Pregnant Soldier Among Ft. Hood Victims • Unsportswomanlike Soccer Player Suspended

• One of the victims of the Fort Hood massacre has been identified as pregnant 21-year-old soldier Francheska Velez of Chicago, who was starting maternity leave in two weeks. "She loved the military, loved to serve," said a friend. •

Velez, an Army private, had recently returned from Iraq, where she disarmed bombs. She had served for three years, recently reenlisted for another three, and wanted to become a psychologist to help other soldiers deal with the stress of military life. Her friend Sasha Ramos says she respected the position of Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter. "He's somebody she would have saluted," Ramos said. "It's degrading to all soldiers that he did something like that." • Vandy Beth Glenn has filed a federal lawsuit to get her job at the Georgia General Assembly back after she was fired for being transgender. She had been working as Glenn Morrison and living as Vandy Beth, but she and her supervisor agreed she would start dressing as a woman on Halloween 2006. But she was fired by Georgia Legislative Counsel Sewell Brumby, who said in a deposition, "It makes me think about things I don't like to think about, particularly at work … I think it's unsettling to think of someone dressed in women's clothing with male sexual organs inside that clothing." • According to the American Psychological Association's annual stress survey released earlier this week, women are more likely than men to say they lack the willpower to make lifestyle changes to improve their health. But, Helen Coons, director of the Women's Mental Health Center in Philadelphia, says "willpower" is a misleading term because women may really mean they're too exhausted to make changes and think of themselves as being "selfish" if they put their needs ahead of others'. • A survey of 1,212 doctors published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that many doctors do unnecessary pap smears, adding to heath care costs. Doctors were asked what screening they'd recommend in various situations and most said they'd give a pap smear to a 35-year-old woman with no history of cervical cancer whose cervix had been removed, which is inconsistent with guidelines from several medical associations. • Though many men think women are mainly interested in color when buying a car, a survey by Ipsos Public Affairs for CarMax found 33% of women say price is the most important factor, followed by reliability and fuel efficiency. • Canadian researchers compared 6-year-old children who were breast-fed for 6 months with those who were breast-fed for only three months and found that there were no differences in intelligence, behavior, or blood pressure. While longer breast-feeding gave the children an immunity boost as infants, the researchers say the advantages of breastfeeding do not include lower risks of obesity, asthma, allergy, or dental problems in the long term. • Elizabeth Lambert, the NCAA women's soccer player whose unsportswomanlike behavior was featured on SportsCenter last night has been suspended indefinitely from the University of New Mexico's team. "Liz is a quality student-athlete, but in this instance her actions clearly crossed the line of fair play and good sportsmanship," said her coach, Kit Vela. • A prosecution source in the Amanda Knox trial says her DNA is on the handle of a knife used to kill Meredith Kercher, but the defense still insists there was DNA tampering at the scene of the crime and that the kitchen knife doesn't match Kercher's wounds. Closing arguments in the case begin in two weeks. • Mary Karr, who just published her memoir Lit, says she developed her storytelling ability as a child. She and her mother would play a game when they were driving or her mom was hungover. "Tell me a story she liked to say, meaning charm me - my life in this Texas suckhole is duller than a rubber knife. Amaze me," says Karr. • "Presidents hate the press," says White House reporter Helen Thomas. "They hate me most of the time. ... Asking questions about Watergate, about Monica Lewinsky, they're questions that will hurt and yet you can't avoid them. If you do avoid them, it shows you don't have guts." •

Send an email to Margaret Hartmann, the author of this post, at margaret@jezebel.com.

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