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Monday, December 31, 2012

Jamshed rains on Dhoni's party

Pakistan win first ODI at Chepauk by six wickets.

CHENNAI:
Opener Nasir Jamshed's dogged century overshadowed Man of the Match MS Dhoni’s retaliatory brilliance in a six-wicket win for Pakistan over India in the first ODI at Chepauk on an overcast Sunday.  The Indian captain’s fighting 113 not out had pulled India up from a precarious 29/5 to set a respectable 227 target after they were sent in by Misbah ul Haq, but Pakistan’s batting line up proved up to the chase. Jamshed (101*) and Younis Khan (58) added 112 after the loss of two early wickets and a series of fortunate events ensured the target was overhauled with 11 balls to spare. Left-arm fast bowler Junaid Khan had earlier brought India to their knees with his four-wicket haul in the morning.
If Pakistan’s trump card was their pace, India’s undoing was their reliance on part-timers performing the crucial role of a fifth bowler. The visitors were rocked by debutant Bhuvaneshwar Kumar’s strikes – including the dangerous Mohammad Hafeez on the first ball of the pursuit – but the slower bowlers surrendered the initiative by giving away 77 in ten overs. It was a patchy chase by the neighbours. Jamshed was handed two reprieves - a poor decision and a dropped catch by Yuvraj Singh - and Shoaib Malik (34) was caught behind off R. Ashwin's no ball. Malik survived again when Virender Sehwag at mid wicket lost his skier in the lights, and in the end Pakistan staggered into the series lead on the back of a decisive 56-run stand between the two. In fact, Dhoni was also dropped by his counterpart Misbah when he had scored 16. Virat Kohli, who twisted his ankle and injured his knee while bowling, was taken off the field late in Pakistan's innings.
Chennai boys to the fore
It was a Chennai Super Kings get together after India’s top half had fallen to the deadly left arm pace of Junaid and Irfan. Dhoni initiated the first installment of damage control with Suresh Raina (43) and completed what he’d begun through dizzying acceleration in the later stages in the company of R. Ashwin (31). The two alliances gained 198 runs – 73 and a record 125 – and were starkly contrasting. The first was a crawl to safety as off-spinners Saeed Ajmal and Hafeez came on and gave nothing away. The second was a tearaway sprint towards a competitive total as a tired Dhoni went for his shots. The feature century too comprised contrasting sections. The first fifty came off 86 balls, while the second took just 39, and by the end of his unbeaten, seventh ODI hundred Dhoni looked as drained as basin with the stopper out. But his tiredness and cramps had had an invigorating effect and his recourse to big shots ensured 81 runs in the last 10 overs, 52 in the last five.
Junaid scythes through
India would have settled for far less when on an overcast morning and a moist pitch Junaid and Irfan clean bowled four of the top five. There was instant drama when play began an hour late.  Sehwag didn’t move his feet and lost his off stump; fellow opener Gautam Gambhir drove futilely as the ball rattled into the furniture; Kohli was castled by just the perfect amount of inswing; while Yuvraj was done in by a beauty that whizzed through him before he could get the bat down.  Rohit Sharma was the fifth batsman down when he was taken superbly by a diving Hafeez at third slip. The team may well have folded within 100 had it not been for the CSK trio.  The India captain was dropped by Misbah at midwicket when he was on 16 and the reprieve made him even more watchful. A long, quiet phase was endured before Hafeez – who had given virtually nothing away – skidded one through Raina on the second ball of the batting Powerplay. With India now six down for 102, Pakistan would have hoped for a quick, decisive end.
Dhoni turns it on
But Ashwin supported his leader ably, allowing the senior batsman to cut loose as the fag end neared. Dhoni smashed a free hit off Irfan for the first six of the innings over long on and then carted Ajmal out of the park. The penultimate over, bowled by the hulking left arm fast bowler, was broken open with successive fours followed by a cover driven six – a shot that gave Dhoni his century in 118 balls. The Jharkhand batsman also crossed 7,000 ODI runs in the match, becoming the seventh Indian to the landmark.
