Violence

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

A 52-year-old man was stabbed to death in West Philadelphia and a 31-year-old woman was shot in the head and fatally wounded in East Mount Airy in violence overnight, police said. Police are seeking a possible motive in the killing of the man, who was found stabbed in the chest on the 5600 block of Arch Street. The victim, who lived in the area, was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:25 a.m., police said. The woman was shot in the head about 2:05 a.m. while sitting in a car with a man on the 1100 block of Mount Airy Avenue, police said.

Terry Starks' voice rang out as he shouted through a bullhorn at a busy intersection in North Philadelphia. "We're tired of the senseless violence out here," Starks, 34, called out to passersby and a handful of people milling in front of a bar at Ridge and Cecil B. Moore Avenues. "A brother lost his life out here Friday. " "We're Philadelphia CeaseFire," Brandon Jones, 26, yelled through another bullhorn. "We are here because we think change can happen here. " Their comments drew the attention of some pedestrians who paused to listen; others responded with wary gazes.

The Inquirer's investigation of the climate of pervasive violence in Philadelphia's public schools on Monday won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the profession's most prestigious honor. The award is the 19th Pulitzer Prize for the 183-year-old newspaper and its first since 1997. The seven-part series, "Assault on Learning," revealed that violence in city schools was widespread and underreported, with 30,000 serious incidents over the last five school years. Those findings were later corroborated by a Philadelphia School District panel on safety, spurred an overhaul of incident reporting in the district, and prompted hiring of a state-funded safe-schools advocate.

IF PEOPLE put as much effort into stopping violence on the streets of Philadelphia as they do into things like arguing over politics and minding celebrity lifestyles, the city would be on its way to peaceful living. As a public high-school student, every day I wonder if I'll make it safely through the day. Jennifer Smith, Philadelphia

Even as two faces now gaze out from a wall of Benjamin Franklin High School, last-minute work needs to be done for the All Join Hands: Visions of Peace project. On Saturday, you have one last chance to join this antiviolence project. About a year has passed since residents from throughout the region began work on the mural. It is rising on the long wall of the school, located at Broad and Spring Garden Streets. The mural's mission: to remind its viewers of the high cost of violence and the high hopes for a safer future.

It should come as no surprise, but a study of young children has confirmed that physical abuse at home is more strongly linked to later aggressive behavior than such factors as poverty, divorce or marital violence. In other words, as often as not, violent people learned to be that way because as kids, they were the victims of violence. Sparing the rod needn't spoil the child if effective alternative discipline is applied, and it could help a kid develop into an adult who doesn't misbehave.

They live among swarming flies and fleas in shantytowns that tourists in this tropical island never see. Hidden by walls of scrap metal and wood, barefoot children play in tiny yards littered with dog and goat feces. Youths loiter on corners smoking marijuana. Women sit on boxes staring vacantly. Men swig from bottles of Red Stripe beer, laughing one moment, swearing the next. Drug dealers and hoodlums rule the streets. This is the shadowy world of Jamaica's ghettos, where the clutch of poverty is relentless and the threat of violence ever present.

People with schizophrenia, the mental illness that afflicted a woman who allegedly killed two Canadian tourists in Atlantic City on Monday, are generally not violent, experts say, but the risk that they will be rises when they stop taking medications and start taking illicit drugs. A history of violent behavior and exposure to violence as a child are also red flags. It is difficult to get people with any chronic mental illness to take their medicines properly, psychiatrists pointed out, but it can be especially challenging with people whose brains are so dysfunctional that they may not realize they are sick.

When we think of the women that Republicans in Congress want to exclude from some protections in the Violence Against Women Act — undocumented immigrants, Native Americans, lesbians abused by female partners — we can't help but think of a speech attributed to the Civil War-era abolitionist Sojourner Truth in 1851:   "And ain't I a woman?" To paraphrase another eloquent author, if undocumented immigrant women are beaten, do they not bruise? If Native American women are sexually assaulted by non-Native men, are they not traumatized?

