Saint Clair Shores - When a man with dementia accidentally left a dog outside all night, neighbor's called police to silence the dog's barking. Police obliged by firing 8 rounds into the dog in its front yard.

Brittany Preston left her puppy, Lexie, in the care of her grandfather as she went to work an overnight shift.

Unfortunately her grandpa's mild dementia caused his memory to be impaired. During the evening he let the dog into the yard to go to the bathroom, and forgot to let the dog back in.

Hours went by. The dog waited by the door, barking for its owner's attention. Preston's grandfather failed to hear the barking or remember his mistake.

Neighbors, tiring of the noise, called the police. Sometime after 7:00 a.m., police arrived and surrounded the dog in the yard. Preston's grandfather was awake now, and opened the door to usher the dog back into the house. But the dog continued to bark at police instead of going inside.

Police asked if he was the owner of the dog. Fumbling the question, he said he was not. Of course, his granddaughter was, but he did not make this clear. Police made the assumption the dog didn't belong there.

Saint Clair Shores Police spent some time trying to lasso the dog with a dog stick, but were ultimately overcome by "fear for their lives," a common malady in police work.

According to the police report, police officers opened fire when the dog "charged" at them. Eight rounds were fired into Lexie.

Two million passwords for social media and email accounts have been released online by hackers, IT security experts have discovered.

The passwords for the compromised accounts are believed to have been collected by a botnet which uses infectious software to take note of the keystrokes of its targets.

Thousands of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts were hacked with details published online by what are believed to be cyber criminals.

Of the passwords there were 318,000 Facebook, 70,000 Google (including Gmail, Google+ and YouTube), and 60,000 Yahoo accounts - though their age is unknown.

'We don't know how many of these details still work,' security researcher Graham Cluley told the BBC.

When the last U.S. service members moved out of the Nishi-Futenma housing area at Camp Foster, in 2006, the land was slated to return to civilian use as part of ongoing attempts by Tokyo and Washington to reduce the military burden in Okinawa - host to more than 70 percent of American bases in Japan.

The reversion of the 52-hectare parcel - an attractive hilltop overlooking the East China Sea - was supposed to be a sign of improved ties between the U.S. military and its Okinawa neighbors. But instead it has come to signify a problem that is increasingly straining relations in the prefecture: military pollution.

Seven years after the land at Nishi-Futenma was vacated, its future is still in limbo. The dozens of beige bungalows that used to house U.S. families are abandoned - their screen doors torn and walls overgrown with vegetation.

In light of Greece's economic crisis, a group of city-dwellers has built a self-sufficient eco-community. As many people struggle with growing food security problems, the group produces its own food and electricity.

Rain falls over a vegetable patch on the small Greek island of Evia where Apostolis Sianos, a tall, tanned 32-year-old man with long dark hair, picks vegetables. He will use these tomatoes, green beans, and eggplants for today's lunch.

The gardens here are teeming with life. Bees zip past the herbs and vegetables toward the new apple orchard.

"Natural farming has proven that one acre (4,840 square yards) is more than enough for a single family, as long as there are no animals on it," Sianos said. "We have about 15 acres, so you can imagine how much food we produce."

Sianos is part of the "Free and Real Community," as they call themselves. It's a group of city-dwellers who packed up their lives and moved into the country to build an eco-community off-the-grid. Just as they were breaking earth on their new plot of land, Greece began sinking into the most severe economic depression in living memory.

A group of children calling for immigration reform were forced to leave House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) office on Thursday after Capitol Police officers threatened to arrest them.

In a video posted to YouTube by the group Keeping Families Together, the children are seen in Cantor's personal office singing: "We want reform, we want it now. We are titanium. Keep our families together. We want reform right now."

At that point an officer interrupted the protest to ask if anyone there was planning on getting arrested.

"I heard what you're doing, I appreciate what you're doing," the officer explains. "The congressman can't do anything right now, they can't meet with you. So, please, set [an appointment up] through email. Please don't sing again, guys."

"We have to ask you to leave. If you don't want to leave... if you want to stay in, you're subject to arrest," he adds.

After another verse, the frustrated officer warns against that "everyone that stays in this room may be arrested."

While the children did eventually decided to leave peacefully, another clip shows them being loudly scolded for singing outside Cantor's office.

Watch the videos below from Keeping Families Together, broadcast Dec. 5, 2013.

When James Arthur Ray lifted the heavy tarp door and beckoned his devotees into a wood-frame dome, they obeyed. Tall and confident, Ray watched them enter one by one, more than 50 of them. Stooping under the low ceiling, they crowded into the dark, windowless space and sat in two tight rings around a pit filled with heated stones.

Many had spent more than $10,000 to be there, in what Ray called his "sweat lodge." It culminated five days with the self-proclaimed "catalyst for personal transformation" at Angel Valley Spiritual Retreat, a ranch near Sedona, Arizona. During his "Spiritual Warrior" program, he'd asked participants to shave their heads, spend 36 hours in the desert meditating without food or water, and play the "Samurai Game," in which a white-robed Ray, playing "God," declared people dead, forcing them to remain motionless on the ground.

Before they entered the dome, he warned them his final test was a symbolic death. "You are not going to die. You might think you are, but you are not going to die," he said, according to several attendees. Around 2:30PM on October 8th, 2009, he lowered the tarp, closing off the only source of light and oxygen. The ceremony began.

