Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell today said he will ask Amish elders if they want state police protection from a Kansas church group that plans to demonstrate at funerals of five girls fatally shot in an attack on their one-room schoolhouse.

Five people face criminal charges after a weekend confrontation with members of a Kansas church group that pickets military funerals because it believes US casualties in Iraq are a sign of God’s punishment for America’s tolerance of homosexuality, authorities said today.

In the end, it wasn’t a fingerprint or a blood spatter that led authorities to the woman suspected of strangling a mother-to-be and cutting the baby from her womb.

A FOUR-DAY-OLD girl who was cut from her strangled mother’s womb was in “remarkably good” condition yesterday, a hospital spokeswoman said, and the alleged attacker faced an initial court appearance.

The four-day-old girl who was cut from her strangled mother’s womb was in “remarkably good” condition today as the alleged attacker faced an initial court appearance.

Police today charged a woman accused of strangling an eight-months’-pregnant woman and cutting the baby from her womb in a macabre attack that shocked America.

WHITE-POWER groups are making a comeback in the US after losing support in the wake of the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York.

A woman who called the parents of a missing girl claiming to be their long-lost daughter has been accused of committing a cruel hoax.

Massive firework displays in US cities rounded off America’s July 4 celebrations – the nation’s 227th birthday.