The U.S. Army suffered a record 32 suicides in July, the most since it began releasing monthly figures in 2009.

The high number of deaths represents a setback for the Army, which has put a heavy focus on reducing suicides in recent years. The number includes 22 active duty soldiers and 10 reservists. The previous record was 31, from June 2010.

Army officials cautioned that investigations are still underway in most of the deaths to confirm the exact cause.

"Every suicide represents a tragic loss," Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army said in a written statement. "While the high number of potential suicides in July is discouraging, we are confident our efforts ...are having a positive impact."

Over the last several years, the Army has launched a major effort to institute new training to improve soldiers' ability to bounce back from stress and setbacks in combat and in their personal lives. It has hired hundreds of mental health and substance abuse counselors and has launched a push to convince soldiers that seeking help for mental health problems will not have a negative impact on their careers.

Two star general from U.S. Army (retired) who measured Soviet aircraft photographs for a living, questions 7/7 story.

It's often said that the more education one has, the less religious one is.

But one researcher believes the relationship between education and religion is more complex, arguing in a paper that reality may not support the long-standing notion that education constrains all facets of religious beliefs.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher Philip Schwadel examined data gathered from the General Social Survey, looking at the "effects of education on religious beliefs, devotional activities, the importance of religion in daily life, switching religious affiliations, religious participation, views of religious authority and views on the role of religion in a secular society," according to the paper. Most of the surveys -- including roughly 20,000 responses to questions -- were conducted in person or over the phone before Schwadel's project. He starts the baseline of education at 7 years since most people complete elementary school. Schwadel also controlled for sex, race, age, southern residence, income, children and marital status in his analysis.

He also cites research over the past decade showing that attending college does not affect students' religious identity nor participation as much as previously thought.

A youth pastor has been accused of using a hidden video camera to film four naked, honey-covered girls showering.

Thomas Fortenberry had organised a 'Fear Factor' reality-style contest for the girls which saw him drizzle them in the sticky substance.

The girls, two of whom were 15 and two were 17, were then told to wash the honey off their bodies - during which they were allegedly filmed by a camera Fortenberry had hidden in the bathroom at the Greater Harvest Community Church in Pasadena, Texas.

The matter only came to light after Fortenberry, then 26, began a relationship with one of the girls and confessed to her after they became engaged, The Smoking Gun reported.

When questioned by police, Fortenberry did not deny filming the teenagers, the website claims.

The United States has imposed additional economic sanctions against Belarus, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a daily press briefing on Thursday.

"Today, the United States imposed additional economic sanctions against four major Belarusian state-owned enterprises," Nuland said. "The sanctions are a response to the continued incarceration of political prisoners, the crackdown on political activists, journalists, and civil society representatives."

"These new sanctions augment the travel restrictions, asset freezes, and sanctions announced on January 31st and these measures target those responsible for the repression in Belarus following the December 19th presidential elections. They are not designed to harm the people of Belarus," she said.

Xavier Montjoy sits on his bed in a T-shirt and shorts, his side-swept blond bangs and dark-rimmed glasses framing squinted hazel eyes and furrowed brows. He's trying to recount how his parents recently explained that Sept. 11, 2001, had meaning beyond being the day he was born, but all he remembers at the moment is that they said something about planes crashing in three parts of the country.

In his life, he says, it's just not a big deal.

Like the millions of children born in the past decade, he's never known a world untouched by that day's terrorist attacks. He's played baseball and soccer and hates math like generations before him but is growing up in a new normal shaped by the events of that day and the people behind them. In this world, the military has deployed several of his relatives overseas, and security officers maintain tighter border security and enforce travel restrictions that leave fliers standing in security lines in socks or bare feet at the airport near his house on a tree-lined Columbus street.

As for Osama bin Laden, the boy says, who was he? Xavier remembers hearing about bin Laden's death the day after it happened, when he says classmates announced "Obama is dead!" and a teacher clarified it wasn't the president. If further explanation followed, it didn't resonate with Xavier.

"I didn't really know what he was talking about," he says. "And frankly, I didn't really care, 'cause I had no idea."

There are more important things to this laid-back kid, such as what's for dinner or which villains he can slay in his Wii games. He'd much rather tell visitors about the modified weapons he imagines and sketches than talk about what happened on his birthday.

Thousands of Haitians living in one of the biggest tent camps created after last year's earthquake could soon have a new home: the mountains north of Port-au-Prince.

City officials plan to relocate the almost 20,000 people living on the 42-acre (17-hectare) Champs de Mars plaza across the street from the crumbled National Palace if the central government approves, Port-au-Prince Mayor Jean Yves Jason said Wednesday.

Patrick Rouzier, a housing and reconstruction adviser for the government, acknowledged the plan in a text message. He said Jason wants to move the families to Morne Cabrit, a mountain north of the capital, and house them in temporary shelters.

The government has reservations about the approach, Rouzier added, but he did not elaborate. He said he was traveling with President Michel Martelly.

Jason cited an "act of banditry" in the public square as a reason for officials wanting to clear away the camp, which has become a shantytown complete with barber shops, boutiques and restaurants and is a symbol of Haiti's post-quake misery.

Authorities involved in the arrest of a protester who removed his shirt and pants at a security checkpoint at Richmond International Airport were doing their jobs and acted appropriately, a government attorney argued Wednesday in Richmond federal court.

Carlotta P. Wells, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, argued in favor of a motion to dismiss Aaron B. Tobey's lawsuit, which claims his constitutional rights were violated. Wells said Tobey had made his point by removing his shirt to display words from the Fourth Amendment written on his torso but went too far when he disobeyed a command to pass through a security scanner.

But Anand Agneshwar, an attorney representing Tobey in his lawsuit against airport and federal officials, said the 21-year-old Charlottesville man obeyed the commands of authorities. Agneshwar said it was the authorities who went too far by detaining Tobey for 90 minutes or longer with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Teachers at a Northland school have made the macabre discovery that a skeleton thought to have been plastic was actually real.

The skeleton, made up of a skull and one side of the body, had been used as a teaching aide at Totara North School in Kaeo, the Northern Advocate reported.

Principal Bastienne Kruger was about to use it in a lesson showing how the human skeleton fitted together when she realised it was not plastic after all.

"When we realised it was real we wanted to do right by this poor person, but we didn't know how - so we phoned the hospital, and they suggested we bring it to the police."

Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs has been sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting two underage followers he took as brides.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader was handed the maximum sentence possible.

Last Thursday, the 55-year-old was found guilty of forcing two girls into "spiritual marriages" and fathering a child with one of them.

The charges followed a raid on a remote west Texas ranch in 2008.