It was past midnight when the insurgents crossed into Afghanistan's Dur Baba district on the border with Pakistan and began their descent. In the valley below, relatives of the district governor, Hamisha Gul, a tall, handsome man in his late 40s, had gathered at his compound to celebrate the impending marriage of his cousin Nawshir. The wedding would take place the next day and the plans were festive. Men would dance the traditional Pashtun attan to the ...

The world may soon know for sure where Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca rests after fascists executed him in 1936 during Spain's Civil War. Officials in southern Spain Friday cleared the last legal hurdle to permit exhuming a mass grave site in a village near Granada where Lorca and some other Civil War victims are thought to be buried, CNN partner station CNN+ reported. The area has been fenced off for weeks as scientists conducted preparatory ...

Four people face felony charges after authorities discovered that hundreds of graves were dug up and allegedly resold at a historic African-American cemetery near Chicago, Illinois, authorities said Thursday. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said the four would resell the plots in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, excavate the graves, dump the remains and pocket the cash. "This was not done in a very, very delicate way, folks," he told reporters at a news conference Thursday. "They would excavate a ...

Elvis Presley. Marilyn Monroe. Jim Morrison. Their graves are public shrines for fans and followers. Countless people from all over the world make pilgrimages to their burial sites, hoping to draw close to those they adored from afar. Now Michael Jackson's gravesite will become the next holy grail. A private gathering for the pop icon was held Tuesday at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California. Afterward, his casket was taken to the public memorial ...

It was a journey that took more than a hundred years. Missing for decades, the remains of Cpl. Isaiah Mays, a Buffalo Soldier and Medal of Honor recipient, were laid to rest Friday at Arlington National Cemetery. Paying respects were African-American veterans, U.S. Army soldiers and those who rode for days as part of a motorcycle escort -- members of the Missing in America Project, who traveled from as far away as California and Arizona at their own expense to ...

Smoking in youth-rated movies has not declined despite a pledge two years ago by Hollywood studios to encourage producers to show less "gratuitous smoking," according to an anti-smoking group. The American Medical Association Alliance, pointing to research that big-screen smoking leads teens to pick up the tobacco habit, called for an R rating for any movie with smoking scenes. The head of the group that gives U.S. movies their ratings, however, said the smoke has been clearing from youth-rated movies, ...

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, and it may conjure images of picnics, barbecues or just a lazy day off. But originally the holiday was charged with deeper meaning—and with controversy. The exact origins of Memorial Day are disputed, with at least five towns claiming to have given birth to the holiday some time near the end of the Civil War. Yale University historian David Blight places the first Memorial Day in April 1865, when ...

Flowers arrived at Capt. Marissa Alexander's office at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on June 3, 2005. Her husband, Staff Sgt. Leroy Alexander, was half a world away fighting with the Special Forces in Afghanistan, but he had found a way to send a floral arrangement to his wife, who was five months pregnant with twins. "He called me and asked me what building I worked in. He said he had to update some records," Alexander said. The flowers lifted her ...