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Age: 39 Education: 1997 graduate of Virginia Tech University. Received doctorate in psychiatry from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. Career: U.S. Army psychiatrist. As of Oct. 13, he had less than a year of clinical practice. From 2003 through this summer, was an intern, a resident and then a fellow at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. Also, he was listed by the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress as a fellow for disaster and preventive psychology. Commissioned as a captain, he was promoted to major in May. Personal information: He...

Fearing that a gunman who killed 11 people at a military facility in Texas may have been Muslim, US Islamic groups were bracing themselves for a public backlash against the faith today. Soon after Pentagon officials named one of the shooters at the Fort Hood facility as Nidal Malik Hasan, Islamic groups rallied to condemn an act President Obama had earlier described as a "horrific outburst of violence". "The guy's name is a Muslim name," Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) told AFP, expressing fears about damage to inter-faith relations, already strained by the September 11 attacks,...

SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris will not seek the death penalty for an alleged gang member accused of murdering a father and two of his sons last year, a prosecutor said today. The announcement in San Francisco Superior Court means that Edwin Ramos will at most serve life in prison without parole if convicted of the June 22, 2008, slayings of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, Matthew, 16. The decision is in keeping with Harris' campaign promise never to seek the death penalty. There had been speculation, however, that with Harris running for...

BRUNSWICK, Ga. - As cryptic as ever, Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering wouldn't say this afternoon whether the man charged with tampering with evidence and obstructing police in their probe of Saturday's mobile home massacre is tied to the deaths.

Concealed Handgun Permit Holders Kill 7 Police, 44 Private Citizens Over Two-Year Period 31 Incidents Result in Criminal Charges or Suicide of Concealed Handgun Permit Holder Washington, DC--Concealed handgun permit holders killed at least seven police officers and 44 private citizens in 31 incidents during the period May 2007 through April 2009 according to a new study (http://www.vpc.org/studies/ccw2009.pdf) released today by the Violence Policy Center (VPC). The release of the study comes as the U.S. Senate is expected to take up today--Monday, July 20--an amendment to the defense authorization bill (S. 1390) that would create a de facto national concealed...

The first wave of slayings haunted Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. The killer slipped mostly unseen through the night, preying on older women who lived alone. He raped them and squeezed their necks until they passed out or died. On the 17 who were killed, he placed pillows or blankets over their faces. The second wave hit a decade later in Claremont -- five older women raped and strangled, faces again covered. Even with at least 20 survivors, police never connected the two homicide-and-rape rampages nor solved either of them. The victims gave conflicting descriptions of the rapist, police in...

Washington, DC (AHN) - An FBI program that investigates unsolved killings along highways has linked long-haul truck drivers with hundreds of murders across the country, the Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend. The Highway Serial Killings Initiative (HSKI) has solved more than two dozen killings since it started five years ago, authorities said, according got the Times. At the center of HSKI's operation is a database holding information on more than 500 female murder victims, whose bodies were discarded at or near truck stops, motels and other places along well-traveled truck routes nationwide. The database also has information on...

1 January 2008Genocide Watch has called a Genocide Alert because of genocidal massacres that are increasing daily in Kenya in the wake of a disputed election between President Mwai Kibaki, who is a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group, and Mr. Raila Odinga, who is ethnically a Luo. Ethnic riots have broken out in Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret, and numerous other places in Kenya. People have been pulled from their cars and their identification cards checked for their names, which symbolize their ethnic identity, and then killed if they belong to groups being targeted.  Hundreds of people have already been murdered. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The scene repeats itself daily on city streets: a driver gets stuck bumper to bumper, blocking an intersection and preventing another car from turning left. But authorities say that was enough to cause Edwin Ramos to unload an AK-47 assault weapon on a man and his two sons, killing them. The deaths immediately drew public outrage, which intensified when authorities revealed that Ramos, 21, is an illegal immigrant who managed to avoid deportation despite previous brushes with the law.

Commentary by Daniel T. Zanoza, Executive Director So, it happens again, this time at Northern Illinois University. Five students are killed by a mad man, numerous others are wounded and then the killer takes his own life. For the next few weeks, we will be hearing loads of speculation as to why. Some will blame the DeKalb, Illinois killings on guns. Some will say the lack of guns at the University prevented school security from defending the innocent. And then some will go into the deeper, psychological explanations for why these young people kill. But many will miss the mark....

I know that many are, rightly, focused on the Primaries and elections. However, news is also happening around the world. Many of these events may not seem to affect those within the US. However, events in other nations show patterns. Patterns point to outcomes. Outcomes which will directly affect America. Today's post focuses on a series of stories from the UK The first article is from The Sydney Morning Herald concerning honor killings among Islamics. Sadly, this cancer of honor killings extends to the US and Canada, but that is for another post. The grainy video, taken on a mobile...

