Word: swats
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...viral video is raising an outcry in Pakistan - and highlighting the fact that in some parts of western Pakistan, the government is no longer in charge and the Taliban is. Filmed in the Swat Valley, where the government recently signed a controversial peace deal with the Taliban, the video apparently shows a 17-year-old girl pinned down by as many as three men - among them her brother - while a fourth flogs her repeatedly, chastising her for having an alleged affair. She lets out a shriek with every lash, pleading for mercy. Dozens of men look on, but nobody speaks...
...government's agreement with the Taliban in Swat included the imposition of religious law in the area, a move many legal experts and women's-rights groups had cautioned against. The valley, once a prime destination for Pakistan's honeymooners and hippies, was transformed in recent years into the front line of Pakistan's domestic war on terrorism. More than 1,500 people have been killed there, and at least 100,000 have fled. A cease-fire is now in place in exchange for the imposition of Shari'a law. But reports of the curtailment of women's rights...
...disrupted when Cambridge Police and the Cambridge bomb squad swarmed the area in response to a bomb threat. Police closed down Massachusetts Avenue, the Harvard Square MBTA stop, and several nearby Square businesses. “Where the T stop was, there must have been like eight or 10 SWAT cars and a big squad car parked there,” said Pierce E. Tria ’10. Tria said he saw Harvard and Cambridge police officers cordoning off Holyoke and Mount Auburn Streets. The scare was precipitated by a call to Cambridge police made by a pedestrian early...
...though not always the right ones. Colorado tightened restrictions on gun sales at gun shows ... but national legislation died in Congress. An epidemic of profiling swept U.S. high schools, but it was based largely on the erroneous idea that the killers were bullied outcasts. Armed-standoff tactics changed too. SWAT teams are now more likely to rush into a building and take down shooters immediately rather than establishing a perimeter and waiting for more information. That strategy may have saved lives at Virginia Tech, where in 2007, Cho Seung-Hui killed 32. (See pictures of the Virginia Tech shooting...
...cooperated extensively with U.S. efforts to target al-Qaeda militants on its own soil, facilitating the capture of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and scores of other operatives. Its army has lost several hundred men in clashes with various Pakistani Taliban groups in the tribal areas and the Swat Valley. Still, it's no secret that the Afghan Taliban's leadership continues to operate from the Pakistani city of Quetta, and reports of ongoing Pakistani backing for Taliban efforts in Afghanistan have surfaced regularly in recent years...