Dream debut, again
After a rocking Twenty20 debut last week, Bhuvaneshwar claimed a wicket on his first ODI delivery when he swung one into the dangerous Hafeez. Pakistan had crawled to 21 after the Powerplay before Kumar jolted them again – No.3 Azhar Ali (9) dragging one outside off to Rohit at midwicket.  The young Uttar Pradesh bowler moved the ball both ways and conceded just five in his first five overs. Younis and Jamshed played out the pace battery and accelerated when the part-timers came on.
Yuvraj spills it
Yuvraj went for boundaries, and the batsmen each picked sixes of Suresh Raina as the 100 partnership came up. It took Dinda’s reintroduction and a good catch by Ashwin to get the breakthrough. Younis hit an attempted yorker to mid-wicket where the off-spinner scooped the ball off the ground – a verdict arrived at after some consultation with the third umpire. Dinda could have had another in his next, but Yuvraj dropped a straightforward chance of Jamshed - then on 68 -  at point. Although Misbah was out bowled by an Ishant Sharma slower ball with over 50 still needed, Malik made the best of his chances and stayed with Jamshed to the end.

Hugh Hefner's Many Exes

Before Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner takes a trip to the altar to marry on-again, off-again girlfriend Crystal Harris, take a trip down memory lane with omg! as we look back at some of Hef's gal pals from over the years.
Mildred Williams
It’s hard to imagine Hef with someone his own age, but long before he was a media mogul, Hef married fellow 23-year-old Mildred Williams in 1949. The couple went on to have two children – daughter Christie, now 60, and son David, now 57 – before divorcing in 1959. Christie would grow up to become chairwoman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises.
Hugh Hefner 
Barbi Benton
Beauty Barbi Benton became Hefner’s main squeeze in the late ‘60s after meeting him while working as a model on his TV show “Playboy After Dark,” when Benton was just 18 and the magazine publisher was 42. Benton eventually released a few country music albums, starred in iconic TV series “Hee-Haw,” and appeared on the cover of Playboy a whopping four times, including in 1982, six years after she and Hef broke up.
Hugh Hefner, Barbara Benton 
Shannon Tweed
Before she became Kiss guitarist Gene Simmons’ better half, actress Shannon Tweed, who was bestowed with the honor of Playboy’s Playmate of the Year in 1982, was hoping to become Mrs. Hugh Hefner. "When Shannon says 'Why don't we get married?' and I say no, she punches me. I think having kids is a reason for getting married. I've had two," Hef told People in December 1982, after the couple had been dating for 14 months. "Shannon [27 at the time] is unusually mature and I'm not the average 56-year-old. A lot of the boy is left in me." Tweed moved on to Simmons the following year and married him 28 years later … in a wedding ceremony Hef attended! 
Hugh Hefner, Shannon Tweed 
Carrie Leigh
Though Hugh Hefner has a knack for remaining friendly with many of his exes, 1983 Playboy cover girl Carrie Leigh wasn’t one of them. Leigh, who started dating Hef in 1983 – when she was 19 and he was 57 – moved into her new boyfriend's fabled mansion and sued Hefner for $5 million in palimony after the two broke up. “He promised to marry me, he promised to have a child with me, promised to support me," she said at a press conference. She later got married to someone else and dropped the suit. 
Hugh Hefner, Carrie Leigh 
Kimberly Conrad
After 30 years of living as a bachelor (and a busy one at that), Hef decided to make another trip down the aisle at age 63, this time to marry a 1988 Playmate of the Month, Kimberly Conrad, who was just 27 at the time. Conrad gave birth to Hef’s other two children, sons Maston and Cooper, now 22 and 21 respectively. Hef and his second wife split after nine years together, but Hef didn’t actually file for divorce until 2009, shortly after Cooper turned 18, when he asked a judge to reduce his spousal support from $40,000 to $20,000 a month. Throughout their separation, Conrad had lived with the couple’s sons in a house conveniently located next door to the Playboy mansion.
