Quote: The new medical reports on the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case tell us a lot. And it is not just for what they find, but also what they don’t find.

First, the reports provide striking evidence that Zimmerman did not start the fight with Martin, and that Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense. Martin’s injuries were two-fold: broken skin on his knuckles and the fatal gunshot wound.

Zimmerman’s injuries involved: a fractured nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury.

It takes considerable force to break the skin on multiple knuckles. The large range of injuries on Zimmerman indicates that the Martin’s attack was prolonged. But here is what is missing: where are the injuries to Zimmerman’s hands? Where are the bruises on Martin’s face or other parts of his body? The evidence paints a picture where Martin was the only person landing blows.

Quote:Age is the problem here.

Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin is skipping a planned visit to the United States this month for an economic summit and a much-anticipated meeting with President Barack Obama, the White House announced Wednesday.
The Russian leader told Obama by phone that he is unable to join the other leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations meeting outside Washington on May 18-19 because he needs to finish work setting up his new Cabinet, the White House said. The Obama administration had moved the gathering to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland from the planned venue in Chicago partly to accommodate Putin.

Quote:The crux of the problem, as always, is money, or rather the lack of it. For decades the country has paid for federal investments in transport with a federal tax on petrol (gasoline). But the tax, of 18.4 cents per gallon, is not indexed to inflation and has not increased since 1993. To make matters worse, Americans are driving less, in cars that use less petrol. The result has been a steady decline in the amount of money set aside for road-building and maintenance (as well as for public transport and for the clean-up of leaks from fuel-storage tanks, both of which get small slices of the petrol-tax pie).

Congress has had to spend $35 billion since 2008 topping up the “Highway Trust Fund”, as the petrol-tax piggy bank is known. But with money short, and parsimonious Republicans in charge of the House, such bail-outs are encountering ever stiffer resistance.

Quote:Even those Republicans who embrace federal spending on highways are unwilling to levy more taxes to pay for it. Most of them reject all talk of increasing the petrol tax, or even indexing it to inflation, says Erich Zimmermann of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a pressure group. And a growing number seem to be suspicious of any federal involvement at all in infrastructure investments, despite the fact that it was a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, who created the interstate highway system in the 1950s with large dollops of federal cash.

Quote:Between 2007 and 2009, grades for 59 students in nine courses were submitted to the registrar with forged signatures of professors who said they never taught the course. During that same span, “several faculty members” stated that there were unauthorized grade changes and they were not aware of who authorized the adjustments.

Quote:Nearly 40% of students in UNC courses under probe played football or basketball

Quote:"I was fortunate enough to take Swahili classes with the starting lineup of the men's basketball team at UNC. That was quite an experience," he said

Quote:SAN DIEGO – The California student who was forgotten about by agents and left alone in a holding cell for five days without food or water filed a $20 million claim Wednesday against federal drug officials.
Attorney Eugene Iredale sent the demand notice on behalf of UC San Diego senior Daniel Chong, 23, to the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) general counsel, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Chong had been picked up in a drug sweep but was never arrested or charged.
"The deprivation of food and water for four and one-half days while the person is handcuffed the entire time constitutes torture under both international and domestic law," the claim said.