The winners and the losers

• Winner: There are Eagle Scout projects and then there is Brad Jencks' Eagle Scout project. The 15-year-old South Jordan boy and about 250 volunteers catalogued and restored the Bingham Cemetery, which served Bingham city, a former mining town at the foot of Kennecott Bingham Copper Mine. In all, 1,825 grave sites were catalogued and a GPS map of the eight-acre cemetery was established to help survivors search for relatives' grave sites. Jencks also prepared a 1,500-page book on the cemetery and area. This was a remarkable effort of service that has unmeasurable meaning to the relatives of what was a remarkably diverse community. Jencks' efforts have won well-deserved national acclaim.

• Loser: The heart-wrenching mistaken identity case of two Indiana college students involved in a van crash grows worse by the day. One family buried a young woman they mistakenly believed was their daughter and another stood by a convalescing young woman they had been told was their daughter. Now it has been revealed that the roommate of one of the crash victims raised doubts about the identity of the crash survivor two weeks ago. Taylor University officials reportedly did not explore the roommate's claim further, fearing a public investigation would "upset the families," according to press reports.

• Winner: In an attempt to counter China's widening gender imbalance, one Chinese province has closed 201 clinics that helped detect and abort female fetuses. It is also offering stipends to elderly couples without sons. This crackdown highlights the growing concern over China's one-child policy and the traditional preference for male offspring.