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MIAMI — Military attorneys for confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators called Friday for the dismissal of the charges against the men, saying an Air Force general advising the tribunals applied "unlawful influence" to bring them to trial. The defense motion followed Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred's ruling last week that disqualified Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann from the case against Salid Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver. Allred ruled that Hartmann had "failed to retain the required independence from the prosecution function to provide fair and objective legal advice to the convening authority."...

Crown Heights erupted in anger today as hundreds marched in protest after a 16-year-old Jewish teen was beaten and robbed in the early morning hours. Police have made no arrests and have named no suspects, but the incident raised tensions that have simmered since the racial uproar of the early 1990s. "Jewish blood is not cheap and we are making that statement," said Getzy Markowitz, 23, one of up to 300 people who marched in protest yesterday afternoon. "We are standing up for life an standing up for justice." Cops said that Alon Sherman was riding his bicycle north on...

The Feral Sex: The terrifying rise of violent girl gangsBy PAUL BRACCHI - More by this author » Last updated at 23:48pm on 16th May 2008  The girl emerged from her house with a mobile phone glued to her ear and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.  Her friends take the mickey out of her, we learn from her sister's MySpace internet page, because she is never out of "a chav T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms" - and she didn't disappoint yesterday. Even so, it doesn't pay to get on the wrong side of this 14-year-old, who plays for...

A Plano megachurch minister was taken into custody Thursday after authorities say he drove to Bryan, Texas, to have sex with a person he thought to be a 13-year-old. Joe Barron, a minister at Prestonwood Baptist Church, is accused of online solicitation of a minor.

Robert Harry to AZRKBA show details 9:33 AM (9 hours ago) Reply I spent the last three weeks on a Central American cruise and fell in with a group of Canadians in the smoking lounge. They have an interesting debate about guns up there. The man who seemed most interesting was an Inspector with Violent Crimes RCMP. Not all we are told about violent crime in Canada is true. The Inspector told me that while Canada as a whole has less guns deaths than the United States and less violent deaths than us the official numbers are less than honest....

A gang suspect already facing a murder charge soon may face another after San Pablo police identified him as the triggerman in a fatal February shooting. Contra Costa County prosecutors filed homicide and conspiracy charges Friday against three men arrested this week by detectives, and they contemplate similar charges for three others, including 20-year-old Jorge Camacho. Camacho, who awaits trial in connection with the Feb. 27 shooting death of a homeless woman who was struck by a stray bullet, also fired the shots that killed Luis Perez on Feb. 16, San Pablo police Detective Mike Gancasz said. Police say Camacho...

Since Arizona’s local law enforcement began enforcing illegal immigration laws and an employer sanctions law went into effect, illegal immigrants have been fleeing the state in large numbers. The effects have been far-ranging. Commuters are reporting fewer vehicles on the freeways, shortening their rush-hour commutes. What had become a serious transportation problem in Arizona is losing its urgency. English Learner Language (ELL) students started dropping out of school. This helped end a confrontation between the state legislature and a liberal federal judge who had ordered the state to spend more money on ELL classes. Fewer illegal immigrants are using hospital...

Saturday, May 3: A Philadelphia police officer, Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, is shot and killed with a semiautomatic weapon while responding to reports of a bank robbery in the city’s Port Richmond section. Liczbinski is the second officer shot in the city this year, and the third in the last two years. Monday, May 5: About a dozen Philadelphia police officers, less than 24 hours into the manhunt for the third and final suspect in the Liczbinski shooting, beat three suspects who had been fleeing the scene of an unrelated murder. The entire incident happens to be caught on tape by...

TAMPA - Deputies have arrested 35-year-old Edward Allen Covington in connection with a gruesome triple murder in Lutz. He is charged with three counts of first degree murder, three counts of abuse of dead human bodies, one count of cruelty to animals, and one count of violating probation. He is charged in connection with the murders of Lisa Freiberg and her two children, 7-year-old Zachary and 2-year-old Heather Savannah. Their bodies were discovered inside their mobile home on Mobile Villa Drive in Lutz on Monday.  Hillsborough Chief Deputy Jose Docobo said there was a substantial amount of physical evidence linking...

"Doesn't Belgrade help you?" we asked. "It's hard to call it 'help,'" Popovich said. "Their policy is to move all the educated people to Serbia and help them find work. Belgrade helped all qualified workers leave. Only we farmers and workers remain. But that's okay. We'll win Kosovo back the same way we lost it. And our friends will be stronger by then. I don't think we should drag Russia into a war right now. In the meanwhile our kids are growing up." "Do Serbs really have children in the enclaves?" we asked. "People just understood what they need to...

