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As wedding scenes go, it is a rather sedate affair. But four women who joined in the celebrations are thought to have paid with their lives. They are feared to have been the victims of honour killings after dancing with men. In scenes from the wedding, they are pictured in heavy robes and headdresses, sitting on the floor while singing and clapping. Two men were apparently dancing next to them, while out of shot another person captures the moment on a mobile phone video camera. Soon afterwards, the women were said to have been shot or had their throats cut...

Attorneys challenge account of San Diego corpsesBy ELLIOT SPAGAT | Associated Press – 46 min ago SAN DIEGO (AP) — The government's case against two men accused of dissolving corpses in vats of acid for a Mexican drug gang hinges on flawed witness accounts, defense attorneys said Thursday. Jose Olivera Beritan, 38, and David Valencia, 41, are accused burning two strangled corpses in 55-gallon barrels of acid heated by slow-burning propane tanks. The killings occurred in a San Diego home in June 2007 in what authorities say was an unusually gruesome display of drug violence crossing the border from Mexico...

A 23-year-old former Marine who some say was distraught after combat service in Iraq has been named a suspect in the serial killings of four homeless men in Orange County. Itzcoatl Ocampo of Yorba Linda was chased by bystanders Friday after the most recent stabbing death behind a fast-food restaurant in an Anaheim shopping center parking lot. Ocampo remained in police custody without bail Saturday and is expected in court on Tuesday. "We are extremely confident that we have the man who is responsible for the murders of all four homeless men in Orange County," Anaheim Police Chief John Welter...

IRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Terrified by Alabama's strict new immigration crackdown, parents living in the state illegally say they are doing something that was unthinkable just days ago — asking friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances to take their children if they're arrested or deported. ((snip)) "We're afraid to go back to Mexico because of the drugs, the cartels and the killings," Gonzalez said. "And we are afraid to stay here because of the law."

In August 2009, ten people died, eight burnt alive. Four churches were destroyed. Threats against Christian witnesses force them to flee to avoid further violence. Muslim leader says Christians “deserve” to be murdered. Catholic priest wonders whether minorities will ever have justice. Lahore (AsiaNews) – Pakistan’s fundamentalists are rejoicing following the acquittal verdict. The country’s Christian minority is “under shock” because, this time as well, the massacre of innocent victims done in the name of the infamous blasphemy law will go unpunished. The justice system also shows its powerlessness vis-à-vis extremists who can carry out heinous crimes with total impunity,...

The United States said Sunday it is "deeply troubled" over clashes on the Syrian border with Israel that reportedly resulted in 14 deaths, and called for calm on both sides. Israeli troops opened fire as protesters from Syria on Sunday stormed a ceasefire line in the occupied Golan Heights. "We are deeply troubled by events that took place earlier today in the Golan Heights resulting in injuries and the loss of life," the State Department said in a statement. "We call for all sides to exercise restraint. Provocative actions like this should be avoided." The US statement emphasized that "Israel,...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL * EUROPE NEWS * MARCH 3, 2011, 9:57 P.M. ET Frankfurt Shooting Suspect Had Links to Radical Islamists Suspect Had Contact to Radical Islamist Groups via Facebook By DAVID CRAWFORD, LAURA STEVENS and MARCUS WALKER FRANKFURT—The suspected gunman who killed two U.S. servicemen at Frankfurt airport Wednesday had links to Germany's radical Islamist circles, but German investigators say they currently believe he carried out the attack on his own. U.S. President Barack Obama said he is "saddened" and "outraged" by the shooting of a group of U.S. airmen in Germany. Video courtesy of Reuters Investigators suspect...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal authorities ignored warnings that could have prevented a 2009 massacre at an Army base, two U.S. senators said in a report on Thursday that outlined intelligence failures similar to those in the September 11, 2001, attacks. Major Nidal Malik Hasan -- an Army psychiatrist who had been dubbed by two colleagues as "a ticking time bomb" -- was charged with murder in the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas that killed 13 and wounded 32. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, and Susan Collins, the panel's top Republican, said in the probe that authorities had...

I find it fascinating that in two columns by Bob Herbert of the NY Times and one by the editor of the Hutchinson News, the writers can only come to one conclusion in the face of several public mass shootings in the US: more gun control. It is useful to consider the phrase "first responders." In recent years it has come to refer to the first government employees who respond to an incident and who assist as best they can when they arrive at the scene. Actually, the first responders are those at the scene of an incident when it...

