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At least seven people have died in an accident suffered by a Spanair aircraft after taking off from T-4 at the Barajas airport in Madrid. [Excerpt; my translation from the Spanish.]

Fazal Khan wanted his American-born sons to recite the Quran from memory. So he sent them to a religious school in his native Pakistan in 2004. Noor, now 17, and Mahboob, 16, didn't like it at Jamia Binoria, a prominent madrassah in Karachi, describing it as a world of black and white compared to the color of Atlanta. "I want to go home badly," Noor said in a 2005 interview that appears in a new documentary film about the school. "I think about what I could be doing and what I am doing." After four years and publicity that focused...

You could call it the Atlanta version of "High Noon." Top city officials will announce Tuesday that despite a new state gun law that went into effect at midnight, they will have anyone carrying a weapon at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport arrested. The state lawmaker who sponsored the new gun law says if they do, the city will immediately be sued. And state Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica) said the plaintiff in the lawsuit could be himself. "I have a permit, and I have family I have to pick up at the airport tomorrow [Tuesday]," Bearden told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on...

Playing the Spoiler Role? The Libertarians say they're not out to ruin McCain's chances. But they could cost him. At Tuesday night's Libertarian debate, the party's most celebrated presidential candidate wasn't even there. In fact, he isn't even a Libertarian. And yet his name was invoked almost a dozen times in the course of the hourlong debate leading up to this weekend's Libertarian convention.

An Atlanta police recruit shot and killed a teen boy who tried to rob him at gunpoint early Saturday, authorities said. The 14-year-old allegedly had confronted the recruit while he was in his vehicle in the parking lot of the Parkside Crossing apartments, in the 4200 block of Jonesboro Road in Forest Park. Forest Park police Lt. Amy Wright said the teen suffered more than one gunshot wound and died. She would not reveal the boy’s name, saying she was not sure all his relatives had been notified, but said he lived on Fisher Road in Atlanta. Wright also did...

OMAHA, Neb. — The mother of the teenage gunman who killed eight people at a busy shopping mall last week apologized Thursday for her son's crime and said she did her best raising him. "I have been absolutely devastated," Maribel Rodriguez told The Associated Press. "The most difficult part is giving all of my best efforts to convey to all these beautiful people that I truly am sorry." Her son, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins, fired more than 30 rounds inside a mall department store Dec. 5, striking 11 people. Eight of them died, and he killed himself. Families held funerals and...

BANGKOK, Thailand - More than 90 percent of the 123 passengers and an unknown number of crew were killed on Sunday when a Thai airliner crashed on the Thai resort island of Phuket, Deputy Governor Vorapot Rajsima said. "The casualties should be higher than 90 percent. I'm at the airport and the plane is still smoking," he told Channel 9 television. [...] Earlier, Angsuwan had told TITV that there was heavy rain when flight OG269 attempted to make a landing. "The visibility was poor as the pilot attempted to land. He decided to make a go-around but the plane lost...

Jose Genao sells used cars for a living, but lately he's had to turn away customers from his Smyrna dealership. Genao used to sell about 15 vehicles a week, mostly Ford F-150 or Silverado pickups to a Mexican clientele. Now he sells only two or three. Half a dozen customers have returned cars because they can't register them. "They bring the key and tell me, 'Jose, I'm leaving,' " Genao said. Genao is feeling the fallout from a new state law, effective July 1, that requires a valid Georgia driver's license or ID card to register a car in Georgia....

Introduction In November of 1985, Microsoft released Windows 1.0. And thus began Windows' 22-year reign (to date) as the world's most popular, most irritating computing platform. Which Windows features have been responsible for the most angst? We tallied this list of offenders with the advice of PC World editors and contributors as well as members of the PCW community. Our roster includes several kinds of worsts: Just plain bad ideas, good ideas gone awry, and a few ideas that started out terrible but eventually became surprisingly decent. Click on the images above to see 'em all, starting with number 20.

