A 42-year-old mother of two faces the punishment of death by stoning in Iran after authorities convicted of adultery. And according to Mina Ahadi, who heads the International Committee Against Stoning and the Death Penalty, only international pressure can help save her.

As Ahadi told CNN: "Legally it's all over. It's a done deal. Sakineh can be stoned at any minute."

The woman, Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, who is from Tabriz, was convicted of "adultery while being married" in 2006 and has already received a punishment of 99 lashes. Should the execution go forward, Ashtiani will be buried up to her chest (for men it is to the waist) and then pelted with stones that are large enough to inflict severe damage but no so large as to kill the person instantly, says Amnesty International, citing Article 104 of Iran's Penal Code.

Here's how Ashtiani's case reached this point, as reported in the Guardian:

Sakineh already endured a sentence of 99 lashes, but her case was re-opened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. She was acquitted, but the adultery charge was reviewed and a death penalty handed down on the basis of "judge's knowledge" - a loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present.

Mohammad Mostafaei told CNN last week that Ashtiani may not have been fully capable of understanding the court proceedings due to the fact that she speaks Turkish and not Farsi.

Her son Sajad told the Guardian recently, "She's innocent, she's been there for five years for doing nothing."

Amnesty International, citing Ashtiani's case among others,

for Iran to halt all executions last week.

VA hospital may have infected 1,800 veterans with HIV

Patients receiving dental work at a Missouri VA hospital may have been exposed to potentially life-threatening diseases.

 A Missouri VA hospital is under fire because it may have exposed more than 1,800 veterans to life-threatening diseases such as hepatitis and HIV.

John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis has recently mailed letters to 1,812 veterans telling them they could contract hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) after visiting the medical center for dental work, said Rep. Russ Carnahan.

Carnahan said Tuesday he is calling for a investigation into the issue and has sent a letter to President Obama about it.

"This is absolutely unacceptable," said Carnahan, a Democrat from Missouri. "No veteran who has served and risked their life for this great nation should have to worry about their personal safety when receiving much needed healthcare services from a Veterans Administration hospital."

The issue stems from a failure to clean dental instruments properly, the hospital told CNN affiliate KSDK.

KSDK: VA dental patients at risk of infection

Dr. Gina Michael, the association chief of staff at the hospital, told the affiliate that some dental technicians broke protocol by handwashing tools before putting them in cleaning machines.

The instruments were supposed to only be put in the cleaning machines, Michael said.

The handwashing started in February 2009 and went on until March of this year, the hospital told KSDK.

The hospital has set up a special clinic and education centers to help patients who may have been infected. However, Carnahan said he feels more should be done and those responsible should be disciplined.

"I can only imagine the horror and anger our veterans must be feeling after receiving this letter," Carnahan said. "They have every right to be angry. So am I."

This is not the first time this year a hospital has been in hot water for not following proper procedures.

In June, Palomar Hospital in San Diego, California, has sent certified letters to 3,400 patients who underwent colonoscopy and other similar procedures, informing the patients that there may be a potential of infection from items used and reused in the procedures.

Man arrested after wife writes to Obama asking for help

New York  -- Not everyone expects a response when they write a letter to the president of the United States. But Caroline Jamieson got much more than she expected when her husband ended up in jail and afraid he would be deported.

Jamieson, vice president of marketing at a new-media advertising company, wrote President Barack Obama in January because her husband, Hervé Fonkou Takoulo, was facing deportation to his native Cameroon. Takoulo failed in a bid before political asylum almost a decade ago, and a judge issued a deportation order after they were married.

After he and Jamieson married on 2005, Takoulo applied for a green card based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. But immigration law requires that the deportation order be lifted before the couple can appear before immigration officials to argue their case that the marriage is legitimate and not a ploy to legalize Takoulo's presence in the United States.

"We want to be given the chance to interview and prove that we are a married couple, so Hervé can get a green card, and that has proven extremely difficult to do," Jamieson told CNN.

They never received a direct response to the letter. But they did get two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers waiting outside their East Village, Manhattan apartment on June 3 when Takoulo was leaving the apartment to go to the gym.

