Several U.N. workers were killed Friday in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Reports indicate that a demonstration against the burning of a Quran by American pastors turned violent. There are conflicting reports about the number of people killed, and a U.N. spokesperson has issued a statement confirming the attack, while calling the incident "still confusing."
The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday filed a memo in support of extraditing former Survivor and Pimp My Ride producer Bruce Beresford-Redman to Mexico on suspicion of murdering his wife in Cancun last year. The Los Angeles Times got a copy of the 45-page extradition memorandum. He fled Mexico after his wife's body was found stuffed in a waste water treatment pump, and he was found with cuts across his body. His lawyers have until the end of April to respond.
Ferdinand Dorsey, a 24 year-old student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was shot and killed at an apartment building near campus Monday night, after "arguing with other Southern students on campus." His death came just two days after the violent death of another Southern student, Sheena Barnett, whose body was found beaten and burned inside her home Saturday. "Why don't you start calling us now and tell us exactly what's going on in these communities?" asked the mayor of Baton Rouge, rhetorically, and oddly.
According to Latvian news agency Leta, a vigilante in the audience of a Latvian screening of Black Swan last weekend shot and killed another audience member "over how loudly the deceased man was eating his popcorn." Say what you will about the suspect, but he wasn't a hypocrite; he at least had the decency to commit his noisy crime during the end credits of the film.
Today's most sickening news story: onetime karate instructor Patrick Gonzalez was sentenced to death today, after being found guilty of "leading a group of men dressed like ninjas" into a Florida couple's home and killing them as their nine adopted children—all with special needs, like autism—slept or looked on in horror. The killers reportedly thought that the couple was hiding millions of dollars in their house. "The men took an unopened safe from the home that contained nothing of value, but a second safe that wasn't stolen had $164,000 in cash, court records show." [AP, photo via AP]
On Monday, a jury in Tucson found former beautician Shawna Forde guilty of killing nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul in a bizarre paramilitary raid on the Flores home in 2009. Forde, the leader of a group called "Minutemen American Defense," is what you might call an anti-immigration activist, if you include murdering fourth-graders under your definition of "activism"; two years ago, she and two of her fellow "minutemen" burst into the home of the Flores family, apparently looking for drugs that they planned on using to fund their creepy military games, and shot Raul, Brisenia, and Brisineia's mother Gina. Gina survived by playing dead and later testified against Forde.
Police in Tampa, Fla. have arrested 50-year-old mother Julie Schenecker for the murder of her two children. "She [told] us that they talked back and they were mouthy," said a police spokeswoman.