Being raised in tough neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Jamira Burley learned firsthand the impact of drugs and violence on families in the city. Two of her brothers served time in prison on robbery charges. A third brother was shot to death in his home. It was the death of her brother, Andre, in 2005, when she was 16, that prompted Burley to turn her anguish into action, forming an antiviolence program at Overbrook High School. She has continued that mission for the last seven years, locally and nationally.

A 52-year-old man was stabbed to death in West Philadelphia and a 31-year-old woman was shot in the head and fatally wounded in East Mount Airy in violence overnight, police said. Police are seeking a possible motive in the killing of the man, who was found stabbed in the chest on the 5600 block of Arch Street. The victim, who lived in the area, was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:25 a.m., police said. The woman was shot in the head about 2:05 a.m. while sitting in a car with a man on the 1100 block of Mount Airy Avenue, police said.

CAIRO - Egyptian troops blasted protesters with water cannons, tear gas, and live ammunition Friday, trying to prevent them from marching on the Defense Ministry in clashes that left one soldier dead and scores of people injured just three weeks ahead of presidential elections. The fierce street battles raised fears of a new cycle of violence surrounding the upcoming vote to replace Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted more than a year ago. For the first time in Egypt's chaotic transition, hard-line Islamists, rather than secular forces, were at the forefront of the confrontation with the military rulers who have been accused of trying to cling to power.

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. peacekeeping chief said Tuesday that U.N. military observers in Syria are reporting cease-fire violations from the government and opposition, and he demanded an immediate halt to all violence. Herve Ladsous refused to say which side was responsible for the most violations. But he said the unarmed observers had documented a number of Syrian heavy weapons deployed in populated areas - including armored personnel carriers and howitzers - despite the government's claim that it had withdrawn tanks and troops from cities and towns as required under international envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan.

  The day seemed routine for Teri Wright, who came home from her job as a national operations manager in Center City, ate dinner, watched TV, and went to bed. But at about 2 a.m., she was awakened by four men who had broken into her house. They tied her up at gunpoint. Wright was raped four times. "I had a choice that night," said Wright, 48, of Edgewater Park, Burlington County. "I could have untied myself and laid in the bed" and kept a secret. Instead, she ran for help and reported the assault to police.

In Safe, adventures in babysitting take on an ultraviolent dimension. The bloody actioner, filmed partly in Philadelphia, stars Jason Statham as a homeless palooka with mysteriously good fighting skills who decides to protect an orphaned girl (Catherine Chan) sought by warring mobs of Chinese, Russians, and dirty NYPD cops. The girl is a math genius employed by a mob leader (James Hong) to store his bookkeeping data in her head, beyond the reach of electronic hackers and investigators.

Headlines like "Stabbing victim feared estranged husband would kill her" and "Two plead guilty to raping 12-year-old girl" are haunting reminders of the violence and sexual abuse that occur far too often. According to a 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, more than 1.9 million women in Pennsylvania have been victims of sexual assault, physical violence, or stalking. Domestic violence and sexual assault leave scars beyond the physical damage. The emotional wounds cut far deeper than the injuries we can see. Victims are often left to heal, physically and emotionally, on their own. As current and former prosecutors, we know from firsthand experience that Southeastern Pennsylvania has some of the best victim services organizations and advocates to help women and children through the healing process.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Artillery shatters homes in opposition areas. Regime tanks roll though city centers. Civilians dig graves for dozens of corpses, scrawling their names on headstones with black markers. Six days on, this is the cease-fire in Syria. But United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon and others stand by the U.N.-negotiated truce, saying that the violence is sporadic and that President Bashar al-Assad's regime has lessened its assaults. Even with dozens reported dead in the last two days, the world powers struggling to stop Syria's bloodshed are reluctant to declare the cease-fire dead.