A 25-year-old woman from India, working as a housemaid in Saudi Arabia, was tortured to death by her employer, the woman's family claims. However, The Saudi hospital where she had been treated says she died of "natural causes."

Asima Khatoon, from Hyderabad, had managed to sneak a call to her family two months before her death to blow the whistle on her ill treatment at the hands of her employer, Abdul Rahman Ali Mohammed, the ANI news agency reported, citing Asima's family members.

They said the young woman complained of being harassed both physically and mentally, and begged her parents to help her get back to India as soon as possible.

The Telangana state government sent a request to the Ministry of External Affairs asking for help in repatriating the woman, Indian media report.

It was a call from an unknown source that informed relatives in India she had died at the King Saud hospital for chest diseases.

A restaurant in Cologne that was selling "delicious and juicy" Erdogan burgers, apparently named after the Turkish president, was forced to close over "credible threats" it had received, the eatery said.

The burgers had only been on sale in the Urban Burgery restaurant since April.

"Delicious, juicy, and the next big thing, is Erdogan the burger," was the intriguing announcement on the restaurant's Facebook page, "It [the burger, definitely not the Turkish leader] weighs more than any kebab."

The "tasty and delicious" Erdogan burgers were served with goat cheese, the restaurant said, apparently referring to German TV satirist Jan Bohmermann's poem implicating Recep Tayyip Erdogan in alleged sex acts with goats and a proclivity for child pornography. Erdogan and later German Chancellor Angela Merkel found the poem insulting. Bohmermann now faces prosecution under a rarely-used law that punishes those who insult foreign dignitaries.

At least one man has been killed and three injured after a knife-wielding German man reportedly shouting "Allahu Akbar" attacked people at Grafing train station near the city of Munich. The attack might have an Islamist motive, officials said.

Apart from "Allahu Akbar" the man was heard shouting "unbelievers," Das Bild newspaper reported, citing local witnesses.

The prosecutor has confirmed the death of a 50-year-old man. He added that "two people are badly wounded, one is in critical condition." The three injured are aged 58, 43 and 55.

The "assailant made remarks at the scene of the crime that indicate a political motive - apparently an Islamist one," Ken Heidenreich, spokesman for the prosecutor's office, told AFP. "We are still determining what the exact remarks were."

The 27-year-old German citizen stabbed a newspaper delivery man in the back, a firefighter told the Merkur paper.

The culture war that so defines current debates between the left and right sides of politics has its history in the barmy theory of 'cultural Marxism'

What do the Australian's columnist Nick Cater, video game hate group #Gamergate, Norwegian mass shooter Anders Breivik and random blokes on YouTube have in common? Apart from anything else, they have all invoked the spectre of "cultural Marxism" to account for things they disapprove of - things like Islamic immigrant communities, feminism and, er, opposition leader Bill Shorten [Leader of the Australian Labor Party - Sott.net ed.].

What are they talking about? The tale varies in the telling, but the theory of cultural Marxism is integral to the fantasy life of the contemporary right. It depends on a crazy-mirror history, which glancingly reflects things that really happened, only to distort them in the most bizarre ways.

It begins in the 1910s and 1920s. When the socialist revolution failed to materialise beyond the Soviet Union, Marxist thinkers like Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs tried to explain why. Their answer was that culture and religion blunted the proletariat's desire to revolt, and the solution was that Marxists should carry out a "long march through the institutions" - universities and schools, government bureaucracies and the media - so that cultural values could be progressively changed from above.

A Kansas City, Missouri couple may have tapped into America's latent resentment regarding this election season, receiving national attention for a joke campaign sign which they put in their front yard reading: "Everybody Sucks 2016. The US is doomed."

Debbie Butler told KSHB-TV last week that she and her husband, an Army veteran who fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq, first bought the sign as joke.

"It's just fun," Butler told the network. "We just thought it was funny when we saw it, so we bought it and put it in the front yard."

Although buying it may have just been a flight of fancy, it has since attracted attention from Kansas City residents, and images of it have gone viral on a national level.

"It gets a lot of car honks," Butler explained to KHSB. "It gets people stopping and saying, 'We love your sign.' People slow down and take pictures of our sign."

Another West Point scandal is apparently brewing this week on the campus of the 214 year-old United States Military Academy located 50 miles up the Hudson River from New York City. A photo of sixteen African American female cadets posing in dress gray uniform directly in front of the historic Central Barracks (built circa slavery era of 1850) with raised clenched fists has gone viral and is creating quite a stir. A West Point official acknowledged that the controversial photograph depicts a group of cadet women from this year's senior class due to graduate May 21^st and that the incident is currently under serious investigation for any violation of the Defense Department stipulation prohibiting:

Any member of the Armed Forces shall not display a partisan political sign, poster, banner, or similar device visible to the public at one's residence on a military installation.

