iStockphoto/Thinkstock(BOWIE, Texas) -- The Texas deputy shot three times in March while chasing a paroled Colorado inmate suspected in the slaying of Colorado's prisons chief will be heading back to work this weekend, and he says he is "ready to go back to it."
On Wednesday, authorities released the dash camera video of the moment 27-year-old Montague County Sheriff's Deputy James Boyd was shot during a routine road block on March 21 in Bowie, Texas. After months of recovery, Boyd plans to return to work on Sunday.
"I'm ready to go back," Boyd told ABC News Thursday. "I'm kind of nervous about it but I know I can do the job, so I'm ready to go back to it."
Boyd was wearing a bulletproof vest when he approached the 1991 black Cadillac allegedly being driven by Evan Spencer Ebel just over two months ago. Boyd said that 10 seconds passed between when he had pulled over the car and when he was shot.
"He was driving in the left-hand lane," Boyd said. "Something caught my eye about. There was something there."
Almost as soon as Boyd approached the car, Ebel, a white supremacist gang member who signed his name "Evil Evan," began firing at him with a 9mm Smith and Wesson handgun, police have said. Boyd was shot twice in the chest, and a bullet grazed his forehead above the left eye.
"I was shocked. That's not what I was out there looking for," he said. "I was out there looking for proactive stops. This is the most severe incident I've encountered."
The shooting started a 100-mph car chase across two Texas counties during which the car's occupant continued to shoot at police. The chase ended when the driver was hit by an 18-wheel truck.
Ebel emerged from the wreck and kept shooting at cops until he was cut down by return fire. Ebel was flown to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, where he died.
Boyd said that he doesn't remember much of what transpired between his approach of the vehicle and being in the hospital. He went through months of cognitive rehab before his return to the force this weekend, mainly to work on his stability.
"We worked on my reaction times, my problem-solving skills, and my speech therapy, which is for my listening," he said.
Montague County Sheriff Paul Cunningham told ABC News that once he returns to the force, Boyd will be presented with a new vest and an award. He will also be speaking about his experience at a few area schools. Cunningham said that when he heard about what transpired with Boyd, whose family he has known for decades, he was livid.
"It pissed me off, to be real honest," he said. "Any time you see one of your people hurt [it causes alarm]....We're such a small department, and close knit."
Boyd, at first, will be on dispatch when he returns to the police force, as was requested by his rehabilitation team, which felt he should be taking it easy at first.
"We're going to watch and him and work him back in at his pace," Cunningham said.
ABC News(PHOENIX) -- Jodi Arias will not be put to death -- at least not yet.
A judge declared a mistrial in the sentencing phase of her murder trial Thursday, after the jury could not agree on whether to sentence Arias to death or to life in prison for murdering her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, in 2008.
Under state law, in a capital case, if the jury can't reach a unanimous decision, the Maricopa County, Ariz., District Attorney's Office must weigh whether to spend time and resources to find a new jury, schedule new court dates, and re-present its evidence to try to reach a death sentence, which could take months, according to Jerry Cobb, spokesman for the prosecutor's office.
Arias, 32, was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Alexander in a gruesome attack in 2008.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez has argued that because the murder was especially cruel, involving 27 stab wounds, a slit throat, and a gunshot wound to Alexander's head, Arias deserves the death penalty.
But the jury was unable to return a verdict on which they agree.
On Wednesday, the jury stopped deliberations and sent Judge Sherry Stephens a note about their indecision. She responded by sending them back to the jury room to continue deliberating, with instructions on how to ask questions of her or attorneys if they felt they could not come to an agreement.
"Each juror has a duty to consult with one another, (and) to try to reach agreement without violence to individual judgment. You may want to identify areas of agreement and disagreement. If you still disagree, you may wish to tell the attorneys and me what issues, questions or law or facts on which we can possibly help," Stephens told the jurors.
"At this time please go back to the jury room and continue deliberating," she said.
