We have frequently written about rising violent crime around the U.S. with an emphasis on the soaring homicides in Chicago which are up nearly 50% YoY (see recent posts here and here). Now it seems as though others in the mainstream media are starting to take notice.


The New York Times recently compiled data from around the country and found there were nearly 6,700 homicides reported in the 100 largest cities in 2015, a YoY increase of 950 or roughly 17%, with nearly half of the rise — 480 of the 950 — coming from seven cities. Their study is tied to a June 2016 report published by the National Institute of Justice in which Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, declared that "the [2015] homicide increase in the nation's large cities was real and nearly unprecedented."

Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets of five Catalan cities for rallies aimed at speeding up the process breakaway from Spain, local media reported.

Demonstrators carried national flags with some of them wearing traditional Catalan clothes or T-shirts bearing pro-independence slogans. Rallies spanned Barcelona, Salt, Berga, Lleida and Tarragona, Catalan News Agency reported on Sunday. A mass rally for Catalonia's national day, "Diada," expected over 340,000 people , according to AFP.

This year's event differs from the previous ones by its "decentralized" character which means the demonstrations which were previously held only in Barcelona have now reached other cities as well.

"Each year we try to come up with something new... this year we wanted to show that Catalonia is a diverse country and we walked away from being focused on Barcelona. We want to show the world that we are diverse, but united. We are a lively country, on the move, and we are standing on the threshold of turning into a new state," Natalia Estevez, vice-president of Catalan National Assembly, told RIA Novosti.

High school football players across the US followed San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's lead and declined to stand for the national anthem Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

It appears that Kaepernick has started a movement with his silent protest during the national anthem during a pre-season game on August 26. Kaepernick said his "taking a knee" was to protest racial oppression and police brutality in the United States.

Nearly two dozen arrested for protesting 'Urban Shield'—the military and police expo in California

Hundreds of people gathered in California on Friday to protest Urban Shield, the annual expo showcasing police and military weapons and offering SWAT training in the Bay Area.

At least 23 people were arrested as protesters from a wide swath of civil and human rights organizations locked themselves to the entrance of the Alameda County Fairgrounds, where the convention is taking place from September 8-12.

Critics say the event promotes violence and police militarization, particularly in minority and low-income communities.

There are more people in Germany who could potentially commit terrorist acts than ever in the past, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told German daily Bild in an interview, adding that the terrorist threat in Germany is "very real." More than 520 people in Germany are capable of committing "unexpected" and potentially "high-profile" terrorist attacks inspired by Islamism, de Maiziere said in the interview, published on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US. He also added that the current number of potential terrorists in Germany is at its highest in history.

The minister also warned that, along with potential Islamist attackers, there are also about 360 people who are "closely affiliated"with them and could lend assistance in preparing an attack or "provide logistical support" to the assailants. He added that such people usually belong to potential terrorists' "inner circle".

De Maiziere emphasized that "today, the threat comes from both hit-teams [arriving in Germany] from abroad and radicalized lone wolves in Germany. Both threats are now very real," he added. He said that the hit-teams "are secretly smuggled into Europe and prepare their actions without being noticed, as we saw with the attacks in Paris and Brussels."

The body that represents hospitals across England has issued a startling warning that the NHS is close to breaking point because of its escalating cash crisis.

Years of underfunding have left the service facing such "impossible" demands that without urgent extra investment in November's autumn statement it will have to cut staff, bring in charges or introduce "draconian rationing" of treatment - all options that will provoke public disquiet, it says.

In an unprecedentedly bleak assessment of the NHS's own health, NHS Providers, which speaks for hospital trust chairs and chief executives, tells ministers that widespread breaches of performance targets, chronic understaffing and huge overspends by hospitals mean that it is heading back to the visible decline it last experienced in the 1990s.

"Taken together this means the NHS is increasingly failing to do the job it wants to do and the public needs it to do, through no fault of its own," Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, writes in the Observer.