Jamieson told CNN that the officers cornered her husband and asked him if he had written a letter to the president. "He said 'No, but my wife did.' And they explained that with that letter -- when it was brought to their attention -- that the Obama administration wanted them to resolve this quickly,'" Jamieson said.

Her husband was held at ICE headquarters for six hours, alone in a room, until he was chained at the wrists, around his stomach and his ankles and taken to the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey, she said.

For the next two weeks, a frantic Jamieson wrote letters to politicians and anyone else who might be able to help. She got responses, she said, but none seemed to lead anywhere. Takoulo was allowed to call his wife once a day at designated times but he knew little about his situation. He spent his days with repeat sex offenders and men accused of felonies, fearing imminent deportation.

"I did everything I could and went into survival mode and pushed for all these connections to the press," she said. "We are fortunate to have that leverage. What about the people in the country who don't have access to those means?"

Then, on Thursday, he was brought to an immigration processing jail in Manhattan and released. There was no explanation offered for his release, but Takoulo is now wearing an electronic ankle monitor while his case is being reviewed.

ICE spokesman Brian P. Hale said the circumstances of Takoulo's arrest were undergoing an internal review and he was released as "an alternative to detention pending a review of his case."

Investigators are looking to determine whether "appropriate separation" between Jamieson's letter to the president and Takoulo's deportation case were violated. If so, he said, the case will go to the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general for "immediate and appropriate action."

Takoulo graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with an engineering degree in 2008 and received several job interview offers after graduation. But the deportation order hung over his head and prevented any followup.

"All he wants to do is contribute to this economy," Jamieson told CNN. "We want to be a productive couple. He's been dying to work."

The couple has been following Barack Obama's rise in the political world since 2004.

"I felt a special kinship to him because I'm of mixed race, and my husband obviously has a similar background," Jamieson told CNN.

Regardless of whether or not her letter was mishandled, the incident has deeply affected the couple's faith in the Obama administration.

"I feel really confused, I don't understand how something like this is possible. I can't imagine that at the top of the Obama administration that they realize that something like this is happening," Jamieson told CNN.

Cartoon characters attract kids to junk food

-- Shrek, Dora the Explorer, and other animated TV and movie stars beloved by children have been moonlighting as junk-food pitchmen in recent years. And they're good at it.

Fifty percent of children say that food from a package decorated with a cartoon celebrity such as Shrek tastes better than the same exact food from a plain package, according to a new study.

And when given a choice, the vast majority of kids pick the food from the cartoon-adorned package as a snack, the study found.

The use of TV and movie characters on food packaging is "designed to access certain feelings, memories, and associations," says Dr. Thomas Robinson, M.D., a professor of child health at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. "If you associate certain products with things that are otherwise considered fun, it's going to make those products seem more desirable."

Cartoon characters tend to appear on junk food, which makes health experts even more concerned about the magnetic effect they have on kids. Although characters such as Dora and SpongeBob SquarePants have been used to market fruits and vegetables, they are most often used on chips, candy, and other unhealthy snacks. SpongeBob has even hawked Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Health.com: 11 kid-targeted junk foods

"Parents may not set out to buy unhealthy products," says the lead author of the study, Christina Roberto, M.S., a doctoral student at Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, in New Haven, Connecticut. "But kids can be really, really persuasive. They see them and they want them, and it gets difficult to have that battle in the grocery store."

Characters from TV and movies have appeared on food products for years, but until now little research has been done to examine how they influence children's food choices.

Health.com: 25 foods you should never eat

In the study, which is published this week in the journal Pediatrics, Roberto and her colleagues presented 40 children ages 4 to 6 with paired samples of graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks, and baby carrots. Each pair of sample foods was identical down to the clear packaging, except that one of the packages had a sticker of Shrek, Dora the Explorer, or Scooby Doo on it.

Between 50 percent and 55 percent of the children said that the food with the sticker on it tasted better than the same food in the plain package. (The percentage varied with each food.) And between 73 percent and 85 percent selected the food in the character packaging as the one they'd prefer to eat as a snack.