Now a second jury in a new penalty trial will deliberate whether to give Arias the death penalty or life in prison. That trial is set for July 18. If they also reach an impasse, and cannot agree, then Arias's life could be saved.
Stephens would then sentence her to either life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, or natural life, without the possibility of parole.
Win McNamee/Getty Images(DALLAS) -- The Boy Scouts of America Thursday voted to lift its longtime ban on admitting gay Scouts but will continue to exclude openly gay adults from leadership roles.
The vote by its 1,400 national membership came as no surprise to gay rights advocates, who hailed it as a first step to ending discriminatory practices in the 103-year-old organization.
The ruling by secret ballot at a national convention in Dallas means that mothers like Jennifer Tyrrell, who is a lesbian, will still be excluded from the Boy Scouts.
Tyrrell was let go as an Ohio den leader of her 8-year-old son Cruz's Cub Scout pack last year because she was gay, but she applauds what she sees as a "temporary" policy.
"It's a great first step, and the fact that they've gone to the Supreme Court to defend the right to discriminate shows the progress we've made," the 33-year-old mother of four told ABC News.
"I am encouraged because we definitely are in it for the long haul," said Tyrrell. "Once the ban is lifted on youth, they will see their fears are unfounded. There are going to be [gay] boys who want to continue as leaders. It's just a matter of time."
She said she would continue to fight for other gay families who wanted to be part of the Scouts.
But others, such as former Eagle Scout James Dale, who brought the lawsuit against the Boy Scouts that made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2000, said the partial lifting of the ban was "unacceptable."
In 1991, he was fired as an assistant Scoutmaster of a New Jersey troop when he came out of the closet in college. He lost the Supreme Court case by one vote.
Growing up, Dale said he found the Boy Scouts to be "one of the organizations that were the most welcoming and accepting."
But today, he sees it as an "anti-gay organization" that is out of step with a culture that is rapidly accepting same-sex families.
"You can have gay Scouts, [but] you can't have gay Scout leaders or anyone over the age of 18," said Dale, who's now 42 and works in advertising in New York City.
"It's still a damning and destructive message that they're going to send to young people. They will go from celebrated Eagle Scout when they're 17 years old to basically not being welcome anymore once the clock strikes 12 and they're 18 years old."
"It's kind of fascinating that the Boy Scouts of America are still so stuck," he said. "They're willing to destroy the organization. Over some...small-minded values."
About 70 percent of all local troops are supported by religious groups, according to the Boy Scouts, and in recent months, some have backed away from their opposition, according to the gay advocacy group GLAAD.
The Mormon church, which sponsors most of the troops, has now endorsed allowing gay Scouts. The Roman Catholic Church has taken no official position. The National Jewish Committee on Scouting, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Metropolitan Community Church all urged full repeal of the ban.
But many other Christian groups stood firm in protest, citing religious freedom and the previous Supreme Court decision.
Nearly 19,000 past or current members of the Scouts signed a petition from Alliance Defending Freedom, which was delivered to the Boy Scouts this week, urging it to keep the ban.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- This is the case of the F-bomb that's landed New York City's mayor in federal court.
One of the leaders of the Big Apple's taxi industry filed suit against Michael Bloomberg this week, claiming a violation of his constitutional right against retaliation in the wake of news reports that a fuming, swearing Bloomberg threatened to destroy the yellow-cab industry once he's out of office next year.
Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman claimed Bloomberg has been trying to "blackmail" and bully city hacks because of their unified opposition to his administration's plans to require all taxi owners to convert their fleets to the new "Taxi of Tomorrow" design.
The mayor and his aides have been "relentless in their retaliation ... in their stubborn determination to override any opposition, from any quarter, to the Taxi of Tomorrow," according to the lawsuit filed late Wednesday in Manhattan Federal Court.
Those efforts, Freidman's suit said, were compounded by Bloomberg's recent comments when the mayor "personally threatened ... Freidman during halftime at the Knicks/Pacers playoff game at Madison Square Garden, stating, 'When I am out of office, I will destroy your f---ing industry," and then stating, "after January, I am going to destroy all you f---ing guys."
