Jon Hrusa / EPA

SLAIN: Reggae legend Lucky Dube was killed by carjackers Thursday night as he dropped off his teenage son and daughter at home in South Africa.

Reggae star's death rocks South Africa

Jon Hrusa / EPA

SLAIN: Reggae legend Lucky Dube was killed by carjackers Thursday night as he dropped off his teenage son and daughter at home in South Africa.

The fatal shooting of Lucky Dube spurs renewed calls for action against violent crime.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 20, 2007

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A wave of anger and shock has followed the killing Thursday of reggae legend Lucky Dube by carjackers, with politicians from across the spectrum calling for a renewed effort to reduce one of the world's highest homicide rates.

Killings for a cellphone, a few dollars or old household goods barely rate headlines, but the shooting of Dube, 43, one of Africa's most renowned musicians, in front of his two teenagers horrified South Africans, including President Thabo Mbeki.

Dube recorded more than 20 albums over the last 25 years, and toured extensively around the world. Much of his work had strong political or social messages, including anti-apartheid themes. His last album, "Respect," released in 2005, included songs with titles such as "Political Games," "Changing World," and "Celebrate Life."

Crime has been a political hot potato since the end of apartheid. But despite its boasts of success, the governing African National Congress remains under enormous pressure to stem the violence, with the country slated to be the host of the 2010 soccer World Cup.

South Africa has nearly 20,000 homicides a year.

Some politicians called Friday for the reinstatement of the death penalty, and the opposition Democratic Alliance said Dube's slaying was more evidence that crime continued to soar.

"The circumstances surrounding his murder again illustrate that violent crime in South Africa is out of control, and that government's remedies to address this scourge have failed," said Democratic Alliance spokeswoman Desiree van der Walt.

Mbeki, often criticized by his opponents as being in denial about the extent of crime in the country, expressed dismay over the killing before flying to Paris to see South Africa compete against England in the Rugby World Cup final.

"It's indeed very, very sad that this happens to an outstanding South African, an outstanding musician, world renowned," he said. "We shall continue to act together as a people to confront this terrible scourge of crime, which has taken the lives of too many of our people, and does so every day."

To explain the violent crime rate, analysts often point to the fact that South Africa is one of the world's most unequal societies, with a vast underclass of poorly educated, unemployed people and a small wealthy elite.

Police set up a task force Friday to track down the three gunmen who confronted Dube Thursday night as he dropped off his son and daughter at home. Police said he tried to escape and was able to drive a short distance after he was shot, but hit a tree and died at the scene.

"What makes his death more painful is that it happened at a time when government has renewed its pledge to forge a partnership with people, communities and their institutions to fight crime," said Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan.

The African National Congress called the killing "barbaric and senseless."

"Brutal crimes such as these once more remind us . . . of the need to join hands with our law enforcement agencies and forge a bold front against crime," party spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said.

Birth Control Pills for 11-Year-Old Girls...

NOTE: See what the world has come to? Is the school board raising our kids or are WE raising our kids? Since when is it okay for a school board to decide to put your ELEVEN year old daughter on birth control without your permission or knowledge??? This is UN Agenda 21 in full effect again people, remember a very important part of the agenda is population control and we know that Planned Parenthood plays a huge part in that. Trust me, they aren't doing this for your children because they actually CARE, they are definitely following an agenda. What about the hormonal effects this might have on an 11 year old? Parent's need to step up because this news absolutely proves that they are losing control. You can read the article below......

At the King Middle School in Portland, Maine, medical workers are allowed to give the girls as young as 11 birth control pills without their parents knowing about it.

The school board in Portland voted 7-2 to make that happen. The rationale is that some kids will have sex and the school must try to reduce pregnancies. Also, parents must sign a waiver allowing their children to receive medical care at the school.

However, that medical care is kept secret from the parents, in the birth control area.

Now giving sixth grade girls the pill is dumb. It doesn't protect them from disease and tacitly says that sex at that young age is understandable.

