There was no other way to put it: Stiven Baird, an American in the French Foreign Legion, looked terrible.
A week into the legion’s jungle warfare course here in the equatorial rain forest, he was famished after eating nothing for three days but some agouti, a rodent that resembles a large, tailless rat.
Another young woman has been found dead in Chechnya bringing the number of recently murdered women to seven, a spokesman for investigators said on Saturday.
The body of the 18-year-old girl was discovered on Friday evening near Novy Enginoi, a village northwest of Grozny, the capital of the Russian North Caucasus republic. She was shot in the head.
The bodies of six women aged between 25 and 35 were found in the Grozny region on Wednesday, all of them shot in the head or chest.
The incidents have so far been considered as separate cases. But human rights advocates said the murders in this largely Muslim republic could have been committed in retaliation for the women's immoral behavior.
Pakistan is nearly a failed state — and a U.S. invasion under President Obama can't be ruled out.
It was a cold, dark, wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. I was in my car, driving my 12-year-old daughter and her friend back from a birthday party. I was tired and fed up from being in the car.
"Mummy, mummy," trilled a voice from the back. "I want to phone the pirates."
Dungeness crabDennis Sturgell, who once made millions, is in trouble with the law and has made enemies by catching Dungeness off the Bay Area coast. Now, Sturgell faces a bleak season. "I used to love to fish. Now, I pretty much despise it," he said.
A 30-year-old man in Russia's Urals has admitted to fatally wounding and then drinking the blood of a female acquaintance, Russia media reported on Tuesday.
According to preliminary reports, on Monday the body of a woman bearing signs of a violent death was found at a dacha just outside the Orenburg Region town of Gai. It was then established that the woman had died after a quarrel with a male friend.
"As was stated by the detained himself during questioning, he started to beat the women, and when she lost consciousness he slit her arm open and began to drink her blood," a spokesperson for investigators said.
Police in Japan's Osaka have detained a man who threw some 200 maggots around a commuter train to try and frighten female passengers, local media said on Monday.
The 35-year-old man told police on Sunday that he wanted to "see whether the women in the coach got frightened and if their legs started shaking."
A check of his belongings revealed a further 3,600 maggots. Police believe that the suspect was preparing to use them the same way.
Some 18 similar incidents have already been reported in Osaka in November alone. Police are investigating to see if there is a link between them.
The Indian sailors aboard the chemical-tanker MV Stolt Valor landed in Mumbai airport, to a joyous welcome from family members eight weeks after their ship was seized by Somali pirates.
There were 18 Indians in the crew on board. Four have returned. The rest will come to India on Tuesday.
For the sailors, the ordeal is cemented in their minds.
A 20-year-old trainee officer, Naveed Borundkar, described how some 30 pirates hijacked the ship, after firing a rocket-propelled grenade from a speedboat. He says they fired continuously.
"They were carrying all the automatic guns, Kalashnikovs, stun guns, RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], everything was there. They were heavily armed," he said.
That moment began eight grueling weeks of life in captivity under the eyes of the gun-toting pirates.
Allister Fernandes, 25, says they were terrified, but prayers kept them going.
"With arms and ammunition you are always on gunpoint," he noted. "All 24 hours we were on gunpoint. We were all staying on bridge, navigation area, all 22 crew members were sleeping there, eating there. It was very strict."
Naveed Borundkar says he comes from a family of sailors, but nothing had prepared him for the piracy. He says the mental agony is difficult to describe, but the conditions under which they stayed were as bad.
"Living condition was pathetic, unhygienic and it was unimaginable. It was like we were into the Stone Age," he said.
Indian media reports say a large ransom has been paid to secure the release of the Japanese ship.
The MV Stolt Valor is among scores of ships which have been seized this year by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, a busy navigation route.
The general secretary of the National Union of Seafarers of India, Abdulgani Serang, says the pirates should be called "maritime terrorists."
"When you project them as pirates, you know Sinbad the sailor and all those folklore, romance and adventure, it gives that angle," he said. "But we will request the media to project the pirates as nothing short of maritime terrorism, in fact it is like that."
India says it will strengthen its presence in the dangerous waters off Somalia, by sending another warship to join those from several countries that are patrolling the area. One Indian warship is already deployed in the Gulf of Aden. Last week, the Indian navy said it sank a pirate ship.
This week is the 75th anniversary of one of the darkest days in the history of the Bay Area, when vigilantes dragged two terrified men from the county jail in San Jose and lynched them from trees in a downtown park as a mob of 10,000 citizens went mad with blood lust.
