Recent works by Tina Susman

Stars take new leading roles

George Clooney was there. Mia Farrow was there. So were Drew Barrymore, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Naomi Watts, Matt Damon and Bono.

DARFUR: INSIDE THE CRISIS

A war against leprosy

The shriveled woman with pale eyes and rags cloaking her thin frame held out the flesh-and-bone knob that used to be her hand. Flies covered the scabby, reddened stump, but she was oblivious to them, unable to see the buzzing pests with her blind eyes and unable to feel them with the deadened nerve endings left where her fingers once were.

DARFUR: INSIDE THE CRISIS

Struggles of the South

On a sweltering afternoon, the university clock tower reads 8:55, just as it has for years. It is a symbol of a dilapidated city stopped in time, along with the fans that hang motionless from ceilings of most buildings, and the rusted wreck of a boat run aground in the dark, muddy Nile, a few feet from where women wash clothes in the murky water.

DARFUR: INSIDE THE CRISIS

Lives in limbo at Sudan camp

For three months, in the late stages of pregnancy, Debeza Yar walked on bare feet through southern Sudan, heading east from Western Equatoria province. Her destination was Bor, her hometown on the White Nile River, which civil war had emptied years earlier.

UN accord on Darfur

In a rare show of unanimity, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution yesterday intended to speed the deployment of UN troops into Sudan's war-torn Darfur region to enforce a new peace accord.

A flawed peace pact

The tattered tents stretch as far as the eye can see on the edge of town. The narrow paths buzz with weary-looking people, bleating goats and whining donkeys hauling rickety wooden carts, a vision almost medieval in its wretchedness.

Starved for a solution

A 5-month-old boy who, at 7 1/2 pounds looked as fragile as a newborn, sucked formula through a thin tube positioned against his emaciated mother's chest. Some day, when his mother is able to provide milk to nourish her son, it is hoped he will have learned to associate her breast with food and be weaned from the tube.

DARFUR: INSIDE THE CRISIS

Where the Despair Begins

In the three years and three months since war erupted in Darfur, an isolated region in western Sudan, hundreds of thousands have died and millions have been forced from their homes. On May 5, the Sudan government and one of three rebel groups reached a U.S.-brokered peace agreement raising the prospect for an end to Darfur's agony Now the region's fate hangs on whether other rebel groups sign the accord and whether the United Nations is able to deploy peacekeepers to this embattled area.

DARFUR: INSIDE THE CRISIS

Using rape as a weapon of war

The gunmen eyed the 11 women for a few moments, as if scanning a menu. Then they chose three: Buthereina Hassab el-Dama, her sister and their cousin.

Factions that are factors in Darfur

JANJAWEED: Translated from Arabic as "armed man on a horse." Though the government says the janjaweed are independent thugs over whom it has no control, international investigators say they are fighters recruited by the government from nomadic, Arab-dominated tribes to fight alongside soldiers.

Sudan peacekeepers sought

Sudan's president still has not accepted the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops in the country's war-torn Darfur region, Bush administration officials said yesterday, something that could hinder implementation of a deal to end the 3-year-old conflict.

Too little, too late in Darfur?

The Bush administration led last week's efforts to push the warring parties in Sudan's Darfur region to sign a peace deal, but critics of the United States' handling of the crisis say it should have been far more aggressive two years ago when it first declared the war a genocide.

ALL WORK AND NO PAY

Lured to the Big Easy with promise of Katrina cleanup jobs, bands of workers face ...

Gary Wiggins was down on his luck and living in an Atlanta homeless shelter when a man named Harrison Braddy made an appealing offer - a job in New Orleans with a company cleaning up the hurricane-battered city, along with cheap housing.

LOOKING FOR THE LOST

The search for children scattered by Katrina

Three months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast, the fate of more than 1,300 children remains unknown. Until a few days ago, Lil Joe and Kolenik Williams, brothers from New Orleans, were among the lost.

Answers hard to come by for families kept at distance

Each day for more than three months, Linda L. Jackson has wondered if her two grown daughters and seven grandchildren, ages 8 to 16, are alive.

Errors in evacuation

As investigators struggle to resolve the cases of hundreds of children missing since Hurricane Katrina, they and relief workers who specialize in crises say the evacuation of New Orleans was fraught with missteps that made a chaotic situation far worse.

