A small German village containing just 102 residents and with almost no infrastructure will have to accommodate as many as 750 asylum seekers after a decision by the regional authorities. Villagers fear the area will be unable to cope with the burden.

The first group of refugees amounting to 500 people will arrive in Sumte - a small village in the German state of Lower Saxony - as early as Monday. The one-street settlement with no shops, no school and even no police station fears that its accommodation capabilities will be pushed to the limit.

Initially, the regional authorities wanted the village to house 1,000 refugees, which they informed the settlement mayor of via e-mail in early October. At that time, this news was perceived by the villagers as a hoax.

Christian Fabel, the village's mayor, and his wife thought "it was a joke," which "certainly could not be true," as they could not believe that the settlement would be ordered to house a number of asylum seekers that exceeded 10 times the number of its villagers, the New York Times reported. However, they soon realized that it was not a joke and that it was impossible to block this decision when Alexander Gotz, a spokesman of the Lower Saxony Interior Ministry, responsible for the distribution of refugees, told Fabel that the village had "two options - yes, or yes."

Later, after the villagers protested this decision at several meetings with regional authorities citing security concerns and a lack of necessary infrastructure, the number of refugees the settlement should house was decreased from 1,000 to a maximum of 750 people.

"The burden of 1,000 refugees for one village with only 102 residents is absolutely disproportionate - it cannot be compared with any other place in Germany," the village's mayor Christian Fabel said at the first meeting with the regional authorities devoted to this issue.

Around 1,000 policemen across the US had their licenses revoked and lost their jobs over the last six years on account of numerous sexual offenses that included rape and possession of child pornography, an AP investigation based on official data revealed.


The probe involved examining records from 41 states to see how many police officers' licenses were revoked in 2009-2014 and for which offenses. Police desertification data was not provided by nine states and the District of Columbia. The investigation included examining the records of state and local police, sheriff's deputies, prison guards and school resource officers. However no federal officers were included in the investigation.

Philip White was travelling back home from a conference on technical advancements to assist the blind on May 22, 2012, when he missed his bus in Denver. White, who was 77-years-old at the time, and blind, called the police after the bus station security guard told him he had to leave the station. This call would prove to be detrimental.

White was told that the bus was full and he couldn't get on board. He only wanted to discuss options with staffers at the terminal, but he eventually was told by a security guard that he was "trespassing" and he'd have to leave the terminal, according to court documents.

"Philip White missed his bus to the mountains, when he asked Greyhound staff for help in catching the next bus home, he was told by a security guard he was trespassing and had to leave the Greyhound Bus Depot," said White's attorney Mari Newman. "This is a Master's Degree holder and long-time educator who was set upon with excessive force as police violated his civil rights, all over a bus ticket."

After being told to leave, White declined and then called the police. Officer Kyllion Chafin of the notoriously brutal Denver police department showed up. Chafin did not care that White was the person who had placed the call to police and instead of helping the man in need, he escalated the situation to violence. Chafin quickly attacked White. White, having no idea if his aggressors were actually who they said they were, asked to feel Chafin's badge to confirm he was an officer. "He told me 'You aren't touching me,'" said White.

In the wake of the South Carolina "Assault on Spring Valley High" a number of other high profile cases of school cops abusing students are coming to light. One of those has recently resulted in charges being filed against a school police officer who punched a student in the face for not having a hall pass.

But in what Democracy Now calls "one of the most shocking cases of police brutality inside a school," 17-year-old Noe Niño de Rivera was tasered by police, resulting in him spending 52 days in a medically induced coma.

It all happened back in November 2013, but the details of this case are only now coming to light.

Now, de Rivera has been left permanently brain damaged. As a result, last year Bastrop County in Texas settled a federal lawsuit with the de Rivera family for $775,000.

Watch the interview below with Democracy Now and the de Rivera family attorney, Adam Loewy...

Chinese police have reportedly arrested members of a gang who kept mentally disabled women in a pigsty before selling them as brides.

Police in northern China have detained members of a gang who held mentally impaired women in a pigsty in order to subsequently sell them as brides to men from impoverished areas, media reports said. The pigsty was located at the Shandong province, where buyers typically paid up to 100,000 yuan ($15,000 USD) for each "bride", aged between 20 and 30, police said.

The women were bought from their families in southern China for 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan ($500 — $800 USD) on promises that they would be married to well-to-do suitors, the South China Morning Herald newspaper reported.

"Once you mention a girl would be married into a good family, their parents don't ask too many questions," the newspaper quoted one of the detainees as saying. He added that mentally disabled girls were considered a burden by their families, who did not even try to get in touch with their dear ones after they were sold.

