But the culture is changing, albeit slowly. Close on the heels of a law allowing women to ride bicycles in "enclosed areas" for "recreational purposes," two female Saudi Olympians competing in London and the swearing-in of 30 female members of the Shura Council comes a new anti-domestic violence campaign. The very first of its kind in Saudi Arabia.

The "No More Abuse" campaign is sponsored by the nonprofit King Khalid Foundation, and is intended to raise awareness about available resources for women and children experiencing violence in their homes and families. The ads depict a woman wearing a hijab but with a clearly visible black eye, and the Arabic text roughly translates to "The tip of the iceberg." An English language version reads: "Some things can't be covered."

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Silverman had been going through a period of intense personal stress lately – his death came just one day after he packed up his recently sold home. Just last month, he'd closed the shelter because he could no longer afford to maintain it. He had said he was struggling to keep up with his heat and grocery bills.

In his dogged efforts to help men and to raise public awareness, Silverman worked to remove the stigma that can often prevent men from speaking out because of pride and fear and misunderstanding. Yet where Silverman came up short was in perpetuating the Men's Rights movement's fiction that there's any gender equity as far as violence and victims. The Calgary Herald recalled, in its coverage of his death, Silverman's oft-repeated insistence that "men are about as likely as women to say they have been the victims of domestic abuse."

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As reported by the Houston Press, local eatery Roots Bistro posted the tone-deaf message that "Beer should be like violence: domestic" on its marquee this weekend. And while the manager claims the sign was only up for 10 minutes, the "joke" outraged local residents and almost all of  the Internet.

According to the House Press:

When contacted about the sign and its intentions, a manager on duty who identified himself as Kenneth offered the following explanation: "That sign is not up now. It was up literally for 10 minutes and it was pulled down..."

"Obviously no one here would condone any type of violence, domestic or otherwise," Kenneth said, although he couldn't explain why no one thought the sign was tacky, tasteless or offensive until a customer dining on the patio pointed it out...

"Everyone makes mistakes," said Kenneth. "We completely deserved the backlash, and I can't be mad at anyone but myself."

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In its preview story of the political week ahead, the New York Times notes that the president is "seek(ing) to regain momentum" on the gun issue as "a filibuster threat is growing in the senate" and as a two-week congressional recess is marked by a nationwide activist push by the National Rifle Association. To counter it, the president is heading to Colorado, a state made famous by two of the most high-profile gun massacres in history - and now the first state in the historically pro-gun West to pass serious gun regulations.

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As a result, far too few judges have the legal authority to order the surrender of firearms when issuing protection orders in domestic violence cases. And according to a harrowing report in The New York Times on Monday, the consequences have been deadly:

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Obama is speaking at a signing ceremony for the bill, which extends domestic violence protections.

The law strengthens those protections for victims who are attacked on tribal land. It also makes clear that lesbians, gays and immigrants should have equal access to the law's programs.

The president says the original law "changed our culture." Obama praised Vice President Joe Biden, who wrote the bill in 1994, for making violence prevention one of his top priorities.

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Suffolk County authorities filed misdemeanor charges of assault and endangering the welfare of a child and a noncriminal charge of harassment against the NRA's Richard D’Alauro following a domestic disturbance with his wife in their Long Island home. He pleaded guilty to the harassment charge, admitting that he intended to “harass, annoy or alarm” his wife “by subjecting her to physical contact,” according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by the New York Daily News.

As a result of the charge, police confiscated a total of 39 firearms from D’Alauro's home, and a judge barred him from owning or purchasing additional guns until October 2013. But after the fall deadline passes, police will be forced to return D'Alauro's arsenal and he will once again be allowed to purchase more.

Federal and state law prohibit convicted domestic abusers from purchasing firearms, but those restrictions do not apply to D'Alauro because his offense is below the level of a misdemeanor.

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In the photos, we see a 31-year-old man named Shane throw his 19-year-old girlfriend Maggie against a set of kitchen cabinets. He traps her with his body against a kitchen counter. He chokes her. At one point, her 2-year-old-daughter walks in and stamps her feet as she sees what’s happening.

The Internet thinks this is Sara’s fault.

Sara’s photo essay, earlier called “Maggie and Shane” and originally published at fotovisura.com, was published Wednesday as “Photographer As Witness: A Portrait of Domestic Violence” in Time’s “Lightbox” photography feature. The 39-frame story is edited down from photos taken in three visits with the couple over roughly as many months.

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VAWA was allowed to expire in September, 2011, and then stalled for all of 2012 over expanded protections for LGBT women, Native Americans and undocumented immigrants. House Republicans objected to these additional protections, and repeatedly blocked the bill.

On Thursday, after pressure from Democrats and from within the GOP itself, House Republican leadership allowed the bill to go for an up-or-down vote, after first voting on a Republican version of the bill that did not include the additional protections. That bill was expected to, and did, fail by a vote of 166-257.

In a statement, President Obama said that "Renewing this bill is an important step towards making sure no one in America is forced to live in fear."

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“Some people could make the argument that a lot of people like being in abusive relationships," Warden said, the Concord Monitor reports. "It’s a love-hate relationship. It’s very, very common for people to stick around with somebody that they love who also abuses him or her."

Warden added during the hearing: "Is the solution to those kind of dysfunctional relationships going to be more government, another law? I’d say no. People are always free to leave."

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On Tuesday night, the House Rules Committee sent the House Republican version of the bill for a floor vote, where it is expected to fail. This version stripped out the expanded protections, but was soundly rejected by Democratic leadership. If it does fail, the Rules Committee said the Senate version will be taken up instead with an up-or-down vote.

