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Colombia to return mistakenly deported teen to U.S.
Colombia will hand over to U.S. officials Friday a Dallas teenager who ran away from home more than a year ago and was mistakenly deported to Colombia, the South American country's foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday.
The family of Jakadrien Turner (pictured) says U.S. immigration authorities deported her after mistaking her for a Colombian national after she ran away in fall 2010.
FULL STORY
Overheard on CNN.com: Broke doctors, rich doctors? Behind the stethoscope
Editor's note: This post is part of the Overheard on CNN.com series, a regular feature that examines interesting comments and thought-provoking conversations posted by the community.
We've seen quite a bit of reaction to a CNNMoney story on doctors going broke due to reasons including insurance changes, the economy and business acumen. Commenters claiming to be doctors and medical staffers (and their family, too) wrote in to share why people should appreciate their circumstances. Many consumers also responded with their own thoughts.
The following comments were selected to show perspectives from beyond the sea-foam-green curtain.
Higher costs, sicker patients
One commenter cited many external factors that are creating financial stress for doctors. FULL POST
Overheard on CNN.com: Tradeoffs, politics of paring down military
Editor's note: This post is part of the Overheard on CNN.com series, a regular feature that examines interesting comments and thought-provoking conversations posted by the community.
President Barack Obama unveiled a plan Thursday for a leaner, cheaper military. The new strategy eliminates the military's ability to actively fight two major wars at once, but the president insists that the country will still be agile enough to deal with existing concerns and new threats.
Obama unveils plans for pared-down military
Many readers seemed appreciative of this change, but some of them were quite afraid of consequences.
Flambizzle: "This is a hard call. We're all afraid of China and Iran or if they buddy-up. But [Obama] promised this and here it is, and we do need it. I don't like to think of losing jobs or even soldiers' jobs. But this country can't continue to militarize while people starve. Those days are gone and we're broke. And the reliance for a lot of the economy on super-powerful military-industial contractors is a throw-off from the Cold War that is bad for our economy and country. And, quite simply, it's also an obvious attempt to curb America's military bullying. Now someone like Bush won't be able to con us into throwing away money and lives anymore. It will be unrealistic as much as it was unaffordable."
Some commenters said the government should focus on trimming its bureaucracies first. FULL POST
Gotta Watch: When they fought back
The harrowing story of a young mother who protected her baby by shooting an intruder sheds light on those spur-of-the-moment choices people make when they are in danger. Here’s a collection of other instances when victims defended themselves against their attackers. While the victims in these stories were wounded, the following incidents did not result in any fatalities.
Critics say proposed Tenn. bill could enable harassment in schools
A proposed bill that will be debated in Tennessee would create a loophole in state schools' anti-discrimination laws that could protect students who engage in harassment if it falls under their religious or political beliefs, opponents of the bill told CNN.
Currently schools in the state are being required to adopt policies that prohibit harassment and bullying.
Supporters of the bill say their goal is to make sure whatever policies are implemented will keep in mind a student’s freedom of expression and protect the student from being punished merely for expressing their views so long as they aren’t threatening harm or damaging property.
“This bill clarifies that the policy may not be construed or interpreted to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of students and may not prohibit their expression of religious, philosophical, or political views as long as such expression does not include a threat of physical harm to a student or of damage to a student's property,” the bill states.
But opponents say it will create an dangerous exemption that allows those who condemn homosexuality to openly harass gay students strictly because of their religious views without punishment - so long as they don't actually harm them.
The bill, which was introduced in 2011 in the House and Senate, has gained attention after the conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) announced it would be one of their highest priorities for the year. The sponsors of the bills did not return calls for comment about where discussion on the bill stood.
The group's December newsletter says it hopes "to make sure [the law] protects the religious liberty and free speech rights of students who want to express their views on homosexuality,” according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Because of the specific protection requested for religious and political views, activists for the LGBT communities fear the law may be sending the wrong message to students that it would be OK to harass each other under the cloak of religious or political views.
Goalkeeper scores on 90-yard kick
The goalkeeper sends it long ... Gooaaalllll!
American Tim Howard on Wednesday joined a select group of goalkeepers to score from the length of the field in the Barclays Premier League, England's top soccer league, which is widely considered the world's top league.
Howard's goal sails over Bolton goalkeeper Adam Bogdan.
Everton's Howard, kicking from his own goal area, sent the ball long into the windy night. It took one bounce behind the Bolton defense, and then the wind blew it over Bolton goalkeeper Adam Bogdan and into the Bolton net, 90 yards or so from where Howard struck the ball.
Howard joins another American, Brad Friedel, and Peter Schmeichel and Paul Robinson as goalkeepers to score in Britain's elite league. That's just four goals from keepers among the almost 20,000 scored in the league's 20-year history.
