A German of Iranian origin who traveled to Syria to join a jihadist group was sentenced to two years in prison for appearing in a set of images with severed heads of Syrian army servicemen. The case marks the first Syria-related war crime verdict in Germany.

A regional court in Frankfurt has found Aria Ladjevardi, a 21-year-old German citizen, guilty of war crimes for treating two Syrian army soldiers "in a degrading and humiliating manner" in violation of international humanitarian law.

The unidentified militant group, to which Ladjevardi is said to have belonged, raided a Syrian army checkpoint between March 8 and April 16, 2014, in the town of Binnish located in the Idlib province. The militants captured and later executed two servicemen. In course of the slaughter they beheaded the victims and spiked their heads on metal rods put on public display, the court has stated in a statement Tuesday.

South Korea's military has announced the location of its THAAD anti-missile defense system, intended to deter threats from North Korea. The plan, which greatly angered regional powers, has led thousands of Koreans on to the streets in protest.

Seoul and Washington say the system is intended to both counter threats in the region and defend US troops stationed there. It forms the core element of the America's multilayered defense program. But the local residents fear it will lead to deteriorating health and will negatively impact the agricultural economy. The system's high-powered radar has been linked to infertility and cancer, according to local rumors, which the government dismissed as "baseless."

Some 3,000 people first took to the streets on Saturday, following the previous day's announcement of the US-backed Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense System, or THAAD. This was in Chilgok County - thought to have been the likeliest of the locations. The protests have since spread.

But on Wednesday the government revealed the location to be the county of Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, about 135 miles (217km) southeast of Seoul.

"South Korea and the US' joint working group have proposed the Seongju area, North Gyeongsang Province, as the optimal place for the deployment ... and the countries' defense ministers have approved it," the Ministry of National Defense's Deputy Minister for Policy Yoo Jeh-seung announced on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reports.

This led to no less than 5,000 farmers gathering in protest, according to Yonhap. Opposition continues to be so fierce that some officials have gone on hunger strikes. This was followed by the county's Governor Kim Hang-gon writing a letter to Seoul in his own blood, as the attendees observed.

Ninety-five percent of the people living in Crimea would vote in favor of the republic's accession into the Russian Federation if a referendum on the subject was held again today.

On Tuesday, Russia's state owned public opinion research agency, VTSIOM, released the results of a poll conducted among Crimean residents between late June and early July of this year which found that 95 percent of Crimeans and 94 percent of the people living in Sevastopol, which is a separate subject of the Russian Federation, said they would vote to reunite with Russia if a referendum on the issue took place in the near future.

Only two percent of those polled said they would not support the reunification. Three percent of Crimeans and four percent of Sevastopol residents found the question too complicated to answer.

In the same poll, Crimeans were asked if they were satisfied with the general situation in their region. Seventy-six percent answered "yes," of which 34 percent were "very definite" about it. Ninety-seven percent of Crimeans and 98 percent of those living in Sevastopol said they approve of how Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing his job.

The Crimean Republic reunited with the Russian Federation two years ago after over 96 percent of its residents, the majority of whom are ethnic Russians, approved the move in an urgently called referendum. The decision was prompted by the ouster of the democratically elected president of Ukraine in a violent coup in Kiev and the installation of a nationalist-backed government that almost immediately declared war on the pro-Russian regions in the country's southeast, which refused to recognize the newly imposed regime.

Dozens of half-dead people blindly staggered through the streets of a Brooklyn neighborhood known as "Zombieland" Tuesday morning, propping themselves up against fire hydrants and vomiting foam down their shirts.

But the apocalyptic scene wasn't for a movie. The victims had apparently smoked a bad batch of the "synthetic marijuana" drug known as K2 — and 33 people had to be hospitalized.

"It looked like a scene out of 'The Walking Dead,' " said Brian Arthur, a lifelong Brooklyn resident who posted footage of the disheartening scene on Facebook.

British Airways passengers flying from Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5 are facing huge lines and lengthy delays after a glitch in a new IT system caused chaos at check-in.

It is the second time in as many weeks that travellers have taken to social media to post pictures of long queues in the departure hall, as hundreds of people have had to contend with "total chaos" at the start of their holidays.

"Total chaos at Heathrow Terminal 5 where 'technical difficulties' have halted BA check in," wrote Theo Delaney on Twitter, sharing a photo of a snaking line.

Filtering the news accounts of the tragedy in Dallas, we have more questions than answers. For some time, we have been afraid that long-standing, lethal police brutality toward African-Americans and the Black Lives Matter could provide a combustible mix in this troubled, wounded nation.

