I moved out of Southern California in the summer of 1969. I was ten years old, and my parents were fleeing decadence and depravity in favor of the more wholesome Midwest.

Before our move, a story had circulated about some local (Newport Beach) high schoolers who had "gone on an LSD trip" and gotten caught by police. As I understood it, the teenagers had "taken LSD" and started leaping from rooftop to rooftop, "tripping" all over the neighborhood and waking people up to the sound of thundering hoofbeats overhead. At the time I wondered whether LSD conferred a miraculous leaping or flying ability, since the houses in Lido Sands, though rather tightly clustered, were mostly spaced perhaps eight or ten feet apart, which seemed like a long way to jump.

I vaguely recall this "LSD-fueled teenage midnight horsemen of the apocalypse" story having something to do with my parents' decision to move back to Wisconsin. Southern California circa 1969, a few years after the hippie movement had peaked and turned into a bad trip, didn't seem like a good place to send your kids to high school. (Little did my parents know that the 60s would hit Wisconsin high schools ten years late, putting me and my siblings directly in the path of the psychedelic hurricane.)

Years later, as an "experienced" (in the Jimi Hendrix sense) subversive teenage wannabe intellectual, I would read about the Manson murders and notice how convenient they had been for the Establishment. From the moment Charlie Manson's grinning, demonic face started leering from every front page and TV screen in America, the whole hippie-antiwar thing had seemed a whole lot scarier. I read the official version of the Manson myth, Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, and thought: This is too crazy to be true. None of the Wisconsin hippies I know are even remotely like these characters. Maybe it's something they add to the fluoride in the Southern California water.

An Afghan soldier has shot and killed two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, officials say.

A spokesman for the Afghan military said on July 30 that the two soldiers were killed when a member of the Afghan National Army opened fire on troops inside a military base in the district of Shah Wali Kot the previous day.

The soldier who turned his gun on the Americans was wounded during the attack and is now in custody, said the spokesman, Ahmad Sadiq.

The U.S. military said on July 29 that two of its service members were killed in Afghanistan, but provided no details.

What may have been considered a prank by a group of middle-schoolers could have cost an art teacher her life. All of the students involved are just 12 and 13 years old, but school security said they were well aware their teacher had a serious allergy when it was used against her last school year.

"That could be attempted murder," a Columbus City Schools (CCS) security officer is heard telling Columbus Police officers in a body camera video. The call about the attack came from Starling K-8 school last November. On the video, the security officer is seen escorting police to the art teacher's door where signs stating "Banana Free Zone" are posted. Another sign instructs students to wash their hands if they've eaten a banana that day.

Children are being rented, bought, recycled, and kidnapped so that single adults, mostly men from Central America, can gain quick release into the United States after crossing the border illegally.

The cost of renting a child varies.

"We've had indications ... that it could cost anywhere from a few hundred — or even in some cases, less than $100 — up to $1,000 or more," said Kevin McAleenan, acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), during a congressional hearing on July 18.

McAleenan said in one case, a 51-year-old illegal alien had purchased a 6-month-old baby for $80 in Guatemala so that he could easily get into the United States. The man, a Honduran national, confessed to border agents when he was faced with a DNA test.

Amid the war of words between President Donald Trump and Congressman Elijah Cummings over tweets about Baltimore, an uncomfortable truth is emerging: many American cities have a problem with rats, lots of them.

Describing the district represented by Cummings (D-Maryland), including Baltimore, as a "rat and rodent infested mess" in a tweet over the weekend, the president drew a wave of condemnation from critics, some of whom interpreted the remark as a racist dog whistle about the city's residents. Upon closer examination, however, Baltimore indeed ranks among the country's most rodent-friendly cities, though not quite the worst.

Coming in at number nine (out of 50) on an annual list of America's rattiest cities compiled by the pest control service Orkin, Baltimore has a pest problem no matter how one slices it. The battle to control the city's prolific rodent population was even chronicled in a 2017 documentary, Rat Film, which eventually aired on PBS.

During a tour of the city last year, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh - who has since resigned in disgrace - observed "Woah, you can smell the rats," in a video clip that has gone viral.