When the Lusitania went down, it left a mystery behind: What was the cause of the second blast? After nearly a century of investigation, argument and intrigue, clues are starting to surface.
Kindrat Murzak was born in 1925 in Sarny, a village in the heart of what was then Soviet Ukraine.
She was only 7 years old when the Great Famine swept across her country, driving millions into starvation.
But the memories of these terrible times haunt her to this day.
"I remember 1933. A woman next door ate her two children, a 7-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl," she says.
A Russian tanker which has just arrived in Kenya's Mombasa port bears the scars of a recent clash with pirates.
Below the wheelhouse there is a window missing and a dirty great stain where it used to be.
An internal inquiry by the Central Intelligence Agency has found that the agency withheld crucial information from federal investigators who spent years trying to determine whether C.I.A. officers committed crimes related to the accidental shooting down of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.
They were cold, wet, weary and battle-scarred. Yet that didn't stop the men with names like Hayashi, Inouye, Kobashigawa, Okutsu, Sakato and Kuwayama from answering the call Oct. 27, 1944, to rescue a battalion surrounded by German forces.
For the next three days, their unit, the all-Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, would fight in dense woods, heavy fog and freezing temperatures near Bruyeres, France, and prove their motto "Go for Broke!" wasn't mere words. "Go for Broke" is Hawaiian slang for "shoot the works."
The Germans cut off the Texas National Guard 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment in the Vosges Mountains on Oct. 24. The 442nd was ordered in after the enemy had repelled repeated rescue tries by the 141st's other two battalions.
Nearly half the men in the Japanese-American unit would be dead or wounded three days later with the "Lost Battalion" still isolated.
"Then, something happened in the 442nd," according to historians at the Army Center for Military History in Washington. "By ones and twos, almost spontaneously and without orders, the men got to their feet and, with a kind of universal anger, moved toward the enemy position. Bitter hand-to-hand combat ensued as the Americans fought from one fortified position to the next. Finally, the enemy broke in disorder."
"The Lost Battalion" rescue is recorded in U.S. military annals as one of the great ground battles of World War II. The regiment relieved the 211 besieged Texans on Oct. 30, and had gone for broke to do it: It suffered more than 800 combat casualties.
Thankful members of the 141st gave their rescuers a plaque that read, "With deep sincerity and utmost appreciation for the gallant fight to effect our rescue after we'd been isolated for seven days."
The "Lost Battalion" is just one entry — a defining one, to be sure, but only one — in the regiment's catalog of valor during World War II. For its size and time in combat, less than two years, the 442nd is the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.
The commander of American and allied naval forces off the coast of Somalia has begun efforts to halt a spike in piracy, urging merchant vessels to sail with armed guards on board and to travel only within lanes now patrolled by warships.
Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million.
A 35-year-old Muscovite has admitted to murdering a visitor to his flat who agreed to stake his life on a game of backgammon, Russian media have reported.
Sergei Smirnitsky was arrested in south Moscow on murder charges after reportedly knocking on his neighbor's door to ask him to help drag a corpse from his eighth-floor flat to the street. The shocked neighbor called the police instead.
India's navy says one of its stealth frigates destroyed a heavily armed pirate mother ship with two speed boats in tow, about 528 kilometers southwest of the coast of Oman.
It is the second time in a week the Indian navy has clashed with suspected hijackers in the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden.
Pygmy tarsierA team led by a Texas A&M University anthropologist has discovered a group of primates not seen alive in 85 years. The pygmy tarsiers, furry Furby/gremlin-looking creatures about the size of a small mouse and weighing less than 2 ounces, have not been observed since they were last collected for a museum in the 1920s. Several scientists believed they were extinct until two Indonesian scientists trapping rats in the highlands of Sulawesi accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier in 2000.
A corpse with occult symbols carved into it has been discovered in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg, the Fontanka Internet portal reported on Monday.
The body of the unidentified man, said to be in his thirties, was found hanging from a tree on Sunday afternoon in the Olgino region of the city, a short distance from the Baltic Sea's Gulf of Finland.
Fontanka said that the dead man had a Celtic cross carved on his forehead, an upside down pentagram cut into his chest, and the words, "I go to take revenge" carved into his left arm. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, black trousers, and army-type boots.
Rushing Eagle
Doctors in Sicily have been claiming state money for some 50,000 patients still on their medical lists despite being dead, Italian media says.
An inquiry by Italy's financial police is said to have found that, in some cases, payments have been claimed for people who have been dead 20 years.
Somalia's president says insurgents now control most of the country, and that the government is close to collapse.
The remarks by President Abdullahi Yusuf late Saturday followed the capture of several key towns in recent days by Islamist militant groups.