"The pain doesn't go away" for 9/11 survivor Rick DeSantis, who spoke to RT on the eve of the tragedy's 15th anniversary, calling for a full investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers. DeSantis vividly recalls the "flames and the ball of fire" from that fateful September day 15 years ago, which still gives him nightmares even today.

"I think I only survived by the grace of God. When Tower One was hit by a plane, I proceeded to Tower Two to go inside. When I got to the doors of Tower Two, I heard the second plane... I turned around slowly... It seemed as though it was slow motion," he told RT.

Almost 3,000 people lost their lives on September 11, 2001, as a result of a series of terrorist attacks in the US, with around 2,600 dying after two passenger planes slammed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York.

DeSantis witnessed the horrors first hand and helped to lead some of those caught up in the terrorist attacks to safety. "I saw many, many things that day, and I saw the reactions that human beings take in situations like that. There are those that freeze and can't move... and then there are those who go on autopilot like the firemen, who go straight into danger," he said. The 9/11 survivor, who is campaigning for greater healthcare for those affected by the disaster, also wants an independent inquiry to look into what actually happen on September 11 in more detail.

"The suffering has not stopped, not mentally or physically, and it is not going to stop. It has been 15 years. The pain does not go away," he told RT. "It is outrageous what we have gone through... the wars... Since 9/11, 57,000 factories have been closed in this country; $5 trillion have been spent and lost because of this, and we have had one illegal war after another. The questions, even the simplest of questions, have never been answered," he said.

Alarmingly, DeSantis alleges that the authorities have tried to cover-up certain aspects of the terrorist attacks. "How do buildings with 250,000 tons of structural high-grade steel, four inches thick, collapse at the speed of gravity and accelerating in its speed of collapse as it came down. There is only one way that can happen and that is a controlled demolition. I lived it, I was there and I heard the explosions, but it seems every time that you share this, it gets edited out."

He believes the actual death toll was a lot higher than the official tally of 2,996 given by the authorities. He also mentioned that the fire at the site of the Twin Towers burned until March 2002, while two weeks after the accident, rescue services actually stopped digging "because they were hitting pockets of molten lava."

Gregory Frazier, 55, was sitting in his backyard after an argument with his daughter, eating chicken wings and fries, when Broward Sheriff's deputies took his life. Frazier had done nothing illegal or threatening, and just wanted the cops to leave him alone.

For telling the cops to leave him alone, he got five bullets in the back.

The tragic story is another example of what can happen when you call the cops. All too often guns are drawn and deadly force is deployed as a first response.

Frazier's sister had called 9-1-1 during an argument he was having with his daughter and niece, Keneisha Woodard. Woodard said he was "a little rowdy with me" and flipped some furniture in the living room. But by the time deputies arrived, he was sitting in the backyard eating food.

A private security firm, guarding the highly controversial construction of a $3.8 billion oil pipeline, turned mercenary last weekend and were caught on video unleashing vicious attack dogs against a sizable crowd of peaceful protesters — including women and children. And now, the only people to be punished for the vicious attacks, are the ones who filmed it.

Saturday evening, Democracy Now! announced that an arrest warrant had been issued for host and executive producer Amy Goodman. Goodman, along with a team from the media outlet, were in North Dakota last week to cover the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The video taken by Democracy Now! of the horrid abuses inflicted on the protesters by private security quickly went viral. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux and at least 100 other Native American nations as well as activists and advocates peacefully chanted "water is life" while guards held dogs nearby to intimidate the crowd. Without warning, these security henchmen showered the demonstrators with pepper spray and released the dogs — at least six people were bitten, including a young child.

In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) incorrectly assured New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe. To this day, first responders are still being diagnosed with and dying from illnesses born of breathing in the toxic air at Ground Zero.

Now Christine Todd Whitman, who was administrator of the EPA from January 2001 until June 2003, has admitted that she was wrong about the air quality in an interview with the Guardian to be published Sunday.

"Whatever we got wrong, we should acknowledge and people should be helped," she told the British paper.

"I'm very sorry that people are sick," she continued. "I'm very sorry that people are dying, and if the EPA and I in any way contributed to that, I'm sorry. We did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had."