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The teenage terrorist who blew up a double-deck bus in Tavistock Square, London, killing 13 people including himself, was caught on closed-circuit television two and a half hours earlier. Hasib Hussain, bearded and wearing jeans and a jacket, was pictured at Luton railway station as he and three other bombers headed for the 7.20am train to London last Thursday. In his rucksack was the 10lb bomb that exploded at 9.47am on the No 30 bus shortly after three other bombs went off in Underground trains. Hussain, 18, a nondescript character, troublesome at home in Leeds and an under-achiever at school,...

When the leaders of the world's industrialized nations meet today in Scotland, they would do well to take time out from their policy debates to focus on the fate of Akbar Ganji, who is becoming known as the Iranian Vaclav Havel. He is the journalist and dissident entering his 27th day of a hunger strike inside Evin Prison. Over the July 4th weekend, the chief of Iran's society of journalists told IRNA that Ganji was in critical condition. If Bush meant anything when he proclaimed in his second inaugural, "As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you,"...

Let the honeymoon begin. With Antonio Villaraigosa officially ensconced as mayor, many of his supporters are viewing his first year as a test as much of the city as of him. "The biggest enemy out there for Antonio Villaraigosa is Antonio Villaraigosa," one supporter said at the $500-a-person Music Center gala that preceded Friday's inauguration. The fear, voiced by many, is that Villaraigosa - and his staff - will begin to believe all the hype about his political potential. Most immediately is the prospect of him entering the governor's race next year. As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's poll numbers drop and...

Killer nurse Charles Cullen on Monday admitted murdering five patients while he was working at Hunterdon Medical Center, bringing to 29 the victims whom the state's worst serial killer has confessed to slaying in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Cullen pleaded guilty to the murders in state Superior Court. He also has acknowledged trying to kill five patients during more than a decade in hospitals and nursing facilities in the two states. He has told investigators he might have killed as many as 40 people, which would make him one of the nation's most prolific mass murderers. Cullen had previously denied...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen on Wednesday killed a former judge whose name once was on a list of Sunni Arabs joining a parliamentary committee to draft Iraq's new constitution, officials said. Separately, a Filipino hostage was released after almost eight months in captivity. Former judge Jassim al-Issawi, whose candidacy to join the 55-member committee was later dropped, was a law professor at Baghdad University and the former editor-in-chief of Al-Siyadah newspaper, said Salih al-Mutlak, secretary general of the Sunni National Dialogue Council Al-Issawi, 51, and his son were killed in Baghdad's northwestern Shula neighborhood, said Abdul Sattar Jawad, current editor...

Calif. - Marcus Wesson, the domineering patriarch of a large and incestuous clan, was convicted Friday of murdering nine of his children, whose bodies were found in a bloody pile last year at the end of a police standoff. Wesson, 58, could get the death penalty. The jury took more than two weeks to find Wesson guilty on nine counts of first-degree murder. He was also convicted on all 14 counts of raping and molesting seven of his underage daughters and nieces. The defense had argued that Sebhrenah Wesson, 25 — the oldest to die — killed herself as well...

An ultrasound image is a picture worth more than a thousand words when it comes to understanding key differences between the values that separate the United States and the People’s Republic of China. In the United States, ultrasound image technology has been instrumental in establishing the unborn child as a living, breathing, sensing person. Several states are in the process of enacting laws requiring abortion practitioners to offer pregnant women the chance to see an ultrasound image of their baby before performing an abortion. Congress is considering the Informed Choice Act, which allows pregnancy help clinics to receive federal grants...

ARCATA, Calif. - Federal scientists are planning to shoot a small number of barred owls they say are crowding out the threatened spotted owl in northern California - an experiment that could lead to killing thousands of the larger owls on the West Coast. Scientists said the "removal" experiment would be the best way to quickly determine whether barred owls are pushing spotted owls toward extinction. If successful, officials would then consider expanding the program. "This experiment is a small step," said Brian Woodbridge, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Yreka, Calif. The final plan...

A court in Rangoon rejected and closed the case of Aung Hlaing Win who was killed at a military intelligence interrogation centre. Mayanggone Township court, on 10 June, declared that the death of Aung Hlaing Win was an “ordinary” one and closed the case, causing disgruntle among the remaining relatives of Aung Hlaing Win. His corpse was never returned to the family as the authorities cremated it secretly. Although a doctor testified at the court that the victim bodies bore signs of tortures, the court insisted that Aung Hlaing Win died from “natural” cause with illness and diseases he suffered...

JERUSALEM - Israeli soldiers killed a top Islamic Jihad militant in a gunbattle Tuesday, and a Palestinian mortar attack on a Jewish settlement killed two non-Israeli workers in one of the deadliest days since February's truce. The attacks punctuated a day of violence that left five people dead. A second militant was also killed in the gunbattle in the West Bank. Other attacks included Palestinian rocket and mortar barrages aimed at a series of Israeli targets and Israel's killing of an unarmed man who infiltrated into Gaza from Egypt. The clashes exacerbated tensions already inflamed by Monday's confrontation at a...

