Taking a controversial plunge into uncharted waters, Richmond is poised to become the first city in the country to invoke eminent domain to address its foreclosure crisis.

"After years of waiting on the banks to offer up a more comprehensive fix or the federal government, we're stepping into the void to make it happen ourselves," Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said in a conference call Tuesday.

On Monday the city sent letters to 32 investors - largely private-label security trusts - offering to buy 626 underwater mortgages at discounts to the homes' current value. If the offers are spurned, the letter said Richmond may use the power of eminent domain to condemn the mortgages and seize them, paying 80 percent of the homes' market value.

The city would then help the underwater homeowners refinance into mortgages in line with their homes' current worth.

Wall Street vehemently opposes the untested idea, claiming it violates property rights and would have a chilling effect on future mortgages in Richmond while leading to years of costly litigation.

It is one of the oddities of the Royal Family -- shared by the majority of the English upper classes -- that for many generations they have circumcised their male sons, invariably using a Mohel, the Jewish word for a circumcision practitioner. It was rarely done on medical grounds, nor on religious ones, but was a matter of class.

This has prompted some speculation as to whether the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will chose to follow suit. Understandably, Clarence House will not comment on such a private and delicate matter.

However, it is unlikely because the connection between class and circumcision, which continued up into the 1970s, has all but died out in Britain. Indeed by the time the Duke of Cambridge himself was born in 1982, it is understood that Diana, the Princess of Wales, refused to continue the tradition, in keeping with the then medical opinion that it was an unnecessary procedure whose risks outweighed any possible benefits.

The NHS now tries to guide parents away from the practice and the most recent figures suggest just 3.8 per cent of male babies are circumcised in the UK. This is down from a rate of 20 per cent in the 1950s, when there was a belief, especially among those who could afford to have it done privately, that it was more hygienic.

An improbable, bipartisan coalition has emerged on Capitol Hill to force the Justice Department and the National Security Agency to consider changes to the once-secret collection of ordinary Americans' telephone calling information as part of antiterrorism efforts.

The rare convergence is another sign that the post-Sept. 11 emphasis on domestic security at all costs is gradually giving way to nagging concerns among Republicans about a "Big Brother" federal government and Democrats worried about protecting individuals' civil liberties.

The shared concern follows explosive revelations about domestic surveillance by fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

The shared outlook reflects "a real change in both parties on the war on terror, the role of the military and intelligence agencies, and a new common ground on distrust of government," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "There is still a strong bipartisan coalition (favoring intelligence gathering), but the pressure will only grow on the White House and the security agencies to implement some changes."

A parallel right-left coalition emerged just last week when a number of libertarian Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and David Vitter of Louisiana, supported legislation by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that would overhaul the armed forces to deal more effectively with sexual assault.

Over the past three years, photographer Lindsay Morris has been documenting a four-day camp for gender nonconforming boys and their parents.

The camp, “You Are You” (the name has been changed to protect the privacy of the children and is also the name of Morris’ series), is for “Parents who don’t have a gender-confirming 3-year-old who wants to wear high heels and prefers to go down the pink aisle in K-Mart and not that nasty dark boys’ aisle,” Morris said with a laugh.

It is also a place for both parents and children to feel protected in an environment that encourages free expression.

“(The kids) don’t have to look over their shoulders, and they can let down their guard. Those are four days when none of that matters, and they are surrounded by family members who support them,” Morris said.

Morris has stated that her photographic goal for the project is “to represent the spirit of these boys as they shine.” Some of the ways in which the kids shine is through the talent and fashion shows at camp that are popular and for which the campers come well-prepared.

I LEARNED that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died.

The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen.

I visited the site later, once I was able to bear the pain of seeing where he sat in his final moments. Local residents told me his body was blown to pieces. They showed me the grave where they buried his remains. I stood over it, asking why my grandchild was dead.

Nearly two years later, I still have no answers. The United States government has refused to explain why Abdulrahman was killed. It was not until May of this year that the Obama administration, in a supposed effort to be more transparent, publicly acknowledged what the world already knew — that it was responsible for his death.