Although Micah Johnson was apparently moving up and down stairs to effect multiple sniper posts, the numerous accounts of other gunmen generating "triangulated fire" do not strike us as being satisfactorily dismissed by Johnson's vertical mobility.

Subsequent accounts of other snipers turning out to be armed protesters at what was described as a "peaceful" protest strike us as inadequate as well.

With Louis Farrakhan having called for blood, with jihadists being recruited for combat as proxy warriors in the Caucasus and Syria, among other places, with long-standing interface between Farrakhan and white supremacist elements, with white supremacists having enthusiastically embraced Donald Trump, we are of the opinion that other angles should be explored here.

Graphic body camera video was just released showing a Wagoner police officer kill an unarmed man — for pointing his finger.

The shooting occurred after 25-year-old Andrew Henson led police on a high-speed chase for approximately 20 minutes. The chase began after a routine traffic stop.

Police say Henson's car rolled after he clipped a patrol car. When Officer Robert Reynolds approached Henson, he was hiding behind the car.

According to the body cam footage, Officer Reynolds approached Henson with his gun drawn. As Henson emerged from behind the vehicle, he pointed at Reynolds. "You're going to have to kill me," Henson said.

Americans throw away almost as much food as they eat because of a "cult of perfection", deepening hunger and poverty, and inflicting a heavy toll on the environment.

Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the US are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards, according to official data and interviews with dozens of farmers, packers, truckers, researchers, campaigners and government officials.

From the fields and orchards of California to the population centres of the east coast, farmers and others on the food distribution chain say high-value and nutritious food is being sacrificed to retailers' demand for unattainable perfection.

"It's all about blemish-free produce," says Jay Johnson, who ships fresh fruit and vegetables from North Carolina and central Florida. "What happens in our business today is that it is either perfect, or it gets rejected. It is perfect to them, or they turn it down. And then you are stuck."

Food waste is often described as a "farm-to-fork" problem. Produce is lost in fields, warehouses, packaging, distribution, supermarkets, restaurants and fridges.

By one government tally, about 60m tonnes of produce worth about $160bn (£119bn), is wasted by retailers and consumers every year - one third of all foodstuffs.

Four men in Detroit were arrested over the past week for posts on social media that the police chief called threatening. One tweet that led to an arrest said that Micah Johnson, the man who shot police officers in Dallas last week, was a hero. None of the men have been named, nor have they been charged.

"I know this is a new issue, but I want these people charged with crimes," said Detroit Police Chief James Craig. "I've directed my officers to prepare warrants for these four individuals, and we'll see which venue is the best to pursue charges," he said.

Five police officers were killed in the Dallas shootings, constituting the highest number of police casualties in an attack since September 11. And as a result, law enforcement officials everywhere are suddenly much more sensitive to threats against their lives.

But one result has been that several police departments across the country have arrested individuals for posts on social media accounts, often from citizen tips — raising concerns among free speech advocates.

"Arresting people for speech is something we should be very careful about," Bruce Schneier, security technologist at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, told The Intercept.

One of the many interesting details to be learned by understanding human psychology is how a person's unconscious fear works in a myriad of ways to make them believe that they bear no responsibility for a particular problem.

This psychological dysfunctionality cripples a substantial portion of the human population in ways that work against the possibility of achieving worthwhile outcomes for themselves, other individuals, communities and the world as a whole. In an era when human extinction is now a likely near-term outcome of this dysfunctionality, it is obviously particularly problematic. So why does this happen and how does it manifest?

In essence, if a person is frightened by the circumstances of others or a particular set of events, their fear will often unconsciously delude them into believing and behaving as if they bear no responsibility for playing a part in addressing the problem. This fear works particularly easily when the person or people concerned live at considerable social and/or geographic distance or when the events occur in another place. But it can also work with someone who is socially or geographically close, or with an event that occurs nearby. Let me illustrate this common behaviour with several examples which might stimulate your awareness of having witnessed it too.

I first became seriously interested in this phenomenon after hearing someone, who had just returned from India, describe the many street beggars in India as 'living a subsistence lifestyle'. As I listened to this individual, I could immediately perceive that they were very frightened by their experience but in a way that made them not want to help. Given that this individual has considerable wealth, it was immediately apparent to me that the individual was attempting to conceal from themselves their unconscious guilt (about their own wealth and how this was acquired) but I could perceive an element of anger in their response as well. This anger was obviously shaping the way in which street beggars were perceived so that there was no apparent need to do anything. So what was the unconscious anger about? Most probably about not getting help themselves when they needed it as a child.