The World - Oct. 25, 2012

THURSDAY

The Boy Scouts of America released 20,000 pages of files laying bare child sexual abuse in the organization between 1965 and 1985. The pages included 1,247 files on suspected and convicted pedophiles.

A U.S. military court ruled that Fort Hood shooting suspect Major Nidal Hasan must shave his beard, which he says he grew because of his Muslim faith, before appearing for court-martial on murder charges connected to the 2009 rampage.

Los Angeles County Assessor John Noguez was arrested and charged with accepting bribes from a consultant whose clients he allegedly aided by slashing their property values to save them millions of dollars in taxes.

A Texas high school cheerleading team may continue using religious scriptures on banners at football games for now, a federal judge ruled, saying the students had a constitutional right to express their faith on school property.

A gunman opened fire at Las Dominicanas M & M Salon in Casselberry, Fla., killing three women and wounding another before fleeing and committing suicide at a nearby house.

FRIDAY

Big Tex, the 52-foot-tall cowboy mascot for the State Fair of Texas, went up in flames due to a suspected electrical malfunction, reducing the animated structure to little more than a charred skeletal frame. Smoke was seen billowing from Big Tex’s head before flames engulfed his body and torched its cowboy hat, face, torso and jeans.

Police in France were trying to identify the skeleton of a man believed to have lain undiscovered in his bed for more than 15 years.

WEEKEND

A heavy New York City police presence Saturday discouraged a group of hundreds of skateboarders from defying a court order that banned the annual race through midtown Manhattan known as the Broadway Bomb.

A gunman opened fire at Azana Salon & Spa in Brookfield, Wisc., killing at least three people and wounding four others before committing suicide on the scene.

An earthquake that killed nine people in Spain last year may have been triggered by decades of pumping water from a nearby natural underground reservoir, suggesting human activities played a role in moving Earth’s crust, scientists reported Sunday.

Ed Grigor of Binghamton, New York, received a 23-jewel wristwatch that had been stolen from him while he served in the Navy 53 years ago.

MONDAY

Six earthquake experts were convicted of manslaughter in an Italian court for failing to give adequate warning of the 2009 earthquake in the city of L’Aquila that killed 308 people.

A 22-year-old man hopped into an idling Trailways bus in downtown Spokane and took the vehicle on an hourlong joyride before being arrested outside in the Valley.

An Austrian artist installed a one-way mirror in a Vienna cafe that allows men to peek from their restroom into the ladies room. The mirror only shows women at the sink. In related news, there’s a place in France...

Soula Alevridou, a stocky 67-year-old woman who runs a line of luxury brothels, has taken up sponsorship of the Voukefalas soccer club in Greece as athletic clubs try to survive the country’s economic crisis.

The world’s biggest bra, a “mega 1,360B,” is being auctioned for a breast cancer charity. The bra is nearly as big as two tennis courts and weighs as much as 1,800 traditional bras.

TUESDAY

Talk about a pole tax: A New York court ruled pole dancers at the state’s strip clubs are not official artists and thus do not qualify for tax-exempt status and must pay taxes on their tips.

A shark killed a male surfer at Surf Beach near Vandenberg Air Force Base off California’s coast in the second fatal shark attack at the same beach in two years.

A measure on the Arizona ballot will ask residents whether the state should take sovereign ownership over the Grand Canyon away from the federal government.

A 41-year-old car washer from northeastern Brazil shocked his family by turning up at his own wake after his family mistakenly identified a murdered local man at the morgue as him.

Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson pledged $100 million to New York’s Central Park Conservancy, making the largest gift ever in the history of the city’s 155-year-old urban icon.

WEDNESDAY

AngloGold Ashanti fired 12,000 South African wildcat strikers who ignored a deadline to return to work, the latest company to resort to mass firings after weeks of crippling labor unrest. Some 100,000 gold miners are on strike in the county.

Four military planes attacked an arms factory in Khartoum, Sudan, where there was a huge fire overnight. Sudanese officials blamed the attack on Israeli planes.

Compiled by Gazette staff from a variety

of sources.