The tirade made the front page of the New York Post and the mayor has not denied it.
City Hall had no immediate response to the lawsuit.
After three terms in office, Bloomberg will return to private life on Jan. 1, 2014.
Freidman, also a board member of the Greater New York Taxi Association, has been a key voice in the battle against the Taxi of Tomorrow plan, arguing that it eliminates competition and would put unfair burdens on cabbies and those who own taxis.
His lawyer, Steve Mintz, said Bloomberg "is threatening hard-working taxi entrepreneurs, and it's un-American, offensive and we won't give in. We have won every case in court and will continue to."
Even before the mayor's purported colorful halftime commentary, the Bloomberg administration has been pushing Freidman to abandon his opposition to the mayor's taxi plans, his lawyer said. The key tool, Mintz alleged, is a barrage of summonses against Freidman's fleet that would cost the taxi owner more than $3.5 million.
NASA GOES Project(WASHINGTON) -- Get ready for an “extremely active” active Atlantic hurricane season, government forecasters said Thursday.
Between now and the end of the Atlantic hurricane season (Nov. 30) the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration predicts 13 to 20 named storms, of which seven to 11 could become hurricanes. Three to six of those hurricanes could be major, with winds 111 mph or greater.
Three climate factors are coming together to produce an “active” or “extremely active” hurricane season, NOAA forecasters said Thursday. Ongoing climate patterns off the coast of Africa have spawned a period of high hurricane activity since 1995. Water temperatures are warmer than average in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean are absent this season; those tend to keep hurricanes from forming.
The 2013 prediction follows an especially active 2012 Atlantic season, which produced 19 named storms. (The average is 12, according to NOAA.) Of those storms, 10 became hurricanes and two became “major” hurricanes packing wind speeds 111 miles an hour or greater. Two tropical storms fired up in May, even before the official start of the 2012 season: Alberto and Beryl. The deadliest 2012 storm by far was Sandy, which killed at least 147 people as it raked its way across the Caribbean to the Eastern Seaboard.
In the U.S., Sandy caused approximately $50 billion in damage.
On Monday, NOAA predicted a below-normal hurricane season for the Central Pacific Basin.
National Hurricane Preparedness Week is May 26 through June 1.
iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- A New York City businessman was rescued this week after being held for more than a month in an abandoned warehouse, where his alleged abductors tortured him for weeks in a plot to extort his family for millions in ransom, prosecutors said.
Pedro Portugal, an accountant and father, was abducted off a Queens street in broad daylight last month, when he was forced into an SUV by a two men pretending to be police officers, according to the Queens, N.Y., District Attorney's Office.
From there, authorities said, he was taken to a nearby warehouse where he was tortured with beatings and acid, all in an effort to secure $3 million in ransom from his family in Ecuador.
"This is a terrifying story of a businessman allegedly being forcibly abducted off the streets of Queens County in broad daylight and being beaten and held against his will for more than a month while his alleged kidnappers demanded $3 million from relatives in Ecuador for his safe return," Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said in the prepared statement.
The kidnappers, "a group of masked males, burned his hand with acid, threatened to cut off his fingers and kill him, and punched him in the face and body causing him to lose teeth and suffer multiple bruises," prosecutors said in a prepared statement.
"In many respects, this thing was like a James Bond movie. He was tied to a chair, duct-taped, ropes put around his wrists, a hood put over his head," Brown told ABC News affiliate WABC-TV.
After 32 days in captivity, Portugal, 52, was rescued on Monday when police officers, disguised as building inspectors, raided the building. They found Portugal bound with cloth and duct tape.
"The outstanding work by detectives in the case may well have saved the victim's life," New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement.
Three men were arrested and have been identified as Christian Acuna, 35, Dennis Alves, 32, and Eduardo Moncayo, 38.
All three men are charged with two counts of kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment. If convicted, the defendants each face up to 25 years to life in prison.
