Craigslist is at the center of another horrifying sexual assault, this time the rape of a Wyoming woman—allegedly solicited by her disgruntled ex-boyfriend.

The soon-to-be ex-Marine allegedly posed as his ex-girlfriend and solicited “a real aggressive man with no concern for women” to break into her home and engage in a rape fantasy. A week later a man obliged, gagging the woman and raping her at knifepoint.

“I’ll show you aggressive,” Ty Oliver McDowell supposedly said; he now says he thought he was simply doing what they had agreed upon in online conversations, Salon reports—though, of course, he was communicating with ex-boyfriend Jebediah James Stipe. The case underscores the ease with which one can “get someone raped,” notes DoubleEx. McDowell is charged with first-degree sexual assault, among other counts; Stipe is charged with conspiracy to commit the same crime.

Videos showing teens strangling each other for fun have gone viral, offering young people step-by-step instructions on how to get high by squeezing the carotid artery to restrict the flow of oxygen to the brain. Medical experts say the practice, known as ‘the pass out game” can lead to brain damage and death. “This is disturbing, highly dangerous, very risky and should be avoided at all costs,” one researcher told the Independent.

They advise parents and educators to learn the warning signs—unexplainable headaches, bruising around the neck, bloodshot eyes or ear pain—to help curb the craze, which they say is most popular among high-achieving teens who prefer this to getting caught with drugs or alcohol. The CDC estimates the “game” killed 82 US teens between 1995 and 2007; Games Adolescents Shouldn’t Play, a campaign group, puts the figure at 458.

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A 35-year-old mother of nine is suing a Springfield hospital, three doctors and two nurses, claiming they permanently sterilized her against her will, violating her reproductive rights, according to a lawsuit filed in Superior Court.

Tessa Savicki, who has nine children aged 3 to 21, claims doctors were supposed to implant an intrauterine device, which is a type of reversible birth control, after she delivered a son, Manuel Flores, on Dec. 19, 2006, at Baystate Medical Center.

Instead, she said, a type of permanent sterilization known as a tubal ligation was performed, leaving her mentally distraught and incapable of bearing more children.

A 35-year-old mother of nine is suing a Springfield hospital, three doctors and two nurses, claiming they permanently sterilized her against her will, violating her reproductive rights, according to a lawsuit filed in Superior Court.

Tessa Savicki, who has nine children aged 3 to 21, claims doctors were supposed to implant an intrauterine device, which is a type of reversible birth control, after she delivered a son, Manuel Flores, on Dec. 19, 2006, at Baystate Medical Center.

Instead, she said, a type of permanent sterilization known as a tubal ligation was performed, leaving her mentally distraught and incapable of bearing more children.

Savicki has nine children from several men, is unemployed and relies on public assistance for two of the four children who live with her. She receives supplemental security income, or SSI, for a disability, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she said. Her mother has custody of three of her children. Two of her children are no longer minors.

Full story here.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi are famed in capital-area circles for their fun-loving spirit, their glamorous lifestyle, and for ripping people off, interviews with law enforcement officials and some of the pair’s many creditors reveal.

Court records show that in case after case, the Salahis hired people or companies to chauffeur them or put on events and left them stuck with the bill.

The parties seeking payment from the Salahis include banks, legal firms, hairstylists, dress designers, caterers—and the Washington Post, which is owed $24,000 for advertising. With all the lawsuits piling up against them, “you’d think they would be staying out of sight, but that is not what they do,” one sheriff says. “I am sure a lot of people weren’t surprised when people saw their picture that night they went to the White House.”

More on this story here.

A woman accused of telling the Secret Service she would “blow away” Michelle Obama was in federal custody Tuesday as the Obama family planned to travel to Hawaii.

Kristy Lee Roshia, 35, was charged with threatening a family member of the president and assaulting a federal agent after being arrested Saturday less than two miles from the Kailua home where the Obama family planned to stay during a holiday visit later this week.