Pests in cities tend to gather where trash accumulates, and rats in particular will nest wherever there is warmth and easy access to food (and they'll eat just about anything). Though some might find the furry creatures cute, rats are no joke, carrying a range of infectious diseases, including hantavirus and hemorrhagic fever. If that wasn't bad enough, the animals also reproduce at a disconcerting rate, birthing around 60 pups per year on average, allowing them to quickly overtake certain urban areas.

DGHS says; 3 die in Dhaka;1,096 more new cases reported; city schools step up measures to combat Aedes mosquito

Dengue has spread to 50 districts with a record 1,096 patients having been diagnosed with the viral disease yesterday alone.

Three days ago, dengue cases were being reported from only 17 districts and the day before yesterday reports came in from five new districts. The number of districts with dengue cases shot up to 50 yesterday, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Dengue spreads, 3 die

At least three people, including a child, died in the capital and Savar yesterday after they had been diagnosed with dengue. So far, 35 people have died after being diagnosed with the disease.

The government claims that eight people have died of dengue so far.

A federal appeals court on Monday said an Ohio man who was acquitted of a felony after creating a parody Facebook page that mocked a suburban Cleveland police department can sue the city and two police officers over his arrest.

In a 3-0 decision, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said Anthony Novak can pursue several claims over his March 2016 posting of what he admitted was an "insulting parody" of the Parma police department's Facebook page.

Novak had sued for damages after being acquitted in August 2016 of disrupting police services over his parody page, which was taken down after about 12 hours.

At least 3,812 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of this year, with 89 kids killed by airstrikes alone, a new UN report reveals. International forces were responsible for over 300 civilian deaths.

Between January and June 2019, 1,366 civilians were killed, of whom at least 327 were children, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)'s report says.

While the overall figure is down compared to last year's record high, there has been a 31 percent increase in casualties caused by government and foreign forces, with 717 Afghan civilians killed.

Ground raids and clashes were responsible for most civilian casualties, followed by air strikes and bombs. Airstrikes caused 519 civilian casualties, including 363 deaths - a 39 percent increase in airstrike casualties from the previous year, which the UN said highlights "the lethal character of this tactic."

Once again, feminists go to preposterous lengths to explain differences in performance between the sexes, even when the truth is obvious, and not hurtful in itself (but highly dangerous for the ideology).

After 40 million people spent 10 weeks qualifying for the highest-paying ever e-sports tournament, the Fortnite World Cup, with a prize fund of $30 million, an inconvenient fact emerged. Not a single one of the solo finalists who made their way to play the battle royale computer game in front of screaming crowds of thousands in Flushing Meadows, New York was a woman.

Media explanations immediately defaulted to the social discrimination templates that have been around since before consoles existed. According to the Guardian, gaming communities are "unwelcoming" while "women players are sometimes belittled and objectified, their abilities constantly questioned" when they are not being pelted with "misogynistic insults" through the in-game chat. In its analysis, Forbes spoke about unspecified but evidently unfortunate "root issues causing girls not to pick up games when they're younger" in addition to the assumed "toxicity." One of the many blue tick journalists commenting on the issue on Twitter distilled the argument to its essence: "male gamers."

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a full-page "explainer" about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign targeting Israel under the headline, "Is BDS Anti-Semitic? A Closer Look at the Boycott Israel Campaign." We were surprised — and pleased — that the piece was as fair as it was.

The biggest problem with the article is the headline/framing. The Times would never run an article asking, "Is Zionism Racist?" — although there is plenty of evidence that Jewish nationalism is as inherently intolerant of non-Jews as white nationalism is of people of color.

But the article does include many paragraphs that are fair. Just look at this one. The Times acknowledges that the demand by the BDS campaign for "full equality" for Palestinian citizens of Israel is threatening to Zionists.

But many Israelis say the movement's real goal is the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Full equality for Arab citizens of Israel would require overturning or amending Israeli laws that grant Jews automatic citizenship and define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Reasonable readers are sure to ask, If a state is premised on inequality, what kind of state is it? As the Times suggests, discrimination is embedded in Israel's laws. The nation-state law is a "basic law," said to be equivalent to a constitution. In Israel, Jews have more rights than the 20-25 percent of the population that is non-Jewish, and the millions of Palestinians under occupation are denied rights altogether.