Kimberley Conrad, Hugh Hefner 
Sandy and Mandy Bentley
After Hefner’s second marriage ended in 1998, he was “beat up emotionally and bruised,” he later told The Daily Beast, and sought comfort in numbers. Two of the women he started seeing were Illinois-born twin sisters Mandy and Sandy Bentley, who quickly became residents of the Playboy Mansion and were featured on the cover of the lad mag in May 2000. However, Sandy reportedly didn’t want to be tied down to one person either, and when Hefner found out she was seeing someone behind his back, he showed her the door
Sandy and Mandy Bentley 
Tina Jordan
Single mother and former loan officer Tina Jordan also moved into the Playboy Mansion when she met Hefner (46 years her senior) in 2001 and became Playmate of the Month in March 2002, when she was 29. The couple broke things off in 2004.
Hugh Hefner, Tina Jordan 
Brande Roderick
If you blinked, you might have missed Brande Roderick in the sea of blond girlfriends Hef has had over the last decade. The now 38-year-old dated the icon around 2000-2001 and (what do you know?) became a Playboy Playmate in 2001. After she and Hef broke things off, Roderick began an acting career and eventually married former NFL linebacker Glenn Cadrez, with whom she has a 2-year-old son.
Brande Roderick, Hugh Hefner 
Izabella St. James
Polish-born Izabella St. James met Hefner at a Los Angeles nightclub in 2000, while she was a law school student at Pepperdine University. After getting her degree, she didn’t follow in the typical lawyer’s footsteps – instead she moved into the Playboy Mansion! She later went on to write the book Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion about being a housemate, which didn’t exactly endear her to Hefner. “Quite simply, Izabella … was one of a number of girls that I dated and lived at the house in the early part of 2001,” Hef later told The Daily Beast. “Despite what she writes, she didn’t leave of her own volition. She left because she was asked to leave because she didn’t get along with some of the other girls. She was in conflict with some of the nicer girls like Holly [Madison] and Bridget [Marquardt], and I kind of cleaned house.”
Izabella St. James 
Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson
And when Hefner "cleaned house," he was left with these three ladies: Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson. Each woman caught his eye at various times, but they came together in 2005 for a reality series about life at the famed abode called “The Girls Next Door.” For six seasons, they shared their lives behind the walls at the mansion, but Hefner's relationship with each woman started to unravel. First, Wilkinson fell in love with NFL player Hank Baskett, who she went on to marry; Madison, his No. 1 girlfriend, dumped Hefner when he told her he didn’t want to get married again or any have more children (she's currently pregnant); and Marquardt was the last to leave, in 2009, because she wanted to become her own person. Although the romances fizzled, Hef has remained on (mostly) friendly terms with the trio of women. 
Hugh Hefner Crystal Harris
In 2008, Hefner met Crystal Harris at his annual Halloween bash at the Playboy Mansion. Just months later she moved in along with the Shannon Twins and quickly slipped into the role of No. 1 girlfriend. While Madison couldn’t get Hefner to commit to marriage, Harris did. Hefner popped the question over Christmas in 2010 and she said yes. However, the road to the altar wasn’t smooth. Weeks before their June 2011 wedding, Harris called it off and left Hefner red faced as he had already put her on the cover of the June issue of Playboy with the headline: "Introducing America's Princess, Mrs. Crystal Hefner." Oops! Although he swore off marriage (again!), he reunited with Harris a year later and in early December 2012 they announced that they were once again engaged. The star-studded nuptials are set to take place at the mansion on New Year’s Eve – though, as we’ve learned, anything can happen. Hugh Hefner, Crystal Harris

Liberal arts colleges forced to evolve with market

In this 2012 photo provided by Adrian College, members of the school's Bulldog football team warm up before homecoming in Adrian, Mich. Adrian's president, Jeffrey Docking, has added seven sports and two pre-professional degree programs to the liberal arts college since arriving in 2005 _ and nearly doubled enrollment to about 1,750. (AP Photo/Adrian College, Matt Gaidica Photography)ADRIAN, Mich. (AP) They're the places you think of when you think of "college"  leafy campuses, small classes, small towns. Liberal arts colleges are where students ponder life's big questions, and learn to think en route to successful careers and richer lives, if not always to the best-paying first jobs. But today's increasingly career-focused students mostly aren't buying the idea that a liberal arts education is good value, and many small liberal arts colleges are struggling. The survivors are shedding their liberal arts identity, if not the label. A study published earlier this year found that of 212 such institutions identified in 1990, only 130 still meet the criteria of a "true liberal arts college." Most that fell off the list remained in business, but had shifted toward a pre-professional curriculum.
