Arizona girl’s attack sheds light on rape in Liberia

The allegation is shocking: an 8-year-old girl lured to a storage shed with the promise of chewing gum, pinned down and sexually assaulted by four boys, none of them older than 14. The response from the girl’s family sent a second and equally stunning shockwave through their Phoenix, Arizona, community: “The parents felt that they had been shamed or embarrassed by their child,” reported Phoenix police Sgt. Andy Hill.

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Viewpoint: The Stupidity of the Gates Arrest

Here is what the absurdist, typically stilted police language of Sergeant James Crowley’s official report on his arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates really means: Gates: You’re not the boss of me! Crowley: I am the boss of you. Gates: You are not the boss of me! Crowley: I’ll show you. You’re under arrest

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‘Shame’ felt by young assault victim’s family decried

The president of Liberia spoke Friday on the sexual assault of an 8-year-old Liberian refugee in Phoenix, Arizona, decrying reports that the parents believe their family has been shamed by the girl. “This is not a question of shame on the family. It is the question of an assault on a young child.

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Evangelist guilty of taking minors across state lines for sex

A jury in Arkansas convicted evangelist Tony Alamo on Friday of 10 federal counts of taking minors across state lines for sex, according to the court in the Western District in Arkansas. Authorities in September charged Alamo, the 74-year-old founder and leader of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, and raided his 15-acre compound near Texarkana, Arkansas. Jurors reached the verdict after more than eight hours of deliberations.

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Prosecutor: Juvenile sexual assault is ‘heartrending’

With four Phoenix, Arizona, boys ages 9 to 14 charged with sexual assault on an 8-year-old girl, a prosecutor vowed Thursday his office will "seek justice for the young victim in this heartrending situation." “This is a deeply disturbing case that has gripped our community,” said Maricopa County attorney Andrew Thomas. According to Phoenix police, the girl was lured to a storage shed at an apartment complex on July 16.

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Federal agents apprehend fugitive after 15 years

Federal agents have apprehended accused child molester Edward Eugene Harper, who was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list, an FBI official said Thursday. Harper, 63, is accused of molesting two girls, ages 3 and 8, in his neighborhood in Hernando, Mississippi, more than a decade ago, the FBI said. The FBI said it received a telephone tip in June at the Denver office regarding Harper, and brought a SWAT team and a hostage negotiation team to apprehend him in rural Wyoming on Thursday

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Mob Allegations Turn Rome’s ‘Sweet Life’ Sour

“In all Europe there is no street quite so lively, quite so cosmopolitan or quite so zany as Rome’s Via Venetos” So began a 1959 TIME story trumpeting Café de Paris as the new must-see-and-be-seen spot on the then already famous leafy boulevard. Fifty years later, the sidewalk locale is as luxurious as ever , attracting both well-heeled Italians and tourists looking for a hint of the breezy, post-War sweet life celebrated in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, in which the café was a key location. On Wednesday, Café de Paris was back in the spotlight for different reasons: Even as sharply dressed customers and summer travelers in shorts sipped cappuccino, police seized the premises on suspicion that it had fallen into the hands of the increasingly powerful Calabrian mob

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Harvard professor Gates arrested

African-American scholar and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested last week on a charge of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home, according to a Cambridge, Massachusetts, police report. According to the report, officers responded to a call Thursday from a woman who said she saw “a man wedging his shoulder into the front door” at Gates’ house near the university

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Serb cousins guilty of burning Muslims alive

A U.N. tribunal convicted two Serb cousins Monday of having burned alive more than 100 Muslims in what the presiding judge called a part of the "wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man." Milan Lukic and Sredoje Lukic were convicted of crimes dating back to the early 1990s, during the bitter ethnic conflict that ravaged the former Yugoslavia. The crimes include two incidents in which Muslim men, women and children were forced into homes that were then set on fire — some who tried to escape were shot.

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