A DeKalb County developer who fell into a children's trap to catch a yard sign thief agreed Tuesday to a deal that will spare him a criminal record. Charles Buckley was accused of swiping a political campaign sign from Hank Freeman's yard in July 2006. He was caught when Freeman's children, ages 6 to 11, staked out their Oak Grove property, hoping to catch the thief. Buckley apologized to Freeman Tuesday in DeKalb State Court for stealing the sign supporting Don Broussard, who was running against Jeff Rader in a primary contest for the DeKalb County Commission. Under the terms...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Investigators found a crying 6-year-old boy tied up in a sweltering car at a suburban restaurant after employees reported seeing a man take the child outside and return without him to finish eating. Police believe the boy, whose name was not released, was tied up for about 30 minutes while the outside temperature was in the 80s Saturday in Ringgold, Ga., about 13 miles southeast of Chattanooga, Sgt. John Gass said Tuesday. "He was sitting up in between the two front seats and he was crying," Gass said. "He had a rope tied to one of his...

Movie ratings, which have long considered sex, violence and profanity in films, will now factor in all forms of smoking, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. MPAA ratings have in the past noted illegal teen smoking in films. But on Thursday the association said in a press release it would consider "depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context" in its ratings. "Clearly, smoking is increasingly an unacceptable behavior in our society," Dan Glickman, MPAA chairman and CEO, said in a press release posted on the association's website....

The parents of a baby that died of starvation after being fed a vegan diet have been found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and first degree cruelty to children. Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31, will get an automatic life sentence for the death of their 6-week-old infant, Crown. After being fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice, he weighed only 3 1/2 pounds when he died. The Fulton County jury deliberated the case for about seven hours. Prosecutors said it was a chilling case of murder by starvation, a painful and prolonged death....

DES MOINES, Iowa - A senior campaign official says former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack will drop his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. There is no word yet as to why the Vilsack is abandoning his bid, but he has scheduled a 11 a.m. CST news conference to make what his campaign calls a "major announcement".

US Airways on Wednesday withdrew its $10 billion takeover bid for Delta Air Lines, complaining that it did not get a fair hearing from Delta's bankruptcy court creditors. The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline's decision came on the eve of a Thursday deadline for the creditors to show support for US Airway's two-month-old takeover run. US Airways withdrawal clears the way for Delta management to continue its plan to emerge from bankruptcy this spring as an independent airline. A court hearing on Delta's reorganization plan is set for Feb. 7 that could allow Delta to begin seeking creditors' votes for its plan....

Federal immigration agents arrested six illegal immigrants Wednesday who had security badges that gave them access to restricted areas of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, including the tarmac. The immigrants, all of Mexico, worked installing drywall for T.C. Drywall, Inc. of Alpharetta, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. None of the men was considered a security threat. ICE continues to investigate the circumstances of the immigrants' employment and possession of the restricted access badges, ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi said. The six likely will be deported to Mexico. The arrests are a part of ICE's "critical infrastructure worksite" focus...

LOS ANGELES - Michael Richards is doing damage control. In the aftermath of his racist tirade against two black hecklers during a standup comedy routine, Richards on Wednesday hired a publicist with strong ties to the black community who set up calls to the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. New York publicist Howard Rubenstein took on Richards as a client, then arranged for the actor to call the black leaders. --SNIP-- “Clearly he needs some race sensibility training, and some psychiatric help. His anger is volatile and dangerous to himself and others,” Jackson said. --SNIP-- “I’ve been very involved...

TORONTO, Sept. 18 -- Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday. The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods. [snip] Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in...

A mid-air collision between a private jet and a glider on Monday afternoon leaves the pilot and crew safe but the glider and its occupant(s) missing. Authorities say the jet was travel ling at 300 knots when it collided with the glider over Douglas County about 3 PM Monday afternoon They say the pilot and his crew had to make an emergency landing without landing gear at the Carson Airport. They had just received clearance from the tower to descend to 12,000 feet. The plan has received major damage to the nose of the aircraft, and it is not known...

Do you have what it takes to become a citizen? When immigrants want to become Americans, they must take a civics test as part of their naturalization interview before a Citizenship and Immigration Services officer. The questions are usually selected from a list of 100 sample questions (see at http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/English.pdf) that prospective citizens can look at ahead of the interview (though the examiner is not limited to those questions). Some are easy, some are not. We have picked some of the more difficult ones. [Seriously?] Should you be welcomed immediately to the Land of the Free or sent home for...