Children involved in UFC-style fights

An estimated 3.2 million kids aged 5 to 12 take mixed-martial arts classes, training to administer beatdowns modeled after the adults' Ultimate Fighting Championships, according to a January report in ESPN magazine, which profiled the swaggering, Mohawked Derek "Crazy" Rayfield, 11, and the meek, doll-clutching fighting machine, Regina "The Black Widow" Awana, 7.

Kids under age 12 fight each other without regard to gender, and blows above the collarbone are always prohibited (along with attacks on the groin, kidneys and back). "Crazy" was described delivering merciless forearm chest smashes to a foe before the referee intervened, and the Black Widow won her match in less than a minute via arm-bar submission. Parental involvement appears to be of two types: either fear of their child's getting hurt or encouragement to be meaner.


The Continuing Crisis

- Breaking Bad (and Quickly!): Tyrone Harris, 26, reported for his first shift at Dunkin' Donuts in Morristown, N.J., in January and received his name tag.

Seven minutes later, according to police, he was on his way out the door with $2,100 from his supervisor's desk. (Apparently, the supervisor had opened his drawer a little too far when reaching for the name tag, giving Harris a glimpse of the cash.)

- In a January submission to India's Supreme Court, an association of the country's caste councils begged for greater sympathy for men who commit "honor killings" of wayward females. The councils denied encouraging such killings, but emphasized that fathers or brothers who murder a daughter or sister are usually "law-abiding, educated and respectable people" who must protect their reputations after a female has had a "forbidden" relationship - especially a female who intends to marry within her sub-caste, which the councils believe leads to deformed babies.

- Aubrey Ireland, 21, a dean's-list senior at the University of Cincinnati's prestigious college of music, went to court in December to protect herself from two stalkers - her mother and father, who, she said, had been paranoiacally meddling in her life. David and Julie Ireland put tracking devices on Aubrey's computer and telephone and showed up unannounced on campus (600 miles from their home), telling officials that Aubrey was promiscuous and mentally imbalanced. A Common Pleas Court judge ordered the parents to keep their distance.

- Medium-Tech Warfare: (1) The mostly rag-tag army of Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime unveiled its first jerry-built armored vehicle in December. The "Sham II" is an old diesel car with cameras for navigation, a machine gun mounted on a turret with a driver looking at one flat-screen TV and a gunner another, aiming the machine gun via a Sony PlayStation controller.

(2) Video transmissions from drone aircraft rose stiflingly to more than 300,000 hours last year (compared to 4,800 in 2001). With input expected to grow even more, Air Force officials acknowledged in December seeking advice from a private-sector company experienced in handling massive amounts of video: ESPN.