In recent years the Black Lives Matter group has adopted this arm and hand gesture as a sign of solidarity lending support to the many African Americans murdered since the Trayvon Martin case in 2012. The numerous high profile cases of unarmed black men killed by white policemen has given impetus to the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Off its own website it defines itself as "a chapter-based national organization working for the validity of Black life. We are working to (re)build the Black liberation movement." It should come as no surprise that any organization advocating black empowerment especially when it began using the clenched raised fist as its symbolic gesture signifying solidarity and strength would attract illicit attention from the FBI and Homeland Security, not unlike the FBI's long running COINTELPRO operation that illegally monitored Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and the Students for a Democratic Society back in the 1960's and 70's.

During this year's presidential election campaign, Black Lives Matter protesters attending Donald Trump rallies have recently been widely reported in the media for clashes with Trump supporters, at times erupting in violence mostly from angry Trump zealots pissed at that their uninvited party crashers. This of course comes in response to Trump making inflammatory racist statements against both Muslims and Latinos.

Hundreds of thousands of children starting school are lacking basic personal hygiene, communication and social skills, but can probably unlock an iPhone, new research says.

The State of Education report by school leaders service The Key surveyed more than 1,100 senior primary school staff on pupils' readiness to start school.

Those surveyed said many children suffer from a lack of social skills, which included delayed speech or deficient self-help skills, such as taking themselves to the toilet.

Some teachers also said many pupils had levels of reading, writing and numeracy much lower than they should be.

One headteacher said four-year-olds "know how to swipe a phone but haven't a clue about conversations."

"Why, in the 21st century, are children still arriving in school nurseries aged three or above, without being toilet trained?" another school leader lamented.

Monday morning, scientists working for the Department of Homeland Security will begin releasing (nontoxic) gases and particles on crowded subway platforms, beginning a week-long airflow study aimed at measuring the impact of a nightmarish chemical or biological terrorist attack.

It's not the first such study — most recently the NYPD gassed the subway system in 2013 (also nontoxic) — but this is the first large-scale use of particles, in addition to gases. While gas tests help scientists, counter-terrorism specialists, and emergency responders understand the impact of chemical weapons like sarin gas or mustard gas, the particle test will measure the fallout from aerosol-dispensed biological agents like anthrax or ricin.

Every day this week, particles will be released from machines at busy stations like Grand Central, Times Square, 34th St. - Penn Station. Special machines and filters on platforms and subway cars will gather the particles. Researchers working throughout the system will also wear small patches designed to collect them.

The Department of Homeland Security, along with a MTA and a slew of other agencies, assured New Yorkers that neither the gases nor the particles are a health risk. The study won't significantly increase the level of particle matter wafting through the air, in part, because New York City subway stations are already brimming with particulate. In fact, as the project's assessment report noted, the levels of steel, manganese, and chromium in the subway system are 100 times higher than outdoors.

Hundreds of people are protesting at San Francisco City Hall on Monday, expressing support for five people who conducted a hunger strike lasting more than two weeks, and pushing for an end to police brutality and the removal of the city's police chief.

Demonstrators in San Francisco are calling for the ouster of Police Chief Greg Suhr, with an all-day strike intended to push their agenda. The beleaguered city police department has been racked with controversy over the fatal shootings of people of color, as well as racist and homophobic text messages sent by some officers.

Beginning at 8 a.m., demonstrators started marching on City Hall, chanting slogans such as "No justice, no peace," and "Fire Chief Suhr." At one point, they also chanted, "How do you spell murder? S-F-P-D."
Monday's strike comes a few days after 33 protesters were arrested during a Friday night demonstration at City Hall, where dozens of demonstrators came out in support of five hunger strikers known as the "Frisco Five." In an attempt to force Mayor Ed Lee to fire Suhr, the individuals subsisted on chicken broth, coconut water and juice for 17 days before being admitted into a hospital for deteriorating health.

The "Immortal regiment" movement has spread from Russia to cities worldwide, with thousands of people in 42 countries across the globe already marching or getting ready to march in commemoration of their loved ones who fought in World War Two.

The marches, which are taking place from May 7 through May 9, are an act of admiration and remembrance of all those who showed bravery during perhaps the most terrifying time in our recent history. They serve to show that each person who died or suffered in World War II was someone's family, someone's loved one.

Since its inception in 2007, the Immortal Regiment initiative has been met with unprecedented support, and by 2015 it had received national status. Last year it was held in seven other countries in post-Soviet space and Europe for the first time. This year's map of the Regiment movement, however, is unprecedented.