Free Republic

Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan forcibly shaved in military prison after being sentenced to death • Major Nidal Hasan began growing a beard in the years after the November 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 30 wounded The Army psychiatrist sentenced to death for the Fort Hood shooting rampage has been forcibly shaved, an Army spokesman said on Tuesday. Major Nidal Hasan began growing a beard in the years after the November 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 30 wounded. The beard prompted delays to his court-martial because it violated Army grooming regulations. He was convicted of...

Officials said Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan was shaved after his move to death row and Texas legislators proposed a new compensation bill for shooting victims. Hasan, who was convicted in the 2009 shooting deaths of 13 people and injury of 31 others at the Texas military base, grew a beard for what he said were religious regions prior to the start of his court-martial. The move drew the ire of the judge, who found Hasan in contempt of court, causing a one-year delay of his trial. After Hasan, 42, was flown to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Friday to be put...

Raipur (India), 22 Dec. - In a remote village in the Indian jungle around 50 women have been attacked by inhabitants, who beat them and shaved their heads because they believe the women to be witches: police sources in the poor Indian State of Chhattisgarh reported this. It seems that the attackers acted on advise of a local guru, who claimed that punishing the 'witches' that way they would earn protection from evil spirits. The persecution, the climax of a purification ceremony to ward off evil spirits from the village, continued for nine days. Indian Prime Minister Raman Singh condemned...

British police arrested a man before Christmas who was suspected of preparing himself for a suicide bombing and who had links to Al Qaeda, British newspaper The Sunday Times said. The paper, which did not give a source, said the man in his late twenties was arrested after leaving notes to his family saying he planned to "martyr" himself. The paper said he was an Algerian asylum seeker. The man had also shaved off all his body hair, a religious act often observed by would-be suicide bombers so that they are "clean" before entering heaven, the newspaper said. "I hope...

``Star Wars'' star Natalie Portman is convinced her shaved head makes her look like a terrorist. The itty-bitty actress, 24, who lopped off her lush locks for the upcoming ``V for Vendetta,'' told Newsweek she suspects her chrome dome was the reason New York's finest pulled her over by the Midtown Tunnel the other day. ``I've never had that happen to me before,'' the Harvard grad confessed to the weekly news magazine. ``It's supposedly random . . . My registration was expired because I had been out of town, and it was my first day back. I'd been in Israel...

Walking down Spring St. in Lower Manhattan this AM, a gorgeous Asian woman walked by me with a male friend, and a large round button over her left breast that said, "No Bush". I burst out laughing, and kept walking, and it was not until 30 seconds later that I thought of an appropriate response. "Doesn't that itch?"

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani woman had her head shaved as a punishment for having an affair and her four-year-old daughter was made to marry the five-year-old son of her lover, police say. The punishments were handed down to Mumtaz Mai by a traditional village jury in the central province of Punjab on Monday, Deputy Superintendent of Police Habib Ahmed Ghumman told Reuters on Wednesday. Passing sentence on Mai's affair with a married man, the council in the village of Jaddar Bhanda ruled that the couple's children should be married and her head be shaved. It also ruled that her...