Roshia called the Secret Service’s Boston office last month and told a receptionist, “I will kill Michelle Obama” and “I will kill Marines,” according to a Secret Service affidavit.

During the same call, she said she would “blow away” Michelle Obama, the document states.

A message left at the federal public defender’s office in Honolulu was not immediately returned.

Roshia has a history of leaving rambling messages and sending poems, love letters and photographs of herself to the Secret Service, according to the affidavit.

As early as 2004, she told the agency that “although her mission is to assassinate the president, she has no desire to hurt him,” the document states.

The affidavit said Roshia acknowledged to Secret Service agents before her arrest that she had threatened Michelle Obama.

It also says Roshia said she knew where Obama would be staying in Hawaii, and the reason she had traveled to Hawaii in September was “to protect Obama.”

Roshia was also charged with lunging at a Secret Service agent, striking him in the arms and face during her arrest.

She was being held without bail pending a Wednesday detention hearing.

A millionaire businessman who fought back against a knife-wielding burglar was jailed for two-and-a-half years yesterday. But his attacker has been spared prison.

Munir Hussain, 53, and his family were tied up and told to lie on the floor by career criminal Waled Salem, who burst into his home with two other masked men.

Mr Hussain escaped and attacked Salem with a metal pole and a cricket bat. But yesterday it was the businessman who was starting a prison sentence for his ‘very violent revenge’.

Jailing him, Judge John Reddihough said some members of the public would think that 56-year-old Salem ‘deserved what happened to him’ and that Mr Hussain ‘should not have been prosecuted’.

But had he spared Mr Hussain jail, the judge said, the ‘rule of law’ would collapse.

He said: ‘If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.’

Salem, who has previous convictions, has already been given a non-custodial sentence despite carrying out what the judge called a ‘serious and wicked’ attack.

Mr Hussain’s nightmare began on September 3 last year when he, his wife, 18-year-old daughter and two sons aged 18 and 15 returned from their mosque during Ramadan to find three intruders in their home in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

They were tied up and told to get on the floor if they did not want to be killed. One of Mr Hussain’s sons managed to escape and alerted Mr Hussain’s younger brother Tokeer, 35, who lived a few doors away.

Mr Hussain made a break for freedom by throwing a coffee table at his attackers. He and Tokeer chased the gang and brought Salem to the ground in a front garden.

Reading Crown Court heard how Mr Hussain and his brother then beat Salem while he lay on the ground, using a cricket bat, a pole and a hockey stick – leaving him with a fractured skull and brain damage following the ‘sustained’ attack.

Salem’s condition meant he was unable to enter a plea to false imprisonment. He was given a non-custodial sentence-in October.

Salem, of Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, did not give evidence at Mr Hussain’s trial. Michael Wolkind, QC, representing Mr Hussain, who runs a soundproofing company, said his client’s actions were ‘taken in the agony of the moment’ and that his ‘calm judgment was not available’.

‘If there was a call to arms it was down to the extreme moment of stress,’ he said. Mr Wolkind said Mr Hussain, a devout Muslim, blamed himself for the attack and felt guilty for not protecting his family properly. ‘It will take him a number of years to recover,’ he said.

The court also heard from psychiatrist Dr Phillip Joseph who said Mr Hussain was a calm person who kept himself in control, but that his body had chosen the ‘fight rather than flight’ option.

During mitigation a number of letters from Daily Mail readers who had supported a campaign against the businessman’s conviction were read to the judge.

The court heard that Mr Hussain’s wife Shahwen has had a mini stroke since the attack.

Judge Reddihough sentenced Munir Hussain to 30 months in jail for grievous bodily harm with intent. Tokeer was given 39 months because the judge said he had not faced as much provocation as his brother.

The judge added: ‘The prosecution rightly made it plain that there was no allegation against you, Munir Hussain, in respect of the force you used against Salem in defending your own home and family or of the force used by either of you in apprehending Salem.

‘However, the attack which then occurred was totally unnecessary and amounted to a very violent revenge attack on a defenceless man.

