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An accused jilted madman who flew into an ax-wielding rage at a Lower East Side McDonald’s was released without bail at his arraignment, authorities said Sunday. Michael Palacios, 31, who allegedly grabbed an ax and trashed the Delancey Street fast-food joint in a fit early Friday, was arraigned on fourth-degree criminal-mischief and possession-of-weapons charges hours later and freed, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said. Neither charge is eligible for bail under the state’s lenient criminal-justice reforms. According to a criminal complaint filed in the case, Palacios slammed two tables and a plate-glass partition during the early-morning rampage. Palacios also told...

Note: The following text is a quote: Dallas Resident Uriel Palacios Sentenced to 30 Years in Federal Prison for His Role in Cocaine Trafficking and Money Laundering Conspiracy Related to Mexico's Gulf Cartel DALLAS—Uriel Palacios, 23, of Dallas, was sentenced this morning by Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater to 360 months (30 years) in federal prison, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Palacios pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine and one count of conspiracy...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Supporters of offering illegal immigrants in-state tuition to North Carolina's public universities pledged Wednesday to keep fighting for the measure, offered by lawmakers in April with great expectations but defeated less than two months later without so much as a committee vote. "We're going to keep working until we get it done," said former Gov. Jim Hunt, the highest profile supporter of the bill. "They will not outlast us." Hunt and about 200 others gathered to review how the bill failed to move forward during this year's legislative session, with some meeting later to discuss their failed...

CARACAS - A Venezuelan judge Thursday ordered a trial for four leaders of Súmate, the volunteer group that helped organize a failed vote to recall President Hugo Chávez last year. The judge accused them of ''conspiracy to destroy the country's republican system'' because they received U.S. funds. The defendants include María Corina Machado, who in May was invited to the White House for talks with President Bush and in June met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during an Organization of American States General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale. The case against Machado, Alejandro Plaz, Ricardo Estévez and Luis Enrique...

[What] prompted Fidel Castro to order the Christmas decorations dismantled... was the light display forming the number 75. That's how many political dissidents Castro rounded up in March 2003 and threw into Cuban jails. At their trials, these librarians, journalists and peaceful political activists received sentences of up to 28 years. Now a loosely connected international movement of librarians is refusing to forget their Cuban colleagues. One inspiring example comes from the town of Vermillion, South Dakota, whose public library is sponsoring the independent -- that is, not government-run -- Dulce Maria Loynaz Library in Havana. The Loynaz Library was...