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A New York City taxi driver arrested for raping a woman in his cab fell for a DNA trick often seen on TV crime shows, police sources say. The alleged taxi driver rapist is also under investigation for a second assault, the New York Daily News reports. Police posed as taxi inspectors and asked to meet with cabbie Gurmeet Singh, 40, about a work-related issue, sources tell the Daily News. The cops were really investigating an alleged taxicab rape in September, when a witness jotted down a partial medallion number that led police to Singh....

Time after time, Obamacare has withstood challenges before the Supreme Court. This time, opponents of the law tried to use four words in the 2,700 page bill to bring the law down. Yesterday, they failed. In 2010, Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to reform the health insurance market. Among its many provisions, the law required all individuals to buy health insurance. To make health insurance more affordable, the law provided low income individuals refundable tax credits....

At least five Marines are the victims of a new online “sextortion” scam, one which threatens to report them to their commanding officers after luring them into simulated sex via Skype. Criminal investigators at the U.S. Naval Base in Okinawa, Japan, have issued a warning to Marines to be on alert for Internet scams that are specifically targeting service members, reports the Marine Corps Times. Sex scams are rampant online, and if you take the right precautions, you can avoid being “sextorted....

A student at Princeton University was arrested for the ‘creepshots’ he took on his phone after a fellow student fell asleep. ‘Creepshots’ are photos taken of an unsuspecting subject that are in some way sexual. In this case the photos were allegedly sexually explicit and taken after the victim passed out from drinking. The alleged perpetrator, Richard Charles Tuckwell, used his cell phone to take the pictures. It’s not clear whether the photos were given to anyone else but that doesn’t make it any less of a crime....

It seems that forever young Rod Stewart better start singing a new song… at least one that his litigation law firm likes a bit better. The firm of Glaser, Weil, Fink, Jacobs, Howard & Shapiro, former attorneys of Rod Stewart, has sued their client of more than 20 years for unpaid fees totaling just over $3.3 million. Fortunately for Rod, the sum comes out to be a bit less in pounds sterling....

The U.S. 1st Circuit of Appeals has reversed an earlier decision to grant American Airlines skycaps around $330,000 in baggage fees. The American Airlines skycap reversal hinged on whether the court was to interpret the case via state tip laws, or if they were to interpret the case based on federal law. Federal law prevailed. The skycaps brought the lawsuit against American Airlines after the airline began charging a $2.00 fee for passengers who opted for curbside check in of their baggage....

The federal spending bill recently passed by Congress may have a dramatic impact on the government’s enforcement of federal laws criminalizing marijuana even in states that have legalized medical use of the drug. The bill is currently awaiting President Obama’s signature, reports the Los Angeles Times. But if he signs it as expected, the bill will bring an end to the federal government’s prohibition on medical marijuana in states where it’s been legalized....

Thomson Reuters has released the names of the nation’s top 15 hospital systems, according to a news brief. The results are included in the organization’s fourth annual study of U.S. health care systems. Researchers analyzed quality of care; patient perception of care; efficiency; length of stay; mortality rates; and patient safety. Only U.S. health systems with more than two non-federal hospitals were considered. The results are broken down into three comparison groups based on the total operating expense of each system (TOE):...

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear five gay marriage appeals, effectively making gay marriage legal in five more states. The High Court denied applications for appeal from Utah, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Virginia, which means the lower court decisions which struck down gay marriage bans in those states are in effect. The Associated Press reports that six other states will likely have marriage equality soon, with their respective gay marriage decisions only on hold pending the Supreme Court’s review....

Things have come full circle for Mark Ciavarella, a Pennsylvania state judge convicted in February for his involvement in a juvenile court scheme that has the media referring to him as the “‘Kids for Cash” judge." Sentenced to 28 years for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments in exchange for sending innocent and low-level juvenile defendants to a private detention center, the 59-year-old will be spending what is likely to be the rest of his life in jail....

When military service members face courts-martial, they face many of the problems that criminal defendants face in civil courts. However, the military criminal system can be very different from the civilian court system that most of us are more familiar with. To illustrate this, here are five questions commonly asked about the court-martial process, and the answers every service member (and civilian) should know: Yes. The army can file criminal charges against a service member who refuses to deploy when called upon to serve his or her tour of duty....

The long-awaited new 50 Cent mixtape is out, and it’s a huge hit – but not for relatives of a murder victim referenced in the album’s opening song. The song in question is called “Body On It,” about a double homicide in Queens, N.Y., where 50 Cent grew up. A man shot and killed his girlfriend’s son Dec. 2, then boarded the Q111 bus and opened fire at strangers, the New York Daily News reports....

A federal appeals court ruled that private Mississippi Gulf Coast residents and private landowners can sue an oil company and other defendants for global warming-related damages to their property. Alleging a chain of causation between the defendants’ substantial emissions and injury to their property, they maintain that the companies used their property so as to produce massive amounts of greenhouse gasses, which then injured both plaintiffs and the general public by contributing to global warming, caused the sea level rise and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina....

Nearly every state and the federal government has hate crime statutes that can increase penalties for crimes targeting specific individuals based on immutable characteristics like race, religion, or national origin. But the wording of hate crime laws, in terms what they prohibit and who they protect, can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And different courts might interpret those statutes differently. Just this month, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state’s hate crime law does not cover anti-gay assaults....

Hate-crime charges aren’t just for avowed racists who deliberately target victims based on ethnicity. Often, a simple assault charge, along with the use of a slur – racial or otherwise – can technically result in a hate crime. Case in point: A Morgan Stanley investment banker who allegedly stabbed a cab driver’s hand in a dispute over cab fare. Because the Connecticut banker allegedly made threats and racial slurs about the cabbie’s Middle Eastern ancestry, the banker was arrested and charged with intimidation by race or bigotry, Reuters reports....

Financial problems for Annie Leibovitz continue to mount as the celebrity photographer is now being sued for unpaid bills. Brunswick Capital Partners LP, a Manhattan-based investment firm, has brought a lawsuit against Leibovitz for failing to pay fees owed to them for arranging her recent financing agreement with another firm, Colony Capital LLC, Business Week reports. Brunswick Capital Partners LP says it linked Leibovitz with investors to pull her out of a financial hole and threatened to cost her control of her portfolio....

Thousands of cartons of fresh cilantro are being recalled after a sample tested positive for Salmonella, which could be deadly if ingested. No illnesses have been reported, but the company that sold the cilantro, Pacific International Marketing, announced the cilantro recall Dec. 9. The Food and Drug Administration found Salmonella in a sample of Pacific cilantro, but the source of the Salmonella is not known, Pacific said in a press release....

After 29 years, police have made an arrest in connection with the murder of Kae Robinson. Robinson was only 19 years old, and was sunbathing at Lake Weatherford in Weatherford, Texas when she disappeared and was later discovered murdered. While investigators continued to follow up on leads over the decades, the case had seemingly gone cold. That is, until this past January when the case was reviewed and a new approach taken....

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that the Jamba Juice Company and the FDA are notifying the public that smoothies containing strawberries which were sold at Jamba Juice stores in Arizona, Southern Nevada and Southern California between November 25 - December 1, 2006, may have been contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems....

How much is a life worth? Or, more accurately, how much is a donor egg that could begin a life worth? For more than a decade, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has set the price guidelines for donor eggs, suggesting that donated human eggs should not be sold for more than $5,000 without justification, and that a $10,000 price tag was “beyond what is appropriate.” Unsurprisingly, the women donating or selling their eggs weren’t pleased with the price caps, and filed an antitrust lawsuit against ASRM, alleging the suggested prices amounted to illegal price fixing....