While much of the frenzy has centered on Zimmerman’s past run-ins with police and on Martin’s musings and photos posted to Twitter and MySpace, the avalanche of coverage has been unable to resolve the most critical unknowns: Who instigated the final confrontation? Did Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, have good reason to feel he was in danger? Did local police handle the case evenhandedly?

Past experience – for example, in the 1991 Rodney King beating – has demonstrated that facts aren’t easily agreed to when cases take on a racial tinge. Opinions and preconceptions have even greater currency in an era of 24-hour news and social networking.

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Two days after he was consecrated as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, Gregory Brewer was marching Monday with the crowd demanding justice for Trayvon Martin.

He was the only white clergyman to address the Sanford City Commission inside the Civic Center that evening, urging city leaders to address the concerns of the black community.

“I thought it was very courageous,” said Andy Searles, a pastor with Aloma United Methodist Church in Winter Park. “It would have been very easy for him to sit in his office and organize the paperwork on his desk, but he made a statement of what the church should be.”

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Data may have been targeted at a “U.S.-based entity,” and MasterCard’s own systems “have not been compromised in any manner,” the Purchase, New York-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. It didn’t specify how many accounts may have been affected.

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[This case]…is evolving into a case of two justices: separate and, like Jim Crow laws, far from equal.

From the apparent racial profiling, overt violation of neighborhood watch protocols and real-time police directives, to accusations of tampered evidence, to the failure to undertake reasonable measures afforded by the law, I count a multitude glaring discrepancies. How did “The System” fail to ensure that this boy’s life was not inconsequential?

As a citizen, I understand that no case is all black or all white, despite appearances to the contrary. I realize that justice is fraught with nuances, not the very least of which is Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which was designed to protect threatened parties, and in all irony of all ironies appears to be the very thing keeping the instigator out of prison, in complete contrast to the spirit of the controversial pro-gun law.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The insurgent violence stalking northern Nigeria has struck a long list of official targets, killing police and army officers, elected officials, high-ranking civil servants, United Nations workers and other perceived supporters of the Nigerian government.

Now it has an ominous new front: a war against schools.

Public and private schools here have been doused with gasoline at night and set on fire. Crude homemade bombs ”” soda bottles filled with gasoline ”” have been hurled at the bare-bones concrete classrooms Nigeria offers its children.

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The French Interior minister says Mohammed Merah, the prime suspect in seven murders in and around Toulouse, died Thursday morning in a jump from an apartment window after “shooting madly” at police who raided the building.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said police entered the apartment Thursday after hearing nothing from Merah overnight, only to be ambushed by the suspect who “came out of the bathroom shooting madly at everybody.”

“At the end, Mohammed Merah jumped out of the window with a weapon in hand, continuing to shoot. He was found dead on the ground below,” said Gueant.

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Syria is locked in an ominous and violent stalemate: With overwhelming firepower and a willingness to kill, President Bashar al-Assad could hold on to power for months or even years, keeping the opposition from controlling any territory and denying it breathing space to develop a coherent, effective leadership, according to analysts, diplomats and Syrians involved in the uprising.

Syrians and regional analysts say sheer force alone is unlikely to eradicate what has become a diffuse and unpredictable insurgency, one able to strike out even after the government has used crushing force against centers of resistance like Homs, Idlib and Dara’a. Broad areas of the country are hostile territory for government troops, and attackers have managed to hit centers of power, even in the capital, Damascus.

But with so much blood spilled, diplomacy stalled and both sides refusing to negotiate, there is no obvious path out….

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Seven years after Florida adopted its sweeping self-defense law, the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, has put that law at the center of an increasingly angry debate over how he was killed and whether law enforcement has the authority to charge the man who killed him.

The law, called Stand Your Ground, is one of 21 such laws around the country, many of them passed within the last few years. In Florida, it was pushed heavily by the National Rifle Association but opposed vigorously by law enforcement.

It gives the benefit of the doubt to a person who claims self-defense, regardless of whether the killing takes place on a street, in a car or in a bar ”” not just in one’s home, the standard cited in more restrictive laws. In Florida, if people feel they are in imminent danger from being killed or badly injured, they do not have to retreat, even if it would seem reasonable to do so. They have the right to “stand their ground” and protect themselves.

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French police are linking the shootings of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse to the killings of three soldiers of North African descent in two separate incidents last week.

The same gun and the same stolen scooter were used in all three attacks, sources close to the investigation say.

A teacher and three children were shot dead at the Ozar Hatorah school, and a teenage boy was seriously injured.

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A man aged 20 has been arrested in northern Italy on suspicion of plotting an attack on a synagogue in Milan.

The suspect, described as Moroccan-born, was said to have had details of the synagogue and plans for an attack on his computer.

