Amy Bishop Inquest to Be Held This Week
Amy Bishop, the professor who allegedly shot and killed three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville this year, has an inquest scheduled this week for the 1986 killing of her brother, Seth. The District Attorney ordered the inquest after the university shooting occurred, because it now appears that the earlier case was mishandled. The inquest is expected to last from Tuesday to Friday, where the judge will determine if an indictment needs to be filed. [CBS News]

President Hosts Nuclear Conference
Today President Barack Obama will meet with 47 countries on creating a strategy for keeping nuclear weapons from terrorists. This is the largest U.S.-hosted assembly of international leaders since 1945, when the United Nations was created. The United States is actually the only country to ever use nuclear weapons; two bombs were dropped on Japan during World War II. While a nuclear-free world is said to be unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, President Obama hopes that this will be a concrete step to that ultimate goal. [Yahoo News]

Cases with No Corpses Still Render Convictions
In Newark, N.J., prosecutors are trying to pin the deaths of five black teens in 1978 on Lee Evans, 56, and Philander Hampton, 53. The challenge is that there are no bodies to use as evidence in the murder convictions. Prosecutors, however, are pushing ahead with the case anyway, because they believe the defendants got rid of the bodies in a staged fire, which was so intense it burned away the corpses. Interestingly enough, cases with no body present usually find defendants guilty about 90 percent of the time. Lawyers who decide to take on these cases often feel a need to still champion them because there are often other means--circumstantial evidence--of proving a defendant's guilt. The presence of DNA technology, computer records, improvement in forensics and cell phone logs have helped the majority of these no body cases end with a conviction. In addition, these prosecutors believe that allowing these types of cases to slide through the legal cracks will only encourage other criminals to do away with bodies in the hopes of evading the law. [AP]

Census Counts Down Due to Money-Strapped States
Due to the recession, many state and local governments have curtailed their 2010 census outreach spending significantly. Even though communities that are underrepresented are deeply affected by inaccurate census counts, states such as California have only been able to spend a fraction of the amount they spent for census outreach in 2000. Case in point, state census counts, which started two weeks ago, are already behind 10 percent. [Google]

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