America will miss Jon Stewart. But it's fair to say we miss him already, because his America is gone. The political climate — angrier, more bitter, more violently divided — is radically different from the one he signed up to make fun of. Political satire, as Stewart defined it on The Daily Show, requires him to appear equally tough on the left and the right. But that means he has to pretend there's such a thing as a moderate center.

If his show got more predictable in the past few years — making the same jokes every night about the same Fox News/Tea Party bullshit — that's because America did too. And it clearly took a toll on him. "Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing," he said recently. "I live in a constant state of depression."

Stewart was a strange fit for The Daily Show, an already thriving franchise when he took over in 1999. His specialty was a sort of good-natured bro humor. He didn't do topical material. He looked uncomfortable in a suit and tie. If he'd ever had a political opinion, he kept it to himself. The transition was clumsier than anyone wants to remember. But there was a moment, early on in those first few months, when you could see things change — in retrospect, this was one of the pivot points of 21st-century TV culture. Stewart was doing a bit about the NYPD — then wracked by a scandal in which at least one cop sexually assaulted and tortured a black man with a toilet plunger — and its "CPR" motto: "Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect." Stewart said, "Although many officers tragically mistake it for 'Cram Plunger in Rectum.' "

Then he winced — not a comedian's wince, not a jokey "sorry, folks" wince, just a reflexive flinch that said, "Wow, that was not fun at all." You could see he hated himself for that line, hated the handful of people in the audience who laughed — and was already telling himself, "Yeah, this is exactly what I'm not doing from now on."

For generations, passionate kisses immortalized in movies, songs and the arts have served as a thermometer of romantic affection.

But current research has found that not only is romantic kissing not the norm in most cultures, some find it uncomfortable and even flat-out repulsive.

Justin Garcia, research scientist at Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, is the co-author of a new study published in the journal American Anthropologist -- "Is the Romantic-Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal?" -- that looked at 168 cultures throughout the world to better understand where kissing does and doesn't occur.

Using standard cross-cultural methods, the study found that fewer than half of all cultures surveyed -- 46 percent -- engage in romantic/sexual kissing. Romantic kissing was defined as lip-to-lip contact that may or may not be prolonged.

"We hypothesized that some cultures would either not engage in romantic/sexual kissing, or find it to be a strange display of intimacy, but we were surprised to find that it was a majority of cultures that fell into this category," said Garcia, assistant professor of gender studies in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences. "This is a real reminder of how Western ethnocentrism can bias the way we think about human behavior."

While the US has had its share of deadly social violence over the past year, much of split along along racial lines, it has mercifully avoided a full-blown racial war. However, in recent weeks there has been a troubling increase in invocations toward even more violence, and even more deaths, which seek to achieve just that: a United States gripped in racial warfare.

The latest such call for violence was caught on tape just a few days ago, when on July 30 during a speech delivered at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Miami, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for black Americans to "rise up" and "kill those who kill us" if the federal government fails to "intercede in our affairs."

Follows an excerpt from his troubling sermon:

I am looking for 10,000 in the midst of the millions, 10,000 fearless men who say death is sweeter than continued life under tyranny.

Death is sweeter than to continue to live and bury our children while the white folks give the killer hamburgers.

Death is sweeter than watching us slaughter each other to the joy of a 400-year old enemy.

The Koran teaches persecution is worse than slaughter. Then it says, retaliation is prescribed in matters of the slain.

Retaliation is a prescription from God to calm the breaths of those whose children have been slain. So if the federal government will not intercede in our affairs, then we must rise up and kill those who kill us. Stalk them and kill them and let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling."

Recording below:

Four Los Angeles-area police officers have been arrested on charges of physically abusing minors who were attending a boot camp for at-risk youth in central California, a sheriff's office said on Wednesday.

The San Luis Obispo Sheriff's Office said the four officers were arrested following a two-month investigation into allegations of abuse on 13 youths between the ages of 12 and 17.

All of the juveniles came from the Los Angeles-area, about 200 miles (322 km) to the south, and were participating in a week-long program from May 17-24 at Camp San Luis Obispo, a California Army National Guard military base, the sheriff's office said in a release.

The sheriff did not give any details into the kinds of physical abuse the children were said to endure, but the Los Angeles Times, citing an attorney for the children, said it included the youths being slapped and punched, and having their hands and backs stepped on while they were doing push ups.

A New York police officer has been indicted for sexually abusing a teenage girl, the New York Daily News reports.

Joel Doseau was arrested Wednesday morning and faces 40 counts for abusing a girl starting in 2008 when she was 15 years old and he was 37, the Daily News reports. She just recently came forward to report the abuse and is now a young adult. Doseau is a sergeant with the NYPD.