Survivors remember the Tulsa race riots of 1921

Eighty-five years ago, allegations that a black man had tried to assault a white woman in a city elevator spurred hundreds of whites to attack what was one of the country's most prosperous black communities, a bustling neighborhood called Greenwood.

They live in fear as he walks free

Even now, 11 1/2 years after she was gang-raped and beaten by masked men in military uniforms, the woman known as Jane Doe II recoils at giving any hint to her identity or whereabouts.

They were civil rights trailblazers, too

Five years ago, Mary Ware went to her dresser, pulled a pile of yellowed newspaper clippings from a drawer and spread them out for her teenage granddaughter, Kanoshua, to see.

Are they here to stay?

Robin LaPresle worked her bartender's shift in New Orleans the night of Aug. 28, then put her cat in the car and floored it, heading east as Hurricane Katrina closed in.

THE HURRICANES: THE AFTERMATH

Rita's remnants

Rescuers combed the soggy, battered landscape for victims of Hurricane Rita yesterday as authorities tried to block over-eager residents from returning home to towns ill-equipped to handle them.

HURRICANE

Chaos before the storm

Hurricane Rita became slightly less powerful but no less fearsome Friday as it bore down on the Gulf Coast, causing death and damage even before Saturday's expected landfall.

RITA AND KATRINA

Rita rages, Texas trembles

More than a million people were ordered to evacuate the Gulf Coast yesterday after Hurricane Rita burgeoned into a Category 5 storm, with 165-mph winds, and churned toward Texas in a scenario hauntingly similar to Katrina's.

Hired to haul aid, arrest in looting

Three truckers under federal contract to deliver ice and water to Hurricane Katrina survivors stole hundreds of dollars worth of Barbie dolls, underwear, appliances and other goods from a store outside New Orleans, sheriff's deputies said yesterday.

KATRINA - FEMA

Effort mired in bureaucratic hash

When the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, promised $2,000 debit cards to Hurricane Katrina's neediest evacuees, Susan Anastassiadis, who was watching Brown's televised announcement Wednesday in her Deer Park home, sprang into action.

KATRINA: THE OVERVIEW

Water pressure

Despite warnings they were in the midst of a "contaminated soup," thousands of stalwarts yesterday were resisting New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's order to abandon the flooded city, and nobody was forcing them out.

KATRINA: THE SEARCH CONTINUES

Desperately seeking survivors

Scouring neighborhoods still submerged by filthy flood waters, rescuers yesterday embarked on a desperate door-to-door bid to save the last of Hurricane Katrina's survivors, many of them elderly or invalid left stranded in attics or on balconies.

KATRINA EVACUATIONS

'It's been hell' for them

Fires blazed in New Orleans' shattered downtown yesterday as rescue workers, some in water scooters, tried to reach people still stranded in their homes six days after Hurricane Katrina sent the waters of Lake Pontchartrain sloshing over the city.

KATRINA - HELP AT LAST

Aid, but little comfort

National Guardsmen finally hit the seething streets of New Orleans Friday, and efforts to clear Hurricane Katrina survivors from the uninhabitable city appeared to gain momentum. But progress was matched by new obstacles that underscored what many said was an inexcusably sluggish response by the Bush administration.

KATRINA DAYS OF DESPAIR

A new reign of chaos and fear

Desperation boiled over into rage yesterday as efforts to evacuate Hurricane Katrina survivors from increasingly squalid conditions in New Orleans faltered in the face of the sheer enormity of the task. The chief of the city's homeland security called the federal response "a national disgrace."

KATRINA: THE AWFUL TOLL

Fear flows along with the waters

New Orleans' mayor warned that thousands could be dead in the submerged city yesterday as fetid floodwaters continued to ooze through the streets and rescue workers adopted drastic measures to handle Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, which was proving as disastrous as the storm itself.

Death, debris in Mississippi

More than 100 people were feared dead in Mississippi alone yesterday after Hurricane Katrina left a sodden swath of destruction along the Gulf Coast, and rescue workers picking through the remnants of shattered neighborhoods warned that the toll was sure to rise.

