A trio of American teens will face adult charges in the murder of an Australian man – The investigation into Spain’s deadly train wreck will now include possible negligence coming from the top – Some UK schools are accused of doing something we’d expect in Putin’s Russia – and one of the world’s best-known novelists has died.

Three Oklahoma teens are charged as adults in the murder of Aussie baseball hopeful Christopher Lane, the Melbourne man who traded his Baseball skills for a college education in America.  Chris was out jogging in Duncan, Oklahoma on Friday when cops say the youths picked him out to kill in a drive-by shooting because they were “bored”. 15-year-old James Francis Edwards Jr. and 16-year-old Chancey Allen Luna are charged with first-degree murder.  17-year old wheelman Michael Dewayne Jones was charged with being an accessory after the fact, even though he said in open court, “I pulled the trigger.” 

Olivia Newton-John is reportedly in shock after a construction contractor shot and killed himself at her home in Palm Beach County, Florida.  It’s not clear why 41-year old custom homebuilder Christopher Pariseleti chose that location, although the house was being renovated for sale to US Television personality Rosie O’Donnell.

A cat brought back to life with a blood transfusion from a dog?  Really?  Wow!

China continues to make inroads in Africa, now in a country seen as necessary to the west to maintain stability (hegemony?  Shh!) on the continent.  Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signed deals with China to build a railway line, an energy project, and a project to improve wildlife protection. 

A judge is widening the investigating last month’s deadly train derailment in Spain, to include the state rail company Adif.  The judge says officials should have foreseen that human errors, caused by fatigue or habit, could pose a risk on what was known to be a difficult curve.  The train’s driver, 52-year old Francisco Garzon, is charged with negligent homicide in the deaths of 79 passengers.

Dozens of schools in England and Wales are accused of harboring anti-gay policies that were supposed to have been wiped out ten years ago. The British Humanist Association (BHA) says the schools’ policies echo the language of the now-scrapped “Section 21” rules, which banned the “promotion of homosexuality”, whatever that is.  A Department for Education spokesman said schools should not “promote any sexual orientation”, and the government in Wales says it will investigate the claims as a “matter of urgency.”

An American legal news website is shutting down rather than operate in the current electronic surveillance climate.  Groklaw founder Pamela Jones specifically cites the US National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on email and telecom communications in and out of America, as exposed by fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.  Jones promised her sources anonymity, but now says she can’t guarantee that because of the NSA.

US Army Private Bradley Manning will be sentenced on Wednesday for providing more than 700,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks.  The military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, could sentence the young man to as much as 90-years in prison for violating a World War One-era espionage law.  Manning provided WikiLeaks with data that embarrassed the United States, including video of an Apache helicopter killing civilians and a journalist in Iraq, documents that showed there were much larger numbers of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan than the US had previously admitted, and secret US Embassy cables that showed diplomats doing undiplomatic things ranging from being catty to turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuses.

Prolific author Elmore Leonard is dead at age 87.  Although he didn’t usually like the way Hollywood treated his novels, the on-screen adaptations have been as popular and influential on celluloid as his words have been in print: “Get Shorty,” “Be Cool,” “Out of Sight” and “Jackie Brown” (based on his novel “Rum Punch”).  His first novel, “The Big Bounce,” was filmed twice, in 1969 and 2004.  Before he redefined the crime genre, he wrote westerns which also became popular movies such as “Hombre” and “3:10 to Yuma”.