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In corrections systems nationwide, officials are grappling with decisions about geriatric units, hospices and medical parole as elderly inmates — with their high rates of illness and infirmity — make up an ever increasing share of the prison population.
With a flurry of coast-to-coast developments this week, same-sex marriage is back in the political spotlight and likely to remain there through Election Day as a half-dozen states face potentially wrenching votes on the issue.
The Boy Scouts have labored for decades to curtail sexual abuse of scouts by adult volunteers. But when their name was evoked in a lawsuit linked to the Penn State abuse scandal, the reference was not to problems — it was acknowledgment that the Scouts' current prevention policies are considered state of the art.
In poll after poll, Americans say the economy is the paramount issue facing the nation, with hot-button social issues trailing far behind. Nonetheless, abortion will likely be in the election-year spotlight in a slew of states facing possible votes on sweeping abortion bans.
Recent high-profile cases of child sex abuse have roused national revulsion against the adults who perpetrated them. Rarely mentioned is the sobering statistic that more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America's children is committed by other minors.
A man in Texas is serving a 35-year prison sentence for spitting at a police officer — because he has the virus that causes AIDS and his saliva was deemed a deadly weapon. In Michigan, an HIV-positive man who allegedly bit a neighbor during an argument faced a bioterrorism charge.
The killing of Osama bin Laden during a raid by Navy SEALs on his hideout in Pakistan was the top news story of 2011, followed by Japan's earthquake/tsunami/meltdown disaster, according to The Associated Press' annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors.
On the wall of Ralph Nader's office hangs a color portrait of baseball legend Lou Gehrig, an old-fashioned hero who seems to rebuke so much of today's sports world — the sex-abuse and drug scandals, labor strife, rampant commercialization.
Fears that persisting economic woes would increase child abuse in the U.S. have proved unfounded, according to the latest federal data.
The practice of sex-selection abortion, usually targeting a female fetus due to parental preference for a son, has few defenders in the United States. Yet a proposed federal ban is drawing vehement opposition from liberal advocacy groups who call it a veiled attempt to undermine broader abortion rights.
For the American Red Cross, it has been a doubly challenging year.
Retirement communities may have their perks, but Beryl O'Connor says it would be tough to match the birthday surprise she got in her own backyard when she turned 80 this year.
In the early months after the 9/11 terror attacks, America's visceral reaction was to gird for a relentless, whatever-it-takes quest to punish those responsible and prevent any recurrences.
Amid the furor over the Penn State sex abuse scandal, it's an easily overshadowed fact: The United States has made huge strides over the past 20 years in reducing the prevalence of child sex abuse.
The number of foreign children adopted by Americans fell by 15 percent last year, reaching the lowest level since 1994 due largely to sharp cutbacks by China and Ethiopia, sources of most adoptees in recent years.
When Joe Paterno, the ousted Penn State football coach, was confronted with a possible case of child rape, he notified his bosses rather than call the police or the child-abuse hotline. That was all Pennsylvania law required him to do, yet in most other states the failure to call could be a crime.
It can be a malicious rumor whispered in the hallway, a lewd photo arriving by cell phone, hands groping where they shouldn't. Added up, it's an epidemic — student-on-student sexual harassment that is pervasive in America's middle schools and high schools.
A federal court is being asked to grant constitutional rights to five killer whales who perform at marine parks — an unprecedented and perhaps quixotic legal action that is nonetheless likely to stoke an ongoing, intense debate at America's law schools over expansion of animal rights.
According to her dads, life is good for Carrigan Starling-Littlefield, a spunky 5-year-old being raised by two gay men in South Carolina, which doesn't recognize their out-of-state marriage.
She's a 40-year-old mother of eight, with a ninth child due soon. The family homestead in a Burundi village is too small to provide enough food, and three of the children have quit school for lack of money to pay required fees.
Barry Warner has loved wildlife since boyhood, and lived out his dream of becoming a conservation officer. He sees no contradiction in the fact that he's also a lifelong trapper, skilled at capturing wild animals and, if appropriate, killing them as part of an avocation that many Americans view as barbarous.
A law school professor from Southern California was named Thursday as the new chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, one of the most active groups opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage.
After 19 years hiding her relationship with an active-duty Army captain, Cathy Cooper is getting ready to exhale. On Tuesday, the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell" will expire. And Cooper will dare speak her love's name in public.
At a food pantry in a Chicago suburb, a 38-year-old mother of two breaks into tears.
In the 21st century, parenthood and paranoia often walk hand in hand.
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