Doug Letterman/Flickr

See Also

T-Shirt Vendor Says He Used To Trust Alleged Subway Killer With His Kids

Drunk Women On The Subway Allegedly Stabbed A Man When He Asked Them To Quiet Down

Riders Take Down An Alleged Groper On The L Train In Brooklyn

A woman has confessed to pushing a man in front of the 7 train Thursday night.

Erika Menendez, 31, has been charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime after she was arrested early Saturday morning and confessed to pushing Sundano Sen, 46, in front of the oncoming train, The New York Post reported Saturday.

More from the Post:

“She is accused of committing a subway commuter’s worst nightmare,"Queens DA Richard Brown said. "(He was) suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train, shoved from behind with no chance to defend himself.

“She told police that she pushed a Muslim off the train tracks. She said, ‘I’ve hated Hindus and Muslims since 2001 since they put down the Twin Towers. I have been beating them up since.”

Brown told The New York Times he had no information about Menendez's mental health or criminal history.

Witnesses told police Thursday that Menendez and the victim weren't arguing before the attack but rather Menendez came up behind Sen at the 40th St. station in Sunnyside, Queens, and pushed him in front of the 7 train without being provoked.

Menendez was arrested around 5 a.m. Saturday after her relatives called the police last night after seeing video footage of the incident, the Post reported.

Sen was an Indian immigrant from Calcutta according to the Post. He has just opened a small copying business on the Upper West Side this year and lived in Queens, according to the Times.

His roommates told the Times they were horrified by the incident and described Sen as "so quiet, so gentle, so nice."

This is the second time someone has been pushed to their death on the subway this month.

Ki-Suck Han was pushed onto the subway tracks earlier this month. and a man named Naeem Davis was arrested in connection with the incident.

DON'T MISS: Young Lawyer Reveals 'Deep Inside Me There's A Serial Killer Lurking' >

C-SPAN Craig Whitney on C-SPAN

As the debate over gun control in the United States rages on, self-described liberal Craig Whitney

on the Second Amendment.

Whitney, a former New York Times editor, argues in his new book "Living With Guns: A Liberal 's Case for the Second Amendment" that Americans have a long-standing common-law right to have guns for self-defense.

That right goes back to colonial times, when Americans felt they had a civic duty to use firearms when called upon to protect the common good, Whitney said in a recent C-SPAN interview.

“If you could ask Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton or John Hancock after the adoption of the Bill of Rights whether they had an individual right to carry arms and use them for self-defense, or to hunt . . . they would have laughed at you,” Whitney writes, according to a review of his book in The New York Times.

“Of course they had that right, they would have said," Whitney adds, in his book. "The Second Amendment didn’t give it to them; it simply recognized a right Americans had always had in common law and protected it.”

But Whitney, a member of the NRA, isn't a Second Amendment absolutist. He told C-SPAN any responsible gun owner knows having a gun is a "huge responsibility," and that the United States needs to live safely with the guns that have become part of its culture.

The NRA has spread a lot of hysteria and fear about possible gun regulations, but the U.S. can start reducing gun violence by checking the backgrounds of everybody who buys a gun, Whitney says. (Currently, private sellers aren't required to conduct criminal background checks before selling guns.)

Whitney told C-SPAN, "How can the NRA oppose regulations aimed at keeping people like criminals and drug addicts from keeping guns?"

SEE ALSO: Here's Why Dianne Feinstein's Assault Weapons Ban Might Actually Work >

Shark Tank Explodes onto Shoppers Mysterious Itch Cells Found Mission to Drill Into Buried Antarctic Lake Called Off See Also The World Is Totally Unprepared For Extreme Events Like Sandy A Mysterious Animal Is Attacking Livestock In Kentucky Children Don't Want Toys For Christmas Anymore

As the holidays call for good will toward men, new research indicates that kids who are kinder are also happier and more popular.

This finding suggests that simple and brief acts of kindness might help reduce bullying, the researchers say.

At the top of parents' wish lists is for their children to be happy, to be good and to be well-liked, and past research has suggested these goals may be not only compatible but complementary.

The link between happiness and prosocial behavior such as kindness toward others apparently goes both ways: Not only do happy people often do good for others, but being more prosocial increases people's sense of well-being.

Based on this prior research, scientists carried out what they say was the first long-term experiment analyzing kindness in pre-teens. The investigators followed more than 400 "tweens" – kids age 9 to 12 – attending Vancouver, Canada, elementary schools.

The students were randomly assigned to two groups. Half the students were asked by teachers to keep track of pleasant places they visited, such as playgrounds, baseball diamonds, shopping centers or a grandparent's house.

The other students were asked to perform acts of kindness, such as sharing their lunch or giving their mom a hug when she felt stressed by her job.

"We gave them examples of acts of kindness, but we left it up to the kids to decide what was a kind act," said researcher Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, a developmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

The students were asked to report how happy they were and identify classmates they would like to work with in school activities. After four weeks, both groups said they were happier, but the kids who had performed acts of kindness reported experiencing greater acceptance from their peers – they were chosen most often by other students as children the other students wanted to work with. [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

"You can do this very simple intervention that not only increases happiness but makes kids like each other more in the classroom," Schonert-Reichl told LiveScience.

According to Schonert-Reichl, bullying often increases in grades 4 and 5. By asking students to briefly and regularly act kindly to those around them, "hopefully we can get kids to get along in the classroom and reduce instances of the bullying and teasing that we see, especially around this age group," Schonert-Reichl said.

"One thing we haven't done yet that I think would be fascinating would be to see what kind acts kids in this age group do," she added. "Another would be seeing if this actually can be an intervention for bullying — will it decrease bullying in the classroom? And we did this in classrooms; what happens if you did it on the whole school level?"

The scientists detailed their findings online Dec. 26 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Copyright LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.