Free Republic

THESE horrifying knives have been taken off the streets of Coventry in the last 10 days. They are examples of the kinds of blades police and the Evening Telegraph are trying to banish from the city during the One Knife One Life campaign. The campaign, which was launched in the city last week, aims to teach youngsters - and particularly teenage boys - the dangers of knives. Police say young people carry knives to make themselves feel more secure, or because they know other people do. They say they don't think about the potentially devastating consequences carrying a knife can...

A MEXICAN couple were recovering separately after a marital spat got out of control and saw them firing guns, throwing knives and hurling homemade bombs, Mexican daily Milenio said yesterday. In scenes taken straight out of hit romantic comedy Mr and Mrs. Smith starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Juan Espinosa and Irma Contreras fought until their house blew up in a homemade gasoline bomb explosion, the paper said. Police called to the home in the indigenous Mayan Indian town of Oxkutzcab in the southeastern state of Yucatan arrested Mr Espinosa. Ms Contreras was taken to hospital with third-degree burns....

They have the heft of an ax, a blade nearly as long as a sword, and the intimidation power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Cheap and easily bought, machetes in America have commonly been reserved for underbrush and sugar-cane cutting. But now, in a spreading trend that so far has drawn little national attention, criminals are using machetes as weapons, striking fear in cities and towns across the country. Witness these recent incidents: In the heartland Indiana city of Evansville in February, a robber pulled a machete on a convenience-store cashier, who put...

DETROIT -- A Detroit judge said Wayne State University police should not have arrested a student for carrying a knife. The knives are part of his Sikh religious beliefs. Sukhpreet Singh Garcha was arrested in August for carrying a 10-inch knife, known as a kirpan, on his hip. Police said the knife violated the city's weapons laws. Carrying a kirpan at all times is a basic tenet of Sikhism, an Indian-based faith with an estimated 25 million followers worldwide. The judge ruled last month that the knife ordinance is intended to apply to people carrying a weapon for some unlawful...

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Sikh students can carry ceremonial daggers to class and that doing so does not pose an undue danger to others in the schools. The top court overturned Thursday morning a Quebec Court of Appeals ruling that had barred the kirpan from schools in the province. The Quebec court had said a limit on religious freedom was reasonable, given the safety concerns from carrying the daggers to school. "Religious tolerance is a very important value of Canadian society," the top court judges wrote in their decision. "A total prohibition against wearing a kirpan...

Sikhs in B.C. are cheering the Supreme Court of Canada's decision that upholds the right of Sikh children to wear a ceremonial dagger to school. The case involved a Montreal student who wasn't allowed to wear his kirpan to school. Schools in B.C. have long permitted orthodox Sikh students to wear the ceremonial dagger. In its 8-0 judgment, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a total ban infringed on Gurbaj Singh's guarantees of religious freedom under the Charter of Rights.

Katie Grant: Let’s cut to the chase: blades must be banned As you walked down the street this morning to buy this paper, did you stop to wonder whether any of those you passed were carrying a knife? If you live in the west of Scotland, chances are that if you passed 20 young men aged between 15 and 25, almost all would have been carrying a “blade”, as the cool call them, for “protection”. Glasgow is more like The Sopranos than The Simpsons. Knowing this, Cathy Jamieson, the justice minister, has announced that there is to be a nationwide...

NATIONWIDE knife amnesty to end the carnage on our streets was launched yesterday. The five-week initiative, running throughout the UK, is aimed at repeating the success of Operation Blade, which took thousands of weapons off the streets of Strathclyde in 1993. Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson yesterday vowed it would be just one of many measures to battle knife crime in Scotland. Victims of the scourge have included policeman Lewis Fulton, knifed through the heart in Glasgow in 1994 as he tried to arrest a teenage schizophrenic. Knives are becoming an increasing menace in the hands of young girls, too. Kirsty...

Fritz Wenzel's The Daily Notebook (updated daily; sometimes more often) Tuesday, May 3 CINCINNATI - With the swift confirmation last week of Congressman Rob Portman as President Bush's new U.S. Trade Representative, the race is officially on to grab hold of his seat in the U.S. House. And it has attracted quite a cast of characters. Perhaps the best known is Pat DeWine, the son of the U.S. Senator. He's widely disliked, for a number of different reasons, among them the fact that he just won a seat as a Hamilton County commissioner in November, and is now wanting to...

Gifts from a journey in a Vietnam-era Huey Austin's Cheryl and Pat Fries gambled everything on a dream film project and came away with the kind of fulfillment that is greater than money or fame. Sarah Beal (enlarge photo) Pat and Cheryl Fries finished editing 'In the Shadow of the Blade' in the summer and the movie will have its television premiere Thursday on the Military Channel. By Brad BuchholzAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, February 08, 2005 For the past five years, Pat and Cheryl Fries of Austin have gambled everything on a movie their own movie. It's the project of their...

London police say the easily accessible weapons are coming out of pockets in the heat of the moment. The easy accessibility of knives on the street makes them deadly when emotions run high, London police said following a rash of weekend knifings. "Walking downtown with a pocket knife or some other type of knife . . . is not necessarily a criminal offence," London police Chief Murray Faulkner said yesterday. "But when emotions erupt, people know they have this weapon in their pocket and they're quick to use it." Latest police statistics show weapons offences, which aren't broken down by...

"This is evidence of why we recommend passengers to remove their shoes, because we need to X-ray (them)." Sidney Hayakawa Honolulu federal security director of the Transportation Security Administration Man with blade held He allegedly tried to board a flight with a box-cutter blade in his shoe sole By Rosemarie Bernardo rbernardo@starbulletin.com The Stafford-brand, size 10 1/2, black dress shoes looked common enough. But it was the box-cutter blade glued inside one of the shoes that caught the attention of security personnel at Honolulu Airport's Interisland Terminal yesterday. The 33-year-old man who put his shoes through the screening process now...

Pencil sharpeners banned after attack WEAPON: A pencil sharpener blade PENCIL sharpeners have been banned from a primary school after a pupil dismantled one and used the blade to slash another child's neck. The victim was attacked in the playground at Waterloo Primary School in Ashton under Lyne. He was taken to Tameside Hospital where he had butterfly stitches placed on the wound. The attacker was suspended for two days and is now back in school. Police, who were notified two days later, have spoken to the young attacker and his parents. Headteacher David Willis has now banned all pencil...