In February former Massey Energy executive David Hughart stood in a courtroom in Beckley, West Virginia and pleaded guilty to obstructing the work of federal safety inspectors. Massey’s chairman and CEO Donald Blankenship, the most powerful coal baron in the history of the American coal industry, ran the company with an iron fist in an iron glove. He had control over even the smallest detail and most likely would have told his subordinate what to do. Despite that, if events transpired the way they almost always have in the history of coal and power in Appalachia, Blankenship would not be touched or his name even mentioned in the criminal proceedings.

And then an extraordinary thing happened. Judge Irene Berger asked Hughart who had ordered him to give miners advance word of inspectors. "The chief executive officer," Hughart replied.

Bangladesh Building Collapse - 2013

With more than 1,000 people dead, the eight-story garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh is an almost unparalleled tragedy. But Friday, 17 days after the disaster, a miracle emerged from the rubble. As onlookers cheered, workers pulled a survivor from the wreckage. Identified only as “Reshma,” the woman is in good condition after reportedly surviving on little more than water and dried fruit.

Since the first reports that Malcolm Shabazz had been killed, there has been a series of confusing accounts, and there are sure to be more as his death is investigated.

The latest reports from Talking Points Memo confirms the State Department’s report that a U.S. citizen was killed in Mexico on Thursday.  While the State Department did not disclose the victim’s name, noted activist Terrie Williams, a close associate of the Shabazz family, told the Amsterdam News it was Shabazz who was killed.

The rash of hate crimes following the Boston Marathon bombings reminds us of the major challenges religious minorities face in this country. Last week a taxi passenger in Northern Virginia verbally and physically attacked his driver for being “a fucking Muslim.” The victim, Mohamed Salim, who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq and currently serves as an Army Reservist, was left with a fractured jaw. This week in California, an 81-year-old Sikh man was brutally assaulted with a steel pipe in a suspected hate crime, from which he suffered a fractured jaw, punctured lung, and head injuries.

While the police investigate whether or not to charge the attackers with hate crimes, politicians and community leaders continue to explore ways to minimize hate-biased violence and facilitate the integration of diverse communities in modern America. The U.S. military has an opportunity to contribute in this regard by opening its doors to various religious minorities, many of whom remain marginalized.

When billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett forked over $142 million to purchase 63 newspapers last year, most other newspapers didn’t take much notice. Buffett’s decision seemed backward-looking but deserving of praise: to us journalists, anyone rich and reckless enough to assume the cost of operating a newspaper in this grim media environment was worth celebrating.

But absent from the scattered coverage of the Buffett mega-purchase was the usual finger-wagging and moralizing about media concentration and the potential dangers of a politically engaged owner interfering in his newspapers’ political coverage. Odd because Buffett is a political guy. He hosts fundraisers for President Obama, pens opinion pieces for The New York Times advocating a more progressive tax code (the so-called Buffett Rule, which the administration adopted in 2011), and pops up on Sunday political chat shows to expound on gridlocked Washington.

Loud cheers greeted Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus as they arrived at their homes Wednesday afternoon, almost one decade after they were abducted, subjected to prolonged sexual and psychological abuse, and apparently bound with ropes and chains, in the Cleveland house of horrors.

The happy homecoming came on the same day that 52-year-old Ariel Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape, and police officers pulled out more than 200 items of evidence from Ariel Castro’s home on Seymour Avenue.

Of Cleveland’s three Castro brothers, it was the middle one, Ariel, 52, who seemed to have his life in order.

Neighbors describe the other siblings—Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50—as kind and polite but nearly always drunk. No one could remember how they earned a living. Ariel, on the other hand, who was charged Wednesday with the rape and kidnapping of three women he allegedly held hostage in his home for nearly a decade, worked a day job for 20 years as a schoolbus driver until he was fired in November. While his brothers got around town on bicycles, Ariel owned a motorcycle and cars, including a Jeep Cherokee and a red Toyota pickup. He had at one time filled in on bass in a local band, Grupo Fuego. He didn’t drink nearly as prolifically as his two siblings did.

The message to the parents of the Boston bombing suspects was clear and unmistakable: “pack and go.”

And soon after the phone call from the Chechen authorities Tuesday, a car carrying government officials arrived to accompany the couple out of the republic.

We first met Charles Ramsey, the hero who rescued three Cleveland women from close to a decade of captivity, in this amazing interview. His plain white T-shirt counterbalanced his colorful personality, and Ramsey’s intensity and wit shone through as he described his decisive actions. But first, he mentioned his meal at McDonald’s. Delicious.

The interview made him an Internet celebrity. Before long, “Charles Ramsey” was trending on Twitter, YouTubers were paying him Auto-Tuned homage, and Antoine Dodson was welcoming him into the pantheon of hilariously expressive local TV interview subjects.

(Here’s the requisite Gregory Brothers auto-tune:)

If it was possible to make a bad situation worse, that’s what Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh managed to do at a Senate hearing Tuesday morning when he blamed an increase in sexual assault in the military on the “hookup” culture prevalent among young people. Welsh said 20 percent of female recruits report being assaulted before they joined the military. “They come in from a society where this occurs,” he said.

Not only did Welsh’s remark seem to place blame on the victim, it also revealed a tendency to view sexual assault in the most benign way, as a date gone bad or a breakdown in communications rather than a violent act. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the first woman to chair the personnel subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, told The Daily Beast it was “outrageous testimony” that showed a fundamental misunderstanding about the violent nature of sexual assault. The senator is introducing a bill next week to take felony crimes out of the chain of command so that rape victims will feel more able to report violent assault without fearing repercussions from officers up the line.