These distinctively American institutions — educating at most 2 percent of college students but punching far above their weight in accomplished graduates — can't turn back the clock. But schools like Adrian College, 75 miles southwest of Detroit and back from a recent near-death experience, offer something of a playbook. First, get students in the door by offering what they do want, namely sports and extracurricular opportunities that might elude them at bigger schools. Offer vocational subjects like business, criminal justice and exercise science that students and parents think rightly or wrongly will lead to better jobs.
Then, once they're enrolled, look for other ways to sprinkle the liberal arts magic these colleges still believe in, even if it requires a growing stretch to call yourself a liberal arts college. "We're liberal arts-aholics," says Adrian President Jeffrey Docking, who has added seven sports and two pre-professional degree programs since arriving in 2005 — and nearly doubled enrollment to about 1,750.
But he's also a realist.
"I say this with regret," said Docking, an ethicist by training. But "you really take your life into your own hands thinking that a pure liberal arts degree is going to be attractive enough to enough 18-year-olds that you fill your freshman classes."
In ancient Greece, liberal arts were the subjects that men free from work were at leisure to pursue. Today, the squishy definition still includes subjects that don't prepare for a particular job (but can be useful for many). English, history, philosophy, and other arts and sciences are the traditional mainstays. But these days, some prefer a more, well, liberal definition that's more about teaching style than subject matter.
"I refer to it as learning on a human scale," said William Spellman, a University of North Carolina-Asheville historian who directs a group of 27 public liberal arts colleges. "It's about small classes, access to faculty, the old tutorial model of being connected with somebody who's not interested only in their disciplinary area but culture broadly defined."
Does it work? It's true that research tying college majors to salaries can make the generic liberal arts degrees look unappealing. But technical training can become obsolete, and students are likely to change careers several times. These schools argue you're better off, both in life and work, simply learning to think.
Research does point to broader benefits of studying liberal arts in small settings, in areas like leadership, lifelong learning and civic engagement. Liberal arts colleges are proven launching pads to the top of business, government and academia (graduating 12 U.S. presidents, six chief justices and 12 of 53 Nobel laureates over a recent decade who attended American colleges, by one researcher's count). Foreign delegations often visit to observe, and big U.S. universities are trying to recreate mini-liberal arts colleges within their campuses.
But outside a secure tier of elites with 10-figure endowments — the Swarthmores, Amhersts, Wellesleys of the world — many schools are in trouble. The liberal arts still account for about one-third of bachelor's degrees, but the experience of getting one in these small settings is increasingly atypical. Definitions vary, but liberal arts colleges today probably account for between 100,000 and 300,000 of the country's roughly 17 million undergraduates. There are more students at the University of Phoenix, alone.
These schools "are all getting to around $40,000 a year, in some cases $50,000, and students and their families are just saying 'we can't do it,'" Docking said. Small classes make these schools among them most expensive places in higher education, though they often offer discounts to fill seats (Adrian's list price is $38,602, including room and board, but the average student pays $19,000).
Other pressures are geographic and generational. Many liberal arts colleges are clustered in the Northeast and Midwest, in towns like Adrian, founded by optimistic 18th- and 19th-century settlers who started colleges practically as soon as they arrived. But where the country is growing now is the South and West, where the private college tradition isn't as deep. Meanwhile, students these days expect the climbing walls and high-end dorms that smaller, poorer schools can't afford. And a growing proportion of college students are the first generation in their family to attend. They've proved a tougher sell on the idea they can afford to spend four years of college "exploring." In UCLA's massive national survey of college freshman, "getting a better job" recently surpassed "learning about things that interest me" as the top reason for going to college. The percentage calling job preparation a very important reason rose to 86 percent, up from 70 percent in 2006, before the economy tanked.
Politicians have reinforced the message. Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott recently proposed public colleges charge more for degrees in subjects like anthropology that he said were less economically valuable to the state than science and engineering (though in fact, those subjects usually cost much more to teach).
