In this May 5, 2011 photo, Justin Van Fleet stands at the site of where his home once stood before the flood of 2008, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Van Fleet is among thousands who have received letters in recent weeks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency notifying them they received too much money from the agency dating back to 2005 and now must pay it back. After the raging Cedar River filled his... 

Entertainer Simon Ledger was singing Kung Fu Fighting as a Chinese man and his mother walked past which later prompted the complaint to the police. A pub singer has been arrested on suspicion of racism for singing the classic chart hit Kung Fu Fighting. The song, performed by Simon Ledger, 34, is said to have offended two Chinese people as they walked past the bar where he was singing. The entertainer... 

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area. The product in question: unpasteurized milk. It’s a battle that’s been going... 

Avi Yanai (right) got only 18 years for ruining the lives of "hundreds of women". That means a few months for each life ruined. A few hours or days for every rape these women experienced. A military court in Russia has sentenced an Israeli citizen to only 18 years in prison for running a vast network of female trafficking in the Middle East and Europe. Aside from Yanai, 83 people were arrested... 

WikiLeaks: Half of the prisoners at Guantánamo were innocent. The newspapers El Pais, The New York Times and Washington Post published on their Web sites Sunday night (24) a series of secret documents that reveal detailed information about the U.S. military base in Guantanamo. The three publications deal with 759 records of 779 prisoners who passed through the prison. Dated between 2002 and 2009,... 

The US pastor whose burning of a Koran sparked deadly violence in Afghanistan was briefly jailed in a heavily Islamic suburb on Friday after a court banned his protest outside a mosque. A local judge jailed Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida and his associate Wayne Sapp after a court found their planned protest outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, could lead to violence. During... 

Up to 30,000 people chant anti-EU slogans in Zagreb’s main square. Up to 30,000 Croats took to the streets of the capital Zagreb over the weekend to protest against the jailing of two generals for war crimes in the Balkans wars on Friday. Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac are considered national heroes in Croatia. General Gotovina was jailed by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for 24 years,... 

Thanks for Freedom of Speech, gay pride parades are a cherished form of free speech but not when it comes to the Israeli apartheid. Gays are bashing Christianity all the time and yet they are not banned from their Gay Pride Parades. We’ll believe it, and pay for it, when we see it. Mayor Rob Ford along with some Toronto city councillors was skeptical about a promise by Queers Against Israeli Apartheid... 

Big Brother? Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, pictured here with Obama, claims the move will protect Internet consumers from fraud and identity theft. A plan to create a national online identity system was launched today to help combat cyber crime. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke claimed the move will protect Internet consumers from fraud and identity theft. Unveiling the scheme, he insisted the cyber... 

President Bashar al-Assad blames conspirators for the unrest sweeping Syria. Witnesses claim soldiers who disobeyed orders in Banias were shot by security services as crackdown on protests intensifies. Syrian soldiers have been shot by security forces after refusing to fire on protesters, witnesses said, as a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations intensified. Witnesses told al-Jazeera and the... 

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, left, speaks about illegal immigration at an event in Arizona also attended by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. AP An Arizona sheriff says U.S. Border Patrol officials have repeatedly told him they have been ordered to reduce – at times even stop – arrests of illegal immigrants caught trying to cross the U.S. border. Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever... 

A 12-year-old Staten Island boy was charged with felony assault as a hate crime for attempting to rip a religious head scarf off the head of a classmate on Wednesday, sources said. Osman Daramy attacked the female student outside the Berta Dreyfus Intermediate School in Stapleton about 1 p.m., the sources said. Osman allegedly punched and kicked the girl before trying to grab the scarf wrapped around... 

Civil rights leader the Rev. Joseph Lowery is among the plaintiffs, who claim the state circumvented the typical legislative process in creating “super-majority white neighborhoods.” Suit says ‘super-majority white neighborhoods’ were created. The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus filed a lawsuit Monday against the state of Georgia seeking to dissolve the city charters of Dunwoody, Sandy... 

The lawmaker behind a bill Texas that would levy felony charges against overly-touchy security personnel may be staunchly Republican, but he truly believes his cause isn’t one tied to the political left or right. “We’re talking about what would be a criminal act in any other place,” Rep. David Simpson (R) told Raw Story on Monday. “If you viewed someone naked without... 

Abdullah al-Kidd, right, and his attorney, American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Director of the Immigrants' Rights Project, Lee Gelernt, talk about a Supreme Court lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Al-Kidd was handcuffed and marched through Washington's Dulles International Airport in his Muslim clothing after 9/11. "I could only assume that (people) thought I was...