A coroner's report says that a man arrested in the violent aftermath of Iran's presidential elections died from beatings, Iranian media reported Monday in what appeared to be the first official confirmation of a detainee's death from mistreatment. The death of Mohsen Rouhol-Amini was the result of "repeated blows and severe physical injuries" and other mistreatment at Tehran's Kahrizak prison, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported, citing an informed source. Officials initially had said Rouhol-Amini had died from illness. Kahrizak ...

When David Whitney traveled to Pakistan to shoot his film about a man forced to flee Afghanistan after falling foul of the Taliban he didn't expect fiction to turn into reality. But that's exactly what happened three weeks into shooting political thriller "Kandahar Break" in late 2008. Gunmen attacked the first-time director and his crew near the Afghan border. Four Pakistani crew members were shot and wounded in the incident and the entire crew was forced to flee the ...

The art of portraiture, once reserved for the rich, the royal and the holy, has found a new mass appeal online. Some avid social-network users are commissioning artists to create small digital images to represent themselves in the online world. Other Internet-savvy people use automated computer programs and Web sites to generate posterized likenesses of themselves. Matt Held, a 38-year-old painter in Brooklyn, New York, has gained Internet celebrity for painting peoples' Facebook photos and then giving them to his ...

It is midday and girls are flooding out of school, but Nujood Ali is not among them. We find her at the family's two-room house in an impoverished suburb of the city where Nujood is angry, combative and yelling. Tension surrounds the home like a noose. After much arguing with family members, Nujood finally grabs her veil and agrees to sit down with CNN. Her presence is grudging, although CNN had got permission in advance to see how the girl ...

Naked, bound and blindfolded, a crudely shot video shows a man being pushed to the ground by men wearing what appear to be military, camouflage fatigues. One of the men kicks the blindfolded man in the back. Another man raises a gun, points it at the back of the man's head and pulls the trigger. A loud crack is heard; the man slumps to the ground. Off-camera, someone can be heard saying in Sinhala, the majority language of ...

In one of the funniest scenes in the film "The Big Lebowski," the hot-headed Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman, explains to the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges, how much he hates nihilists because they don't believe in anything, they have no "ethos." PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- In one of the funniest scenes in the film "The Big Lebowski," the hot-headed Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman, explains to the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges, ...

There has been a big fuss this week because Michelle Obama wore shorts. She has worn shorts before — to walk the dog, do stuff around the White House. But the photos of her wearing them in that iconic descending-from-Air-Force-One-onto-the-tarmac setting proved too much for the media. Obamas? Check. Summer news doldrums? Check. Controversy? Close enough. It was a story. And people reacted. The Today Show's poll on whether she should have shone that much thigh got ...

It's rarely a shock when a star's personal demons rear up in the form of a police blotter. Robert Downey Jr.'s '90s jail stints, Christian Slater's 59-day stay behind bars on assault charges in 1998 and Lindsay Lohan's alleged coke-fueled car chase this summer all followed a pattern of prior troublesome behavior. Each performer was known to have spent time in treatment for addiction. For these celebrities, a mug shot somehow seems as appropriate a career visual as a red carpet wave. But the ...

Zieba Shorish-Shamley's Afghanistan doesn't exist anymore. The tea and fresh fruit her Muslim family shared over laughter with their Jewish friends at home. The female lawmakers who spoke out in Afghanistan's parliament. The tourists who were so enchanted by Kabul, the country's cosmopolitan capital, they called it the "Paris of Central Asia." When the Afghan native recently returned home, all of those childhood memories seemed like a mirage. What she saw instead was what many Americans now associate with Afghanistan: ...

Afghanistan's government on Wednesday called for a media blackout on reporting violence as fresh attacks threatened disruptions a day ahead of pivotal presidential elections. The media was asked to refrain from covering any attacks on election day in an effort to "ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people." This week, the Taliban said it plans to disrupt the elections with continued attacks and threatened to kill Afghans who vote. The government request came as police ...