The Bush White House, we now know, used retired generals with ties to the Pentagon and to military contractors to deceive the U.S. public. Unembedded journalists in Iraq were a thorn in the side of the Pentagon spin masters. Might that April 8 attack been a message to them? Thanks to former Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne, we may be closer to finding out.

An international media advocacy group has criticised the US military for not fully investigating the deaths of three journalists killed when their hotel and Al Jazeera's office came under US fire as Baghdad fell on April 8, 2003.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says it has continuously called on the US military to fully investigate the incidents that came just before the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled.

"The Pentagon has never credibly explained the strike on the Baghdad bureau on Al Jazeera, despite our repeated calls to investigate it," Joel Campagna, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa senior programme co-ordinator, said.

Tariq Ayoub, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, was killed when a US missile struck the Baghdad bureau.

Al Jazeera directors had given the US military the bureau's geographic co-ordinates weeks before the war began in March 2003.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the CPJ stated that their investigation into the attack "found that although the attack on the [Palestine] hotel was not deliberate, it could have been avoided and may have been caused by a breakdown in communication within the US army chain of command."

''Kids are being trained to eat junk food,'' said Saralyn Myers, a Dobbs Ferry mother of two who has been active in her district for the past four years on the elementary school's Healthy School Lunch Committee. ''We teach them early about sex education. We need to teach them about food. Eating should be fun and enjoyable, about fueling the body, and integrated into the idea of being healthy.''

Ms. Myers and her committee were nonetheless able to infuse the daily lunch menu with options like whole wheat bread (alongside the white bread), black bean and brown rice wraps, hummus and whole wheat pitas, tofu sloppy joes, bean tacos, and simple additions to the salad bar like chick peas and sunflower seeds.

''Ten years ago, for example, pasta would have been served with meat sauce,'' said Marjorie Holderman, principal of the Dobbs Ferry Middle School. ''Now it's more likely to be pasta primavera, with vegetables, or pasta marinara. A lot of children like to eat this way, even though they may not run out and buy a tofu burger.''

His camera catches one incredible detail after another: it was God’s will that Mr. Travesser, 66, sleep with other men’s wives, including his own daughter-in-law, and that assorted young women and under-age girls lie nude with him. As the interviewees talk about such things, you might find yourself thinking, “These people obviously didn’t understand the power of the medium or how insane they would sound on film.” But think again: the cult is thoroughly media-savvy, maintaining an extensive Web site full of video and blogs.

Sure, there is a point of view in the documentary, as evident from Mr. Anthony’s excessive use of close-ups of cult members’ vacant stares. But even if the film is, say, only 10 percent accurate, it’s an alarm bell, especially after the recent accounts involving the much larger, polygamist sect in Texas. The authorities in New Mexico, at least, seem to have heard the alarm: two weeks ago they came in and removed three minors from the compound, and on Tuesday they arrested Mr. Travesser on three charges of criminal sexual contact.

Last month, authorities removed two girls and a boy from the compound. The reasons for their removal are not publicly known, but the removals gained attention because they came after more than 400 children were removed from the Texas ranch of an offshoot Mormon sect that practices polygamy. Those children remain in state custody.

Bent has acknowledged having sex with his followers, but authorities will not divulge who the alleged victims are.

A former member of the Lord Our Righteousness Church, however, told CNN affiliate KOAT that he left because Bent wanted to sleep with his daughters.

John Sayer said he split with the church after 16 years when Bent told him he was supposed to sleep with seven virgins -- and that two of them were to be Sayer's daughters, then 14 and 15 years old. He said he told Bent that it wasn't right and that he, his wife and his daughters left the compound.

Sayer told KOAT that his youngest daughter later returned and was one of the three removed by authorities.

The telephone call that spelled the end of Jim Piculas’ career as a substitute teacher in Pasco County came on a January day about a week after he performed the disappearing-toothpick trick for a group of rapt middle school students.

Pat Sinclair, who oversees substitute teachers in the Pasco County School District, was on the phone. She told Piculas there had been a complaint about his performance at Rushe Middle School in Land O’ Lakes.

He asked what she meant.

“She said, ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ ” Piculas said.

He said the statement seemed bizarre to him, like something out of Harry Potter.

Piculas said he replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He said he also told Sinclair, “It’s not black magic. It’s a toothpick.”

"In this riveting and deeply troubling book, Maia Szalavitz shows that we don't have to go to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo to find examples of harsh violations of human rights: frighteningly similar abuses are inflicted on American teenagers today, in programs ostensibly established to help them. Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids vividly illuminates the human costs of these 'treatment' programs, and the urgency of challenging their misleading claims before more of our children are irreparably harmed"

"Last time this country witnessed somebody with a bag over his head and a noose around his neck, the world was horrified and the nation was embarrassed," thundered Rep. George Miller, on hearing testimony this April regarding abusive treatment of troubled teens in unregulated residential programs. "To be told [by these witnesses] that this is considered a valid therapy by someone in the care of someone else's child…It's hard to believe." [MoJo]

In the past -- despite thousands of cases of severe abuse -- few attorneys have been willing to take these cases because they risk spending a great deal of money that may not be recouped unless they win an extremely large judgment. This provision would level the playing field -- and could make programs uninsurable if they did not stop abusive practices like those experienced by Kathryn Whitehead and Jon Martin-Crawford, who testified eloquently at the hearings.

Whitehead, who was sent to the Mission Mountain School in Montana after becoming suicidally depressed at 13, described a punitive regime which labeled all participants "liars" and "manipulators." Meaningless labor served as discipline and "therapy" was invasive attacks aimed at uncovering "repressed" memories. Whitehead now heads an organization aimed at ending such abuses, called CAFETY. Her testimony can be found here [pdf]

Wow, imprisoning a child in hell for being severely depressed! Sick!

Martin-Crawford attended a New York program called the Family Foundation, which imposed ideology based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous on all participants, including constant forced confessions. Teens were made to restrain other teens -- using duct tape and blankets and they were not given access to the bathroom. His testimony.

Both of those programs are still open.

Almost every six minutes, a woman reports being raped in the United States, according to the most recent figures from the FBI. That added up to more than 90,000 women who were raped in 2006 -- a number that experts consider a gross undercount.

We'll never know for certain how many women were raped in 1984, but one of them was Plain Dealer reporter Joanna Connors, who was then our theater critic. She was attacked on a deserted stage at Eldred Theater, on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.

Today, Joanna will tell you a story she kept quiet about for more than 20 years: her chance encounter with a dangerous felon on parole; the nightmare of the trial; her subsequent years of coping and denial; and, finally, her search to find the man who raped her so she could try, at last, to move on from an incident that changed and scarred her life.

Her story is powerful, and hard to read. The language is raw, the acts described are brutal. Her struggle -- over the rape itself and the complex racial issues it raised -- is intense. Some of you might find even this sanitized version violates your expectation of acceptable content for The Plain Dealer. Some of you might be upset or angry. Some of you might not want to read this story.

We have decided to publish Joanna's story, in the stark way in which she wrote it, because it airs important truths about a violent epidemic that undermines the lives of individual women and of our society as a whole.

We risk offending some readers in the hope that Joanna's story will help other sexual-assault victims grapple with their own trauma and misdirected self-blame, and find ways to heal. For everyone else, we hope reading this story will shed light on the reality of the lasting impact of rape, break the silence, lift the stigma and promote greater understanding throughout our community.

Photo: Lisa DeJong/ The Plain Dealer