HURRICANE KATRINA: PATH OF DESTRUCTION

Under water, overwhelmed

Hurricane Katrina killed at least 55 people as it slammed into the Gulf Coast "like a ton of bricks" yesterday, hurling boats onto highways, crumbling buildings and leaving more than a million without power in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

Cruelty's legacy

Few thought the tortured puppy would survive when he was brought, burned and bound with wires, to the Heartland Animal Hospital on Aug. 1.

BTK letters never got through

Thirty-one years ago, a serial killer slipped a letter detailing some of his murders into a library book, then called a Wichita newspaper and told a columnist where to find it. In misspelled, rambling prose, the letter writer claimed responsibility for the ghastly murders nine months earlier of a couple and two of their children, and he warned that more killings were planned.

JUSTICE HAS ITS SAY

After victims' kin sound off to BTK serial killer, judge sentences him to max - at least 175 years

WICHITA - The courtroom was silent as one minute ticked by. Everyone was waiting for Delores Davis to die.

Chilling details of stalkings, slayings

In a series of chilling revelations, investigators yesterday described confessed serial killer Dennis Rader as a bondage-obsessed sadist who started out strangling cats and dogs, and who later exercised his hands with a squeeze ball after realizing how much harder it is to strangle people.

Reliving the pain once more

WICHITA, Kan. - Wichitans know that for 30 years, Dennis L. Rader prowled their streets as the BTK killer, stalking victims he called "projects," hiding in their closets, then binding, torturing and slowly killing them when they arrived home. They know he got his sexual kicks watching people die, including an 11-year-old girl he dangled from a pipe in her basement after murdering her parents and brother.

Feds turn up the heat on 'ecoterrorists'

Who is a terrorist?

London's mourning is fleeting

It was only a week after the July 7 bombings that tore through London's public transport system, but Rosie Kentish already thought it was time to call a halt to the vigils, flowery memorials and very public displays of mourning.

Tolerance is tested

Damage control was on full display at London's most famous mosque, a former hotbed of radical rhetoric, as Muslims arrived for Friday prayers last week. A large banner promising "A New Beginning," along with a new image and better community relations, flapped from a window as the devout streamed in, past a sign warning they were under government surveillance.

Blair blasts Muslim extremists

Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a blistering attack yesterday on radical Muslims' "perversion of religious faith" and hinted at far tougher anti-terror moves as the death toll from last week's bombings rose to 55 and police released a chilling photograph of the four attackers heading to the train that carried them to their fatal mission.

Arrested in Cairo

Egyptian authorities Friday detained a U.S.- and British-trained chemist who had lived recently in the same city as some of the suspected suicide attackers in last week's bombings, and who held the key to an apartment where the bombs may have been made.

A city in silent grieving

For once, the city was silent or as silent as a city this size could be at high noon on a sunny summer's day. Buses and taxis pulled to the curbs. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks. Voices fell to whispers. Even cell phones stopped ringing as London set aside two minutes yesterday for a silent tribute to the dozens killed a week earlier in what police say were a series of suicide bombings on the public transportation system.

HOLLYWOOD'S LOST CITY

A famed movie set buried in the sand

For those who thought "Sideways" and the Michael Jackson trial were the most star-studded events to hit central California, Peter Brosnan would like to direct you to this sand-blasted town of dunes, railway tracks and broccoli fields.

Not guilty, but is he innocent?

Michael Jackson may have been acquitted, but if jurors' words are anything to go by, he was not exonerated.

JACKSON WALKS

Thriller in courtroom

In a stunning rebuff to prosecutors who have pursued Michael Jackson for more than a decade, a jury yesterday acquitted him on all 10 counts in his child molestation trial, with some indicating that they suspected he had a history of pedophilia but did not believe the accusers in this case.

Jurors bound by their task

They came to the day of judgment in khakis and short-sleeve shirts, in plaids and pink and purple, a folksy sampling of Santa Maria, Calif., who delivered a stunning decision.

Wheels of justice turn secretly

When word came down that jurors deliberating Michael Jackson's fate had a question, anticipation buzzed through the media throng packed into pens in the courthouse's wind-blown parking lot. Could the question offer a clue into jurors' thinking as they wrestled with the 10 charges Jackson faced? Did they want a re-reading of testimony? Were they nearing a decision and seeking additional guidance?

