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CAIRO, Egypt - An American thought to be an al-Qaida activist appeared in a videotape with the terror group's deputy leader Saturday and called on his countrymen to convert to Islam and for U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars. The 48-minute video, posted on an Islamic militant Web site, had footage of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, and of Adam Yehiye Gadahn, a 28-year-old American who the FBI believes attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan and served as an al-Qaida translator. It was the second time Gadahn appeared in the same video with al-Zawahri....

Page 5 Living Will Declaration made this _____ day of ________________, 2____, I, ____________________________, willfully and voluntarily make known my desire that my dying not be artificially prolonged under the circumstances set forth below, and I do hereby declare that, if at any time I am mentally or physically incapacitated and _____(initial) I have a terminal condition, or _____(initial) I have an end-stage condition, or _____(initial) I am in a persistent vegetative state, and if my attending or treating physician and another consulting physician have determined that there is no reasonable medical probability of my recovery from such condition,...

TV reporters 'helped protester burn himself to death' By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi (Filed: 18/08/2006) Indian police are investigating a group of television journalists for allegedly helping a man to burn himself to death and filming his agony for broadcast. Pictures of Manoj Mishra writhing in pain with his back on fire were shown in Bihar state on Tuesday. Mr Mishra later died in hospital from severe burns in the town of Gaya. "We have seized footage clearly showing a group of journalists handing over matches and some inflammable substance, which we later verified to be diesel, to the...

LOS ANGELES - Investigators said Tuesday they are trying to find at least 50 women they have linked to a photographer on death row for murdering two aspiring models in the early 1980s. Authorities are looking into whether the women were raped or killed between 1975 and 1984 by William Richard Bradford, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Web site. In the 1970s and '80s, Bradford posed as a freelance photographer in the West Los Angeles area, taking sexually explicit photos of women he met at bars and auto races, according to the site. The site showed women...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - The wife of a Pennsylvania doctor surrendered Monday to face charges in the shooting death of her millionaire husband last year along the Ohio Turnpike. Hours earlier, a man linked romantically to her pleaded guilty in the case. Donna Moonda, 47, was charged in federal court with interstate stalking that resulted in death and with using a firearm in a violent crime. Earlier in the day, Damian Bradford, 25, of Monaca, Pa., near Pittsburgh, admitted in an Akron court to his involvement in the shooting and agreed to cooperate with authorities. Prosecutors said Bradford was the triggerman....

SEYMOUR, Ind. - Sniper shootings of two vehicles along Interstate 65 in southern Indiana early Sunday left one person dead and another injured, state police said. ADVERTISEMENT A sniper shot at a southbound vehicle with three occupants about 12:20 a.m., killing one of them, police said. About the same time, occupants of a second southbound vehicle called police to report a person in that vehicle also had been shot.

The Nagpada Police yesterday arrested Mohammed Munna Khan (38) and his wife Shenaz (35) for brutally murdering their daughter Mehnaz (18). Gulnaz, the younger daughter, was also arrested for abetting the crime. The police had found Mehnaz’s dismembered body stuffed into a plastic sack on a road near the Byculla flyover on July 2. Love affair In their confession, the parents told the police that they murdered Menaz as she fell in love with a Hindu boy from the same locality. An official from Nagpada police station said, “Fearing social stigma over their daughter’s affair, the duo decided to kill...

Every few weeks in Batman and the surrounding area in southeast Anatolia, which is poor, rural and deeply influenced by conservative Islam, a young woman tries to take her life. Others have been stoned to death, strangled, shot or buried alive. Their offenses ranged from stealing a glance at a boy to wearing a short skirt, wanting to go to the movies, being raped by a stranger or relative or having consensual sex. Hoping to join the European Union, Turkey has tightened the punishment for attacks on women and girls who have had such experiences. But the violence has continued,...

2 hours ago GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli aircraft sent missiles tearing through the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday in an unmistakable message to his ruling Hamas group to free an Israeli soldier. Defense Minister Amir Peretz told a Cabinet meeting that Israel would go after "higher-caliber targets" in the future _ a reference to senior Hamas officials inside and outside the Palestinian territories, a high-ranking political official said. Israeli aircraft, tanks and naval gunboats have been pounding Gaza for the past week in an effort to win the freedom of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who...

HOUSTON - Andrea Yates believed that cartoon characters told her she was a bad mother who fed her children too much candy, a jail psychiatrist testified Thursday. Dr. Melissa R. Ferguson, who talked to Yates the day after her arrest in the bathtub drownings of her five children, said the defendant suffered from a major depressive disorder and was psychotic, picking at her lip until it bled. Ferguson was the first defense witness in the second murder trial for Yates, who has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. She is being retried because her 2002 conviction was overturned last year...