Posted at 6PM on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 OWASSO, OK Police are seeking the help of residents to identify a woman. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19686350&BRD=2754&PAG=461&dept_id=597380&rfi=6 "The Owasso Police Department is seeking the public's assistance in identifying the person shown in this photograph. This person is not a suspect in a crime, but needs to be identified as soon as possible so her well being can be established," said Owasso Police Chief Dan Yancey. Anyone with information about the identity of the woman should contact Detective Jason Woodruff at 272-COPS (272-2677). ©Neighbor Newspapers 2008

WASHINGTON - Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press. In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. "They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases," Ahern told AP. Ahern said the Mexican officials — whom he didn't name — are being interviewed and their cases...

The City Council put aside more than three months of internal bickering and hand-wringing, narrowly approving efforts that take the first step toward removing popular Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who faces perjury and other charges related to explicit text messages sent to a former aide.

Two men raped a mentally retarded teenager in the bathroom at the Brooklyn Public Library's Central branch on Grand Army Plaza on April 14, cops said. According to police, the victim, who suffers from Down Syndrome and cannot communicate verbally, did not indicate to her family that something had happened to her, but her relatives figured out that she was in pain and took her to the hospital. Once there, doctors discovered trauma and other evidence that she had been sexually assaulted, cops said. A spokeswoman for the library said it was unaware of the incident. She said the library...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) ― In a flash, a police officer draws a handgun from its holster. Less than two seconds later, a red laser and bright light shine at whatever is in the gun barrel's path while a mini-camera records it all. That's how mini-cams on police handguns would work under a proposal gaining support in New York, which would be the first state in the nation to require the technology. State police were briefed on the technology and are reviewing it for a possible pilot program, said Michael Balboni, the state's deputy secretary for public safety. The device could...

Thadd McNamara was at the helm of his motor home on a cross-country trip in 2005 when his cellphone rang and a neighbor gave him the news: His grown son, Sean, was in trouble with law -- again. ... It turned out Sean McNamara was accused of burglarizing his father's home and attempting to make off with a baseball cap bearing the logo "Snap-On Tools." It was classic Sean, his father would later say. Nothing serious. Just another knuckle-head move from an overgrown kid who drank too much beer, didn't pay his bills and, essentially, refused to grow up. Thadd...

Saul Bellow’s prophetic 1970 novel captured New York’s unraveling and remains a cautionary tale. Fear was a New Yorker’s constant companion in the 1970s and ’80s. We lived behind doors with triple locks, some like engines of medieval ironmongery. We barred our ground-floor and fire-escape windows with steel grates that made us feel imprisoned. I was thankful for mine, though, when a hatchet turned up on my fire escape, origin unknown. Nearing our building entrances, we held our keys at the ready and looked over our shoulders, as police and street-smart lore advised; our hearts pounded as we tried to...

Notorious D.C. Madam Debra Palfrey, whose long list of powerful prostitution clients kept the nation's lawmakers quaking, was murdered! That's the buzz rocking the Internet and filtering through political circles after she was found hanging by a nylon rope in a shed next to her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, Fla., earlier this month. Just weeks before her death, Palfrey, 52, had been found guilty of running a call-girl service that catered to Washington's power brokers. She faced four to six years in prison and was stated to be sentenced on July 24 but was appealing the vereict. So far,...

Suspected Pedophile Nabbed Police arrested a suspected pedophile in New Jersey after launching a public appeal in the wake of a two-year international manhunt. Chip Reid reportshttp://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4081758n (AP) A rare international alert seeking a man shown in dozens of raw child porn images quickly led to the arrest of a small-time actor, who painted faces at children's parties and performed as "the best Santa Claus anyone has ever seen." Wayne Nelson Corliss told authorities he had sex with three boys in Thailand six years ago, an experience he described as "euphoria," a prosecutor said Thursday at Corliss' first court...

Wayne Bent, who has been charged with criminal sexual contact of a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, was released from jail on a $55,000 bond. (AP Photo )SANTA FE, N.M., May 9, 2008 AP) The leader of an apocalyptic sect accused of sex crimes against underage female followers was released from jail Friday after bond was posted, authorities said. Wayne Bent left the city-county lockup in the small northeastern New Mexico town of Clayton about 3 p.m., Police Chief Scott Julian said. "He is no longer in our custody," Julian said. Bent was released after...