Mr. Yusuf says the government now controls only Mogadishu and the parliament seat, Baidoa. He blamed the situation on persistent disputes within the government, and warned that Somalia faces a grim future if Islamists take full power.
Islamist forces often impose a strict form of Sharia law in the areas they control. On Saturday, they publicly whipped 32 dancers in the southern town of Balad. Spokesman Abdirahim Isse Adow said it is "un-Islamic" for men and women to dance together.
Alaska Native, Tlingit female in potlatch dancing costume, 1906
Around the world, people know the name of Belle Starr, the famous bandit queen. They do not always realize that Belle had a daughter named Pearl who spent most of her life in Fort Smith as the owner of a bordello.
Rose Pearl Reed was born in 1868 in Rich Hill, Missouri. She was the first child of the Belle and Jim Reed, the first husband of Belle and a known thief and murderer.
Growing up, Pearl was subject to the upheaval caused by her parents' lives of crime, moving around the country before settling in Indian Territory. Her father died in a gunfight when Pearl was six and her mother was murdered when she was 21.
Pearl left Indian Territory after Belle's death and established herself as a prostitute in Van Buren, Arkansas. Capitalizing on the dime novel fame of Belle, she changed her name to Pearl Starr at this time.
After securing sufficient capital, Pearl moved across the river to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and established her own bordello. Located on "the Row," Fort Smith's waterfront street of gambling halls, saloons and bordellos, the house was clearly identified with a bright red star surrounded by lighted pearls. The parlor featured a talented piano player, good whiskey and the "most beautiful girls west of the Mississippi." Business prospered and Pearl purchased additional houses, and invested in saloons and other property.
The only time Pearl was implicated in a crime was in 1911. After a burglary at a general merchandise store in Fort Smith, police found several of the stolen items hidden at Pearl's Winslow home. She was found guilty of robbery and sentenced to a year in the Arkansas State Penitentiary. Posting $2,000 bail, Pearl's attorneys appealed the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which overturned the verdict.
In 1916 the city of Fort Smith began enacting ordinances making prostitution illegal. For a few years, Pearl's activities were overlooked but she was eventually arrested. The charges were dropped with the understanding that Pearl would leave the community. In 1921, at age 53, she left Fort Smith for Arizona, where she died in 1925.
The legend of Wyatt Earp conjures up images of muddy Kansas cowtowns and dusty Tombstone streets. What's often forgotten is his brief entanglement with law enforcement in Indian Territory and Van Buren, Arkansas. Maybe that's because Wyatt wasn't a lawman here; he was an alleged horse thief.
Wyatt Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois, in 1848. At the age of 22, he entered the law enforcement profession by beating his half brother Newton in a race for constable of Lamar Township, 35 miles north of Joplin, Missouri. Shortly after that election his young wife, Urilla Sutherland, died. This apparently had a devastating affect on Wyatt because he abandoned his new job and disappeared. It was four months later, in March of 1871, that he resurfaced in Indian Territory. On the 28th of March, it was alleged that Wyatt and an Edward Kennedy got one John Shown drunk and talked him into stealing two horses from one James Keyes. Shown was to take the horses 50 miles north where the others would meet him.
The scheme apparently progressed as planned until Keyes, not giving up on his horses, caught up with the thieves three days later. He recovered his stock and subsequently filed charges against Earp, Kennedy and Shown in federal court in Van Buren, Arkansas. It should be remembered that between 1851 and 1871, the seat of the Federal Court for the Western District of Arkansas was located at Van Buren, not Fort Smith. It wasn't until March of 1871 that Congress passed an act moving the federal court seat and it was another three months after that before court opened in Fort Smith.
On April 6, Deputy Marshal J.G. Owens took Kennedy and Wyatt into custody in the Cherokee Nation. They arrived at Van Buren on April 13 and Wyatt was released after posting a $500 bond.
The grand jury returned the indictments against Kennedy and Wyatt in May. In June, a trial date of November 13 was set. The trial would have occurred in the courthouse at Fort Smith but Wyatt took this opportunity to jump bail and again disappeared. He never did face the charges in court.
Wyatt reappeared later that winter in the buffalo hunter camps on the Kansas prairies, where he met up with a fellow hunter named Bat Masterson. From there it was on to Dodge City where he achieved fame in 1875. Four years later, he arrived in Tombstone, Arizona, and in 1881 Wyatt Earp gained immortality at the gunfight at the OK Corral.
American Indian, Navajo youth, circa 1906
Two mothers in western Tanzania have been attacked by gangs who were after their children who have albinism.
