Decapitated

Hooded men armed with axes descended on an isolated farm village before dawn Friday, slitting the throats of residents or decapitating them. Villagers and hospital workers said more than 300 people were slain. The attack appeared to be the worst carnage since Algeria's Islamic insurgency began five years ago, although it was unclear who carried it out. Witnesses said severed heads lay on the doorsteps of Rais, a village in the Sidi Moussa region 15 miles south of the capital.

A 10-year-old boy who went to give his pet python a bowl of water Monday was held captive when the snake latched onto his hand and coiled tightly around his arm, defying efforts to pry, stab or saw it off. Paramedics were called only after Tanner Murabito was bitten a second time when he tried to force open the snake's mouth with his free hand. The boy's older brother also stabbed the 65-pound python several times with a steak knife before firefighters arrived.

A band of men armed with knives and axes decapitated 31 people who had been forced into the streets from their homes in Medea, south of Algiers, the El Watan newspaper reported. The attack by about 50 men took place early Saturday, the newspaper quoted local residents as saying. El Watan said a Medea resident called the paper, saying, "You have to do something. More than 30 people had their throats slit. Soon they're going to exterminate the entire town."

A parking lot fender-bender that decapitated a 1-year-old girl prompted a federal investigation and drew even more attention Wednesday to the potential dangers of air bags. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration dispatched a team from Los Angeles to investigate Tuesday night's accident, and concerned parents flooded health departments and Volkswagen dealerships with calls for more information.

LSD guru Timothy Leary has been dead three months, but a new documentary shows him still perfectly capable of blowing people's minds. The gruesome final scene of Paul Davids' "Timothy Leary's Dead" shows surgeons in a hospital room removing Leary's head from his body and placing it in a glass-covered cabinet to be cryogenically preserved. Leary's stepson, Zachary Leary, insists that his stepfather's body was intact when it was cremated after his death from prostate cancer May 31.

A man on a weekend fishing trip with his sons decided they were all possessed and beheaded his 14-year-old on a roadside while his younger son and passing drivers watched, authorities said. Eric Star Smith, 34, was jailed pending arraignment on charges of murder, child abuse, evidence tampering, driving while intoxicated and resisting an officer. "We have witnesses who saw him hacking at the boy's head at the side of the road," said Torrance County Sheriff Don Lyles said.

The 50-year-old vendor from South-Central Los Angeles managed to stifle a gasp, but the fingers of her left hand flew instinctively to her lips. The Norwalk retiree sitting two seats away took deep breaths and averted her glance. Next to her, the East Los Angeles soda truck driver, 32, looked as if he would be sick. For months, Judge Lance A. Ito had warned the jurors in the O.J.

A man was decapitated Friday while he was trying to hold an elevator door open for other passengers and his body fell down the elevator shaft, police said. "He was holding the elevator open with his back against the door when it went up and caught his head, decapitating him," police detective Ralph St. Just said. "He was helping one of the passengers out."

A man who attacked his estranged wife on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus she was driving was decapitated when he grabbed the wheel and the bus skidded out of control, caromed off a tree and slammed into a brick wall in Compton, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Tuesday.

An 11-year-old boy who was fishing with companions off a railroad bridge in Pico Rivera was decapitated by a passing freight train Saturday as he tried to race to safety. The 3,600-foot-long freight had come out of a sharp curve near Whittier Boulevard about 1:40 p.m. and was about to cross the bridge over the San Gabriel River when the engineer spotted the six youngsters on the trestle. The railroad man was unable to stop the train and frantically blew his air horn to warn the children.