There are a lot of vulnerable elderly people in America, and they are favorite targets of scammers. One popular trick: the "grandparent scam," where fraudsters dial numbers and pose as grandkids who've stumbled into trouble and need money wired, right away. It's pretty loathsome!

The New York Observer's Irina Aleksander coins a meme: the Cautionary Matron - basically a generation of women disappointed in their lives and passing on their tales of woe to impressionable youth. But can we handle the truth?

A 75-year-old Syrian woman has been sentenced by a Saudi Arabian court to 40 lashes, four months in prison, and deportation for having two unrelated men in her house.