A scandal has been emerging in the trial lawyer industry. It points to a potentially cancerous growth in our economy that is killing jobs and hampering prosperity at a time when families are being pummeled by the rising cost of living. What are Democrats in Congress planning to do about it? So far, the answer has been: nothing.

TYLER, Texas — A jury again needed just four minutes Thursday to convict an organizer of an East Texas swinger's club where prosecutors say young children were forced to perform sexual acts for an audience. Shauntel Mayo, 29, faces life in prison after being found guilty on charges that she forced three siblings, ages 7 through 10, to have sex with each other or perform sexual acts for club members who paid to watch.

Two men and a juvenile are accused of digging up a corpse, decapitating the body and using the head to smoke marijuana, according to court documents. Matthew Gonzalez and Kevin Jones have been charged with the misdemeanor offense of abuse of a corpse, said Scott Durfee, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorneys Office. According to documents filed in the case, Gonzalez, Jones and an unnamed juvenile on March 15 went to an Humble cemetery, dug up a man's grave, left with the head and turned it into a "bong." Gonzalez told authorities about the incident Wednesday, and showed...

They turned up the heat on the politics of crime Wednesday over an initiative likely to appear on the November ballot aimed at gangs and guns. Opponents said the "Safe Neighborhoods" act targets African American and Latino youth and that its backers are trying to fire up "ultraconservatives" to turn out for the presidential election. Proponents denied a political motivation. They said their initiative is just as much about prevention and programs as it is about putting people in prison. Last week, supporters of the measure sponsored by state Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, submitted signatures to the California secretary of...

A burglar, looking for loot inside a home near 8th and Northern avenues in Phoenix, instead found himself in the back of a police car, headed to jail. Neighbors who live in the area claim they have an undercover block watch system that helps keep criminals out of their community. "We know exactly who to call," one neighbor told ABC15. Police accuse Jesse Parra of breaking into Bill Marshall's home near 8th Avenue and Royal Palm Road. Marshall said the bad guy used a porch ornament to shatter his front window and break into his home. Though Marshall was not...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Bailiffs shot and killed a man who opened fire in the lobby of a downtown courthouse Wednesday afternoon, sheriff's officials said. One of the two bailiffs who fired at the unidentified man suffered a non-life-threatening shoulder wound, Pinellas County Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Bordner said. At least four other people were in the lobby at the time but no one else was hurt, Bordner said. The gunman entered the courthouse shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday and approached a security checkpoint wearing a backpack. A deputy ordered him to remove the backpack and place it on a...

Foreign criminals work at airports unchecked By Christopher Hope and David Millward Last Updated: 2:55AM BST 08/05/2008 |   Thousands of foreigners are being allowed to work in high security parts of Britain's airports without passing proper criminal record checks, it was disclosed last night. PA Despite warnings that terrorists would try to recruit people working "airside" in terminals – with direct access to aircraft and baggage – no attempt has been made to check whether foreign workers have committed any offences abroad. The vetting process checks only for crimes committed in Britain. Foreign workers – arriving from inside or...

A Knoxville man shot and killed a Pittsburgh police dog Tuesday before the canine's handler returned fire, killing the man in what city police Chief Nate Harper called "an unfortunate" but justifiable action. The shooting outraged and angered the family of the 19-year-old man, Justin Jackson. He was pronounced dead by a passing paramedic almost immediately after the shooting that occurred at 6:53 p.m. in front of the UPMC facility on Arlington Avenue on the border of Knoxville and Mt. Oliver. Harper said the dog's handler ordered the canine -- a 6-year-old German shepherd named Aulf -- to attack after...

Drivers along Interstate 85 on Monday saw an unusual site along the side of the road. Numerous people were lying face down along I- 85 just after the Highway 9 exit. A News Channel 7 photographer was on the scene as 16 people were taken into custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington D.C. tells News Channel 7 that a Spartanburg County Deputy stopped a van on I-85 and called the ICE team to investigate. 14 men and two women were taken into custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says all are from Mexico and Quatemala and appear to be in...

Police ordered to stop treating criminal damage as a crime to improve performance figuresBy ANDREW LEVY - More by this author » Last updated at 18:01pm on 5th May 2008 Figure tweaking: a leaked memo reveals a Norfolk police force is pressuring officers not to classify incidents of smashed car windows as criminal damage if nothing is stolen Police officers are being told not to record criminal damage as crime.  Rank-and-file bobbies have been told that incidents such as car vandalism should not be classed as an offence when there is 'no idea how it happened'. The revelation has left...

