McClatchy Newspapers

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- If circulation at the detention center library is an indicator, captives are keeping busy in their cellblocks with comics, Westerns, self-help books and video games.

SEATTLE — Forty-four members of at least two church youth groups were injured Sunday during a hayride on Shaw Island, Wash., when a tractor pulling a trailer jackknifed and threw passengers onto a road.

KANSAS CITY, MO. -- The idea is always at the surface, has been since the story of an NFL star dying in an Afghanistan firefight captured America's attention, and strikes especially hard on this holiday weekend 10 years after the September 11 attacks.

You remember Pat Tillman, the NFL star who sacrificed a dream career and millions of dollars for the front line of the fight against terrorism, driven by the kind of values the rest of us admire but can't always match. He died for it, killed by friendly fire and then disrespected by a government cover-up, so how could we not want to honor him as best we possibly can?

MIAMI -- A U.S. military veteran has spurned a government offer of pretrial probation and instead faced the prospect of the Fourth of July in a Miami lockup while awaiting a federal passport fraud trial later this month.

BOISE, Idaho -- In an office deep inside Baghdad's international zone, Staff Sgt. Keith Millar, of Caldwell, likes to look over pictures of his wife and two small children.

It's a way of ministering to himself, of staying connected to what is waiting for him at home. Then it's back to work, helping minister to a diverse group of soldiers and civilians at Forward Operating Base Prosperity.

Though he is not ordained, Millar, 39, is a chaplain's assistant. He protects the chaplain whenever they are out and about. He facilitates whatever programs the chaplain is running. He also runs the huge marble chapel, which was converted from one of Saddam Hussein's large pool houses.

GANSBAAI, South Africa -- Submerged chest-deep in a cage, seven tourists clad in wet suits helplessly bobbed in the Atlantic Ocean's relentless swells. Many had traveled halfway around the world to South Africa, where they hoped to catch a glimpse of the ocean's most fierce and feared creature: the great white shark.

The cage was the only thing between the predator and them. Half-inch bars didn't seem thick enough or close enough together; a man's leg could slip through easily. And wet suits didn't keep the divers' lips from turning sickly shades of purple in the 50-degree water.

But soon enough, they forgot about the cage and the cold. A 15-foot great white appeared 10 feet away in the murky water. A crew member tossed a bait line to coax it in. The shark lurched toward the cage as it pursued the bait, its jaws wide open, revealing rows upon rows of teeth.

Then, as quickly as it appeared, the shark was gone. The tourists resurfaced, amazed by what they'd just seen.

These thrilling excursions are at the heart of a controversy flaring along the South African coast that pits the decade-old cage-diving industry against surfers and environmental activists. The critics charge that one of South Africa's most popular tourist attractions is contributing to an increase in shark attacks and fatalities because the bait tour operators use -- fish oils, blood, even tuna heads -- is conditioning the great whites to associate humans with easy meals.