Afshan Azad, 22, the high-profile Harry Potter actress remains in hiding after refusing to appear in a London court. Ms. Azad had been seeing a non-Muslim man, a Hindu. Her family, specifically her father, Abul Azad, 53, and her brother Ashraf, 28, called her a "prostitute" and tried to force her into an arranged marriage with a Muslim man. Her brother also beat and her father threatened to kill her in May of this year. She escaped her family home and has been in hiding ever since. According to the Telegraph, she refused to testify against her family, saying that...

A shooting spree in a Buffalo, New York restaurant has left four people dead and another four wounded with a man hunt launched to find the shooter. The bloody incident happened very early in the morning in the city of Buffalo after a fight at a large party inside the City Grill bar and restaurant spilled into the street around 2:30 a.m. The witness reported multiple shots. "There was some type of incident" inside the restaurant, "and it then spilled outside and that's when the shootings occurred," Buffalo Police Department spokesman Michael DeGeorge told CNN. "We're trying to sort all...

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Channel 4 News has learned that a controversial deputy has been rehired in Rutherford County. Ron Killings was acquitted earlier this year by a jury in the 2008 traffic death of 11-year-old old Lakeisha White. Outgoing Sheriff Truman Jones confirmed Wednesday that he has rehired Killings. ... Incoming sheriff, Robert Arnold, said that he did not want Killings back in the department but he isn't saying whether he"ll fire Killings when he's sworn in.

When I first see the Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC), it is hanging limply from the ceiling by a strap attached to its neck, dangling over a treadmill. I can’t wait to try it on.

I hate violence. So much that I can barely tolerate the evening news, where crime is given a spotlight. Yes, I know it exists, but why should I dwell on it? It only serves to depress me because I feel so helpless against it. Why would people ever commit such acts? It is mind boggling. The Fort Hood killings were heartbreaking, terrible, and should never have happened. Innocent soldiers were hurt, and the lives of their families will change forever. No one should die the way they did. When I first heard about them, I was upset, of course. I...

He was supposed to help her hero son - but all she saw in Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's eyes was evil. The mom of a soldier who received psychiatric treatment from the accused Fort Hood gunman said she was frightened of the psychiatrist from the very beginning of her son's stay at Walter Reed Medical Center. "I looked into his eyes, and he scared me," Cindy Gagnier told the Daily News. "He made some comments to me that made me feel very uncomfortable, and I don't become uncomfortable very easily." The New York-born mother of four was at her son...

The Army psychiatrist authorities say killed 13 people and wounded 29 others at the Fort Hood Army Base Thursday was a recent and frequent customer at a local strip club, employees of the club told FoxNews.com exclusively. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came into the Starz strip club not far from the base at least three times in the past month, the club's general manager, Matthew Jones, told FoxNews.com. Army investigators building their case against Hasan plan to interview Jones soon. "The last time he was here, I remember checking his military ID at the door, and he paid his $15...

The President has asked the nation not to jump to conclusions about what happened at Fort Hood, which is usually good advice, but it is also what government officials generally say when the government fouls up. Good advice or not, I am jumping to an obvious conclusion: This should not have happened. That doctor should not have been at Fort Hood. I don't care how hard-up the Army is for mental health professionals - a government psychiatrist with bad performance ratings who had been trying to get out of the Army and who had been saying what Dr. Hasan had...

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is awake and talking, a Brooke Army Medical Center spokesman said Sunday. Dewey Mitchell, public affairs chief at the hospital, said he did not know if the accused gunman in Thursday mass shooting at Fort Hood is talking to investigators. “I am not sure how much he is talking,” Dewey Mitchell said. “There is some communication going on. I just got that indication from people on our nursing staff.” Hasan, wounded four times in a shootout with post police, is in critical but stable condition, Mitchell said.

President Obama says "we cannot fully know" what led Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to kill 13 people and wound 38 others at Fort Hood, Texas Thursday. Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before the killings, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces the enemy, and opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam. His rampage at Ft. Hood has the markings of an act of Islamic terrorism. But in his weekly address, Obama says, "We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing." And while the killings were "heartbreaking" and...

Lessons learned from the horrific Virginia Tech shootings in 2007 are credited with averting an even bigger massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, Thursday afternoon when police officer Kimberly Munley confronted the gunman without waiting for backup and took him down with four shots. Reviews in the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech, where 32 died, found that first responders' decision to be careful and wait for backup probably cost lives as that gunman moved unchecked from classroom to classroom as law enforcement massed outside. Those findings had found their way to Fort Hood's Special Reaction Team, which had practiced...