Free Republic

WAYLAND, Mass. (AP) -- A small but growing South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants and sparking new bands across America. Bands like The Kominas (kuh-MEE'-nahs), based in Wayland, Mass., are trying to use their music to explore their identities as Americans and fight stereotypes about South Asian immigrants.

Dunkin' Donuts pulled a television spot featuring talk show host and Food Network personality Rachael Ray this weekend after a Fox news commentator associated it with terrorists. In the ad, Ray is wearing a scarf that Michelle Malkin said in her nationally syndicated column resembled a kiffiyeh, Middle Eastern garb that is "popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos."

GARY, Ind. -- A teenager shot to death by an officer as he fled a burglary scene may have tried to pull up his sagging pants, causing the officer to mistake the movement for a reach for a weapon, according to newly filed court documents. In a motion to dismiss a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Vincent Smith Jr.'s father, the city of Gary suggests the 16-year-old was shot as he was reaching down to hoist up his drooping pants and sprint away from Officer Levi Randolph. "Police officers have to make a lot of split-second decisions," said city...

Western clothes are death sentenceNOOR and her boyfriend used to go out a lot and listen to dance in their favourite restaurant in Baghdad. The 26-year-old university lecturer also used to enjoy going window shopping at night in the city’s once-glitzy Mansour district, dressed in the latest fashions. That was before the “men in black”, the Taliban-style militias waging terror against the urban middle class, arrived in Noor’s neighbourhood, threatening to shoot, kidnap and shave the heads of anyone who challenged their draconian strictures. The militias are part of a hardline religious crackdown organised by Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the...