Gunmen on motorcycles sprayed a van carrying employees from a community center with bullets Tuesday, killing five female teachers and two aid workers, but sparing a child they took out of the vehicle before opening fire.
The director of the group that the seven worked for says he suspects it may have been the latest in a series of attacks targeting anti-polio efforts in Pakistan. Some militants oppose the vaccination campaigns, accusing health workers of acting as spies for the U.S. and alleging the vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile.
Pakistan: Gunmen kill 5 female teachers, 2 aid workers possibly in retaliation for polio work
When fracking came to suburban Texas
Residents of Gardendale, a suburb near the hub of the west Texas oil industry, face having up to 300 wells in their backyards.
The corner of Goldenrod and Western streets, with its grid of modest homes, could be almost any suburb that went up in a hurry – except of course for the giant screeching oil rig tearing up the earth and making the pavement shudder underfoot.
Fracking, the technology that opened up America's vast deposits of unconventional oil and gas, has moved beyond remote locations and landed at the front door, with oil operations now planned or under way in suburbs, mid-sized towns and large metropolitan areas.
Use of torture by authorities has risen in Mexico, groups say
On the eve of Mexico's Day of the Dead this year, authorities in Veracruz declared triumphantly that they had solved one of the decade's most notorious slayings of a journalist in Mexico.
They trotted before reporters a sad-sack figure, one Jorge Antonio Hernandez Silva. They proclaimed him guilty of the April slaying of Regina Martinez, a highly respected reporter for the national Proceso magazine. He had confessed, the Veracruz government said, and the motive was robbery.
US government lists two ice seals as threatened
Two types of ice seals joined polar bears Dec. 21 on the list of species threatened by the loss of sea ice, which scientists say reached record low levels this year due to climate warming.
Ringed seals, the main prey of polar bears, and bearded seals in the Arctic Ocean will be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced.
Shell Oil drilling vessel is adrift in Gulf of Alaska
An unmanned mobile oil drilling rig owned by Royal Dutch Shell is adrift -- again -- south of Kodiak Island after it lost towlines Sunday afternoon from two vessels trying to hold it in place against what have been pummeling winds and high seas, according to incident management leaders.
A team of 250 people from the Coast Guard, the state of Alaska, Shell, and one of its contractors was hunkered down Sunday, mainly in Midtown Anchorage's Frontier Building, trying to resolve the ongoing crisis with Shell's drilling rig, the Kulluk.
Who paid for the Log Cabin Republicans' anti-Hagel NYT ad?
The gay GOP group confirms the ad was funded by outside donors, but refuses to identify them or their cause.
Last Thursday, the gay GOP group Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) placed a full-page ad in the New York Times that attacked Chuck Hagel as anti-Israel and anti-gay and urged President Obama not to appoint him as Defense Secretary. This was quite a strange event for multiple reasons.
Sovereign Citizens Are a Sometimes Violent Fringe Group Rejecting All Government
Meet the Sovereigns, a radical right group that rejects all forms of government, embraces God as the only authority, and clogs the courts with reams of nonsensical paperwork, writes Winston Ross.
His name is Craig Douglas Fleshman, though he won’t answer to that, just as he no longer carries a driver’s license or pays taxes. Pastor Paul Revere doesn’t recognize the authority of the State of Oregon, the United States of America, or anyone else that presumes to have some command over him. He answers only to God.
Israeli high court allows Arab MK to run
Israel's Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Central Election Committee decision to disqualify an Arab Knesset member. The court said Knesset member Haneen Zoabi, of the Balad party could run in the upcoming elections, Israeli media reported Sunday.
"This ruling proves again that the Central Elections Committee is a political body that abuses its authority and allows politicians to bar their rival for ideological reasons," Zoabi told Army Radio shortly after the high court decision.
FBI files on 'Communist' Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller revealed for first time in 50 years
FBI files on Marilyn Monroe that could not be located earlier this year have been found and re-issued, revealing the names of some of the movie star’s acquaintances who drew concern from government officials and her own entourage.
Among the secret records is one from 1956 in which the FBI documents an anonymous call to the New York Daily News claiming playwright Arthur Miller was a communist and Monroe had 'drifted into the Communist orbit'.
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