So, with varying reluctance, colleges have adjusted. In his 2011 book "Liberal Arts at the Brink," former Beloit College president Victor Ferrall calculated that in 1986-87, just 30 of 225 liberal arts colleges awarded 30 percent or more of their degrees in vocational subjects. By 2007-2008, 118 did so. Even at a consortium called the Annapolis Group, comprised of the supposedly purest liberal arts colleges, the percentage of vocational degrees jumped from 6 percent to 17 percent.
"What's new in the past few years," said Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, "is people are beginning to wonder in the places that have remained liberal arts colleges whether that's enough." Schools like Adrian that had already shifted to a more vocational approach "are asking whether the balance is right, whether they need to tip more to the professional side." Adrian was weed-strewn, demoralized and down to its last 840 students when Docking arrived in 2005.
"We borrowed 30 million bucks and said, 'if this doesn't work out, we're done,'" he recalled. First, Docking built up facilities and added teams, notably in sports like hockey and lacrosse that tilt toward more affluent students. No niche market was too small: Adrian started one of the country's only synchronized skating teams. At the nearby University of Michigan, almost nobody walks onto the football team or even the marching band, but you can at Adrian. And everybody recruits. Docking's band director has to bring in 20 kids a year, the symphony director 10. He has fired coaches who don't meet their quotas. (This year, about 700 of Adrian's 1,756 students play varsity sports, more than 40 percent. At the University of Michigan, there are 881 student-athletes — or 3 percent of the 27,500 undergraduates.)
Docking worried Adrian would become a "jock factory," and the number of students wearing team gear on campus is striking. But, he said: "They come in as hockey players, and they leave as chemists and journalists and business leaders." Michael Allen, a longtime theater professor, says the athletics culture has turned out better than he feared, saying most athletes who persist are (or get) serious academically.
Pre-professional programs weren't new to Adrian, but it's recently added athletic training and sports management. The two most popular majors are business and exercise science. So is Adrian still a "liberal arts college?" Some would scoff, but Docking say yes. He notes the top minors include chemistry, English and religion/philosophy. He talks up "institutes" on campus — devoted to ethics, study abroad and other areas — that try to inject liberal arts-style learning around even the pre-professional curriculum. That curriculum still includes liberal arts distribution requirements majors, and he insists liberal arts skills can be taught in other types of classes, and even through extra-curriculars.
Vicki Baker, a professor at nearby Albion College, who co-authored the recent study tracking the 39 percent decline in liberal arts colleges since 1990, also thinks these colleges can retain their value even as they evolve. Her Albion business classes include debates, presentations and other teaching techniques that were impossible when she taught 400 at Penn State.
Liberal arts colleges "appeal to a certain kind of student who really flourishes in that environment," and who might not otherwise succeed in college, Baker said. "It would be a loss to see that vanish." Senior Kyle Cordova chose Adrian half for the chance to play baseball, half for its small size. He was leaning toward a liberal arts major but ended up in criminal justice to prepare for a law enforcement career. He's had the same half-dozen or so professors year after year. "They know me, they know how I work, what I'm weak in, what I'm strong in, how to help me better," he said. "That's better than going to Michigan State."
Communications major Garrett Beitelschies said his professors meet with him on every paper and "you're actually talking in front of the room, having to defend your stance." He's also partaken of an extracurricular feast unimaginable at the bigger schools he considered: president of his fraternity and the senior class, radio, theater, homecoming king and even dressing up as Bruiser the Bulldog mascot at football games. With financial aid Adrian ended up costing him less than some state schools.
Both students said they'd learned broader skills — Cordova cited the complex skills involved in learning to interview witnesses.
But neither said they'd taken a class where the syllabus entailed reading, say, a set of novels. Liberal arts colleges talk constantly — and perhaps with more urgency lately — about better pitching their case to the public. But until they do, they'll have to respond to what that public wants. Docking says the survival recipe will vary (hockey helps here but won't in for Florida colleges). But the basic formula is the same.
"You need to be able to offer more than simply strong academics or you're going to have difficulty attracting students," he said. "There's a lot of competition. You'd better have something to distinguish yourself."

