Cliff Owen

Shot with my cell phone from my car window, while stopped for a red light, in old town Alexandria. She was either totally at peace with herself and the world, or in a coma.

Kori Cioca, 25, was proud to be in the Coast Guard. She loves boating, the water, the honor that comes with military service. But her life was shattered by the fist of a superior when he broke her jaw and then later raped her.

“You think of a Coast Guardsman, you think of somebody in the military holding themselves at a certain level,” Cioca said. “When somebody walks up to you and shakes your hand and says, ‘Thank you for your service,’ little do they know they’re shaking the hand of a man who rapes and beats women in the military. ”

She said she continues to suffer from numbness in her jaw and has nightmares.

“My body hurts every day. My face hurts. I get the most horrible headaches. My body has been trespassed. The honor that I had was stripped from me. I’m no longer proud of myself. People tell me thank you for your service, but my service wasn’t what it was supposed to be,” Cioca said.

complete AP story, by Kimberly Hefling, is here

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito bows his head as an invocation is said at the start of the National Italian American Foundation 35th Anniversary Convention dinner in Washington.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai participates in a discussion with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, Thursday, May 13, 2010.

The photo editors at the New York Times ‘Lens’ blog have been kind to my images the past year, or so  :-)

Despite a couple hundred-thousand miles driven down rural roads and highways, I’ve yet to see a pivot irrigation system at work — you know them, those 1/4 mile long trellises that snake through a farmer’s fields. They sit quietly like those dinosaur skeletons on display at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum.

Well, Friday night they were alive in Sudlersville, Maryland and emitting a soft rain. Had it been a tad bit warmer, I just might have done a Gene Kelly dance through the field.

Michael Donley, secretary of the Air Force, pauses while speaking during the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Fisher House and meditation pavilion for the families of fallen soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, at Dover Air Force Base, Saturday, May 1, 2010.

photographed for the AP