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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday. The rampage, dubbed ``Santarchy'' by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty.She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on buildings.One man climbed the mooring line of a...

A school safety agent at a Brooklyn middle school died last night, apparently from a heart attack, after a 12-year-old student struck her outside a holiday dance, officials said. The agent, Vivian A. Samuels, 56, of Brooklyn, a civilian employee of the New York Police Department working at Intermediate School 390, was escorting the student away from the dance around 5:50 p.m. The girl began flailing her arms and kicking, and struck Ms. Samuels at least once in the head, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said. Ms. Samuels began to feel shortness of breath and chest pains and was taken...

Williams Memorial Service Scheduled For Tuesday In Los Angeles POSTED: 4:02 pm PST December 14, 2005 UPDATED: 5:25 pm PST December 16, 2005 LOS ANGELES -- A memorial service for Stanley Tookie Williams, the convicted killer who was executed on Dec. 13 at San Quentin Prison, has been scheduled for Tuesday in Los Angeles. The noon service will be held at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and will include large TV screens outside. A statement by Williams' supporters says the guests invited to attend the public service include the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and rapper...

What Should Society Do With Its “Tookie Monsters” ? The “ Tookie Williams Saga “ has finally ended. After decades of appeals and delays , and more appeals and more delays; after vast agitation by a wide variety of people : ranging from sincere opponents of the death penalty, to shameless self-advocates looking for more media “face time”, Tookie Williams – the convicted murderer of four people finally got the justice a jury of his peers had decreed. There are many who say the death penalty is “barbaric” ; or that it serves no useful purpose. I tend to agree...

With jazz music, prayer and offerings to the gods, hundreds of Hurricane Katrina survivors on Saturday demanded the government move faster to rebuild the city and provide evacuees with more disaster assistance. Shouting "We're Back," protesters said they feared the city's poor would be shut out of reconstruction after being dispersed far across the United States since the storm. City officials estimate more than 300,000 New Orleans residents have yet to return since Katrina flooded the city, reducing entire neighborhoods to a rubble-strewn wasteland. In one of the largest rallies in New Orleans since the hurricane, survivors marched to City...

Guardsman: New Orleans duty worse than Iraq By MARY BROWNFIELD Published: December 9, 2005 'IT WAS a difficult deployment, because a lot of the guys had just come back from Iraq,” said John Hanson, a U.S. Army National Guardsman and building maintenance specialist for the City of Carmel. “And what we found in New Orleans made it worse.” It wasn’t the hurricane-destroyed homes or the emptiness of the city that made the mission a challenge, but the state of the high school he and his platoon were ordered to get ready to reopen. Hurricane Katrina left 119 schools closed, according...

A brawl that began in the Westbury High School cafeteria Wednesday and spilled outdoors capped weeks of growing tension between Houston students and Hurricane Katrina evacuees and resulted in the arrest of 27 students. The fight was one of about a dozen such on-campus clashes that have roiled Houston and surrounding areas since thousands of students from New Orleans began attending local schools in September. In response, Westbury students can expect more police at the school beginning today, a school district spokesman said. Houston Independent School District Board President Dianne Johnson said the efforts would not end there and sought...

HOUSTON (AP) -- More than two dozen students were arrested Wednesday after a series of fights at a high school between Hurricane Katrina evacuees and local students. One student suffered a cut under the eye. No other injuries were reported, said Houston Independent School District spokesman Terry Abbott. Abbott said 15 students involved in the fights - which started between girls in Westbury High's cafeteria and spread to other areas - were from New Orleans. The other 12 charged were from Houston. One student was charged with assaulting a police officer. The other 26 faced misdemeanor charges of engaging in...

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Two Lincoln teenagers have been ticketed for having sex in a high school hallway during the lunch hour while at least a dozen students watched, according to Lincoln police. School officials said the incident happened over the lunch hour Wednesday at Lincoln Southeast. A female 17-year-old and a male 19-year-old apparently snuck past a gate to get into a restricted hallway near the Prasch Activity Center. Lincoln police said at least a dozen students watched through the gate. A school administrator found the couple and called a school resource officer. "I don't want the message to families...

Los Angeles -- The district attorney's office announced Monday that no charges will be filed against the police officer involved in the February shooting death of a 13-year-old boy who rammed a stolen vehicle into a patrol car after a short chase. The early morning shooting of Devin Brown on Feb. 6 sparked protests in the South Los Angeles area where the shooting occurred. The Los Angeles Police Department sent its findings to the district attorney's office Aug. 5 for a decision on whether to prosecute Officer Steven Garcia, the officer who shot the black teen. District Attorney Steve Cooley,...