This is foolish, ridiculous, and irresponsible. But in the secular progressive world. The SP doctrine is to quote, "empower children" and downgrade parental authority because some parents are bad.

Right now seven states: Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and New Hampshire have no parental notification laws concerning abortion. That means that if young girls in those states get pregnant, Planned Parenthood can set up the abortion and parents will never know.

The SPs love that. Like Vermont, Maine is a state where many Woodstock generation people have congregated and they are very active. A Portland newspaper today is supporting needles of drug addicts and a political cartoon in the paper promotes more rights for convicted sexual offender, both SP cornerstones.

It is ironic that the week my book "Cultural Warrior" comes out in paperback, intense culture battles erupt across the country. First the sacrilege in San Francisco, now the pill for sixth graders.

Portland's three middle schools have reported 17 pregnancies over the last four years. Not many, but too many. So the SP educators in Maine have decided to send a message because of about one pregnancy a year. And the kids get that message loud and clear. If you want to have sex at age 11, see the nurse.

And that's the memo.

G7 MEETING G7 calls for IMF, World Bank reforms

WASHINGTON (Thomson Financial) - The International Monetary Fund is making laudable efforts to reform itself, economic officials of the G7 industrial nations said today, but needs to go further.

'We remain committed to achieving an ambitious package of fundamental reforms,' the G7 post-meeting statement said.

The G7 officials praised the IMF's intention to increase and modernize exchange rate surveillance and said it should be 'firm and even-handed.'

The reforms also include changing capital and voting shares to 'better reflect the realities of the world economy,' the statement said. That means a bigger voice in Fund decisions that 'reflects the growing weight and role of dynamic members, many of which are emerging markets'.

The immediate beneficiaries would be the so-called BRICs -- the fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The IMF's own finances are getting increasingly tight, and the G7 members warned it needed to 'undertake a serious review of its activities and consolidation of its spending'.

Since the members of the G7 also have overwhelming voting control of the IMF, there is a considerable element of circularity in these statements; they are the ones who will have to ensure the IMF carries out its commitments.

On the World Bank, the G7 confined themselves to looking forward to more discussions about its future with new president Robert Zoellick.

dennis.moore@thomson.com

dem/wash/ro/wash/ro

Prosecutor: Mom bought weapons for boy

From Allan Chernoff and Brian Vitagliano
CNN

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A woman bought guns and bomb-making material to indulge her socially outcast 14-year-old son, a prosecutor said Friday.

Michele Cossey makes her way to the prosecutor's office, where she was served with an arrest warrant Friday.

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Michele Cossey, 46, faces charges in connection with her son's alleged plan for a Columbine-like attack on a school. She is accused of buying him a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle, a 9 mm semiautomatic rifle and black powder used to make grenades.

"There's a lot of things at play here," Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor Jr. said. "You have a child who is obviously emotionally disturbed and a social outcast, and no doubt the parents feel sorry for him and are indulging him.

"This is not the best parenting I've ever seen, obviously, and she has to be held accountable for that."

Cossey was charged Friday with unlawful transfer of a fiream, possession of a firearm by a minor, corruption of a minor, endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of reckless endangerment.

A search of the family's home Wednesday in Plymouth Meeting outside Philadelphia turned up the rifle, about 30 air-powered guns, swords, knives, grenades, a bomb-making book and videos of the 1999 Columbine High School attack, Castor said.

Castor said the weapons were plainly visible in the boy's bedroom.

"We alleged that she purchased the 9 mm rifle for her son, allowed him to have black powder, gunpowder and the instruments to make the grenades," Castor said.

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"I don't think she had anything to do with planning this attack, but by virtue of her indulgence she allowed him to get into this position."

During a hearing Friday in juvenile court, a judge ruled authorities could continue to hold the teen during their investigation.

The judge also ordered psychiatric and educational achievement evaluations for the youth, who withdrew from school in 2006 and was reportedly home-schooled.

The teen was charged as a juvenile with solicitation to commit terror and other counts and was being held at a youth facility. If he is found delinquent, he could face long-term detention and counseling.