But Howard had two reasons not to be too happy with his good fortune. One, though his 63rd-minute goal gave Everton a 1-0 lead, Bolton notched two goals to pull off an upset win. Two, goalkeepers are a pretty tight brotherhood who don't like to see misfortune come upon each other.
"I let (Bogdan) know that I was feeling for him. It's not a nice place to be. I've been there before, a long, long time ago, and that was why I didn't celebrate," ESPN Soccernet quoted Howard as saying.
Howard said the conditions in the stadium were rough.
"It's really awful actually. For the back four and the goalkeepers at both ends, there was an awful wind swirling. You could see everybody was mistiming balls," Howard was quoted in the Daily Mail.
Prosecutor asks death sentence for Mubarak
Prosecutors in the trial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak formally requested a penalty of death by hanging for Mubarak and several of his fellow defendants Thursday, an attorney at the court said.
Mubarak is accused of ordering protesters killed during the country's uprising last year, and of corruption. He denies the charges.
Khaled Abu Bakr, a civil rights lawyer representing the families of victims at the trial, told CNN that prosecutors requested death by hanging for Mubarak, former Egyptian Interior Minister Habib El Adly and four of his six aides.
They asked for the maximum jail sentence for the two other aides on trial, Abu Bakr said.
The prosecutors' request came at the end of three days of prosecution arguments in a Cairo courtroom.
FULL STORYOfficial: Arab League monitors made 'mistakes' in Syria
Arab League monitors made "mistakes" during their fact-finding mission in Syria, Qatar's foreign minister said on Thursday.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told reporters that the league is seeking technical assistance from the United Nations for its mission, lambasted by many critics for failing to halt violence.
He didn't elaborate on the errors, but he stressed that the mission was of an "observatory nature, not to intervene in stopping the violence."
FULL STORYThursday's live events
The New Hampshire primary is just five days away, and CNN.com Live is your home for all the news and views from the GOP presidential candidates and the race to the White House.
Today's programming highlights...
7:55 am ET - Romney town hall - GOP candidate Mitt Romney holds a town hall-style meeting in Greater Salem, New Hampshire. He'll then travel to South Carolina and participate at an event in Charleston in 3:45 pm ET.
Record price paid for massive tuna
Fancy a $50 piece of sushi?
That's what one piece of a 593-pound blue fin tuna sold Thursday at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market for a record $736,000 is worth.
Kiyoshi Kimura, who runs the Sushi-Zanmai chain in Japan, bought the record-setting fish at the first auction of the new year at Japan's main fish market, a popular tourist stop in Tokyo, according to the Tokyo Times.
The previous record for a fish was set at the market in 2011's first sale of the new year, when a Hong Kong restauranteur paid $422,000 for a blue fin. He took that fish to Hong Kong.
Kimura said he wanted to keep this year's top tuna in Japan. It was caught off Amori prefecture.
"We tried very hard to win the bidding, so that we could give Japan a boost and have Japanese people eat the most delicious tuna," the Mainichi Daily News quoted him as saying.
Despite the record price Kimura paid, pieces of the prize fish are expected to sell for around $5 in his restaurants.
6 police officers shot in Utah
Six Utah police officers were shot Wednesday night while serving a search warrant in the city of Ogden, police said.
All six were being treated at a hospital, according to Ogden Assistant Police Chief Marcy Korgenski, who said a suspect in the case was also wounded and receiving treatment.
The wounded officers were part of a narcotics task force focused on curbing illegal drug sales, according to CNN affiliate KSL-TV in Salt Lake City.
FULL STORYTaliban says it executed 15 Pakistani security officials
Authorities found the bodies of 15 Pakistani security personnel in the country's northwest tribal region, officials said Thursday.
The security officials had been kidnapped two weeks ago in Tank, an area south of Peshawar near the Afghan border, said Ali Sher, a senior security official.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibly for the killings, said Ihsanullah Ihsan, a spokesman for the militant group.
Ihsan said the execution was in response to a search operation for militants conducted last week in the country's Landi Kotal tribal area, where several women were arrested by Pakistani security forces.
The security personnel belonged to the Frontier Constabulary, a special police unit deployed in Pakistan's North Western region, charged with fighting militancy at a local level, said Majid Marwat a senior commander with the unit.
FULL STORYBaghdad bombings kill 9
A triple bombing in Baghdad's Sadr City slum Thursday morning killed at least nine people and wounded 35 others, an official with Iraq's Interior Ministry said.
The first bomb - attached to a motorcycle - detonated near a group of laborers who were searching for day jobs in the Shiite neighborhood, according to the official. Shortly after that, two other bombs detonated in quick succession nearby.
Iraqis have been concerned about an increase in violence after the U.S. Military withdrawal from the country.
FULL STORY
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