It's being called a "landmark decision." A federal judge ruled November 18 in favor of New Orleans residents and one business, the plaintiffs, and against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a Hurricane Katrina flooding lawsuit. U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr, decided that the Corps failed to maintain the levees that breached during Katrina, flooding St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The case involved six plaintiffs, two of which are in the same household, and the court awarded $720,000 in compensation to the remaining four.

CNN and bloggers report that the body of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis of Fayetteville, NC, has been found. Earlier today 200 people searched for the child's body after police received a tip that she was dead, say news sources.

I first became aware of the buzz about Sapphire's debut novel Push in 1995 or 1996. The novel gained attention for its distressing storyline but possibly more because the novelist received a $500,000 advance, a sum unheard of in those days for a first novel. Well, unheard of except that another writer that year had received even more, Jacquelyn Mitchard.

Updated 10:20 p.m. CST: Army statements at Fort Hood shooting news conference declare the alleged shooter, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, a U.S. soldier and psychiatrist, was not killed during today's shooting spree on the Texas military base. A new source reports the following:

Last year during national Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and I mean exactly one year ago on October 28, 2008, I wrote about one of the most disturbing cases with a connection to domestic violence the nation had seen in a while. A tale of horror unfolded, the murders of the mother, brother and young nephew of acclaimed actress and singer Jennifer Hudson. The alleged perpetrator, her sister's estranged husband William Balfour, was later arrested.