SCHENECTADY — Police raced to St. Mary’s Convent early this year, believing that a man was locked inside, hiding from a thief. They had gotten a call from a whispering man who said robbers had broken into the building. He begged for help. But when police got there on the night of Jan. 27 and broke down the glass door, they found only a group of startled nuns. The call was a prank. The Schenectady City Council agreed Monday to pay $1,250 for the broken door at 828 Eastern Ave. and the Police Department is now tightening its procedures to...

Around 5 p.m. Thursday, Brandon Robertson, of Tyler, was found hiding out in a heavily wooded area of Cass County and once surrounded, turned a gun on himself. He was wanted for allegedly killing Trooper Scott Burns Tuesday at Lake Of The Pines. Now, in a twist to this story, Robertson's girlfriend, 36 year old Jennifer Petrick, was arrested at the same place Robertson was found. KLTV 7's Courtney Lane just returned from the scene and brings us the latest, as details continue to unfold.

Federal grand jury indicts polygamous sect leader for allegedly fleeing prosecution SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal grand jury indicted the leader of a polygamous sect Wednesday, accusing him of fleeing to avoid prosecution on Utah sex charges. The one-count indictment covers a five-month period in 2006, although Warren Jeffs was believed to be on the run for a longer stretch before his arrest in August during a traffic stop near Las Vegas. Jeffs also faces trial in southern Utah in April on charges of rape as an accomplice for his alleged role in the ceremonial marriage of a...

The South Carolina Senate is discussing a compromise on illegal immigration. The Senate is now talking about attaching the compromise to a second House bill. That would bypass procedural hurdles and could put the measure before the House for a simple majority vote later this week. Seven illegal immigrants were busted in July of 2007 at the BMW plant in Greer. Immigration investigators raided the plant, and says the illegals used stolen identities to get their jobs. One was even using the identity of a nine-year-old boy. They were not BMW employees, they worked for a contractor for BMW....

The man who is the subject of a regionwide manhunt after allegedly killing a Texas state trooper was once a peace officer himself. Records with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education show the man wanted for the shooting death of trooper James Scott Burns, 39, of Linden during a high speed chase Tuesday night is a former lawman in Rusk County.

French Prisons: Up to 70% of Inmates Are Muslims April 29, 2008 Muslims make up only about 12 percent of France’s population — but account for from 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country’s prisons. French prison officials blame that remarkable statistic on the poverty of people who have moved to France from North Africa and other Muslim nations in recent decades. French Muslim leaders further hold racism and discrimination as the root cause of unemployment and crime rates among the Muslim minority, according to the Islam Online Web site. In Britain, Muslims reportedly make up 3...

The evil father who locked up his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered her seven children was pictured on a 'boys holiday' to Thailand in the 1990s, it has been revealed. Josep Friztl is believed to have stockpiled food in the dungeon where Elisabeth and her three children were being held. The four were expected to survive alone for up to two weeks until Fritzl returned. Snaps of the electrical engineer enjoying himself were made public for the first time today. They come as it was revealed that Fritzl has told police he acted alone. He has...

Father confronted by axe-wielding burglars - but police are too busy to turn up for THREE hoursBy DAVID WILKES - More by this author » Last updated at 00:49am on 29th April 2008  Cowering upstairs with his partner and their two children as a gang of burglars wielding an axe emptied his living room, Mathew Sims wasted no time in calling 999.  But instead of the immediate response he expected, the police told him: "We're too busy to help." Within minutes, the burglars drove off with a haul of stolen property. Scroll down for more... Terrified: Matthew Sims, Sarah Barham...

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) -- Federal researchers say they've developed a human identification test that's faster and possibly cheaper than DNA testing. It would be a handy new weapon in the arsenal for detectives, forensic experts and the military, though no one expects it to replace DNA analysis - and its promoters say it is not intended to. The new method analyzes antibodies. Each person has a unique antibody bar code that can be gleaned from blood, saliva or other bodily fluids. Antibodies are proteins used by the body to fend off viruses or perform routine physiological housekeeping. "DNA is...

INDIANAPOLIS - A legally blind man beat up an intruder and held him at knifepoint until police arrived at the man's eastside home, authorities said. Allan Kieta, 49, told police he was at home Monday morning when his small dog began barking and he encountered the man. "I opened the door and just ran into him. I had him pinned in the laundry room and just kept pummeling," said Kieta, a former wrestler in high school. He said he grabbed the intruder by the belt and dragged him into the kitchen, where he put a knife at the man's throat...