James Arthur Ray had gone from obscure motivational speaker to self-help superstar. After more than a decade of writing and lecturing, he'd appeared in The Secret, a 2006 film touting "the law of attraction" - a belief that "thoughts become things." Positive thoughts attract positive outcomes, The Secret promised; a dream life awaits anyone with a properly focused mind.

Oprah gushed over the film, twice showcasing its stars and telling her audience, "Watch it with your children." The Secret became a cultural phenomenon; a companion book sold 19 million copies. Ray soon appeared on Larry King Live to say, "Well, Larry, science tells us that every single thing that appears to be solid is actually energy. Your body is energy. Your car is energy, your house, everything, money, all of it is energy." The Today Show, Fox Business News, and local network affiliates followed. He toured the country while guesting on smaller venues from Tom Green's internet talk show to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. He even judged a Miss America pageant. "Whatever you fear or love will come into your life," he'd repeat for his agreeable hosts.

Country set to take South African-style measures as concerns rise that demonstrations will flare up during tournament

World Cup courts are likely to be established at next year's tournament in Brazil as organisers address the country's high crime rate and brace for the possible return of the mass demonstrations that overshadowed the Confederations Cup this summer.

Although the rallies, which brought more than a million people on to the streets this year, were largely peaceful, the host nation said it will establish exclusion zones around stadiums and step up intelligence-gathering operations aimed at preventing violent protest.

"We have boosted the gathering process to prevent demonstrations during large-scale events, to gather relevant information to put in place whatever measures are required to prevent violent demonstrations," said Andre Rodrigues, special adviser for major events at the Ministry of Justice. He said the creation of dedicated courts has also been proposed by national, state and city level governments.

By standards of previous generations, the middle class has been stripmined of income, assets and purchasing power.

What does it take to be middle class nowadays? A recent paper, The Distribution of Household Income and the Middle Class, used Census data to discuss what sort of income it takes to qualify as middle class, but reached no firm conclusion: people tend to self-report that they belong to the middle class based on income, but income is not the only the metric--indeed, it can be argued that 12 other factors are more telling measures of middle class membership than income.

In Why the Middle Class Is Doomed (April 17, 2012) I listed five "threshold" characteristics of membership in the middle class:

1. Meaningful healthcare insurance
2. Significant equity (25%-50%) in a home or other real estate
3. Income/expenses that enable the household to save at least 6% of its income
4. Significant retirement funds: 401Ks, IRAs, etc.
5. The ability to service all debt and expenses over the medium-term if one of the primary household wage-earners lose their job

I then added a taken-for-granted sixth:

6. Reliable vehicles for each wage-earner

Author Chris Sullins suggested adding these additional thresholds:

7. If a household requires government assistance to maintain the family lifestyle, their Middle Class status is in doubt.
8. A percentage of non-paper, non-real estate hard assets such as family heirlooms, precious metals, tools, etc. that can be transferred to the next generation, i.e. generational wealth.
9. Ability to invest in offspring (education, extracurricular clubs/training, etc.).
10. Leisure time devoted to the maintenance of physical/spiritual/mental fitness.

Correspondent Mark G. recently suggested two more:

11. Continual accumulation of human and social capital (new skills, networks of collaborators, markets for one's services, etc.)

And the money shot:

12. Family ownership of income-producing assets such as rental properties, bonds, etc.

The key point of these thresholds is that propping up a precarious illusion of consumption and status signifiers does not qualify as middle class. To qualify as middle class (that is, what was considered middle class a generation or two ago), the household must actually own/control wealth that won't vanish if the investment bubble du jour pops, and won't be wiped out by a medical emergency.

In Chris's phrase, "They should be focusing resources on the next generation and passing on Generational Wealth" as opposed to "keeping up appearances" via aspirational consumption financed with debt.

Another wild week, including a lot of stories that come close to, but might not exactly be GunFAILs. Like the story from Chickamauga, GA, where a man who thought he was shooting at a home intruder killed a wandering, 72-year-old Alzheimer's patient. Or the story from Nashville, TN, where "outlaw country" singer Wayne Mills was shot and killed in a bar fight. (By the way, is "outlaw country" like "gangsta rap?" Are we supposed to be outraged by it? Or is it just good ol' All-American fun?)

By the numbers, the week was heavy on the hunting accidents (10 confirmed, plus one more strongly suspected), and on child victims. Nineteen kids were accidentally shot last week, ages 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 11, 13, 14, 14, 16, 16, 16, 16, 17, 17, 17 and 17. I think the numbers are up and skewing older, because several of them are hunting-related. On the subject of hunting accidents, do please note that six hunters were accidentally shot during opening weekend of the season in the state of Wisconsin, alone.

Just two loaded gun-cleaning accidents this week, three home invasion shootings, and three waistband/pocket ninjas who accidentally shot themselves. Cop numbers are, mercifully, down to just one this week.

On the guns in school front this week, maybe numbers are slowing down? Guns were found in schools in Springfield, MO, Charlotte, NC, Norfolk, VA and Reading, PA.

And now, below the fold, this week's compilation.

The OECD is out with new global rankings of how students in various countries do in reading, science, and math. Results of the full survey can be found and delved into here.

You can see below how Asian countries are obliterating everyone else in these categories.

The United States, meanwhile, ranks below the OECD average in every category. And as the WSJ notes, the US has slipped in all of the major categories in recent years:

The results from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which are being released on Tuesday, show that teenagers in the U.S. slipped from 25th to 31st in math since 2009; from 20th to 24th in science; and from 11th to 21st in reading, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which gathers and analyzes the data in the U.S.