It’s time for another installment of stories that made us sit up and take notice this week:

In the wake of four apparent suicides over the weekend, including an apparent murder-suicide, officials at Fort Hood in Texas promised to take steps to identify individuals who may be at risk, the Austin American-Statesman reported. There have been 14 confirmed suicides (and six suspected suicides) at the base in 2010, compared with 11 in 2009 and 14 in 2008. Army suicide rates have doubled since 2005, and more and more soldiers are stationed at the base as a result of troop withdrawals from Iraq.

An alleged global scheme to steal millions of dollars from U.S. bank accounts using computer viruses has resulted in more than 60 people being charged, including 19 people who were arrested in London on Tuesday, according to this account from the Wall Street Journal. So-called “money mules” were supposed to open bank accounts in the U.S., where they would receive wire transfers made possible by a virus that steals a person’s usernames and passwords from his or her computer. The scheme also targeted small and midsized businesses and municipalities, according to the article.

A private intelligence contractor hired by the Pennsylvania State Police produced information that was “often inaccurate and almost always useless,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported as the director of the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified before a Legislative committee. Moreover, the questionable intel distributed by the Institute on Terrorism Research and Response, which included reports “on the activities of citizen groups that posed no obvious threat to public safety, including student protesters and opponents of natural-gas drilling,” were widely disseminated. “I likened it to reading the National Enquirer: Every so often they have something right, but most of the time it’s unsubstantiated gossip,” the director said.

Here’s another installment of stories that earned our admiration this week:

The number of contractors killed in Iraq and Afghanistan during the first half of 2010 is higher than the number of military fatalities, reported ProPublica.org, which compared U.S. Labor Department figures to information from the Pentagon. This marks the first time in U.S. history that corporate casualties in war zones — which are often under-reported — have outpaced military losses, the article notes. “A recent Congressional Research Service report found that the heavy use of contractors had exposed troops to supply shortfalls, wasted taxpayer money, and stirred anger among locals,” the article states.

An appeals court in Miami overturned a 33-year-old ban on gay adoption in Florida, finding it unconstitutional, the Miami Herald reported. The three-judge panel concluded that there is no “rational basis” for banning gay people from becoming adoptive parents. The article quotes the court’s opinion, which is likely to be appealed to the state Supreme Court: “Given a total ban on adoption by homosexual persons, one might expect that this reflected a legislative judgment that homosexual persons are, as a group, unfit to be parents. No one in this case has made, or even hinted at, any such argument. To the contrary, the parties agree ‘that gay people and heterosexuals make equally good parents.’”

A high-quality recording of the broadcast of Game Seven of the 1960 World Series, which ended with a walk-off home run by Bill Mazeroski, was found in Bing Crosby’s wine cellar, of all places, the New York Times reported. Crosby, a part-owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, couldn’t bear to watch the games as they happened, and hired a company to make a recording of the NBC broadcast that he could watch later. During that era, television stations didn’t normally keep copies of games for their archives, so the newly discovered recording is a monumental find, not just for fans of the victorious Pirates and the losing New York Yankees, but for baseball fans everywhere.