BALTIMORE - A long-standing feud over house rules at a seniors' high rise led one octogenarian resident to shoot and kill another, police said. The shooting on Monday apparently occurred after an 86-year-old desk clerk at the building refused to allow an 80-year-old resident's granddaughter to board an elevator without a visitor's pass, police said. Thomas Batty, 86, was shot once in the head as he sat behind the front desk, and Clyde Lewis, 80, was charged with murder. Both lived on the building's 12th floor. A bail hearing for Lewis was set for Tuesday afternoon. Police Officer Troy Harris...

LAHORE, Pakistan - A Pakistan man killed his three young daughters Tuesday before confessing to police, prompting one officer to shoot him dead, an investigator said. Mohammed Ashraf, 38, used a knife to cut the throats of his daughters aged 3, 5 and 9 before dawn in the eastern city of Lahore, said senior police investigator Amir Zulifquar. Ashraf then went to a police station to report his crime, and was charged with murdering his daughters and placed in a cell. "As I left the police station after questioning Mohammed Ashraf, one of my guards opened fire and killed him,"...

A receptionist at an upmarket hair salon deliberately infected her boyfriend with HIV in a revenge attack on black men who she blamed for giving her the disease. Sarah Jane Porter, 43, who works at the Knightsbridge branch of Vidal Sassoon, set out to infect a string of men after contracting the Aids virus from a black lover. Over a five-year period, she is thought to have had unprotected sex with with dozens of people who were unaware she was HIV positive. A nationwide appeal to trace Porter's former lovers was issued last night as she was jailed for 32...

CALUMET PARK, Ill. - A boy who won a $2 million settlement with the city of Chicago after being wrongly accused of murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1998 has been arrested in a double shooting in a south suburb, according to a news report. The boy, now 15, was caught committing the crime on video surveillance with his older brother, Calumet Park Cmdr. Mel Davis told the Chicago Sun-Times for its Saturday editions. "He turned around and looked at the camera with a gun in his hand," Davis said. "It doesn't get any clearer than that." One of the shooting...

WASHINGTON - Convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo told authorities that he and conspirator John Allen Muhammad were responsible for four shootings, two of them fatal, that had not been publicly linked to them, according to a published report. The Washington Post, citing a source familiar with the case, said in a story in Friday's editions the shootings occurred before the three-week spree in October 2002 in which 13 people were shot, 10 fatally, in the Washington area. The Post said a second source confirmed that investigators have received information implicating Malvo and Muhammad in the four other shootings. The sources...

MACON, Ga. - A 27-year-old woman was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for leaving her newborn daughter in a Wal-Mart restroom last year. Amy Shorter covered her face after the verdict was read Wednesday, and several relatives cried as they left the courtroom. They declined to comment. The jury found Shorter guilty of felony murder for causing the baby's death while committing first-degree cruelty to children. Defense attorney Elizabeth Lane had argued that Shorter did not intend to kill her child. Lane said Shorter didn't know she was pregnant and panicked after giving birth in the...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - One of two young boys allegedly abducted by their father was found dead in a lake Wednesday, and the other boy and their father were found nearby with knife wounds, authorities said. Katron Walker, 32, had cut his own throat and stabbed himself in the chest, Terre Haute Police Sgt. David Smith said. His 2-year-old son, Monte, was also hospitalized with injuries. Police were called to the lake early Wednesday after a resident recognized Walker's van from an Amber Alert and spotted him with the boys. "He was running from a trailer and had both boys...

ATLANTA - Lawyers for convicted killer Wayne Williams, blamed for the murders of two dozen boys and young men in the Atlanta area during the 1970s and '80s, are casting suspicion on a child molester they say lived or worked near where many of the bodies were found. In court papers made public Friday, the defense asked a federal judge for access to police files on the molester. The papers do not identify the man by name but say he is a multiple child molester serving time in a Georgia prison. They also allege that investigators knew the man was...

LEVITTOWN, Pennsylvania (June 6) - A deal is being negotiated that would allow a high school's class president to participate in Friday's graduation ceremony despite concern that he could be targeted by a gang. Tyrone Lewis, 18, had been scheduled to be one of the speakers at the Truman High School commencement ceremony, but police were worried that he could be targeted by a gang from Trenton, New Jersey, because his sister had testified in a murder trial. Lewis had been barred from the ceremony. Dave Truelove, the Bristol Township School District's solicitor, confirmed Tuesday that talks are in progress...

FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany - A woman was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for killing eight of her newborn babies in the 1990s and burying their bodies around her parents' home in a case that shocked Germany. Sabine Hilschenz, 40, was given the maximum sentence after the court found her guilty of eight counts of manslaughter. She also was suspected in the death of a ninth child in 1988, but the statute of limitations does not allow for that case to be tried. Hilschenz was arrested after the remains of the infants were...