Health.com: 25 surprisingly salty processed foods

"Marketers know that cartoon characters sell food products; that's why they use them," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University. "This study really nails it down. Now we have evidence for asking--no, requiring--food marketers to stop using cartoons to market junk foods to kids."

The American Psychological Association and other organizations have likewise called for the elimination of all marketing of food products to children, a stance that Robinson says is reasonable.

"Young children, particularly under the age of 7 or 8, really don't understand the persuasive intent of marketing," he says. "That seems inherently unfair, and something we should protect children from, just like we protect them from other things we think are beyond their cognitive ability, like pornography."

Health.com: new ways to deal with picky eaters

Using the power of cartoon characters for good--to market healthy foods--may be less effective than restrictions on junk-food marketing, Roberto says. The cartoon characters had the least influence on children's preferences when they were on the package of baby carrots, she notes.

"It might be that they're not used to seeing [the characters] on vegetables," Roberto says. Or it might be that kids already know that "a carrot is a carrot is a carrot," she adds, whereas they're not sure how a specific brand of graham cracker or gummy snack will taste.

Health.com: Is it Baby Fat or Obesity?

Food and beverage companies in the U.S. spend more than $1.6 billion each year to attract children's attention, and 13 percent of that is spent on character licensing and similar cross-promotion efforts, according to Federal Trade Commission data cited in the study.

But the calls for reform have had some impact. The use of licensed characters on food products declined between 2006 and 2008, according to research conducted by the Rudd Center.

"It's good to see the voluntary work on this," says Roberto. "But we'd like to see more."

Chicago subway fire sends 12 to hospital

Fire department officials say sparks from passing trains ignited railroad ties in a Chicago subway tunnel.

 A fire in Chicago's subway system Sunday left at least 12 people with smoke-related injuries -- five of them in serious condition, according to a fire official.

Railroad ties in a tunnel near the city's Clark Street station caught fire after apparently being ignited by sparks from passing trains, said Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department.

Ten ambulances responded to the fire, which poured "heavy smoke," Langford said.

A photo snapped by a passer-by shows thick, black smoke billowing above ground.

Service to the subway's Red Line was disrupted and trains were being rerouted to the system's elevated tracks, the Chicago Transit Authority said.

Video: 'It smelled like rubber burning'

In addition to the five people listed in serious condition at local hospitals, four others were in stable condition and three in good condition, Langford said.

According to Langford, such fires are not uncommon in Chicago during the summer months when dry conditions and sparks combine, though he noted that railroad-tie fires typically occur on lines above ground.

Killer, 13, sent to juvenile detention until age 21

DeMarco Harris, 13, was convicted of fatally shooting a woman during a robbery when he was 12.

 A Michigan judge ordered a 13-year-old boy convicted of murdering a woman during a robbery to remain in juvenile detention until he turns 21.

Wayne County Judge Sheila Gibson gave Demarco Harris a blended sentence. The Detroit teen, who committed the crime when he was 12, will be re-evaluated by the court after his 21st birthday.

Depending on the court's findings, Harris will either be released from custody or sentenced as an adult to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

If Harris is convicted of a felony while he is in custody, he will automatically be sentenced as an adult to life in prison, the judge said.

"There are really no happy endings in a case like this," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym I. Worthy said in a statement. "My heart goes out to the family of the victim who have lost a loved one due to a violent and senseless act."

Harris was found guilty earlier this year of murdering Trisha Babcock during a robbery. The 24-year-old woman was shot to death inside her parked car in Detroit on August 1, 2009.

The victim's father called the sentence unfair. "I feel he should definitely spend the rest of his life in prison," Steven Babcockn told CNN. "For him to have a chance or opportunity to be set free when he is 21 is not justice for my daughter."

Babcock said he wanted the judge to set an example. "Just because you're 12, 13, 14 doesn't mean you can murder somebody and be set free when you are 21," he said.

Maria Miller, spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, said Harris will be confined to a secure juvenile facility where offenders convicted of serious violent felonies are heavily monitored.