Newser

When Kent Hendrix woke up yesterday to his teenage son telling him someone was being attacked in front of their house, he did what any self-respecting Mormon bishop/martial arts instructor/fourth-degree black belt holder/weapons collector would do: He grabbed his Samurai sword, ran outside, drew the sword on the attacker, and...

One of the two men detained in Canada on charges that he planned a terrorist attack on a passenger train tried a novel approach in court today: Chiheb Esseghaier made the case that Canada's criminal code doesn't apply to him because it is not the "holy book," reports the Toronto...

A man in India has been arrested for trying to sell his newborn grandson online. Feroz Khan, 47, is alleged to have kidnapped the baby shortly after his birth in Ludhiana, reports the AFP , telling his daughter the infant was stillborn. He reportedly sold the baby for $830 to a...

Adam Savader: "American patriot," "Reagan Republican," alleged sleazebag? The 21-year-old, who worked as an intern on the Romney/Ryan campaign and was a campaign staffer for Newt Gingrich, was yesterday charged with cyberstalking and blackmailing women into sending him nude photos of themselves, Politico reports. Savader allegedly claimed to have naked...

Five people were killed today and another injured in a shooting that led to a high-speed chase in the Illinois town of Manchester. Several schools are closed. The suspect managed to evade police for two hours, but was ultimately captured after a chase in which shots were fired, WLDS reports.

Reno Saccoccia, the Steubenville High School football coach whose star players were found guilty of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, has had his contract as the school's "director of administrative services" extended for two years. The news has sparked outrage across social media, the Washington Post reports, though Steubenville's superintendent...

Thirteen female corrections officers have been accused of helping the Black Guerilla Family gang run a drug trafficking operation inside a Baltimore jail—and having sex with the inmates running the operation—according to an indictment unsealed yesterday. The gang's leader, Tavon White, has allegedly fathered five children with four...

Dzhokar Tsarnaev doesn't sound much like a cold-blooded killer when described by his classmates and friends at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. "He smoked a lot of pot," says Tsarnaev's dorm neighbor, Patrick Yaghoobian. "He smelled like it every day," and the smell often drifted from his room in Pine...

All that money the US Postal Service spent to sponsor Lance Armstrong's cycling team? The Justice Department wants it back, and more. It filed a lawsuit against the cyclist and his company last night, just as its deadline to do so was about to expire. Armstrong's doping was, the lawsuit...

Surviving Boston bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev blames his older brother Tamerlan for the attack —and relatives blame a mysterious cleric known as Misha for Tamerlan's radicalization. Tsarnaev first met the man, an Armenian convert to Islam in his 30s, around six years ago; under his influence, he quit boxing, became...

The Watertown man whose boat was wrecked after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in it is touched that people are raising funds to buy him a new one —but he wants them to save their money for bomb victims. "It makes me feel wonderful that people that are thinking like...

The federal government should stop kicking people out of the country with no chance of appeal for possessing tiny quantities of marijuana, the Supreme Court has decided. The justices ruled 5-2 that those whose crime is only "social sharing of a small amount of marijuana" should no longer be subject...

Two women injured when the LAPD riddled their truck with 102 bullets during the Christopher Dorner manhunt will be receiving $2.1 million each from the department—as well as a new truck . Emma Hernandez, 71, was shot twice in the back while her daughter Margie Carranza, was injured by...

As the condition of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev improves in the hospital—he's been upgraded to fair condition—more dribs and drabs are emerging about the Boston Marathon plot and the apparent motivation behind it. Earlier accounts said Dzhokhar had described his brother Tamerlan as the driving force, and the Washington Post...

If you found yourself wondering why in the world the Tsarnaev brothers would allegedly admit their role in the Boston bombings to a guy they carjacked, then let that guy escape while they bought snacks , well, you aren't the only one. On Mother Jones , Tim Murphy lists 11 befuddling things...

Herbert and Catherine Schaible failed to get medical attention for their 2-year-old son, Kent, in 2009, preferring instead to pray over him. He died of bacterial pneumonia, and they were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011. But despite the fact that the Schaibles' probation required them to seek medical attention...

The man charged with sending poison letters to President Obama, a US senator and a Mississippi judge has been released from jail, a federal official tells the AP. Paul Kevin Curtis has been released from custody, according to the official. He was not sure if there were any conditions on...

For years, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was drifting into radical extremism; neighbors, congregants at his mosque, and relatives all saw the signs. But to his parents, the suspected mastermind behind the Boston Marathon bombings was just a good boy. "Most people who met or knew Tamerlan, including family members, say he was...

A Philadelphia judge has thrown out many of the charges facing Kermit Gosnell, including three first-degree murder counts, NBC Philadelphia reports. The judge also put the kibosh on five counts of abuse of a corpse and one of infanticide. The 72-year-old is hardly home free, however; he still faces four...

A year after a fire at a Brooklyn building—and days after the building's sale—a woman's skeleton was discovered in a charred suitcase inside. Though the suitcase was found last month, police aren't sure when or how it ended up in the building, the New York Daily News reports....