From the Halls to the Shores

Bill Barnes says he was scratching off a losing $2 lottery ticket inside a gas station when he felt a hand slip into his front-left pants pocket, where he had $300 in cash.

He immediately grabbed the person’s wrist with his left hand and started throwing punches with his right, landing six or seven blows before a store manager intervened.

“I guess he thought I was an easy mark,” Barnes, 72, told The Grand Rapids Press for a story Tuesday.

He’s anything but an easy mark: Barnes served in the Marines, was an accomplished Golden Gloves boxer and retired after 20 years as an iron worker. Jesse Daniel Rae, 27, was arraigned Monday in Rockford District Court on one count of unarmed robbery.

RICHFIELD, Minn. (AP) - The last survivor of the first American flag-raising over Iwo Jima during World War Two has died.

Charles Lindberg of Richfield was 86. Lindberg died yesterday at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina (ee-DYE'-nuh), according to the director of the funeral home that's handling arrangements.

Lindberg spent decades explaining that it was his patrol, not the one captured in the famous photograph by Abe Rosenthal (ABE? Try Joe. Nice catch, editor-boy - Mike) of The Associated Press, that raised the first flag over the island.

In the late morning of February 23rd, 1945, Lindberg fired his flame-thrower into enemy pillboxes at the base of Mount Suribachi and then joined five other Marines fighting their way to the top.

He was awarded the Silver Star for bravery.

In an interview with the A-P in 2003, Lindberg recalled two of the men found a big, long pipe there, "tied the flag to it, took it to the highest spot we could find and we raised it." The moment was captured by Sergeant Lou Lowery, a photographer from the Corps' Leatherneck magazine, but three of the six men never saw his photos. They were among the 59-hundred Marines killed on the island.

Last month, Lindberg attended groundbreaking at the site of a new veterans memorial in Richfield.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

A 62-year-old US Vietnam veteran says he was acting on instinct when he strangled a rabid bobcat that attacked him on the back porch of his Florida home.

Dale Rippy endured the 11 kilogram bobcat's slashes and bites until it clawed into a position where he could grab it by the throat. Then he strangled it.

A camping trip to Low Gap Camp Grounds near Helen turned into a harrowing experience for Chris Everhart and his three sons when they tangled with a 300-pound black bear. But it proved fatal for the bear.

The bear had taken the Everharts’ cooler and was heading back to the woods when 6-year-old Logan hurled a shovel at it. Fearing what might happen next, the Norcross father and ex-Marine grabbed the closest thing he could find — a log.

“[I] threw it at it, and it happened to hit the bear in the head,” Chris Everhart said. “I thought it just knocked it out, but it actually ended up killing the bear.”

"This is an occasion for the (world's) 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision," Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, religious affairs minister, later said in parliament.

"The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the 'sir' title," ul-Haq said, also urging Muslim countries to break diplomatic ties with London.

A research abstract that will be presented Wednesday at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS), finds that sleep deprivation, which can result in fatigue, is another factor that can impair troops' vigilance and decision-making with potentially dangerous consequences.

GURGAON, India — For a week, angry throngs from one of India's lower castes blocked roads with burning barricades, stoned police and clashed with rival castes to make a single, simple point: They want to be even lower.

With 25 people dead, the unrest spread to the fringes of New Delhi on Monday as thousands of Gujjars, a class of farmers and shepherds, pressed their demand to be officially shunted to the lowest rung of India's hereditary caste system so they can get government jobs and university spots reserved for such groups.