TV GIRL SOUASHED MY BABY SOUIRREL May 28 2005 A REPORTER sent to do a story about a baby squirrel stood on the fluffy creature by mistake and killed it. Inka Blumensaat wanted to tell how a pet cat had saved the orphaned squirrel by adopting it as her own. But the friendly rodent jumped on her leg as she filmed her report and she panicked and trampled it underfoot,breaking its neck. Heike Reher, whose cat adopted the squirrel in Lubeck, Germany, said: 'The reporter started leaping about like a mad woman. She squashed the squirrel completely. 'Everyone looked at...

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Land-access disputes between oil firms and northern Canadian native groups must be solved in six to 12 months or the companies may drop plans for a C$7 billion ($5.6 billion) gas pipeline to focus on U.S. liquefied natural gas projects, a top analyst said Wednesday. Of the two major Arctic gas projects being proposed in North America, the Mackenzie Valley pipeline faces the biggest risk of being canceled due to its high-profile delays, said Tristone Capital analyst Chris Theal, author of a new 50-page report on the prospects for northern frontier gas. Mackenzie partners Exxon Mobil,...

Saint Paul Police officers arrested a teacher at St. Paul elementary school Thursday for probably cause of criminal sexual conduct with a 9-year-old. Mathew Christopher Curran, 52, was arrested without incident outside Aerospace Magnet School on St. Paul's East Side, according to St. Paul police. Just before 10 a.m. Thursday, school officials learned of allegations sexual contact between Curran and a 9-year-old student and contacted police.

Last Friday, firefighters conducting a routine inspection in a Brooklyn supermarket found 200 automobile airbags and a room lined with posters of Osama bin Laden and beheadings in Iraq. An element in the airbags can be used to make pipe bombs. The owner of the building, according to the New York Post, "served jail time in the late 1970s and early 1980s for arson, reckless endangerment, weapons possession and conspiracy, according to the records." But officials were definite: this has nothing to do with terrorism. It doesn't? What does it have to do with, then? Was this a local Rotary...

Sheboygan - A high school senior from Sheboygan is being investigated by federal authorities after allegedly threatening to kill President Bush. 18-year-old Matthew Rostollan allegedly made those threats during an after-school chess meeting at South High School. Sheboygan police say the student "had made statements that he wanted to get a machine gun and shoot into a crowd of people, killing them and also wanted to kill the President of the United States, mentioning President Bush by name." According to the criminal complaint, the suspect suffers from bi-polar disorder and is taking medication. Rostollan is being investigated by the Milwaukee...

Three Israeli Arabs from north Jerusalem, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), have been arrested for plotting to murder Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the Shas Party and one of the great Torah scholars of this generation. One of the conspirators, Mussa Darwish, 22, a resident of Issawiya, a north Jerusalem neighborhood, became familiar with the location of the rabbi’s home, while working as a delivery boy for a grocery store in the Jewish neighborhood of Givat Shaul. Darwish, who according to security sources, came up with the idea to kill the elderly rabbi,...

"KILL BUSH" PRODUCTS--KILLED By Michelle Malkin   ·   April 14, 2005 12:02 AM Blogs get results: The "Kill Bush" products first reported here and publicized on scores of blogs big and small, have been removed. Here's the announcement from CafePress: The "Kill Bush" products have been removed from CafePress.com. They were created by individuals across the globe, as are the more than 8 million products available on CafePress.com, a diverse network of more than one million shops. Hate related materials are in violation of our terms of service and are prohibited from being sold through CafePress.com. CafePress.com is an automated service,...

No I’m not talking about *that* sin. I’m talking about a sin far greater than whatever he does with Whatshisname. I’m talking about his lending his support to those friendly baby killers of Planned Parenthood. He’s going to keynote their interfaith prayer breakfast. Excuse me for a moment. . . . Sorry. Combining “interfaith,” “prayer,” and Planned Parenthood makes me lose my breakfast. I’m a very pro-choice kind of guy. So I say Mr. Robinson has a choice. He can repent. Or he can face the judgement that awaits those who use Christ’s name and offices to support abortionists and...

Zahra Kazemi did not die in "an accident" at Tehran's notorious Evin prison, whatever Iran's discredited courts may claim. She was savagely beaten, tortured and raped, according to a physician who treated her as she lay dying from a brain injury. Kazemi, an Iranian-born Canadian photojournalist, was arrested June 23, 2003, outside Evin prison while taking pictures at a pro-democracy rally. Three days later she was carried unconscious on a stretcher into Baghiatollah military hospital, reports Maj. Shahram Azam, a physician in the Iranian security forces who treated her. She never recovered. What Dr. Azam saw at the hospital that...

MEDICAL SCIENCE UNDER DICTATORSHIP DR. LEO ALEXANDER Science under dictatorship becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of the dictatorship. Irrespective of other ideologic trappings, the guiding philosophic principle of recent dictatorships, including that of the Nazis, has been Hegelian in that what has been considered "rational utility" and corresponding doctrine and planning has replaced moral, ethical and religious values. Nazi propaganda was highly effective in perverting public opinion and public conscience, in a remarkably short time. In the medical profession this expressed itself in a rapid decline in standards of professional ethics. Medical science in Nazi Germany collaborated with this...