2 charged in Wash. holiday killingsBy DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP Associated Press Writer Posted on Fri, Dec. 28, 2007 AP Photo - King County Sheriff Sue Rahr, left, and Prosecutor Dan Satterberg leave after addressing members of the media to explain charges being filed against a couple accused of killing members of the woman's family, Friday, Dec. 28, 2007, in Seattle. Michele K. Anderson and Joseph Thomas McEnroe, both 29, were charged Friday with aggravated first-degree murder in the methodical Christmas Eve shooting deaths of her parents, her brother, his wife and their two young children. The two were ordered held...

MEXICO CITY - A wave of organized crime violence terrorizing many parts of Mexico is driving fear into the heart of the entertainment business with the murders of several popular musicians, suggesting no one is immune to the rampant brutality. Most disquieting were the weekend slayings of two singers who had crooned only about love and loss, not drugs and guns like some "narcocorrido" celebrities killed in the past. The murders of Sergio Gomez, lead performer for the top-selling group K-Paz de la Sierra, and Zayda Pena of the group Zayda and the Guilty Ones has mainstream singers worrying they...

Austrian Man Shoots Colleague, Slices off Penis in 'Honor Killing' VIENNA, Austria — Austrian authorities said Thursday they arrested an elderly Turkish-born man suspected of fatally shooting a younger Turkish associate and slicing off the victim's penis in what investigators called an "honor killing." ... Officials said witnesses claimed the man allegedly shot the victim, a 58-year-old Turkish-born man, in the street with a shotgun at point-blank range and then cut off his penis with a knife, leaving him to bleed to death. Two teams of surgeons worked at the scene to save the man but were unable to revive...

NEWARK, N.J. -- Three of the young people had been ordered to line up against a wall on the weedy steps behind an elementary school and were shot to death from close range. A fourth was found alive by police slumped near a set of bleachers about 30 feet away, with gunshot and knife wounds to her head. All were from Newark; and all would soon either start or resume their lives away from the violent city, at a college hundreds of miles away. Ofemi Hightower been accepted Thursday to Delaware State University after two years of rejection letters. Terrance...

Mexico takes gloves offPresident gambles with use of military in drug crackdown By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Article Last Updated: 07/09/2007 07:25:29 AM PDT MEXICO CITY — Every Monday morning, President Felipe Calderon settles in at the head of the table in the presidential library at Los Pinos, Mexico's fortresslike chief executive's compound. Calderon presides over strategy sessions with the leaders of Mexico's army and navy, key players in the centerpiece initiative of his seven-month-old presidency: a military assault against drug cartels. No Mexican president in recent history has convened his security council with such regularity, but few of his...

Forty-eight police officers were intentionally killed in the line of duty last year, the FBI said Monday. Forty-six were shot and killed and two were struck by vehicles. The 48 officers intentionally killed were among 114 who died in the line of duty. Both numbers were down slightly from last year. [Snip] Nearly half of the intentional killings, 22, occurred in the South. Eleven officers were killed in the West, seven in the Northeast, six in the Midwest and two in Puerto Rico Seven fewer officers were intentionally killed in the line of duty last year than in 2005. The...

THIS WEEK, California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and a group of Democratic legislators will reintroduce the California Compassionate Choices Act, which would allow terminally ill patients found to be of sound mind to request medication from doctors "to provide comfort with an assurance of peaceful dying if suffering becomes unbearable." Like the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity law it is based on, the California bill nowhere mentions suicide, except to say that "actions taken in accordance with this bill shall not constitute suicide or homicide." That clause was framed to address concerns about legal liability, but the avoidance of "suicide"...

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Vanishing students. Dead bodies. Fears something sinister is lurking in the shadows. A string of college student drownings across the Midwest has all the makings of great mystery. Or does it? Rumors have persisted for years that a serial killer is prowling Interstate 94, hunting young men in college bars and plunging them underwater. Investigators, though, say there's no evidence of foul play. They say the victims were so drunk they fell in the river and died. Not so fast, says criminologist Douglas Gilbertson. An assistant criminology professor at St. Cloud State University, Gilbertson has spent...

FORT PIERCE, Florida (CNN) -- Four "persons of interest" were being held in the Palm Beach County Jail on Friday in connection with the shooting deaths of a family of four this month along Florida's Turnpike, authorities said. The people in custody, who were not identified, were being held on federal drug charges, authorities said. "We are looking for more people," a law enforcement source said. A late-morning news conference was scheduled to discuss the case. Late Thursday, the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office issued a nationwide bulletin asking people to be on the lookout for a 1999 red Dodge...