The men have been arraigned, but had not yet obtained lawyers or entered pleas, sources said.
It was not immediately clear why Portugal was a target for the kidnappers. Authorities said his family in Ecuador owned property, but were not exceptionally wealthy. Police were investigating several possible motives, including a "suspected narcotics link," according to sources.
Investigators told ABC News the victim was known to carry large amounts of cash on him and drove an expensive car, potentially making him a target for abduction.
Portugal's family would not respond to requests for comment.
ABC News(PHOENIX) -- The jury in the Jodi Arias murder trial began its third day of deliberations Thursday on whether to sentence Arias to death, raising the possibility that prosecutors may retry the penalty phase of the case if the jury is deadlocked.
Under state law in a capital case if the jury can't reach a unanimous decision, the Maricopa County, Ariz., District Attorney's office will have to weigh whether to spend time and resources to find a new jury, schedule new court dates, and re-present its evidence to try and reach a death sentence, which could take months, according to Jerry Cobb, spokesperson for the prosecutor's office.
Arias, 32, was convicted of first-degree murder for killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, in a gruesome attack in 2008.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez has argued that because the murder was especially cruel, involving 27 stab wounds, a slit throat, and a gunshot wound to Alexander's head, Arias deserves the death penalty.
But the jury has not yet returned a verdict on whether they agree.
On Wednesday, the jury stopped deliberations and sent Judge Sherry Stephens a note about their indecision. She responded by sending them back to the jury room to continue deliberating, with instructions on how to ask questions of her or attorneys if they felt they could not come to an agreement.
If the jury cannot agree, a hung jury will be declared. Martinez and the Maricopa County Prosecutor Office will then decide whether to find a new jury and present the death penalty phase of the trial to them, Cobb said.
If they decide not to redo the death penalty phase, Arias will be sentenced to life in prison, either with or without the possibility of parole, depending on Stephens' ruling.
The current jury has sat through nearly five months of testimony in the case.
Joseph Devenney/Getty Images(ATLANTA) -- A Georgia woman said she is thankful to be alive after a 20-foot section of a 747 cargo plane’s wing fell off before part of it came crashing into her home.
Pamela Ware was in her Clayton County, Ga., home Sunday afternoon when she heard a boom from above.
The boom Ware heard was a part of the wing of a Boeing 747 cargo plane, operated by China Airlines flight 5254, flying to Atlanta from Anchorage, Alaska. As the plane approached Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Runway 27L at about 2 p.m. Sunday, a piece of its right wing tore off, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.
Part of the ripped debris landed on top of Ware’s house, while another chunk of the plane’s wing landed a few miles away, in the parking lot of a Walmart. The plane’s debris punctured two holes in Ware’s roof before landing in her yard.
Local authorities found several parts of the plane in a community under the approach path. Other aircraft waiting to depart on Runway 27R also reported seeing parts fall off of the aircraft.
The flight landed safely.
Federal officials are investigating what caused the plane’s wing to break.
Lui Kit Wong-Pool/Getty Images(WEST VALLEY, Utah) -- A newly released, eerie home video made by Susan Powell, the Utah mother who disappeared in 2009 under mysterious circumstances, shows her recording her family's belongings just in case something ever happened.
"This is me July 29th, 2008," Powell says in the video. "[I am] covering all my bases, making sure that if something happens to me or my family, or all of us, that our assets are documented."
Powell also discusses the destruction of some of her possessions.
"And I had necklaces too, wherever those are [inaudible] got in a rage, as you can see, and broke this, there's studs and pearls and opals in there, broke those and threw all my DVDs and made a mess because he was angry at me about a year or two back," she said in the video.
The seemingly happy mother turned fearful wife ends her video on an optimistic note.
"Hope everything works out and we're all happy and live happily ever after as much as that's possible," she said, rolling her eyes.
Powell also left a hand-written will in a safety deposit box. In the will she wrote that the document wasn't to be seen by her husband.
"If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one," she wrote.
