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A homeless man was tried for stealing $4.50 worth of food. Here's what the judges said.

In 2015, Roman Ostriakov was sentenced to six months in an Italian jail for attempting to steal $4.50 worth of cheese and sausage.

Ostriakov was convicted for stealing cheese and sausage. Photo via torange.biz.


His sentence was finally overturned this week by a panel of judges for the sort of reason that restores your faith in humanity just a little bit.

Italy's Supreme Court in Rome. Photo by Tiziana Fabi/Getty Images.

According to a BBC report, the judges ruled that because Ostriakov was homeless and had stolen the food because he was desperately hungry, the theft was not a crime.

A man in Italy sleeps outside a train station. Photo by Tiziana Fabi/Getty Images.

The ruling was a stunning display of compassion and a rare acknowledgment of the cost of being poor.

A man in India eats in a prison yard after having been rounded up for begging on the street. Photo by Chandan Khanna/Getty Images.

Ostriakov's conviction and acquittal highlights the often harsh (and disproportionate) punishment meted out to crimes that are born out of poverty and desperation.

In the United States, things like conviction and sentencing disparities for crack versus cocaine and petty theft versus financial crime serve to reinforce the notion that being poor deserves an increased level of criminal scrutiny.

There is evidence that poverty — even when less extreme — primes people to make negative decisions.

A 2013 study, published in the journal Science, found that for the subjects of the experiment, who were poor, worrying about money noticeably impaired their ability to perform well on unrelated spacial and reasoning tasks.

Rather than wasting public resources throwing people in prison for being hungry, we can and should use those resources to make sure they're not hungry in the first place.

Photo by Paul Sableman/Flickr.

In the U.S., that means supporting programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly known as SNAP or food stamps), which feeds millions of the hungriest Americans every year despite frequent efforts to draw down its funding or defund it entirely. It's not always sufficient, but it's often better than nothing — and ultimately a fairly small component (2.3%) of the federal budget.

Recently, more radical measures like universal basic income, which would provide in place of targeted social programs, have gained some traction with advocates on both sides of the aisle.

We can't give everyone a free pass, but we certainly give them enough of a hand that they shouldn't need one.

People eat at a food bank in New York City. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

An editorial in an Italian newspaper — translated by the BBC — hailed the ruling for being a guided by a concept that "informed the Western world for centuries — it is called humanity."

Better yet, let's extend that humanity to hungry people before they're forced to a choice to steal or starve — a choice that no person should have to make.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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