Murdered

Published reports about the alarming rise in homicides in certain cities around the country are proliferating. Milwaukee, Wis., for one, has seen a 76 percent rise in homicides this year compared to the same period last year. But a closer look shows cherry-picked data is unreliable for drawing conclusions about crime trends. Boston, Mass., for example, has seen a 43 percent drop in homicides compared to a year ago. And homicide rates can vary widely from year to year: In Tulsa, Okla., murders are up 81 percent this year but at the same level as 2013. The statistics blog FiveThirtyEight reports “most cities have not shown a significant increase in homicides over the last year” though it found a 16 percent rise in homicides overall.

Filmed

A Saudi woman used her phone to film her husband apparently groping and sexually harassing a maid then posted the video to “scandalise him.” The viral video won her support, including in Saudi Arabia, but lawyers say that under the nation’s spotty justice record and strict cybercrime laws, the wife could face fines and a year in jail for defamation.

Retreived

When floodwaters unearthed a casket in Ridgeville, S.C., on Oct. 5, Wayne Reeves retrieved it. The pastor of nearby New Life Ministries watched for hours with grieving relatives of the deceased as caskets began to surface. A Dorchester County sheriff’s deputy told him not to enter the waist-deep water, but Reeves did. “If that was my mom or my dad, I’d walk through hell and high water ... and today it happened to be high water,” he told WCBD-TV.

Neutralized

The University of Toronto’s University College is reconsidering its gender-neutral dorm “washrooms” after voyeurism in September. Two girls in separate incidents reported seeing cell phones appear over stalls while they were showering. Many washrooms at the college have now been loosely segregated as a “temporary measure” to provide the victims a “safe place.”

Sacrificed

Florida Libertarian party chairman Adrian Wyllie resigned Oct. 1 to protest the party’s sole candidate to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio in his run for the White House. Augustus Sol Invictus, 31, acknowledged sacrificing a goat to the “god of the wilderness” and drinking its blood after a journey into the Mojave Desert. Wyllie’s departure left Invictus defending support he receives from neo-Nazis and his expressed sympathy for eugenics.

Stabbed

Spencer Stone, 23, a U.S. airman who helped thwart a terror attack on a French train, suffered stab wounds outside a Sacramento club Oct. 8. Some reports indicate Stone was trying to protect a friend when the fight erupted between intoxicated persons. Though serious, Stone’s injuries weren’t life-threatening. Authorities didn’t reveal the fight’s cause but ruled out any relation to the French incident. Stone and two childhood Sacramento friends met with President Barack Obama in September after they thwarted the August attack aboard a Paris-bound train.

Pursued

The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BLI) in late September began the legal process to seize money from bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein. BLI Commissioner Brad Avakian ordered the Kleins to pay $135,000 in July for not baking a wedding cake for a homosexual couple. Well-wishers donated well over $400,000 on online crowdfunding sites, drawing scorn for the Kleins’ claims of financial hardship. The Kleins maintain that an Oregon bureaucracy, which refused to stay the Kleins’ fines pending their appeal, does not qualify as due process.

Died

Gen. John Galvin, NATO’s last commander to face the Soviet Union, died Sept. 25 at age 86. Galvin’s 44-year military career included two tours in Vietnam, where he earned medals of valor and later held Army commands in Latin America before leading NATO from 1987 to 1992. The son of a bricklayer, Galvin became a catalyst for Soviet disarmament, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty Russia reportedly kept until last year. He later served as Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy dean at Tufts University.

Died

Phyllis Tickle, author and founding religion editor at Publisher’s Weekly, died Sept. 22 of lung cancer at age 81. Tickle promoted the rapidly expanding Christian book publishing industry in the 1990s and authored The Divine Hours. She became a controversial proponent of the Emergence Christianity movement with The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.

By the numbers

$119,934 | The average compensation (wages plus benefits) for federal workers in 2014, according to an October study by the Cato Institute using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That amount is 78 percent higher than the average compensation of $67,246 in the private sector.

$88,000 | The price an anonymous buyer paid at auction for a first-class menu from the last lunch served aboard the RMS Titanic. A survivor brought the menu with him onto a lifeboat when the ship sank on April 15, 1912.