This video, will and a mountain of personal notes and other evidence -- the sum of an entire life -- have been reduced to a tiny thumb drive handed out by police on Monday.
Investigators have now declared that the mystifying case of what happened to Susan Powell is officially closed.
"No stone has been left unturned," Mike Powell of the West Valley Deputy Chief said this week.
From Susan's 2009 disappearance, to repeated searches, to the horrific murder suicide of her husband and two children, police have never wavered from the belief that Josh Powell was involved, even if they could never prove it in a court of law.
Powell, 28, was last seen in December 2009 at the Utah home she shared with her husband and their two young sons. Josh Powell told authorities that he had decided take an impromptu midnight camping trip with the boys -- in the midst of a winter storm -- the night his wife vanished. Powell says that he returned home to find his wife gone and has claimed that his wife left on her own. Josh Powell was named a "person of interest" in the investigation into his wife's disappearance, but was never charged.
On Feb. 5, 2012, during a supervised visit with his boys, Josh Powell locked a Child Protective Services worker out of the house he was then renting, attacked the boys with a hatchet and set off an explosion that killed himself and his two sons.
iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WEST POINT, N.Y.) -- A sergeant first class is accused of photographing and videotaping female cadets by planting hidden cameras in the bathroom and showers at West Point.
Sergeant Michael McClendon is under investigation by the Army after being accused of taking dozens of naked photos and videos of female cadets over a nearly five-year period.
He has been removed from duty Thursday morning and was sent to Ft. Drum in upstate New York as the investigation continued.
McClendon lived and worked with cadets at West Point. In fact, his job description says he was there to coach and train them on leadership and responsibility.
“I think this behavior absolutely damages the reputation of West Point,” said Anu Bhagwati with the Service Women's Action Network. “I mean, West Point is considered the elite academy.”
“They're serious charges but they really scratch the surface of what's happening at West Point, what's happening in all the other academies,” Bhagwati continued.
A pentagon report released this spring estimated that up to 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year alone.
Last month Lt. Col Jeffrey Krusinski, who was in charge of the Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention Program, was arrested and charged with fondling a woman in a suburban Washington, D.C. parking lot.
Benjamin Krain/Getty Images(MOORE, Okla.) -- Cellphone video recorded by an Oklahoma teacher at Briarwood Elementary School shows the exact moment an E-F5 tornado tore through the building as she attempted to calm students' fears by telling them, "It's almost over."
Robin Dziedzic, a fifth-grade teacher at the school, huddled with students in a darkened bathroom Monday afternoon as the monstrous twister tore through Moore, Okla.
"This is where we walked down and I was right here," Dziedzic said, pointing to the bathroom. "There were about 25 girls and several teachers."
Students held on to each other as the devastating tornado ripped the roof from the building and brought down walls.
"Oh, my God, I hate this. I hate this," a student says.
"It's almost over. It's almost over. Oh, my God," Dziedzic can be heard saying to the student.
After the tornado passed, teachers and students emerged to survey the devastation and see what was left of their school a few days before their summer vacation was set to begin.
The teachers and students at Briarwood were considered fortunate compared to Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven children were killed, according to the medical examiner's office. The cause of death for six of the seven children was "asphyxia" after being smothered by falling debris, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday in a report.
One of those children from Plaza Towers Elementary School was 9-year-old Antonia Candelaria, who will be the first victim laid to rest Thursday.
Authorities also released the names of 23 of the 24 people confirmed dead, ranging in age from 4 months to 65.
Gov. Mary Fallin's office said Wednesday evening that everyone has been accounted for and a total of 353 people sustained injures from the twister.
In the small town of Moore, where few people were sparred grief, the stories of survival are endless. While some hunkered down in a school bathroom or in a bank vault, others took shelter in their homes.
Sarah and Shane Patterson saved and struggled to buy their home in Moore three years ago, which was taken away in seconds by winds estimated at more than 200 mph. As Sarah Patterson toured the devastation, she found the shoes she was wearing when the tornado hit.
