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BY Tyesha Tazwell's count, there were a dozen of them - six girls, six boys - hanging around together. One of the girls tried to get Tazwell's attention by uttering a polite-sounding "Excuse me." Then they pounced. Tazwell, 24, said it took only a few seconds for the teens to knock her to the ground. They pounded her face with a barrage of kicks and punches, stole her purse and chanted "Watch your mouth! Watch your mouth!" when she finally got to her feet and tried to get help. It might sound like Tazwell received this brutal beating in some...

<p>BAGHDAD _U.S. authorities in Baghdad have received five severed fingers belonging to four Americans and an Austrian who were taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq , U.S. officials said Wednesday.</p> <p>The FBI is investigating the grisly development, and the families of the five kidnapped contractors have been notified, American officials said on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the case publicly.</p>

THE tragedy of Kenya’s violence was etched on the face of James Kamau, a softly spoken 43-year-old biology teacher, as he steeled himself to search Nakuru city mortuary for his murdered brother-in-law this weekend. “We are glimpsing an enormity of evil in Kenya larger than any of us imagined,” he said. “Look how they have destroyed our people.” He flinched in a moment of shock as he spotted a familiar pair of brown shoes on the feet of a man burnt beyond recognition who was lying on the floor. “It is Eliud,” he said, turning away in sorrow and comforting...

He asked them to stop smoking in Munich's subway station. They brutally beat up the 76- year-old pensioner. Last Thursday, the 20-year-old Turk Serkan A. and his Greek friend Spiridon L. admitted that they critically wounded the former schoolmaster Bruno N. and offended him by calling him: “Crap German.” When the victim was lying motionless on the floor, the two took the old man's rucksack and quickly fled. The victim suffered a triple fractured skull with dangerous brain bleeding. At first, his life was in jeopardy, but his physical condition is stable now. The motive: “Why was he so stupid...

(IsraelNN.com) An IDF Major was rescued this afternoon (Monday) by PA police from a crazed Arab mob when he mistakenly entered the city of Jenin, in northern Shomron. Arab residents who first saw him and realized he was Israeli threw rocks at him, forced him out of his car and began beating him. A Palestinian Authority policeman called for help, and PA forces rescued the Israeli. He was transferred safely to the Jalameh checkpoint north of Jenin, where the IDF received him. The PA's Maan news agency reported that the officer entered the city from the west, driving a white...

Salem, Mass. (AP) -- A self-proclaimed high priestess of Salem witches and a second person were accused of tossing raccoon parts on the doorsteps of businesses, allegedly as part of a Wiccan community feud. Sharon Graham, 46, and a fellow Wiccan, Frederick Purtz, 22, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of littering and malicious destruction of property. Graham also was charged with intimidating a witness. They were accused of putting a racoon head and entrails on the doorsteps of Angelica of the Angels and the Goddess' Treasure Chest in May. The historic seaport, famous for holding witch trials in the...

Ancient Massacre Discovered in New Mexico -- Was It Genocide? Blake de Pastino in Jemez Springs, New Mexico National Geographic News July 12, 2007 Seven skeletons discovered in a remote New Mexico canyon were victims of a brutal massacre that may have been part of an ancient campaign of genocide, archaeologists say. The victims—five adults, one child, and one infant—were members of an obscure native culture known as the Gallina, which occupied a small region of northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 1100 (see New Mexico map). The culture suddenly vanished around 1275, as the last of its members either left...

Tongan's do wardance during hakka VIDEO

Dear Mexico, Screw off.After your little stunt the other night, booing Miss USA at the Miss Universe contest, all of us up here in the real America have one simple message for you: Get busy edging the sidewalks. Or washing the dishes. Or selling the drugs and joining the street gangs. Or whatever it is you people do that real Americans won’t. Sure, we admire your ability to squeeze 17 people into a minivan, and nobody can fit an extended family into a duplex like you guys, but when it comes to decency and hospitality, you act like savages. Let...

It would be wonderful to feel warm and happy about the diplomacy now breaking out all over. Five years ago America was confronting the axis of evil. Today we are offering access to envoys. After years in the cold, North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan is on his way to New York for talks involving U.S. promises of aid and diplomatic normalization if Pyongyang just stops making nuclear bombs. Later this month, at a "neighbors" conference convened by Iraq, America plans to sit down with Syria and Iran, whose leaders, in the grand tradition of Tony Soprano, are...

