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Wednesday night, KARE 11 told you about an Anoka man who called police saying someone had burned a cross into his lawn. Police arrived to find a 10' by 6' cross burned into the lawn of a African American homeowner De'Andre June, who lives on the 3900 block of 10th Lane North. On Friday De'Andre June was charged with burning the cross himself. According to the criminal complaint, June has been charged with falsely reporting a crime, disorderly conduct and obstructing the legal process. Anoka Police Capt. Phil Johanson told KARE 11 that he has sent misdemeanor charges to the...

A 23-year-old pregnant woman’s jaw remains wired shut two weeks after she was savagely beaten outside her Howard Beach home in what may have been a race-motivated attack. On May 24, the Peninsula Hospital nurse went to her car parked in front of her house, near the intersection of 157th Avenue and 96th Street at approximately midnight to retrieve a cell phone she had accidentally left behind hours earlier. She saw three black women in their 20s walking down the street in her direction. When they got to the car, they threw her to the ground and kicked her repeatedly...

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that...

News & Notes: Thursday's topics: MSNBC decides to stop broadcasting Don Imus after his comments about the Rutgers' women's basketball team; sexual assault charges are dropped against three Duke University students; and Defense Secretary Robert Gates extends the tours of all active-duty troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I never wrote it, but I felt it -- which is just as bad. I said it in private discussions with friends, some of whom tried to get me to see the whole picture, not just the picture I wanted to see. My being a black woman, my knowing too many athletes who treat women like items to be purchased in a vending machine, and my witnessing enough athlete rape trials where accusers are overwhelmed by their fame and fortune -- it all tainted my perception and made me doubt your innocence. I feel stupid now. Will the media spend...

Chilling testimony Monday in a military courtroom. Petty Officer Cooper Jackson showed no emotion as he matter-of-factly stated he killed Marine Corporal Justin Huff on January 2nd. Before Jackson entered his guilty pleas, the military judge, Captain Daniel O'toole, dropped the case down so it is no longer a capital case. That means Petty Officer Jackson does not face the death penalty. Jackson pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping, impersonating a Naval Criminal Investigative Service Agent, and obstruction of justice. This all began in December of 2005. Jackson was involved in a telephone relationship with a woman he knew as Samantha...

The agency in charge of Paris-region hospitals on Saturday confirmed that the husband of a Muslim woman examined by a male gynecologist had physically attacked the doctor, but refused to confirm allegations that the assault was motivated by religious extremism. The AP-HP hospital agency said it had taken legal proceedings against the husband for an incident that occurred on the night of September 8 in the emergency service of an unnamed Paris hospital. However the agency refused to endorse a statement by the professional association of French gynecologists and obstetricians, who described the assault as a manifestation of "Muslim fundamentalism."...

The charges against the Duke lacrosse players should be dropped immediately, and the people demanding the dismissal the loudest and most forcefully should be the very people who have made a living allegedly fighting against racial injustice. I've said this before, but it's worth saying again: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should be in Durham, N.C., today, promising civil disobedience until the charges are dropped and prosecutor Mike Nifong resigns. Ed Bradley and "60 Minutes" should never be mistaken for Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court. Bradley is just a TV reporter and "60 Minutes" is just a TV show,...

NPR and Fox News commentator Juan Williams is a certified liberal – so liberal some have called him the black Alan Colmes, the liberal half of Fox’s Hannity and Colmes. When he writes a book you’d expect the left-wing media to fall all over each other to be the first to review his book and have him as a guest on network radio and TV. That hasn’t happened, however, because his book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America - and What We Can Do About It, has crossed the boundary of...

Rarely does a news story bring tears to the eyes. But when I read the account last week of the murder of Samaira Nazir in an “honour killing” (surely an oxymoron), I nearly wept. Here was a bright, articulate graduate who had her throat cut, was stabbed 18 times by her brother and cousin because she wanted to marry a Muslim man whom her family had not chosen. The details were particularly horrific. Her mother stood and watched as she was murdered — how could any mother do that? Her two nieces, aged just 2 and 4, were forced to...

"Oh my god, I'm a sinner," Ubaid said he once thought of himself. "I kept praying and wishing I weren't gay, hoping it was a phase, and that if I kept praying I'd be saved," he said. Ubaid, who asked that his last name not be used, was born in London to a close-knit and devoutly Muslim Pakistani family. "I have always been passionate about Islam," the 30-year-old said, explaining how he struggled to resolve his religion with his sexuality. Several years after deciding not to enter into a marriage arranged by his parents, he is now secretary of Imaan,...

