Authorities question former deputy sheriff

Authorities question former deputy sheriff
ELLENWOOD, Ga. -- A former deputy sheriff, whose lawyer called him the main suspect in the slaying of the sheriff-elect, was involved in a shootout with men he said were trying to silence him, police said.
Patrick Cuffy, 35, was in police custody but had not been charged Sunday night.
Neighbors said they saw Cuffy and several men exchanging gunfire outside his home early Sunday morning. The men then pulled a wounded man into a red truck parked outside the house.
Hours after the shootout, police found a dead man in an abandoned, bullet-riddled sport utility vehicle. On a nearby interstate, police also stopped a red truck that had bullet holes and blood stains and detained the driver. Police have not identified the body or the truck driver in custody.
Cuffy's attorney E. Duane Jones said his client would remain in custody overnight. He described Cuffy as the main suspect in the shooting death of DeKalb County Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown and indicated his client was the intended target of Sunday's shooting spree.
Authorities searched Cuffy's home in January, a month after the shooting death of Brown, a reformer who promised to clean up a police department tainted by corruption.
Black leaders protestboy's prison sentence
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The Rev. Al Sharpton led a rally in support of a 14-year-old boy sentenced to life in prison without parole for the beating death of a 6-year-old family friend.
Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, was one of several black leaders who spoke at the three-hour rally Sunday.
On March 9, Lionel Tate was given life in prison -- the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder -- for the July 1999 slaying of Tiffany Eunick.
"Clearly, we think this is an outrage," Sharpton told the crowd of more than 150 people.
"Charles Manson can go before a parole board, you have mass murderers that can go before a parole board. Yet a child that was involved in a situation at 12 years old is told he will never see a parole board. You are dealing with a human rights violation."
Lionel, who is housed at a maximum security juvenile facility, said he accidentally killed the girl while imitating pro wrestlers.
Court hearing resumesin Internet twins case
BIRMINGHAM, England -- A British couple fighting for custody of American twins they found through the Internet returned to court today but expected no final decision on the future of the infant girls.
"It's not going to end yet. Whatever happens in Britain, it's going to carry on in America," Alan Kilshaw said before a hearing in Crown Court in Birmingham. The hearing was expected to continue for three days in private.
The girls, now 8 months old, are in the custody of local government social services while Judge Andrew Kirkwood sorts through a tangle of claims to the children. Rival claims have been argued in a succession of courts and television chat shows.
Alan and Judith Kilshaw of Buckley, Wales, adopted the girls in Arkansas after locating them through an Internet adoption service based in California. They named them Belinda and Kimberley.
The adoption was voided last month in Arkansas by Pulaski County Probate Judge Mackie Pierce, who ruled that the Kilshaws and the girls' natural mother, Tranda Wecker, had not met the 30-day residency requirement to qualify as state residents at the time of the adoption.
Taliban atonement
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Butchers with long knives sacrificed 12 cows in the courtyard of Afghanistan's presidential palace today to atone for the delay in destroying two giant statues of Buddha.
The cows were the first of 100 that were ordered killed throughout the country by the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The meat was given to the poor.
Omar issued the order last weekend, saying the cows would be sacrificed as an offering because of the tardy demolition of 170-foot and 120-foot statues of Buddha in central Bamiyan. The statues were carved from a cliff face in the third and fifth centuries.
It took Taliban soldiers nearly two weeks to destroy them after Omar declared the statues idolatrous and against the tenets of Islam.