2012 YEAR IN REVIEW

Top News Stories: #1 Election 2012
The 2012 election the most searched news topic on allfamousthings.blogspot.com! dominated news coverage and online conversation this year. Voters may have complained about the negative campaigning, but they heavily followed local, state and national races. On Nov. 6, citizens set their own records: The "youth" vote (ages 18 to 29) turned out in the same numbers as in 2008, in higher proportion than seniors, and may have helped to decide the election in swing states. The gender gap was the greatest in history. More Latinos than ever before registered, Across the nation, early voting surged. President Barack Obama beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney to win a second term, winning 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. 
President Barack Obama earned a second term after defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney. America's first black president vowed to finish the job he started four years ago. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) Top News Stories: #2 Whitney Houston
Legendary singer and actress Whitney Houston was found dead on Feb. 11 in a Beverly Hills hotel. Tragically, the singer had just talked about overcoming her much-publicized struggle with drugs and alcohol. The movie in which she made her big-screen comeback, "Sparkle," was released after her death. Her funeral was attended by celebrities and dignitaries and broadcast to millions around the world. News of Houston's death quickly spread through social media sites. Mediabistro noted the following: "On Twitter, hashtags related to Houston and her name itself dominated the trending topics. YouTube's News channel featured her videos. Fan pages were created on Facebook."
Singer and actress Whitney Houston was found dead in a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel. Houston had overcome a public battle with drug addiction and was returning to the big screen with "Sparkle." (Mel Evans/AP Photo) Top News Stories: #3 Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy crashed into the Eastern Seaboard on Oct. 29, killing at least 128 people and leaving more than $71 billion worth of destruction in its wake.Sandy was dubbed a superstorm as it continued its progression over the East Coast. The torrential wind and rain knocked out power to some parts of New York City, leaving homes and businesses in the dark for days and blacking out half the nighttime skyline of Manhattan.
Hurricane Sandy swept through the East Coast, leaving 128 people dead and causing an estimated $71 billion in damage. The superstorm destroyed seaside amusement parks in New York and New Jersey. (Mark Lennihan/AP Photo)Top News Stories: #4 Gas prices
As politicians offered their positions on the economy (or, at least, who was to blame for its slow recovery), voters kept a wary eye on gas prices. By December, prices at the pump dropped slightly, and the month began with a national average of $3.40. Even if that marked a month-over-month decline, it continued the streak of highest-on-record days that began in late August.
Gas prices went on a roller-coaster ride in some parts of the country. 2012 saw some places with near-record-high prices that would dip, only to rise again. (Mike Segar/Reuters)Top News Stories: #5 Trayvon Martin case
A chance-encounter killing caught the country's attention when George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, allegedly followed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black teenager in a hooded sweatshirt, walking in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. After a call to a 911 operator, who advised Zimmerman to wait for police, he instead confronted the unarmed teen. Within minutes, Trayvon was dead. A charge might not have been filed, but Trayvon's parents made the case public by filing a petition through Change.org, asking that charges be brought. Many showed support for Trayvon by wearing hoodies over their heads. Others organized a Million Hoodie March. Emerging from this incident was the debate over the "stand your ground" defense, which allows a person to defend himself with lethal force anywhere it's legal for that person to be. Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder, but the case has been marked by conflicting reports of the encounter between Zimmerman and Trayvon. The trial for Zimmerman is set for June 10, 2013.
George Zimmerman was charged in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman claimed he was attacked by the young man, who was wearing a hoodie. Trayvon was unarmed. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) 
Top News Stories: #6 Colorado shooting
Spree killings are rare, and yet 2012 witnessed a surge of them, from the Oikos University massacre in Oakland, Calif., to the Sikh temple killings in Oak Creek, Wis. Among them was the Aurora, Colo., shooting, one of the worst massacres since Columbine. Confusion and chaos reigned on July 20, when an early showing of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises" turned deadly. The gunman fired rounds of bullets in the theater, killing 12 people and wounding 58. The criminal case against the suspect, James Holmes, is in a preliminary stage with no trial date set.In one of the deadliest shootings in the U.S., a gunman opened fire in a theater in Aurora, Colo. Twelve people were killed and 58 were wounded. The suspect, James Holmes (pictured), was charged in the killings. (RJ Sangosti-Pool/Getty Images) Top News Stories: #7 Jerry Sandusky trial
Several high-profile cases of child molestation came to light in 2012. In one case, a high-ranking Catholic cleric was given a prison sentence for turning a blind eye to priests' abuse (in a prelude to the trial of the alleged molesters). And the Boy Scouts were ordered to release hundreds of so-called perversion files.