Police in London said a 40-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion of collecting information useful to terrorism.

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Not far from Copacabana Beach here is a control room that looks straight out of NASA.

City employees in white jumpsuits work quietly in front of a giant wall of screens ”” a sort of virtual Rio, rendered in real time. Video streams in from subway stations and major intersections. A sophisticated weather program predicts rainfall across the city. A map glows with the locations of car accidents, power failures and other problems.

The order and precision seem out of place in this easygoing Brazilian city, which on this February day was preparing for the controlled chaos that is Carnaval. But what is happening here reflects a bold and potentially lucrative experiment that could shape the future of cities around the world.

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James Q. Wilson, a political scientist who coauthored the influential “Broken Windows” article in The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, which became a touchstone for the move toward community policing in Boston and cities across the country, died early this morning in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

He was being treated for leukemia, according to a family friend.

Dr. Wilson, who was 80 and lived North Andover, returned to Boston a few years ago to become the first senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College, and a distinguished scholar in the college’s political science department.

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New Jersey’s attorney general told Muslim leaders Saturday that he was still looking into the extent of New York Police Department surveillance operations in the state, yet stopped short of promising a formal investigation during a meeting that both sides characterized as productive.

Leaders from different New Jersey Muslim organizations met with Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa and state and federal law enforcement officials for nearly three hours in Trenton to discuss concerns over the NYPD’s activities in the state.

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Police are investigating racist e-mails sent to Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, after he spoke out against gay marriage.

North Yorkshire Police confirmed they are treating e-mails sent to the Ugandan-born Archbishop as potential hate crimes….

A police spokesman said: “We can confirm that a complaint has been received from the office of Archbishop John Sentamu, following the receipt of e-mails containing racially offensive statements. The e-mails are being investigated as a hate crime.”

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A year ago arrivals on the outskirts to Kano had to pass a sign forbidding alcohol consumption and banning women from riding on motorbikes. Now it is gone.

Kano may be the sixth-biggest Muslim city in the world””after Karachi, Jakarta, Dhaka, Cairo and Istanbul””but it is far from the most conservative. Women lift their hemlines to get on the back of achabas, motorbikes that are the main source of transport. Mini vans carry both sexes to their destination. It is possible to get a cold beer to wash away sand inhaled during a day on the edge of the Sahara.

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Nigeria’s president has sacked the chief of police, Hafiz Ringim, forcing him to retire early, a statement from the presidency says.

It follows a wave of attacks by the Islamist group Boko Haram, the latest in Kano on Friday in which 185 people died.

The group says it wants to overthrow the government and impose Islamic law.

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Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone….

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Pseudoephedrine is found in over-the-counter cold medicines such as Sudafed. While these pills may provide relief to cold sufferers, to criminals who are in the business of making meth, these pills are gold. Meth-makers legally buy as much of the raw product as they can at local pharmacies and drug stores.

A federal law designed to crack down on methamphetamine abuse sets a hard limit on pseudoephedrine: No more than nine grams, or about seven packs, per customer each month. But to get around that limit, which is electronically tracked by drug stores in certain states, meth users will team up so that each can buy the maximum at once. [Deputy director Dan] Smoot explained that it’s a practice known as “smurfing,” named after the little blue cartoon characters, Smurfs, who are small, but mighty as a team.

Caught this one on the morning run. The video is highly recommended if you have time. Did you know that Kentucky is number 3 in America in Methamphetamine production? I didn’t. Read it all–KSH.

The inevitable resignation of the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s, Giles Fraser, via the predictable medium of Twitter, is a sad day for one of our great national churches. But the departure of this able man, and now the planned reopening of the cathedral, should at least bring to an end the hand-wringing and posturing of the past two weeks. My paramount concern throughout has been that the reputation of Christianity is being damaged by the episode, and, more widely, that the possibility of fruitful and peaceful protest has been brought into disrepute.

The Blitz only closed St Paul’s for four days. By contrast, the Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters, camped outside Wren’s masterpiece, managed to put it out of business for a week. It has been a debacle that should prompt urgent public debate both within the Church of England, and throughout society at large.

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Wearing a bulletproof vest and a ball cap marked “POLICE,” Rich Riney grabbed a ringing phone off a wood-paneled wall in the squat, cinder-block building where he works.

“Cottageville Police Department,” he said in a perfect, customer-service tone of voice.

Not only is Riney an on-duty patrolman and a lieutenant in this three-man department, he’s the receptionist, too. And, thanks to budget cuts, he and the other guys also are part-time housekeepers these days. “We had to get rid of the cleaning crew,” Riney said. “And we cut back on landscaping to two times a month instead of every week.”

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