The buyers were mainly older poor men who could not afford a conventional marriage, a police spokesman said.

He added that the gang was tracked after the two men travelling with one of the women on a train from the Guangxi autonomous region to northern China attracted the attention of railway police who then arrested them. The gang is believed to have collected more than 600,000 yuan ($100,000 USD) in two years from trafficking the women.

The Ziosk tablets on the tables have cameras and microphones built in to the top left corner of the device . Next time you visit check it out. Its extremely creepy. Everyone is being spyed on. I discovered this tonight and it is very disturbing...

You can order, pay your bill and even play games on tablets some restaurants now have at the table. But one of our viewers, Howard Fergarsky noticed a camera on a tablet and wanted to know if the restaurant is watching him.

"Is this a camera or something" our undercover producer asked a Chili's server. "Oh no, it's not," she answered. Despite what the Chili's server is telling our producer, there is a camera on the restaurant's tablet on the table. "I found the camera. Why is it there?" Fergarsky asked. "It doesn't need to be there."

He and friend, Cheryl Keith are afraid restaurants like Chili's, Red Robin and Applebee's which now have tablets for ordering, paying for food, even entertaining your kids with games could also be spying on us, watching and eavesdropping on our conversations or listening to what we're saying about their servers or food. "It concerns me that we're not seeing the hidden risks," said Keith.

Scores of people rallied in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Turkey's southeast, to protest the results of Sunday's parliamentary snap poll. The rally turned into clashes with police, prompting security forces to deploy tear gas.The rally blocked a road near Diyarbakir's center and some of the demonstrators threw stones before police responded with tear gas, Reuters reports. Security in the largest city in the south east had been beefed up all day in anticipation.


Sunday saw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development party winning in the snap poll with the pro-Kurdish opposition falling close to the 10 percent threshold required to enter parliament.


The snap parliamentary election was called in Turkey after the previous vote in June failed to produce a government.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Paris, Saturday, to show their support for Russia and the Syrian government.

Silver utensils - reportedly taken from the Reich Chancellery - belonging to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were auctioned off for high prices in Germany. The lots included silver plates, wine cups and even Eva Braun's powder box, all marked with swastikas and Hitler's initials. All the lots were auctioned off on Saturday in the city of Kirchheim unter Teck by Andreas Thies' auction house, Bild reports.

The bid included cut glasses, a silver plate, one silver cigar box and matchbox and Eva Braun's powder compact. Each item was explicitly marked with a combination of swastika, Reichsadler (the 'Imperial Eagle', used as a symbol by Nazi Germany) and Hitler's initials'AH'. The powder box, which reportedly belonged to Hitler's companion Eva Braun, was marked with her initials 'EB'. The buyer of the items remains undisclosed, perhaps due to the sensitive nature of the bid itself, but it's known all the lots were sold for quite high prices.

The silver cigar box - apparently part of the Fuehrer's personal table service - went for €25,000, thus being the most expensive item. Eva Braun's powder box was sold for €6,000 Euro with two wineglasses and a silver plate being snapped up for €3,600 and €2,500 respectively.


All the items sold at the auction belonged to Adolf Hitler and were found at his residences in Berghof and Obersalzberg, as well as at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, according to auctioneer Andreas Thies. Auctions of such sort frequently spark controversy among the German public, as the Nazi past is still a sensitive issue. In Germany and Austria public demonstration of Nazi symbols is forbidden by law and unwelcomed by society.

Bild's contributor, Stefan Hauck, believes that auctioning items such as these - given they belonged to the leader of the Third Reich - is not illegal but 'disgusting' whatsoever. He adds it is an issue of respect towards victims of the Nazi regime 'to enact a legislation that would prevent beneficiaries from making profit in this perverted way.'

A 10-month-old girl gazing at the planes in St. Petersburg airport before departing to Egypt - this picture of Darina has become the symbol of the plane crash in Sinai on social media. People continue to bring flowers to mourn the tragedy.

Darina Gromova was among the 224 people who died on Kolavia flight 7K9268. It was returning from Egypt's Sharm El-Sheikh resort to Russia's St. Petersburg on Saturday morning when it suddenly vanished from radar over the Sinai Peninsula.

Her parents - mother Tatiana and father Aleksey - were also among those killed in the crash.

"Main passenger. #family. #darinagromova. Pulkovo International Airport Saint-Petersburg New Terminal 1," wrote Tatiana hours before their plane took off from St. Petersburg to Sinai. Little did she know that this photo would become the grieving symbol of the tragic flight.