The most notorious event was the trial of Jerry Sandusky on charges that he abused young men and boys while an assistant coach for the Nittany Lions. Also facing judgment was the legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who failed to act on reports of the abuse. The university quietly removed a statue of Paterno from campus and Nike rechristened a childhood development center named after the coach. Penn State's storied football program was stripped of many football victories because of the school's improper handling of reports of Sandusky's abuse. Sandusky, who denied the charges throughout his trial, was sentenced to 442 years in prison.
Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, was found guilty of sexually abusing young men. He not only ruined the lives of his victims, he also tarnished the storied university. (Aggie Kenny/AP Photo) 
Top News Stories: #8 Joran van der Sloot
On Jan. 13, the Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot was sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to the 2010 robbery and murder of Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramirez, a 21-year-old Peruvian woman he had met in Lima. Van der Sloot has been a suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in 2005 in Aruba.Joran van der Sloot was sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to the 2010 murder of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman he met in Lima. He was a suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. (Karel Navarro/AP Photo)Top News Stories: #9 Connecticut school shootings
On Dec. 14, a spree shooting left 28 dead in the Connecticut town of Newtown.
America had already been roiled by eight rampages in 2012 among them the shootings at Oikos University in Oakland, Calif., (7 dead); the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., (12 dead); and the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., (6 dead). The horror in Newtown—which saw its last homicide in 1984—unfolded among its most vulnerable residents. The gunman, Adam Lanza, shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, in her bed. With his mother's guns—a Glock, a Sig Sauer and a semiautomatic .223 Bushmaster—Lanza then headed to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where his mother is said to have volunteered and where he had once briefly attended. There, he allegedly shot 20 children and six adults, then killed himself after police arrived. The investigation into his motives has surfaced questions about his mental capacity (Lanza was reportedly a genius diagnosed with Asperger syndrome) and his motives (rumors are surfacing about his mother's possible intention to move him elsewhere). Debate about gun control flared again, and President Barack Obama has appointed Vice President Joe Biden to look into the issue.
The more paramount concern in Newtown—and across the United States—was mourning the lost and honoring last heroic acts. The names and ages of Sandy Hook's dead: Charlotte Bacon (6), Daniel Barden (7), Rachel Davino (29), Olivia Engel (6), Josephine Gay (7), Ana M Marquez-Greene (6), Dylan Hockley (6), Dawn Hochsprung (47), Madeline F. Hsu (6), Catherine V. Hubbard (6), Chase Kowalski (7), Jesse Lewis (6), James Mattioli (6), Grace McDonnell (7), Anne Marie Murphy (52), Emilie Parker (6), Jack Pinto (6), Noah Pozner (6), Caroline Previdi (6), Jessica Rekos (6), Avielle Richman (6), Lauren Rousseau (30), Mary Sherlach (56), Victoria Soto (27), Benjamin Wheeler (6), Allison N Wyatt (6).
A sign set up in honor of the victims of the recent shooting in Sandy Hook Village in Newtown, Connecticut on December 18, 2012. (Reuters/Lucas Jackson) Top News Stories: #10 Miami cannibal attack
A series of bizarre killings, led by the so-called Miami cannibal attack on May 26, triggered an outbreak of searches such as "zombie apocalypse." The story of Ronald Poppo, a South Florida homeless man, generated lurid attention for days because his attacker, Rudy Eugene, was nude when he attacked Poppo by chewing off much of his face. A police officer shot and killed Eugene, and no motive has surfaced.
