The parent of an eighth-grade Muslim student at Shiloh Middle School in Gwinnett County is angry after an incident in which a teacher asked his daughter if she was carrying a bomb in her backpack.

Abdirazik Aden, who was born in Somalia, said that on Monday, his 12-year-old daughter was going to class when a teacher stopped her and asked what she had in her bookbag.

He said his daughter told her books. The unidentified teacher responded by asking, her if she had a bomb in her bag?

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces increased pressure to resign, as local black religious leaders called Friday for a "no confidence vote" against him for the 2014 police shooting of a 17-year-old black teenager and systemic police problems.

Religious leaders, who demanded greater transparency for incidents involving the police, said they plan to collect petition signatures that could help force the mayor's ouster.

They called for a special prosecutor to investigate the death of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times by white Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke.

The release of a police video of the shooting of McDonald and the Nov. 24 filing of a murder charge against Van Dyke came more than a year after McDonald's death. That delay was blamed on Emanuel and the top local prosecutor, and has prompted more than two weeks of protests in the nation's third-largest city.

A member of McDonald's family was expected to speak at a news conference at 11:15 a.m. local time (1215 ET).

A British soldier who had his leg blown off by a bomb while serving in Iraq has taken the internet by storm after his Facebook post attacking Islamophobia went viral.

Chris Herbert, who served in the British Army in Basra, Iraq, lost his right leg when a bomb went off next to his Land Rover in 2007.

One of his comrades, Private Luke Simpson, died in the attack, while two other soldiers were also injured.

Andrew Thomas, 26, made a deadly decision to get behind the wheel after he'd been drinking on Thanksgiving night. With his 23-year-old wife, Darien Ehorn in the passenger's seat, Thomas left the Canteena Bar and was immediately pursued by Paradise police officer Patrick Feaster.

In a pursuit that barely lasted a minute, Thomas loses control of his Toyota Four-Runner, hit the median and flipped over. Tragically, Ehorn was ejected from the vehicle and died on the scene.

Officer Feaster then gets out of his vehicle, gun drawn, and as Thomas attempts to get out of the vehicle, in a likely attempt to check on his wife, the cop shoots him in the neck.

Thomas posed absolutely no threat to the officer who was 10-20 feet away from Thomas when he fired. There was no possible way the department could spin the shooting into Feaster somehow fearing for his life. So, they did something entirely different.

They claimed it was an accident.

A 12-year-old's dreams came true when she received a puppy as a New Year's present from Russia's president, after having sent him a letter.

In the true holiday spirit, Olga Maruchshenko, from a small town in Siberia, got the present of a lifetime from Vladimir Putin. He wasn't there in person, but ordered the head of the Republic of Khakassia, where the girl lives with her family, to give Olga a husky puppy after reading the girl's letter.

"My mom knows that I wrote to you, but she doesn't believe that you will read my letter. Even so, I hope and I believe that you will read it," Olga wrote.

The family recently moved to Siberia from Kazakhstan and live on a tight budget, renting a flat.

Utility companies are having a heyday installing electric, natural gas and water AMI Smart Meters, which probably will help many of them—electric power companies, in particular—avoid building new power plants: they can brown-out high demand days or interrupt individual home usage if consumers use more power than utilities think we should—in addition to running up customer tabs for new Smart Meters every several years.

Recently, PASMA (Pennsylvania Smart Meter Awareness) issued two Press Releases days apart, which I think all utility consumers, regardless of where they live, ought to know about since the information deals with the probable unknown monetary side of Smart Meters, as discussed in "Consumers to Pay 'Through the Nose' for Smart Meters Every 6 to 7 Years," and the very scary issue of infrastructure security risks from hackers that Smart Meters pose, as laid out in "Smart Meters Are A Security Risk to the Nation's Power Supply," which tells how a member of the U.S. Congress, who is an electrician, is calling for new and greater scrutiny of Smart Meters "to examine whether they compromise the Nation's energy infrastructure."

According to a US survey, 21 percent of Americans believe that they won't be able to pay off their debts in their lifetime.

A survey of adults in the US has found that 21 percent of people with debts believe they won't be able to pay them off in their lifetime, a proportion which rises to 24 percent of those aged 50 to 64, and 35 percent of those aged 65 and older.

"According to the poll, 21 percent of those with debt predict they will never be rid of it. That's up from 18 percent in 2014 and 9 percent in 2013 who said their debt heading into the holiday season seemed insurmountable," reported Consumer website Creditcards.com, which carried out the survey.

Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw was just found guilty of rape and sexual battery on Thursday. Now, his sentence has been handed down, and he is coming to the harsh realization that being a police officer didn't save him from the 263 year sentence that a jury just handed down to him.

Prosecutors said that Officer Holtzclaw preyed on women who were known to police for having had run-ins with the department in the past. He then told them that if they were to report him, he would have them arrested on charges related to their past.

But Holtzclaw, 29, wasn't feeling so aggressive on Thursday, when he broke down in tears upon hearing the reading of the verdict.

He was convicted of raping 13 women, but was cleared of about half of the total 36 counts against him. He has not had his sentencing set for January, which could likely see him serving the massive sentence as what would amount to life in prison.

Protesters who gathered outside the court earlier this week, demanded that the all-white jury convict the officer based on the physical evidence and the word of the 13 black women, who testified about how they were sexually assaulted.

While the prosecution has easily characterized Holtzclaw as a predator who sought victims living in poverty and with criminal histories that he could hold over their heads, the defense for the rapist cop has said that all of these women have independently invented these rape allegations against the shamed officer.

Holtzclaw, additionally is accused of targeting African American women specifically.

He had a pattern of looking for victims with criminal records or a history of drug use or sex work. This targeting continued for seven months while he worked the 4pm to 2am patrol, according to the Raw Story.

For all but one of his alleged victims, police investigators claim, Holtzclaw used his position on the force to run background checks for outstanding warrants or other means by which to coerce sex.

Prosecutors are now trying Holtzclaw for 36 counts including rape, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy and stalking, to which Holtzclaw has pleaded not guilty.

Holtzclaw's new defense has aggressively called into question his accusers for nothing more than their marijuana use, or drinking. In one case, their "checkered past" was simply having a suspended drivers licenses.

One women's abuse advocate said that, "officers count on no one believing the victim if she reports."

Andrew Rios's seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed the antipsychotic Risperdal, a drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults, and rarely used for children as young as 5 years.

When Andrew screamed in his sleep and seemed to interact with people and objects that were not there, his frightened mother researched Risperdal and discovered that the drug was not approved, and had never even been studied, in children anywhere near as young as Andrew.

"It was just 'Take this, no big deal,' like they were Tic Tacs," said Genesis Rios, a mother of five in Rancho Dominguez, Calif. "He was just a baby."

A senior Iranian cleric has warned that Turkey's illegal deployment of troops to northern Iraq would be detrimental to Ankara and the entire region. "There is no logic behind this issue (troop deployment)," Hojjatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi said in an address to worshipers at weekly Friday Prayers in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

He added that the Muslim people of Turkey would not be happy with their government's wrong approach toward neighboring states and Muslim nations, calling on Turkish officials to focus on their own country's security and economy and to respect Islamic values as well. Iran condemns Turkey's deployment of troops to Iraq and recommends Turkish officials to stop carrying out measures which would lead to their country's isolation, he said.

Turkey deployed last Friday hundreds of troops and heavy weaponry to areas around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which is now occupied by the Daesh Takfiri group. Iraq has strongly condemned the deployment, branding it as a blatant violation of its sovereignty. Iraqi officials have threatened to take action against Turkey at the United Nations Security Council.