"It took them off my feet. The suction in the house pulled them off my feet," she said.
A few mementos of her childhood were left behind such as doll.
"It's a doll my great-grandmother made me when I was a baby," she said. "My mom would be happy to know it's here."
Along with the doll, Patterson was able to salvage a few pictures of her sons -- 9-year-old Lucas and 7-year-old Noah -- who huddled underneath a mattress in the home and prayed as the twister roared through.
"I was praying as hard as I could. And my boys, I said, 'Pray, guys. Just pray,'" Patterson said. "I don't know how we made it."
The Pattersons say they will rebuild in Moore, but with one major addition, a safe room.
Photodisc(SALT LAKE CITY) -- The Utah woman who made headlines for forcing her stepdaughter to wear secondhand clothes as a punishment for bullying says she did it to teach the girl empathy.
“She needed to know how inappropriate she was behaving,” Ally Olsen told ABC’s Good Morning America special correspondent Cameron Mathison.
Olsen devised the unique punishment after being told by the school where her stepdaughter, 11-year-old Kaylee Lindstrom, is a fourth-grader that Kaylee had been teasing a fellow student about her clothes.
“She said, ‘You’re ugly, you dress sleazy, you’re mean,’” Olsen said of Kaylee’s bullying.
Instead of giving Kaylee a lecture, Olsen took her clothes shopping. Their shopping destination, however, was not a mall but a thrift store, where Olsen had Kaylee select the ugliest clothes she could find.
“She would pick out stuff and say, ‘Mom, this is the ugliest thing I have ever seen,’ and I would say, ‘Oh yeah, put that in the cart,’” Olsen said.
For the next two days, to Kaylee’s surprise, Olsen and Kaylee’s dad made the girl wear the clothes she had picked out to school.
“Terrible” is how Kaylee described the bullying she herself received as a result.
“I [was] like, why would they do that to me,” she said of her classmates’ taunts. “I’m still a normal person. It doesn’t matter what you wear.”
Kaylee told Mathison she appreciates the lesson learned. She also now describes her relationship with the girl she bullied as “sisters.”
Olsen and Kaylee’s dad, Mark Lindstrom, say they wanted to put Kaylee in her friend’s shoes, literally.
“We really think if you felt how this little girl feels, you might have a little empathy for her,” Olsen said. “She learned exactly what we wanted her to learn. We couldn’t be happier.”
“For us, we really feel like this was the best idea and the best solution for Kaylee to be the best person she could be,” said Lindstrom.
iStockphoto/Thinkstock(CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga.) -- Becoming the valedictorian of your high school is a difficult and impressive feat in itself, but it's even more impressive for a Georgia teen who did so while her family was homeless.
Chelesa Fearce has a GPA of 4.466 and scored 1900 on her SATs, even though she and her family were without a home for most of her high school years. Sometimes they lived in shelters or inside her mother’s car. Fearce says it was tough at times.
“You'd be worried about your home life and then worried at school,” she said. “Worried about being a little bit hungry sometimes, go hungry sometimes.”
Still, she persevered. “I just had to open my book in the dark and just use a cell phone light. Just do what I had to do,” she said.
Fearce is graduating with top honors at her school in Clayton County, Ga. She will be attending Spelman College in the fall, but already has enough credits that she’ll be a college junior.
Her message?
“Don't give up,” she said. “Do what you have to do right now so that you'll have the future that you want.”
Stockbyte(NEW YORK) -- Philosophy professor Simon Critchley from New York City's New School said he believes that the only way to really learn how to live is to prepare to die.
So, as part of a larger theatrical installation this spring called School of Death, he offered a suicide note writing workshop to anyone who was interested in appreciating its literary art form.
The notes studied ranged from the terse and emotionally conflicted -- "Dear Betty: I hate you, Love George" -- to the narcissistic: "Now you will appreciate me."
One man, before killing himself, wrote on the back of his wife's photograph after she had run away with his brother, "I present the girl I thought I married. Always remember, I loved you once and died hating you."
