Mourning

Hundreds came to the South Gate city auditorium Tuesday to mourn Cindi Santana, a 17-year-old South East High School student whose life was hailed as a miracle and death decried as a tragedy. Santana, a senior, was allegedly stabbed by her ex-boyfriend Sept. 30 during a lunchtime attack on campus. Another student and a dean were injured when they tried to restrain Abraham Lopez, 18. He remains in custody. The crowd lined the sides of the hall, crying and wiping away tears.

For the last decade, USC has enrolled the largest number of international students of any college in the country: 8,615 last year. The Los Angeles university worked hard to achieve that - recruiting students from China, India and South Korea, among 100 countries in all, and providing services for the foreign students once they get here. Now campus officials are faced with the slayings this week of two graduate engineering students from China in a shooting about a mile off campus.

The husband of an Iraqi immigrant who was savagely beaten in the couple's El Cajon home issued an emotional plea Tuesday for help in finding the killer "of this innocent woman. " Kassim Al-Himidi told reporters after an Islamic memorial service for his wife, Shaima Alawadi, that he wants to confront the person who bludgeoned her to death and left a threatening note telling her to return to their native country and calling her a terrorist. "The main question we want to ask," Al-Himidi said in Arabic, with English translation provided by his 15-year-old son Mohammed, "is 'what are you getting out of this?

Chalk another one up for myopic capitalist greed. CAROLINA P. BRIONES Pomona

Any self-respecting postmodern dandy knows the color black is tragically hip, but Kevin Jones can tell you why. Jones curated the ghoulishly fabulous Victorian displays on view downtown in ''Mourning Glory: Fashion's Untimely Demise,'' at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Authentic right down to the human hair jewelry, the tableaux document the fetish for the funereal that swept the world during Queen Victoria's 40-year bereavement after the death of Prince Albert in 1861.

"The Talk of The Town" by Bob Sipchen (May 11) belongs more properly in the obituary section. As one of very few survivors who can boast of having cut his literary teeth on Harold Ross' first edition of a once-noble institution, I mourn its passing. Publisher S. I. Newhouse and (Editor) Tina Brown have killed the New Yorker and converted the corpse to the Journal of the Middle Finger Generation. I shall not renew my subscription, which follows that of my parents for almost 70 years continuity.

Millions of Coptic Christians turned out across Egypt on Sunday to mourn Pope Shenouda III and reflect on the sharpening tensions Christians here face as Islamists have risen in power since last year's overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Shenouda, who died Saturday at age 88, led the Coptic Orthodox Church for more than 40 years. He was looked upon as a spiritual, social and sometimes political leader who guarded the rights of Egypt's minority Christian population in a region prone to religious animosities.

REPORTING FROM KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- Prayers and muffled sobs filled the air Monday during remembrances by Afghan villagers for 16 of their neighbors, nine of them children, who were killed a day earlier during a shooting rampage allegedly carried out by an American soldier. In the capital, Kabul, parliament passed a resolution condemning the "brutal and inhuman" act by the accused assailant, identified by the U.S. military as a sergeant who acted alone in his attack on civilians near his base in Kandahar province.

When gunfire echoed in the darkness before dawn, many villagers assumed it must be a night raid, in which U.S.-led troops swoop down on residential compounds across Afghanistan to arrest suspected insurgents. So the safest course, people thought, was to stay quiet and remain indoors. But for some on Sunday, home was no safe haven. The gunman found them. Chanted prayers and muffled sobbing filled the air on Monday during remembrances by Afghan villagers for 16 of their neighbors, nine of them children, who were killed a day earlier during a shooting rampage that authorities said was undertaken by a lone American soldier near his base in the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan.

Angel Babcock, called Indiana's "miracle toddler,"  was buried Monday, ending one story of hope as Midwestern crews trying to clean up after last week's tornadoes battled worsening weather. The toddler's grieving grandmother told RTV.com on Sunday she had thought of the girl as her "guardian Angel. " With her granddaughter's death, Kathy Babcock said, she no longer had one guardian angel: "I have five. " Angel's mother, Moriah Babcok, her father, Joseph Babcock, an infant sister and a 3-year-old brother were killed Friday when a tornado destroyed their mobile home in New Pekin, Ind. Angel's survival had been called miraculous after she was found in a field near the home and was able to open her eyes.  But her condition deteriorated and she died Sunday of extensive head and neck injuries, Reuters reported.

Alex Weinschenker was born 23 years ago last month. He was his parents' only child, and he was beautiful. He had a sparkle in his eye and as a small boy in Hancock Park, he loved reading "The Lorax" and "The Phantom Tollbooth," and making three-dimensional cities out of paper and tape. He was so smart, but different. He did not go with the flow. Less than one year into UC Santa Cruz, he declared himself done with formal education. "You're always taking the hard road," said his father, Greg, to which he replied, "No, I'm taking the road less traveled.

In the hours immediately following the announcement of Whitney Houston's death, social media exploded in a frenzy of testimonials, declarations of undying love and boundless grief, and — predictably — a small but steadfast stream of crude, even cruel, jokes. Suffocating sentimentality and barbaric unfeelingness are, after all, flip sides of the same coin of grandstanding emotionalism. Celebrities took to Twitter to express shock and condolences. On Facebook among the general public, there was a race to post the most obscure YouTube clip and a seeming competition over who could put up the most heart-wrenching status update.

The coffins came down the hill in an intermittent procession Thursday as families focused their rage on police and military forces for not preventing a soccer riot that left 74 people dead and heightened the lawlessness threatening Egypt's unfinished revolution. Mothers wept and fathers railed as coffins were carried one by one from the morgue in Cairo. Sisters fainted and brothers, some with their own wounds bandaged, turned their heads as names were called and bodies, many wrapped in sheets, were collected and driven over a rutted road toward cemeteries across the city.

Reporting from San Francisco -- Janette "Netty" Navarro used sing-song sounds to make her needs known. John Hernandez was admired for his sweetness — and his insistent style of letting others know when he was hungry or thirsty. Monica Calderon, joyful and affectionate, was beside herself when she and other young women from the group home were hosted at a local high school prom. They prettied up for the occasion, wearing make-up and corsages. The disabled young adults — ages 22, 21 and 24, respectively — died along with two others when the Mt. Carmel Adult Residential Facility, a single-story home in the Northern California town of Marina, became engulfed in flames late Saturday.