TIJUANA, Mexico - Massive gunbattles broke out between suspected drug traffickers who fired at each other while speeding down heavily populated streets of this violent border city early Saturday, killing 13 people and wounding nine. All of the dead were believed to be drug traffickers, possibly rival members of the same cartel who were trying to settle scores, said Rommel Moreno, the attorney general of Baja California state, where Tijuana is located. "Evidently this is a confrontation between gangs," Moreno told reporters. Eight suspects and one federal police officer were injured in the pre-dawn shootings, none gravely, said Agustin Perez...

Men dressed in black with covered faces are hunting and then slashing random strangers with razor blades as part of a gang initiation, police warned residents. Investigators said a gang in Flagler County is sending its future members to Daytona Beach to seek out victims to cut. Once a gang recruit slashes a stranger, he gains the respect of his peers and is inducted into their underground society, police told Local 6's Tarik Minor. The latest victims have prompted a warning to the community from police. "It could be anybody they see," Daytona Beach police Sgt. Bill Walden said. "In...

The Death of Certainty -- Crime & Action in the Early American Republic A pattern is emerging in my reading of "then-versus-now." When a series of 1770 colonial newspaper thefts are discovered, the publisher of the paper, (not the 18th century equivalent of an anonymous email poster) calls the perpetrators "mean, low-lived fellows," whose "souls" were not "large enough to be at the trifling expense of a News Paper."When the British parliament lays an illegal tax on British North America, the little town of Exeter New Hampshire, in the officially stated will of the town, doesn't pull any punches in...

Divorce and unwed childbearing cost taxpayers at least $112 billion each year or more than $1 trillion over the last decade. This estimate from the Institute for American Values is, as the authors suggest, likely to be an underestimate. This staggering but plausible tally of the economic costs of family dissolution follows what we have long known about the social costs. All our major social ills -- poverty, violent crime, substance abuse, truancy and more -- are more closely linked to family breakdown and single-parent homes than to any other factor. A poor black child from an intact home is...

They were passing out cash like it was candy — a few grand in Franklins for all their friends. When police and staff noticed this middle-school generosity at C.E. Williams Middle School, they quickly rounded up nearly $3,000 in $100 bills, and a new $500 iPod. This, they realized, wasn't any milk money. Two 13-year-old Charleston boys are charged with second-degree burglary and grand larceny, accused of stealing money and jewelry from a West Ashley home. They were suspended from school but are back now studying for PACT tests and facing an uncertain future. "They were kind of bragging at...

Justin Webb, BBC's North America editor, reports to UK listeners and readers on the "paradox" that America is less violent (and feels much safer) than Britain, where private hand gun ownership is banned.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Tucson police say they've arrested a 10-year-old boy who put pills in a carton of juice and tried to get two classmates to drink it...

Armed only with a screwdriver, a 95-year-old woman in a wheel chair kept a burglar from breaking into her home by repeatedly stabbing his hand. It was 3 a.m. when a 95-year-old Bartlesville woman heard somebody break the glass on her front door and push the door open. When a hand came inside and tried to unlock the door, she stabbed it. Again and again. She stabbed that hand many times over the next hour, say Bartlesville Police. The woman would not leave the door for fear the man would break in while she was calling for help. Eventually, the...

Prison life is so comfortable and the drugs are so cheap that prisoners don't want to escape, says prison officers chiefLast updated at 17:59pm on 24th April 2008  Prisoners are ignoring chances to escape because they would rather stay in their cushy jails where drugs are cheaper than on the outside, a prison chief officers has said.  Lags at Britain's 'toughest' prisons are treated to breakfast in bed, have Sky TV in every cell and are given cash bonuses for good behaviour. At one prison in Yorkshire, drug dealers and hookers regularly break IN to ply their trade by...

Anthony Cataldo of Oakland first raised concerns about aggressive bullying at his son's elementary school last year after Zachary lost four teeth on the playground - but he said he received only a verbal assurance that things would change. Cataldo said he complained again when some boys at school kicked 7-year-old Zachary in the stomach three months ago but got no response. Now - two days after an older student slammed Zachary against a tree, fracturing his skull and sending the first-grader to intensive care - Cataldo is hiring a lawyer, and school officials are paying attention.