"The worst thing that can befall us is to die alone," said Critchley, 53. "And the suicide note in some strange way is not to die alone. It's always addressed to someone. It's a failed attempt at communication."
He said that if people were more comfortable talking about death, there might be fewer suicides.
"We talk about taxes, but death is kind of obscene," he said. "When faced with the actual issue -- for example the Terri Schiavo case -- we don't know what to do, emote or gloat."
The workshop, which was first reported by The New York Times, was advertised through social media. Those who signed up, ages 20 to 50, analyzed some of history's most famous last words, those of Adolph Hitler, Virginia Woolf and Kurt Cobain.
Suicide notes are part of the "fantasy to get our last word," said Critchley. "Saying goodbye also says how much someone means to you."
Novelist Woolf, just before drowning herself in 1941, writes to her husband, Leonard Woolf, that she is "going mad again" and hearing voices. "I can't fight any longer," she wrote. "...I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."
Hitler writes in 1945 from the Berlin bunker where he and lover Eva Braun took cyanide: "I have chosen death in order to escape the terrible situation of disgrace I am currently in. ...Things were going just as planned before, but little did I know it would backfire on me."
In 1994, Kurt Cobain, borrowing liberally from songwriter Neil Young, writes with great affection to his wife, Courtney Love, and daughter Frances: "I am too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than fade away." He then shot himself in the head.
Critchley's class may seem macabre, but some experts say it is refreshing.
"Morbidity has become fashionable again," said Elke Weesjes, founder and editor- in-chief of the United Academics Journal of Social Science. She is currently working on a journal with the theme "Morbid Curiosity," covering topics such as post-mortem photography, taxidermy and skull worship.
"Before 1880 people butchered their own animals; death was laid out in the parlor before the whole family," said Weesjes, 33. "People who moved to America were fleeing death one way or another -- fleeing the Holocaust, pogroms and famine. We have created a false society and island away from disasters. Death is not part of our everyday life anymore."
Though Weesjes did not attend Critchley's class she said, "Maybe it's good to have a smile on your face and laugh about it, but actually talking about it is a very good thing."
"The Western world is about to get ready to bury the biggest generation in history – the baby boomers," she said. "It only makes sense to start thinking about it. … Denying death can't be healthy."
Critchley said that he initially feared people would think the class was a joke, but he added that students, who had to write their own suicide notes, were, "earnest and engaged."
Wrote one woman: "I am so filled with love it is still all too much to bear. I cannot find my way. The world is all wrong and although I withstood the worst of it, I lost out."
But another was less emotional: "I am sorry, mostly to my dog. Love, Lauren. P.S. Please don't bury me in Los Angeles."
Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call(WASHINGTON) -- Attorney General Eric Holder has disclosed in a letter to Congress that four Americans were killed by U.S. drones in the course of the government's attacks on terrorists.
"Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al Qaida and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi," Holder wrote.
"The United States is further aware of three other U.S. citizens who have been killed in such U.S. counterterrorism operations over that same time period: Samir Khan, 'Abd al-Rahman Anwar al-Aulaki and Jude Mohammed. These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States," Holder wrote.
Holder sent the letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., as well as to leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress, and the chairmen and ranking members of intelligence, foreign affairs and armed services committees. In the letter, Holder detailed U.S. policy on drone strikes against Americans.
The names of the Americans killed by drones had previously been classified information.
Samir Kahn was the publisher of Inspire magazine, which Anwar al-Awlaki edited. Abdul Rahman al Awlaki was Awlaki's son. Both were thought to be killed in the same drone attack as Awlaki.
Jude Kenan Mohammed was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List and was believed to be plotting a car bombing on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
The decision to target Anwar al-Awlaki was "subjected to an exceptionally rigorous interagency review" and approved by Holder and other Justice Department lawyers, Holder wrote.
Holder's letter, released in advance of a speech by the president, represents the administration's most specific statement of policy on drone strikes against Americans.