Four Pakistani men were hanged Thursday for gang-raping a Christian woman at gunpoint during a 1999 robbery, a jail official said. Police arrested the men, all Muslim, shortly after attacking the woman in Faisalabad, an industrial city about 180 miles east of Multan, a main city in Punjab province. There appeared to be no sectarian motive for the crime. An anti-terror court sentenced the men to death after convicting them of raping the woman and robbing her family of about $1,000. The men lost appeals last year, including a mercy plea to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Faisalabad Jail superintendent Yousaf...

An investigation is under way to determine why a Safeway warehouse employee walked into work and opened fire on his coworkers Sunday afternoon, killing one person and injuring five, including a Denver police officer. The suspect, tentatively identified by witnesses as Michael Ford, was shot and killed during a shootout with SWAT officers inside the massive Safeway Denver Distribution Center, located near Interstate 70 and Colorado Boulevard. "The officers confronted the suspect who was armed with the handgun. He fired at us, we fired at him," said Denver police Chief Gerry Whitman. "It was pretty quick ... I don't expect...

The cousin of the alleged victim in the Duke University lacrosse rape case says “alums of Duke” quietly offered the accuser lots of money - a staggering $2 million – early on to drop the charges, and go on with her life. “She told me they wanted her to make the case go away,” Jakki (she will not reveal her last name in order to protect her family), the designated family spokesperson, told The Carolinian and Wilmington Journal newspapers in an exclusive interview June 19. However Jakki adds that her younger cousin, the Black woman at the center of the...

Duke lacrosse, the 46 white players, a black dancer and the reputation of the university are forever changed. But is the case solid? Exclusive sources describe three months of fear, disbelief and confusion over what the future holds -- in and out of court. Once it got serious, once the DNA samples came back negative and the district attorney made it obvious that he'd still proceed, Matt Zash could feel a finger beginning to point his way. Didn't it all add up? Zash was one of the three renters of the now-infamous house where the gang rape allegedly occurred. The...

The Durham Republican Party will field a candidate to run against the district attorney leading the investigation in the Duke lacrosse rape case in the November election, ABC News' Law & Justice Unit has learned. Durham Republican County Chairman Steve Monks told ABC News that he will announce his intention to challenge Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong in a press conference at 4 p.m. ET today. Monks and Durham County Republicans acknowledged that the Duke rape investigation weighed heavily in their decision to field a GOP candidate in a traditionally Democratic county. "People feel [Nifong] totally sold out the...

A brutal beating was caught on tape from inside a school bus. The graphic video showed a middle school teen repeatedly hitting and taunting a 10-year-old boy. The female bus driver can be heard yelling at the teen, and then moments later removing two teens from the bus; one of them just 14 years old.

Bannock County prosecutors say they're handling a crime they rarely see - someone carelessly having sex while infected with HIV. Jeremy Johnson reports. Bannock County prosecutors say while this isn't the first case of its kind here, it definitely is unique. Kelvin Eugene Crawford has been charged with one count of transferring HIV to another person - a charge that could get him up to 15 years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Crawford is already in the state prison for a parole violation on an aggravated assault charge. They say while the victim has not contracted HIV, the charge...

The race for Durham district attorney is not over, yet. Incumbent Mike Nifong's campaign coordinator has jumped ship and is now helping a potential write-in candidate. Jackie Brown helped Nifong beat two challengers in the May Democratic primary. She is now listed as treasurer of the campaign committee for Durham County Commissioner Lewis Cheek. Cheek has not decided if he will run. Brown told a newspaper that she agreed to manage Cheek's write-in campaign for district attorney because she thinks Durham needs new leadership. Nifong has faced heavy criticism for his handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case.

Lawyer Alex Charns unleashed a second salvo this week in what he calls his "poster war," demanding a public police apology for a March placard that sought help in solving the Duke University lacrosse rape case. Charns, representing one of the unindicted players, also reiterated an earlier request that the Durham Police Department launch an internal investigation into the situation. Police spokeswoman Kammie Michael said the department had no immediate comment. According to Charns, the poster libeled 46 lacrosse players before the district attorney acknowledged he had sufficient evidence to prosecute only three for the alleged rape of an exotic...