For the first time in 13 days, a lull has descended upon the fierce fighting between armed tribesmen and forces loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The consistent shelling and gunfire in the capital city of Sana'a have been replaced by a tense quiet, with most residents still choosing to stay in their homes or flee to ancestral villages. After an attack on his presidential compound, Saleh, 69, is now lying in a Saudi hospital recovering from ...

When Lyndon Johnson launched his War On Poverty in 1964, he gave the Office of Economic Opportunity command of ten campaigns* to rescue the nation from want. Almost from the start, however, the antipoverty warriors have been fighting a losing battle on Capitol Hill. By now, a large segment of the Congress seems determined to divest the OEO of its generalship.Whatever praise OEO receives, its defeats—admittedly not infrequent—reap salvos of abuse. Stung by growing senatorial criticism, the agency last week issued an upbeat report claiming that nearly 3,000,000 ...

All sports are competitive, but they are competitive in very different ways. Team sports pitch two groups of players against each other in direct combat. Racket and fighting sports involve individuals going at it against each other. In racing—whether power-assisted or not—each individual competes against the field. But some sports—target sports such as archery and shooting, ice-skating, bowling, classic ski racing—are different. An individual competitor in these sports can't directly affect how a rival does; he ...

There's something especially loathsome about torturing helpless creatures for fun and profit. And evidence of torture is what investigators found on July 8, when federal and local authorities working in teams across eight states staged the largest raid in history against the underground dogfighting racket. Twenty-six people were arrested , and more than 500 dogs were rescued, most of them pit bull terriers. The cruelty visited on the canines is harrowing. Some had been pulled behind cars to ...

Sixteen-year-old Akbar Zaid dreams of becoming a teacher. But for now, his summer job involves holding an automatic rifle and hunting down Taliban fighters. "I'm doing it for peace," Zaid said, right before he fired several shots in the air with his rifle. Zaid is among hundreds of villagers in northwest Pakistan who've volunteered to join private militias, called lashkars. These groups have vowed to help Pakistan's military in fighting the Taliban. Pakistani military officials credit the lashkars with helping ...

A radical Muslim sheikh called Friday for the creation of an Islamic Emirate in Gaza, sparking clashes with Hamas forces that have left at least six people dead, Hamas sources told CNN. The clashes are the latest between Gaza's Hamas rulers, who have said they are moderate Muslims pledged to the Palestinian cause, and more radical Islamic groups. The gunfight erupted near the mosque in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the cleric delivered his sermon, the sources said. ...

On September 10, 2007, almost exactly six years after al Qaeda attacked the United States, Bryant Neal Vinas, a 24-year-old American citizen born in Queens, New York, boarded a flight from the city en route to Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, determined to fight jihad in neighboring Afghanistan. Brought up a Catholic by his Latin American immigrant parents, who divorced when he was young, Vinas tried to join the U.S. army in 2002 but dropped out after just a few weeks. ...

Gen. Nadeem Ahmad swirls the helicopter over Pakistan's ground zero. Below is the Swat Valley of North West Frontier Province. From the air, the valley in the foothills of the Hindu Kush looks undisturbed. Green fields amid clusters of drab houses. A closer look at Swat reveals how well the Pakistani Army fared in its military campaign to wipe out the militants. The cost of success: massive destruction that is sure to hamper the lives of already suffering residents just ...

Amid the worsening conflict in his country, Somalia's president made a plea for Somalis living in the United States to stop sending their young men to fight. "I call on the Somali-American community not to send their youth to Somalia to fight alongside al-Shabaab," President Sheik Sharif Ahmed said on Sunday. He was referring to the Islamist militant group that is waging a brutal war against his administration in Mogadishu. "I am saying to those young men from abroad: 'Your ...

Piled high with food, Minhaj Bahdar rides a rented motorbike back to his family's temporary sanctuary away from the fighting between Pakistan's army and the Taliban. The little motorbike struggles under the weight of food -- 80 kilograms of wheat, 4kg of sugar, 1 kg of salt and 300 grams of tea. It sounds like a lot -- but it has to last the Bahdar family one month. Twenty-three of them live in two tiny rooms provided by a local ...