The week at a glance...United States

Cheyenne, Wyo.

Cheney spat: A public clash over same-sex marriage broke out last week between former Vice President Dick Cheney’s two daughters. “I am strongly pro-life, and I am not pro–gay marriage,” Senate hopeful Liz Cheney said in response to a push poll—believed to have been conducted by supporters of her Republican rival in Wyoming, incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi—that implied the opposite. “I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states,” Cheney added, “not by judges.” Her statement prompted younger sister Mary, who has a wife and two children, to publicly challenge Liz on the issue. “I love my sister,” she posted on Facebook, “but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage. Freedom means freedom for everyone. That means all families—regardless of how they look or how they are made.”

Orient, Ohio

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Prison suicide: Ariel Castro was found hanged in his cell at the Ohio Correctional Reception Center this week, just over a month after he was sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years for the kidnapping and rape of three Cleveland women. The former school bus driver, who hanged himself with his bed sheet, was being held in protective custody alone at the time of his death. His guards were required to make rounds every 30 minutes; he would have been under constant observation had he been on suicide watch. Castro pleaded guilty in July to 937 counts—including kidnapping, rape, assault, and aggravated murder—as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty. Court testimony revealed that Castro chained the three women to poles in the basement, and repeatedly starved and beat one of them each time she became pregnant, forcing her to miscarry five times.

New York City

N-word ruling: A federal jury last week rejected the argument that the N-word can be a culturally acceptable term of endearment, awarding $280,000 in damages to a black employment agency worker who had been the target of an N-word-laced rant by her black boss. Rob Carmona, 61, who co-founded the Strive East Harlem employment agency in the 1980s, said that he had used the word to convey that employee Brandi Johnson was being “too emotional,” and explained that the word has “multiple contexts” in black communities, many of which indicate affection. Johnson, who taped the remarks after her complaints about verbal abuse were ignored, said Carmona’s repeated use of the N-word made her feel “hurt” and degraded. “I felt disrespected,” she said. “I was embarrassed.”

New York City

Festival deaths: The final day of the annual Electric Zoo music festival was canceled this week following the deaths of two concertgoers and the hospitalization of four others who apparently overdosed on a form of MDMA commonly known as “Molly.” Normally ingested in powdered form, it is often considered a purer drug than Ecstasy, which also contains MDMA. But Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman Rusty Payne said the drug—usually imported from Asia, Canada, or the Netherlands—isn’t always as clean as users think. “You have no idea the lab environment these chemicals or substances were produced in,” said Payne. “If they knew where things were produced, they might think twice.” In 2009, there were 22,816 emergency room visits in the U.S. due to MDMA, up 123 percent from 2005.

Marianna, Fla.

Graves unearthed: Investigators at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys have uncovered the remains of two children—among those of possibly dozens—buried on the grounds of the former reform school, which closed in 2011 amid accusations of widespread abuse. The team has unearthed bones and teeth, as well as coffin parts and shroud buttons, that may help in identifying the remains. Several former pupils have come forward in recent years with stories of abuse at the school between the 1940s and ’60s—including alleged torture, sexual abuse, and killings—but a criminal investigation was closed in 2009 for lack of evidence. Researchers using ground-penetrating radar now estimate that at least 50 unmarked graves exist at the school. “These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods,” said forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle.

Washington, D.C.

Tax equality: Gay activists celebrated another victory last week when the U.S. Treasury announced that same-sex married couples are entitled to the same federal tax benefits as heterosexual married couples, no matter which state they live in. The ruling, effective from mid-September, means that the couples will be able file tax returns backdated to the 2010 tax year to seek refunds on health insurance and other tax-favored expenditures. There had been uncertainty about the tax status of gay couples since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in June to invalidate a key part of the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. But under last week’s ruling, even if a couple lives in one of the dozens of states that continue to prohibit same-sex marriage, federal tax benefits and responsibilities will still apply.