Free Republic

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables. The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip. "We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said. But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged. "The children were in that room...

Guatemala City, Aug 22 (EFE).- Fourteen Guatemalan Indians were publicly flogged, forced to kneel on bottle caps and shorn of their hair after being convicted by a traditional assembly of various offenses, local media reported Tuesday. The so-called "Maya punishment," provided for in traditional codes acknowledged by the modern nation-state, was applied Monday in the northwestern town of Nahuala, community leader Pascual Ixmata told the press. The 14 accused - four of them women - were whipped and forced to kneel on bottle caps, and their hair was cut off. The male miscreants, who were charged with sniffing glue, also...

Group's spray-painting meant as a political statement Slogans spray-painted on the side of a church and school, along with dark shadows colored onto streets and sidewalks throughout Cranford's downtown area were meant to be artistic statements, but police call them acts of vandalism. Three Cranford men and a Garwood resident, all 18-year-old members of a musical group called Interior Decorating, have been charged with criminal mischief in connection with the graffiti incidents that occurred at 17 locations during the morning of July 22, authorities said yesterday. (snip) Bonney said the spray-painting was "an artistic statement against capitalism, the war in...