In large Red Cross shelters, where most volunteers were white, the mostly minority evacuees "felt like they were being herded like cattle," said Rev. Anthony Evans of the National Black Church Initiative. In the aftermath of the storms, minority evacuees said they encountered many problems in Red Cross shelters. Evacuees who spoke little or no English -- Hispanic and Asian immigrants along the Gulf Coast, as well as French-speaking members of the Houma United Nation tribe in Louisiana -- struggled to make themselves understood because there were so few translators. Some minority groups complained that shelters were set up in...

Jefferson Parish Councilman Byron Lee says that his constituents were speaking out of fear when they decried plans to build a temporary trailer park in Marrero to house hurricane victims. No doubt he's right, but the comments some West Bank residents made at a public forum also reflect another emotion: hatred. That's a shame because hatred is far more destructive. "If they want to take in Jefferson Parish residents only, that's one thing. But outsiders, no," one woman said. Another speaker was less subtle: "How do we know these people are not from the projects of Orleans?"

Mandisa likes Abercrombie & Fitch, not FUBU. She speaks proper English, not Ebonics. She takes honor classes and belongs to the Beta Club and National Arts Honors Society at Parkview High. She plays the violin and has danced and sung in area productions of “The Nutcracker” and “My Fair Lady.” Mandisa Surpris, a 15-year-old sophomore, is all this. And she’s black. Some of the other black students don’t know what to make of her. The way she dresses, the way she talks, the grades she earns. She’s an anomaly. To them, she’s more white than black. They’ve even told her...

Dec 3, 1:54 AM EST Philly Toddler Brings Crack to Daycare PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A 2-year-old boy was removed from his family and his mother could face charges after the child handed his daycare teacher two packets of crack cocaine, and a search of his jacket pocket turned up nine more, police said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency pulled all its workers out of New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward yesterday after threats of violence and planned to request additional police or National Guard support, a FEMA spokeswoman said. A spokeswoman for Mayor C. Ray Nagin said the police commander for the district knew of no incidents or threat complaints. ... One relief worker in the region said an angry resident berated a Corps of Engineers employee before delivering a threat to the effect of "I'm going to go get my gun, and I'm going to kill you." Federal agents have arrested six people...

Five boys arrested in connection with the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl at a downtown park have not been formally charged with a crime, according to Capt. Frank Fujii, Honolulu Police Department spokesman. The Star-Bulletin reported in both the morning and afternoon editions today as well as its online edition that police filed charges against the boys yesterday. That report was based on statements by police last night. The city prosecutor’s office is working with the Family Court on formal charges against the boys but none has been filed. Four of the boys — two 13-year-olds, a 14-year-old and...

CAPITOL HEIGHTS, Md. -- Another student was beaten on a school bus in Prince George's County, and her parents are pledging legal action. The seventh-grader said she was assaulted by a group of girls on her ride home Tuesday. This is the second alleged school bus assault of a Walker Mill Middle School student in less than a month, and some parents said they fear for their children every time they get on a bus. The parents of Karley Berry, 12, say their daughter is a model student in the talented and gifted (TAG) program at Walker Mill. She is...

Whenever there's a racial incident involving an African American in an overwhelmingly white suburb, it's another embarrassing reminder that the ugly history of separation between the races in America can erupt into the open at any time. It's a reminder to whites, that is. African Americans don't have to be reminded. They are aware of that possibility every day of their lives. No African American, no matter how high he or she may rise, is ever safe from being subjected to racial fears - or far worse - from whites for simply being "in the wrong place at the wrong...

AT LEAST 36 Scottish teachers were hospitalised by pupils last year, according to official figures which reveal the horrifying extent of classroom violence. Primary school children as well as secondary school pupils were involved in the attacks, in which teachers were punched, head-butted, hit by flying chairs or shoved so hard they hit desks or walls. The injuries ranged from cuts and bruises to lacerations needing stitches, broken arms and back injuries. Many victims had to take weeks off work. The revelation that an average of three Scots teachers a month need hospital treatment following classroom violence has enraged teaching...

Florida School Board Sued for Unequal Education Friday, November 18, 2005 PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — A first-of-its-kind class-action lawsuit in Pinellas County, Fla., could force the local school board to reveal how it teaches and disciplines its 20,000 black students, who struggle academically in disproportionate numbers to students of other races. "Public education, to me personally, is specifically set up to dumb us down," said William Crowley, who filed the lawsuit. Click in the video box to the right to watch a report by FOX News' Orlando Salinas. Crowley said the white-run school system allowed his son to fall behind....