The women were hacked with machetes when the attackers failed to find the two children.
Albinos have been targeted in a series of killings around the country due to a belief their body parts can make magic potions more effective.
A recently discovered female pelvis is changing minds about the head size of an ancient human ancestor, Homo erectus, and consequently revising notions about how smart they may have been.
General Michael Hayden, the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has said that Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, remain isolated in the remote mountains of Pakistan near the Afghan border.
Hayden said there are three important points to remember about the U.S. fight against Al-Qaeda. First, while the group has suffered serious setbacks, it remains determined and adaptive. Second, it's resilient and vulnerable. And third, it remains the most serious threat to the United States.
A Chinese fishing vessel was hijacked by pirates armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons off the coast of Kenya late Thursday night and was being held off the coast of the southern Somalia port city of Kismanyu on Friday.
American Indian, Cayuse woman, circa 1910
Rescue workers in south Siberia's Altai Territory spent two days trying to help a flock of goats and sheep descend a cliff, a local emergencies spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The animals ran up the cliff after being attacked by a pack of wolves.
Chief Umapine
More: British Navy kills Somali pirates — Via ABC Online, Australia
Evidence that global warming is causing the worldwide declines of amphibians may not be as conclusive as previously thought, according to biologists.
Red Wing
A teenage Nepalese boy who some believe to be the reincarnation of the Buddha has re-emerged in a remote southern jungle after disappearing more than a year and a half ago.
Officials said thousands of his followers flocked to see Ram Bahadur Bomjan speak Tuesday in Bara district about 150 kilometers south of Nepal's capital, Katmandu.
Police said the teenager plans to preach to his devotees for a short time every day for a week, and then plans to return to the jungle to meditate.
Bomjan has been nicknamed "Buddha Boy" by the local media. He first started drawing crowds in 2005, when his followers said he meditated for months without food, water or sleep. Tens of thousands of people flocked to see him sitting cross-legged beneath a tree.
He left the meditation site in March of 2006, complaining about noisy crowds. He reappeared in a different location in December of that year and meditated there until March, when he vanished into the jungle again.
Many of the boy's followers believe he is the reincarnation of Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher who founded the Buddhist religion some 2,5000 years ago. Modern Buddhist religious leaders said they have not reached a conclusion about Bomjan because they have not been able to properly investigate him.
The average person in the Arab world reads no more than four pages a year, the Syrian newspaper Tishreen said on Tuesday, referring to a UN survey.
Amos Two Bulls
The hungry bears that have terrorized a village in Siberia's Altai Territory for several months have left the area due to a drop in the temperature, a spokesperson for a local nature reserve said on Tuesday.
At least 20 bears entered the south Siberian village of Yailyu — located on the territory of the nature reserve — in late August in search of food. The bears hunted at night, killing chickens and cattle, destroying fences and sheds, and occasionally attacking humans.
A Polish official says the remains of the country's World War II leader, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, will be exhumed in a probe to determine if the 1943 air crash that killed him was accidental or deliberate.
Iron White Man
Israeli police have had to restore order at one of Christianity's holiest sites after a mass brawl broke out between monks in Jerusalem's Old City.
American Indian, Nez Percé, circa 1910
American Indian, Nez Percé, circa 1910
A group of paleontologists visited the northern Arizona wilderness site nicknamed a “dinosaur dance floor” and concluded there were no dinosaur tracks there, only a dense collection of unusual potholes eroded in the sandstone.
A lot of people have questions about the future — things like whether the markets will go up or down, or whether there will be war or peace in some of the world's hot spots.
The answer could lie in the shape of a mountain landscape — or the shape of President-elect Barack Obama's face — or, in a 1,000-year-old Chinese chart of the planets' movements.
Those are just a few tools of the trade for fortune-tellers here in South Korea.
Joe Black Fox
Chinese history is replete with the rise and fall of dynasties, but researchers now have identified a natural phenomenon that may have been the last straw for some of them: a weakening of the summer Asian Monsoons.
American Indian, Hupa woman, circa 1923
American Indian, Zuni girl, circa 1903
A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC.
"Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.
Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.
Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.
American Indian, Quinault female, circa 1913
American Indian, Cheyenne, circa 1927
In a global economy, an airplane's production can be threatened by events thousands of miles away. Here's how six pieces of metal nearly cost engineer Ben Hempstead half a million dollars and held up the largest passenger plane in history.
In a miraculous tale of survival, a Brooklyn woman clung to a 5-gallon plastic bucket for nearly two days in the waters of a South American river, after a water taxi she was in capsized, killing her sister, and possibly her nephew.
Colorado, circa 1900