At Jackson trial, talk is cheap

Michael Jackson's defense attorney had a distinctive way of introducing himself to prosecution witnesses during the pop star's child molestation trial. "My name is Thomas Mesereau, and I speak for Michael Jackson," he would say in his velvety baritone as he stood up to cross-examine them.

What's ailing king of pop?

Is Michael Jackson low on electrolytes? Is he dehydrated? Is he plagued by kidney stones? Is he eating and sleeping? And what's an electrolyte, anyway, and where do you get some if you are, indeed, lacking them?

Courting stars is trial and error

The man with the oversized chin walked confidently to the witness stand, turned to the court clerk and held up his right hand. "My name is Jay Leno. L-E-N-O," he said loudly, as if anybody didn't know.

Jackson's fate in jurors' hands

Jurors began deliberating Michael Jackson's fate Friday after prosecutors, getting the last word in closing arguments, scoffed at the pop star's claim that his love for children is innocent and portrayed him as a middle-aged man obsessed with little boys.

A molester or a victim?

In accusatory tones dripping with sarcasm and tinged with anger, attorneys in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial yesterday offered starkly different views of the defendant and his accusers in closing arguments following three months of testimony.

Jackson jury gets instructions

After three months of watching videos about Michael Jackson and hearing testimony about the pop star, jurors were told yesterday how they may use that information to determine Jackson's guilt or innocence as the judge in his child molestation trial delivered instructions designed to guide their deliberations.

The accuser has the last word

The dark-haired boy slouched in an overstuffed chair, mumbling so badly that the police officer coaxing information from him strained to hear the words.

Video reveals accuser account

Prosecutors in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial Friday showed jurors a video of Jackson's accuser reluctantly telling police that the entertainer had fondled him and gotten him drunk, concluding its rebuttal phase in the case.

Jackson accuser video OKd

The judge in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial ruled yesterday that prosecutors may show a video of his alleged victim being interviewed by police, setting the stage for a lengthy rebuttal period that may force the boy back onto the witness stand.

Defense in Jackson trial rests its case

The defense in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial rested its case Wednesday after comedian and actor Chris Tucker testified that he was so suspicious of Jackson's eventual accusers that he told the pop star, "Michael, something ain't right," and warned him to avoid them.

Leno doesn't aid Jackson defense

In a trial where the unexpected has come to be expected, "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno upheld the tradition yesterday by testifying that the family accusing Michael Jackson of molestation never asked him for money or gifts.

Mom painted as welfare cheat

With talk-show host Jay Leno expected on the witness stand today, Michael Jackson's defense team entered the final phase of its case by hammering away at his chief accuser's credibility with evidence that she was a welfare cheat.

Simmering race issue

On a chilly morning outside the Michael Jackson child molestation trial, one voice stood out from the usual chants of "Innocent!" being shouted by fans. "This case is about racism!" the voice screeched as the star alighted from his sport utility vehicle, waved at the crowd, and headed into court.

Jackson witness testifies on inaccuracies

A woman who was friends with a family that later accused Michael Jackson of molestation and false imprisonment provided more ammunition to his defense Thursday, testifying that the accusers spoke often of their "beautiful friendship" with the pop star and were angry over a 2003 documentary that suggested he behaved improperly with boys.

Jackson's cousin takes witness stand

A 12-year-old cousin of Michael Jackson cried yesterday as he testified that two brothers, who later accused the star of molestation, urged him to watch pornography and masturbate with them at the entertainer's Neverland Valley Ranch.

Neverland staff: Accusers weren't Jackson's captives

The credibility of Michael Jackson's key accusers came in for a major drubbing yesterday as a string of defense witnesses contradicted their claims that Jackson thugs shadowed them constantly - even to dental and leg-waxing appointments - and plied a boy with alcohol before molesting him.

Jackson's ex-lawyer envisioned 'disaster'

Michael Jackson's former attorney said Friday that, long before a family had accused the star of child molestation and false imprisonment, he viewed their relationship with Jackson as a "pending disaster" and suspected they were after his client's money.