Speculation ran high that inexpensive synthetic drugs, or "bath salts," were involved, but an autopsy revealed that was not the case. Poppo shockingly survived and has even given interviews about his attack, telling a Miami TV station, "He just ripped me to ribbons."
A gruesome attack by Rudy Eugene (pictured, left) left homeless man Ronald Poppo (pictured, right) blind and missing pieces of his face. Eugene was eventually shot and killed by a police officer. The attack appeared random. (Miami-Dade Police Dept./AP Photo)

9 killed, more than 2 dozen hurt when charter tour bus veers off icy highway in eastern Oregon

Emergency personnel respond to the scene of a multiple-fatality accident where a tour bus careened through a guardrail along an icy highway and several hundred feet down a steep embankment, authorities said, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012 about 15 miles east of Pendleton, Ore. The charter bus carrying about 40 people lost control around 10:30 a.m. on the snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84, according to the Oregon State Police. (AP Photo/East Oregonian, Tim Trainor)PENDLETON, Ore. - RCMP in British Columbia were asked Sunday to help notify the relatives of people on a Vancouver-bound tour bus that crashed in Oregon Sunday morning, killing nine people.
Police were asked to notify relatives in the Vancouver-area, said RCMP Sgt. Peter Thiessen. "Oregon state police has requested our assistance in regards to that tragic crash in their jurisdiction and requested that we assist in some of the next of kin notifications that may need to be done here in the Lower Mainland or even outside the Lower Mainland," said Thiessen in an interview.
"So as we do them, those notifications, we will be supporting those families that are affected and will be providing information back to the Oregon State Police in regards to those next of kin notifications." Thiessen declined to answer questions about the nationalities of the victims.
Police say the tour bus was owned by a Vancouver company called Mi Joo Tour & Travel and had been headed to Vancouver from Las Vegas with 40 people on board.
It lost control around 10:30 a.m. on snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84 in eastern Oregon. Oregon State Police said it crashed through a guardrail and plunged about 30 metres down a steep embankment. The bus landed upright at the bottom of the snowy slope, with little or no debris visible around the crash site.
More than a dozen rescue workers descended the hill and used ropes to help retrieve people from the wreckage in freezing weather. The bus driver was among the survivors, but had not yet spoken to police because of the severity of the injuries the driver had suffered.
St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton treated 26 people from the accident, said hospital spokesman Larry Blanc. Five of those treated at St. Anthony were transported to other facilities. Blanc did not elaborate on the nature of the injuries but told the Oregonian that the hospital brought in additional staff to handle the rush of patients and did a lot of X-ray imaging.
Lt. Greg Hastings said the bus crashed along the west end of the Blue Mountains, and west of an area called Deadman Pass. The area is so dangerous the state transportation department published specific warnings for truck drivers, advising it had "some of the most changeable and severe weather conditions in the Northwest" and can lead to slick conditions and poor visibility. The East Oregonian said it spoke with two South Korean passengers, ages 16 and 17. Both said through a translator that they were seated near the rear of the bus when it swerved a few times, hit the guardrail and flipped. They described breaking glass and seeing passengers pinned by their seats as the bus slid down the hill. Both said that they feared for their lives.
The paper said that the teens, one of whom injured a knee and the other suffered a broken collarbone, were staying at a hotel arranged by the Red Cross.
I-84 is a major east-west highway through Oregon that follows the Columbia River Gorge.
A bus safety website run by the U.S. Department of Transportation said Mi Joo Tour & Travel has six buses, none of which have been involved in any accidents in at least the past two years. The bus crash was the second fatal accident on the same highway in Oregon on Sunday. A 69-year-old man died in a rollover accident about 30 miles west of the area where the bus crashed.
A spokesman for the American Bus Association said buses carry more than 700 million passengers a year in the United States. "The industry as a whole is a very safe industry," said Dan Ronan of the Washington, D.C.,-based group. "There are only a handful of accidents every year. Comparatively speaking, we're the safest form of surface transportation."
The bus crash comes more than two months after another chartered tour bus in October veered off a highway in northern Arizona, killing the driver and injuring dozens of passengers who were mostly tourists from Asia and Europe. Authorities say the driver likely had a medical episode.