'Wrong to blame one religion for problems' DILSHAD AZEEM ISLAMABAD - Chinese President Hu Jintao Friday appreciated Islamabad’s counter-terrorism efforts and said Pak-China friendship will continue to grow, as it is higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the oceans. In his address to Pakistani nation live telecast by electronic media, the Chinese president talked about Pak-China relations, enlightened moderation strategy, agreements signed by the two countries and key position of the two countries in international scenario. As he was given a warm reception at fully decorated Convention Centre of the federal capital, President General Pervez Musharraf conferred on Hu...

AL-AWWAMIYA, Saudi Arabia (Nov. 21) - When the teenager went to the police a few months ago to report she was gang-raped by seven men, she never imagined the judge would punish her - and that she would be sentenced to more lashes than one of her alleged rapists received. The story of the Girl of Qatif, as the alleged rape victim has been called by the media here, has triggered a rare debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers are...

AMERICAN proposals to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian security forces with additional guns and fighters have alarmed other Western nations, who argue that it is tantamount to supporting one faction in a potential civil war.Fearing the strength of Hamas in Gaza, some US officials have urged that the moderate President Abbas should be given “deterrent capability” so that his Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority forces can confront the Islamist group if talks on a national unity government fail. The divisions have led to a stand-off over the past month, with US officials saying that the unity government proposal had “no legs”. Other members...

Four face charges of torturing boys Police say pair burned, starved, forced to sleep in closet BY JASON WOMACK The Lubbock County Criminal District Attorney's Office filed criminal charges on Monday against four people who police said systematically tortured, beat and starved two boys. Police said the boys' stepmother and father - 37-year-old Melissa D. Lively and 40-year-old Steve A. Lively - routinely burned the boys with a battery charger, forced them to sleep in a closet and fed them habanero peppers. They each face four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Each charge carries a maximum punishment...

Milwaukee police arrested 14,000 people, snagged 200 guns and grabbed 37 pounds of cocaine - all in just three months this summer. Despite such seemingly impressive numbers, crime continues to surge, fueled by what Police Chief Nannette Hegerty calls a "societal crisis" unfolding in neighborhoods gripped by unstable families, few jobs, rampant drug use, teen pregnancy, and topped with a significant dose of anger and hopelessness, the chief said. Faced with such challenges, police can't do it all, she said. "This is a problem bigger than law enforcement," Hegerty said Wednesday. "I think we have a societal crisis." More evidence...

HANINE, Lebanon (AFP) - Strawberry jam, bullets and a lock of human hair. These are among the mundane and macabre war trophies displayed at a makeshift roadside museum in this southern Lebanese village. Somebody has laid the items out neatly on the cement driveway in front of a garage. A fence made from two rows of string is designed to keep people from getting too close. A yellow flag of the Hezbollah Shiite militia flies over one corner of the display, and Hezbollah posters are stuck to a wall above a collection of seized Israeli food: cans of tuna and...

We've deluded ourselves into believing in the myth of the noble and peaceful primitive Nicholas Wade's Before The Dawn is one of those books full of eye-catching details. For example, did you know the Inuit have the largest brains of any modern humans? Something to do with the cold climate. Presumably, if this global warming hooey ever takes off, their brains will be shrinking with the ice caps. But the passage that really stopped me short was this: "Both Keeley and LeBlanc believe that for a variety of reasons anthropologists and their fellow archaeologists have seriously underreported the prevalence of...

OAXACA DE JUAREZ, Mexico Some striking teachers in Mexico today hijacked and burned buses and blocked highways in Oaxaca state. It's the latest in their month-long battle with the state government _ clashes that some fear could disrupt voting in the July presidential election. Some teachers had machetes and guns during their protest. The teachers blocked the roadways in an unsuccessful attempt to stop a march in support of Oaxaca state Governor Ulises Ruiz -- and continued to call for his ouster. The governor last week ordered police to force the protesters out of the central square in Oaxaca City,...

Militants cut off villagers’ noses and tongues in Held Kashmir JAMMU: Suspected Islamist militants killed a villager in Indian-held Kashmir by slitting his throat and cut off the tongues and noses of four others, accusing them of being police informers, authorities said on Friday. The attackers also beat up seven other villagers and set several houses ablaze late on Wednesday in a remote village near Mahore town, 65 kilometres northeast of Jammu city. “These foreign militants are ruthless,” he said, referring to insurgents that India says are Islamists crossing into its part of administered Kashmir from Pakistan, and sometimes even...