Jackson’s ‘suspicious’ advisers

Pop star Michael Jackson had $10 million in unpaid bills but only "tens of thousands of dollars" in cash in early 2003, and associates were making bad decisions on his behalf and trying to take control of his wealth, a former lawyer testified Thursday as defense attorneys in Jackson's child molestation and conspiracy trial continued efforts to portray the entertainer as an innocent dupe of greedy hangers-on.

Neverland manager admits lie

In a tension-filled cross-examination, the manager of Michael Jackson's Neverland Valley Ranch admitted yesterday that he lied to law enforcement officials when he told them he knew nothing about children sleeping in the pop star's bedroom.

'They were excited to be there'

The boy allegedly molested by pop star Michael Jackson "appeared to be having fun," as did his brother, sister and mother during a long stretch at Jackson's Neverland Valley ranch at the time they claim to have been held captive there, the ranch manager testified yesterday.

Rowe turns tables on prosecution

In what appeared to be a major setback for prosecutors in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial, the singer's ex-wife yesterday insisted that a February 2003 video in which she praised Jackson's parenting skills was not scripted by Jackson associates seeking to rebut an earlier television documentary that had tarnished his image.

Brazil trip booking detailed

The woman who used to organize Michael Jackson's air travel said yesterday she was asked to arrange four one-way tickets to Brazil in March 2003 for a family that now accuses the pop star of trying to spirit them out of the country at that time.

Jackson's ex to take the stand

The judge in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial yesterday rejected a defense motion to prevent the entertainer's former wife from testifying as prosecutors scrambled to shore up their case by calling witnesses to corroborate claims of a conspiracy hatched by Jackson aides to silence his accusers.

A meandering trail of evidence

Spectators in Michael Jackson's child molestation case could be forgiven for thinking they had walked into the wrong courtroom late last week. Like a spicy thriller accidentally spliced with a video showing cement hardening, the case took a mind-numbingly dull turn as prosecutors began wrapping up their case, something they expect to do this week.

Setbacks for Jackson prosecutors

Prosecutors in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial suffered a setback Thursday when the judge refused to allow testimony from an expert on battered women, who could have helped salvage the credibility of a key witness -- the alleged victim's mother.

Neverland logs perused

A police officer who used to work as a security guard at Michael Jackson's Neverland Valley ranch said yesterday that in early 2003, ranch management ordered guards not to let a boy allegedly molested by Jackson leave Neverland, bolstering prosecution claims that the youngster was held against his will there.

Counselor: Jackson's accuser was a disciplinary problem

A school counselor said Tuesday that the boy Michael Jackson allegedly molested was a constant disciplinary problem, who "acted up" in class, talked back to teachers and received poor grades both before and after his alleged captivity at Jackson's Neverland Valley ranch, testimony that contradicted family claims that he only became a problem after his time at Neverland.

Defense: Jackson accuser’s mom a grifter

Michael Jackson's lawyer wound down his cross-examination of a key witness Monday by portraying her as a greedy grifter who saw Jackson and his celebrity pals as a ticket out of poverty and who used her son's cancer to get cash from them, along with a car, laptop computer, meals out and shopping trips.

'Nightmare' trip

It was the first vacation in years that Caren Hogan had taken with her husband and two children, and she was looking forward to swimming with dolphins. Instead, the four found themselves trapped in monstrous weather, watching funnel clouds form in the sea, as the Norwegian Dawn cruise ship pushed through a storm and was slammed by a seven-story wave that injured four passengers.

Witness twists her fate on stand

She's a trial lawyer's nightmare, a whiny-voiced drama queen who gives evasive and sometimes nonsensical responses, and who was in tears within minutes of taking the witness stand in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial.

Jackson attorney assails accuser's credibility

A key accuser in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial gushed in reverential tones about the pop star in a video that Jackson's attorney showed to jurors yesterday as he tore into the woman's testimony, portraying her as a master of deception who bilked JC Penney out of more than $150,000 and then wove an incredible tale of abduction and captivity by the pop star in hopes of getting money from him.

A new level of strange

The mother of a boy allegedly molested by Michael Jackson said yesterday that a goon squad of Jackson loyalists shadowed her for weeks, tapped her phones, confiscated her family's passports, pulled her children from school, filmed her and even tried to block her ill son from visiting the doctor, all in an elaborate scheme to prevent them from saying or doing anything that might tarnish the pop star's reputation.