The boy was brought into court in handcuffs. At the end of the hearing, he blew a kiss to his mother and whispered, "I love you."

As Cossey sat sobbing in the courtroom, Castor walked over to her and informed her that he had a warrant for her arrest. He told her to go to his office on a lower floor of the courthouse, where the warrant was served.

The boy's father, Frank Cossey, also could face criminal charges pending an investigation, police said.

Police said Frank Cossey was sentenced to house arrest for failing to acknowledge a 1981 manslaughter conviction when he tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle for his son in 2005, The Associated Press reported.

School officials said police acted on a tip from a Plymouth Whitemarsh High School student and his father. They said they believe the tip was prompted by Wednesday's shooting at a Cleveland, Ohio, school in which a 14-year-old killed himself after wounding two teachers and two other students.

In a separate incidents in West Virginia, six teens have been arrested and charged with making terrorist threats at two high schools.

In Marion County, four students are suspected of involvement in attempting to set fires at Fairmont High School, and a fifth is accused of making unrelated threats against students and teachers, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said.

In Greenbrier County, a Greenbrier East High School student was arrested Thursday morning after students alerted police that he was making threats of a school shooting, said John Curry, county schools superintendent.

Vatican to publish Templar trial papers

By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer

ROME - The Vatican has published secret documents about the trial of the Knights Templar, including a parchment — long ignored because of a vague catalog entry in 1628 — showing that Pope Clement V initially absolved the medieval order of heresy.

The 300-page volume recently came out in a limited edition — 799 copies — each priced at $8,377, said Scrinium publishing house, which prints documents from the Vatican's secret archives.

The order of knights, which ultimately disappeared because of the heresy scandal, recently captivated the imagination of readers of the best-seller "The Da Vinci Code," which linked the Templars to the story of the Holy Grail.

The Vatican work reproduces the entire documentation of the papal hearings convened after King Philip IV of France arrested and tortured Templar leaders in 1307 on charges of heresy and immorality.

The military order of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon was founded in 1118 in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade.

As their military might increased, the Templars also grew in wealth, acquiring property throughout Europe and running a primitive banking system. After they left the Middle East with the collapse of the Crusader kingdoms, their power and secretive ways aroused the fear of European rulers and sparked accusations of corruption and blasphemy.

Historians believe Philip owed debts to the Templars and used the accusations to arrest their leaders and extract, under torture, confessions of heresy as a way to seize the order's riches.

The publishing house said the new book includes the "Parchment of Chinon," a 1308 decision by Clement to save the Templars and their order.

The Vatican archives researcher who found the parchment said Friday that it probably had been ignored because the 1628 catalog entry on the 40-inch-wide parchment was "too Spartan, too vague."

"Unfortunately, there was an archiving error, an error in how the document was described," the researcher, Barbara Frale, said in a telephone interview from her home in Viterbo, north of Italy.

"More than an error, it was a little sketchy," she said.

The parchment, in remarkably good condition considering its 700 years, apparently had last been consulted at the start of the 20th century, Frale said, surmising that its significance must have not have been realized then.

Frale said she was intrigued by the 1628 entry because, while it apparently referred to some minor matter, it noted that three top cardinals, including the right-hand man of Clement, Berenger Fredol, had made a long journey to interrogate someone.

"Going on with my research, it turned out that in reality it was an inquest of very great importance" on behalf of the pope, Frale said. Fredol "had gone to question the Great Master and other heads of the Templars who had been segregated, practically kidnapped, by the king of France and shut up in secret in his castle in Chinon on the Loire."

According to the Vatican archives Web site, the parchment shows that Clement initially absolved the Templar leaders of heresy, though he did find them guilty of immorality, and that he planned to reform the order.

However, pressured by Philip, Clement later reversed his decision and suppressed the order in 1312.

Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Templars, was burned at the stake in 1314 along with his aides.

Surviving monks fled. Some were absorbed by other orders; over the centuries, various groups have claimed to have descended from the Templars.

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On the Net:

Vatican secret archive: http://asv.vatican.va

Publishing house: http://www.scrinium.org