He faces charges that include counts of rape, promoting the sexual performance of a child, sexual abuse and misconduct, using a child for sexual performance and acting in a manner injurious to a child.

A 911 operator in Lawrence, Massachusetts is currently being investigated for allegedly hanging up on Spanish-speaking callers, even though the department is supposed to have a fluent speaker on hand for just such occasions.

Notably, this isn't a one-time accusation against the dispatcher, who has remained unidentified. According to CBS Boston, which broke the story, the operator has dumped Spanish-speaking callers a total of three times, a significant number considering that 75 percent of Lawrence is Spanish-speaking.

In an audio recording made available by the news outlet, a man who called in to 911 can be heard speaking in Spanish.

"I don't speak Spanish. I speak English, sir," the dispatcher says to the man.

Nearly a dozen bounty hunters descended upon a Phoenix, Arizona house with guns drawn on Tuesday night, in an attempt to weed out a suspected fugitive. However, they ended up running into the top dog of the local police department.

Instead of discovering the runaway Oklahoma fugitive they were looking for, they were actually trying to raid the house of the Phoenix Police Chief Joseph Yahner. The bounty hunters said a social media tip led them to the house, where they believed they'd find their target.

According to the Arizona Republic, police said the incident began when two separate bounty hunter organizations, the Northstar Fugitive Recovery and Delta One Tactical Recovery, converged on Yahner's home. A 54-second cell phone recording shows part of the scene, during which the bounty hunters can be seen around the property.

A "hazardous acidic substance in the water" off the shore of part of Santa Monica beach has forced Los Angeles authorities to partially evacuate the packed coastline.

Lifeguards rushed to clear the water and the Hollywood-famous pier, closing it off from block 1700 of Ocean Front Walk to Tower 15, north of the pier, LA County Lifeguard spokesman Ken Haskett told local reporters.

As beach-goers took snapshots at the scene, swimmers were urged to stay out of the water. For now the public is not allowed to enter the cordoned off area until the nature of the substance is determined, ABC local news, KABS, reports.

The mysterious substance possibly comes from an offshore boat and could be chemically treated sewage, said Petty Officer Marshall Anderson with the US Coast Guard who spoke with KATLA news station.

If the substance is proved to be sewage, it will eventually dissipate naturally, Anderson added.

Opposition groups have reacted swiftly to notice of a Friday deadline after which Federal officials could start removing a herd of horses from the Tonto National Forest in Arizona.

Though it's unlikely they would start immediately, the Feds said that these are stray and escaped horses and that they pose a public hazard. But advocates who oppose the roundup say these horses are part of the last vestige of an estimated half million "wild" horses that used to roam Arizona.

In a notice posted to much controversy last week, the Forest Service said people have until this Friday to claim their "stray" horses, before service officials may begin removing the horses from Salt River in Tonto National Forest.

With that Friday deadline looming, anger at the federal government turned to action -- swift and organized. So much so, that it garnered a response from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

"Feds should leave our free roaming & #wildhorses alone. But if they don't, #AZ will do everything we can to protect them and provide sanctuary," Ducey said in a tweet posted Wednesday afternoon.

Police say they are investigating the role of a recent 'blue moon,' after the bodies of a man and his two sons were discovered dead at home on Friday

Leading experts and practitioners of Wicca and other pagan religions have slammed a Florida sheriff's department after police announced that a triple murder was a "ritualistic killing" linked to "witchcraft".

The bodies of a man and his two sons were discovered on Friday in a house in Escambia County in the Florida panhandle, after a routine welfare check.

They had been bludgeoned to death on the afternoon of 28 July, with what police said had been a claw-hammer, and their throats had been slit. One of the sons, who was a Department of Homeland Security employee, had also been shot through the head.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Escambia County sheriff David Morgan told reporters that his department was investigating a connection with "witchcraft", saying that the "method of the murder, blunt force traumas, slit throats, positions of bodies and then our person of interest has some ties to a faith or religion that is indicative of that".

"Those of you that follow any of that will also note that at the time of death we believe on Tuesday it also coincides with what's referred to as a blue moon," Morgan added.

A "blue moon" is when a full moon occurs twice within one month, giving a year 13 full moons instead of 12, and one indeed occurred that week - though the astronomical rarity actually happened on Friday, the day the bodies were found, rather than on Tuesday, when police say the murders took place.

"If they had done even a modicum of research it would be clear this had nothing to do with paganism," said Dr Gwendolyn Reece, a specialist in contemporary paganism at American University. "It's very irresponsible and highly prejudiced on the part of the sheriff."