TommieMedia

To the outside world, Betty Neumar was a diminutive Georgia grandmother who operated beauty shops, attended church and raised money for charity. But when North Carolina investigators in 2008 reopened a 25-year-old murder case, they discovered that Neumar had left behind a decades-long trail of five dead husbands in five states.

Somalia’s president congratulated government soldiers for killing the al-Qaida mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed said Sunday that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was hiding in Somalia and was responsible for violence in the Horn of Africa nation. Ahmed showed reporters documents, pictures and videos he said government troops recovered from Mohammed.

An endangered Mexican gray wolf was shot and killed Wednesday after it escaped from its enclosure at the Minnesota Zoo. The wolf got out on to the zoo’s Northern Trail and ran toward the bison and prairie dog exhibits. The area was evacuated, the wolf was tracked down and then shot by trained zoo staff because it was considered a danger to people.

About 42 million people were forced to flee their homes because of natural disasters around the world in 2010, more than double the number during 2009, according to a report presented by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. That was an  increase from 17 million displaced people in 2009. More than 90 percent of the disaster displacements were caused by weather-related hazards.

The soldiers of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division came to Afghanistan confident that their  counterinsurgency expertise would  again turn a surge strategy into a  success. Now they are headed home uncertain of lasting changes on the  battlefield but certain of one thing: 131 of their number died during the deployment.

Hip-hop artist Brother Ali, The New Standards and “American Idol” finalist Paris Bennett are among artists  joining a benefit concert for victims of the North Minneapolis tornado.

While America’s last 10 years of war have propelled women into new and far more risky roles across the military, there are still some doors that are closed. Chief among those are the special operations forces. But perhaps that door is inching open.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., sent letters to the two companies Wednesday asking that all apps for the iPhone, iPad and devices running Google’s Android software provide “clear and understandable privacy policies.” Such policies would tell users what personal information the app collects and how that information is used and potentially shared. Right now, it’s up to individual developers whether to spell that out.

The St. Thomas Liturgical Choir is preparing to go to Europe for its international tour and pilgrimage. The choir will leave Monday, May 23, and will return June 1 after the 10-day trip.