As Sahil Kapur from TPM explains, there is a method to the maneuvering:

The big admission implicit in this latest move is that House GOP leaders don’t believe they have the votes to pass their version of the bill but that the Senate version is likely to pass the chamber. So this way they’ll give House conservatives the first bite at the apple as a way of saving face and still resolve an issue that has hurt them politically.

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 “The Republican House leadership has decided to replace the Senate-passed version with a substitute that will not provide critical protections for rape victims, domestic violence victims, human trafficking victims, students on campuses, or stalking victims. This is simply unacceptable and it further demonstrates that Republicans in the House have not heard the message sent by the American people and reflected in the Senate’s overwhelming vote earlier this month to pass the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill."

And Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., added that "This partisan bill is a non-starter in the Senate."

From earlier:

House Republicans unveiled a version of the Violence Against Women Act that strips new protections for LGBT women, and changes the provision that would offer increased protections for Native American women.

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Oscar Pistorius will be freed from custody pending his trial in the Feb. 14 shooting death of Reeva Steenkamp, and magistrate Desmond Nair has set bail at 1 million rand (approximately $112,771 USD).

Pistorius will be released until his next court appearance on June 4. As a condition of his bail, he must surrender his passport and all travel documents. He will also be forced to turn in all of his weapons and firearms, and is prohibited from purchasing or owning additional firearms.

He will report to a probation and correctional officer upon his release and until the case concludes.

Nair said Pistorius' sworn statement about the events of the morning of the fatal shooting -- in which the athlete says he shot Steenkamp "accidentally," because he believed she was an intruder -- had been a consideration and helped his application for bail.

Pistorius shot and killed Steenkamp. He has been charged with premeditated murder.

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UPDATED: Feb. 22 at 9:31am

Oscar Pistorius will be freed from custody pending his trial in the Feb. 14 shooting death of Reeva Steenkamp.

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"I did not kill Kathleen!" Peterson shouted as he leaned into a courtroom microphone Thursday, emphasizing each of the five words.

Without missing a beat, his dead wife's sister, Susan Doman, shouted back, "Yes, you did! You liar!" before the judge ordered sheriff's deputies to remove her from the courtroom.

For years, Peterson casually dismissed and even joked about suggestions he killed his third wife, Kathleen Savio, in 2004, or that he was behind the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

His sudden explosion of fury Thursday as he stepped up to address the judge who would sentence him for Savio's death left spectators gasping. Lead state prosecutor James Glasgow said it exposed the real Drew Peterson — the one more than capable of murder.

"We all got an opportunity to see a psychopath reveal himself in open court," Glasgow told reporters shortly after Thursday's hearing. "That shrill ... screech. ... That's the guy that killed Kathy."

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As it happened, the only equality this campaign ended up supporting involved lung cancer. Today, women and men die at similar rates from that disease.

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If there's sense to be made of what happened to Reeva Steenkamp in the home she shared with the double amputee Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, it's a bleak sort of sense. What happened is beyond dispute: Steenkamp is dead, and Pistorius is the prime suspect. Without relying too much on anonymous police leaks, it appears that the cops think Pistorius murdered Steenkamp in cold blood, shooting her once in the bedroom before she fled into a bathroom, where he shot her several more times through the door, killing her. He may or may not have caved in her head with a cricket bat, though it's unclear how that account fits into the previous timeline. The specifics are vague, but the generalities—the one governing general fact, which is a young woman murdered—are specific enough. We know enough to know that this is awful.

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Duncan noted that the title of the bill, like most bills, is "a motherhood-and-apple-pie title," but "if you voted [based] on the title, you'd vote for every bill up here. If we'd all done that, the country would have crashed a long time ago."

Though he voted for the bill's reauthorization in 2005, Duncan added that he has to look at the budget implications of the latest version. "Last time my main concern was the money," he said.

The VAWA, which the Senate approved last week, was allowed to expire in September 2011, and stalled several times in 2012 over a new set of protections carved out for LGBT, undocumented immigrant and Native American women.

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Botha, who was the first officer at the scene, also said another witness had testified to hearing screams and gunshots from the house in the early morning hours of Feb. 14.

"We have the statement of a person who said after he heard gunshots, he went to his balcony and saw the light was on. Then he heard a female screaming two-three times, then more gunshots," he told the court.

Botha also testified that the trajectory of the bullets indicates a standing height position, challenging the defense's claim that Pistorius had approached the bathroom unaided by his prosthetic legs, making him "feel vulnerable."

Officers also found testosterone and needles when investigating the crime scene, but Pistorius' lawyers say the substance is an herbal supplement.

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McCready's entire public life seemed shadowed by disaster and exploitation. She claimed to have had an affair with Roger Clemens that began while she was still a teenager. She made several apparent attempts at suicide – an overdose of antidepressants in 2005, an alcohol and Ambien overdose in 2008, a wrist-slashing incident later in the same year. In 2005, her then-boyfriend Billy McKnight was arrested for attempted murder after a beating and choking incident. Less than a year later, she mothered a son by him. There were multiple arrests, including one for kidnapping her son. There was the inevitable leaked sex tape. There was a stint on "Celebrity Rehab." In an interview three years ago, she admitted, "My entire life, things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself." And in the past few weeks, the chaos only intensified. In January, her music producer boyfriend David Wilson, the father of her 10-month-old son, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Her children were placed in foster care and she was ordered into rehab. And then on Sunday, her body was discovered on the same porch Wilson had died on just weeks earlier. Nearby was the body of Wilson's dog, dead from a gunshot wound.

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