‘It may be that some members of the public or media commentators will assert that Salem deserved what happened to him, and that you should not have been prosecuted and need not be punished.

‘The courts must make it clear that such conduct is criminal and unacceptable.’

Razi Shah, Mr Hussain’s solicitor, said his family were devastated but hoped the conviction could be overturned at appeal.

Last night an MP condemned the decision to jail Mr Hussain as ‘perverse’. Philip Davies, Tory MP for Shipley, said: ‘It’s absolutely disgraceful. The public are sick to the back teeth of this kind of decision.

‘Whatever the rights and wrongs, the starting point should be that this man’s home was violated. He must have been absolutely petrified.

‘A person who inflicts this kind of misery is free to go out and do it again somewhere. It’s always the same, the real criminals get away scot free.’

The 2008 Criminal Justice and Immigration Act sets out the terms on which people might ‘use no more force than absolutely necessary’ against criminals.

Victims or those who intervene to stop a criminal have the backing of the law if they act instinctively, if they fear for their safety and act accordingly, if they act to prevent a criminal escaping, or if their use of force is neither ‘excessive nor disproportionate’.

A man accused of repeatedly fondling a 15-year-old girl’s breasts said he did so because he was checking her for breast cancer.

Vernon Leroy Eveland, 41, has been charged with a sex offense against a child, fondling a victim younger than 16 years old and lewd and lascivious exhibition. The incidents occurred between December 2008 and February 2009. The girl reportedly told investigators that the Fort Walton Beach man had grabbed her breasts and exposed himself to her many times during that time frame. She said Eveland told her that he was checking her for breast cancer, according to reports.

She said on one occasion Eveland threatened to rape her. She said he had unzipped his pants, but did not go any further because someone interrupted him and confronted him.

Eveland told investigators he was on a three-day drinking binge and does not recall events from that night, the report states. Eveland said he has apologized to the girl.

He also said the breast cancer examinations were visual only, and said he never touched the girl. The girl was 14 at the time.

The couple who crashed President Barack Obama’s first state dinner are peddling their story to broadcast networks for hundreds of thousands of dollars, a television executive says.

The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the network does not publicly discuss bookings, told The Associated Press that representatives for Michaele and Tareq Salahi contacted networks to urge them to “get their bids in” for an interview. The executive said the Virginia couple was looking for a payment in the mid-six figures range.

Meanwhile, CNN confirmed that the Salahis had canceled an appearance they had scheduled for “Larry King Live” on Monday.

Network news divisions say they don’t pay for interviews. But for eagerly sought interviews in the past, they have offered to pay for access to exclusive material, such as pictures or videos from their subjects.

Representatives for the couple did not immediately return telephone and e-mail requests for comment.

Michaele Salahis is a reality TV hopeful trying to get on Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of D.C.” Her and her husband’s success in getting into the state dinner Tuesday without an invitation embarrassed the White House and Secret Service.

The agency acknowledged its officers never checked whether the couple were on the guest list before letting them onto the White House grounds. But it initially insisted Obama was never endangered by the security breach because the couple _ like others at the dinner _ had gone through magnetometers.

When it became clear the couple had interacted with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden during the event, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan expressed concern and embarrassment. He said that while an investigation continues, the agency has taken measures to ensure the oversight is not repeated.

A White House photo showed the Salahis in the receiving line in the Blue Room with Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in whose honor the dinner was held. Obama and Michaele Salahi are smiling as she grasps his right hand with both of hers and her husband looks on. Singh is to Obama’s left.

On Saturday, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-NY, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called for a review of Secret Service practices and asked for a briefing this week.

Agency spokesmen declined to comment on reports that agents had visited the Salahis’ vineyard in Hume, Va., in search of the couple. Voice mail messages left Saturday at two separate telephone numbers for the Oasis Winery, south of Washington, were not immediately returned.

It is unclear what the couple told officers at the checkpoint that allowed them to go through the security screening. The Salahis lawyer, Paul Gardner, posted a comment on their Facebook page saying his clients were cleared by the White House to be at the dinner.