A Pennsylvania police officer was fired last month after a gruesome video surfaced showing him repeatedly smash a man's head into the floor until he fell unconscious. Now, all charges against the victim, whose head was the target of the cop's rage, have been dropped as well-exposing the entirely unnecessary use of force and subsequent arrest.

On Wednesday, the New Castle police department announced that all charges have been dropped against the man in the video.

The video, which was posted to Facebook, shows New Castle Police officer Ronald Williams unnecessarily and repeatedly slamming Perry Lawry's head into the floor until the man is left unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

The Pentagon has been requested to house and take care of some 12,000 illegal immigrants at its military bases along the Mexican border, to help the White House impose its "zero-tolerance" policy.

"The Department of Defense has received a request for assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to house and care for an alien family population of up to 12,000 people. DHS requests that DoD identify any available facilities that could be used for that purpose," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The request is quite urgent as the first 2,000 beds will have to be provided within 45 days. If the Pentagon does not find any available space, it is being asked to identify three potential construction sites and to erect "semi-separate, soft-sided camp facilities" that could house as many as 4,000 people each. Four US states which border Mexico - Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, or California - are considered ideal locations.

On Tuesday, voters at the polls in Oklahoma approved a ballot measure to legalize medical cannabis, according to a CNBCreport. After nearly a two-year-old signature drive, cannabis activists were finally successful in bringing State Question 788 to the Oklahoma ballot earlier this year.

Oklahoma's medical marijuana rules are some of the most progressive medical cannabis rules adopted to date and will allow an individual to possess up to 8 ounces of cannabis, six mature plants, and six seedlings. The law would also permit cannabis edibles and concentrates. Patients must receive permission from an Oklahoma Medical Board certified physician - there is not currently a list of qualifying conditions that must be satisfied, patients only need a doctor's recommendation.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersch has questioned the UK government's official line on the motives behind the Skripals' poisoning, saying there is an "instinctive dislike" of Russia within the UK.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's The Media Show, Hersch was responding to a question about whether journalists often bring their own "baggage or views" to stories before they've found out about what's going on, and if this shaped how stories were reported.

He said there is "bias all the time" in the media, and that the UK is "riddled with bias" fueled by an "instinctive dislike" of Russia.

"There's bias all the time, this country's riddled with bias, there's a great dislike of Russia here, an instinctive dislike," he said.

I had to pick my jaw up off the ground when I saw this comment from a reader I know personally, and who is a political professional working with the Democratic Party. He almost always comments here to read me the riot act about my social and religious conservatism. But not this morning, not after reading the "Rosemary's Theyby" post about the next frontiers in gender madness. He writes:

The rot is even worse than you think. You have no idea how highly this has infected the low and middle levels of the Democratic Party. The mistake people make is on focusing on what the high elites in parties think, rather than what you could call the middle management. Elites are close to retirement, really, and while they do exert pull on the rest of the people, they can't pull too much.

Middle management, however, controls _everything_.

Not long ago, when my wife was pregnant, a coworker asked if we knew what we were having. I told this friend, and we were all excited.

Another coworker immediately started lecturing me in front of everyone about how this was grossly cis-heteronormative and that rather than forcing an identity on my child because of genitals, I should cultivate an environment in which the child would be able to flourish and explore the play of gender.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), which represents 1.5 million Americans, has voted overwhelmingly in support of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign (BDS).

Members took part in a vote last Friday on a slate of resolutions put forth by one of its member groups, the Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN).

The church opposed congressional and state anti-BDS legislation calling on Americans to "defend and advocate for the constitutional protection under the First Amendment for all United States citizens". It opposed "specific US legislation and efforts by agents of foreign governments to suppress" those freedoms. It insisted that the "The Israel Anti-Boycott Act", Senate Bill (S) 720 and House Resolution (H.R.) 1697, which seek to impose civil and criminal penalties for nonviolent BDS resistance against human rights violations in Israel and Palestine, was against the US constitution and a threat to free speech.

The resolutions won by a landslide following powerful testimonies from local and visiting Palestinians, Black Lives Matter leaders, Presbyterians and others. Most of the resolutions passed by 80 or 90 per cent or unanimously in committee and through the General Assembly, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) reported.

Just when we thought the over-used Bana al-Abed story was in the war propaganda dustbin, the wonder-child theme has again been re-hashed, this time by the Atlantic Council.

The so-called "think tank" recently highlighted the nine-year old at a conference that also included former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright.

Bana, the child presented to the world in late 2016 as tweeting from eastern Aleppo about wanting peace, Russia being bad, Assad being bad, etcetera, became colonial media's darling, the perfect cover for war propaganda. We are told that Bana al-Abed has written a memoir. She has attended galas, met the Turkish president, and hobnobbed with movie stars and UN officials. Now, the girl has been trotted out on stage to receive an award from the Atlantic Council.

I have read four studies of Hamas and have this evening begun to update my information by beginning my fifth, Hamas Contained : The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance by Tareq Baconi. So far I have only read the Preface and already I wish everyone could read it and follow up by speaking out and doing their little bits to spread light on a world that is too often lost behind distortions of reality.

Sections of the Preface that hit home with me:

The simplistic binaries that frame conversations of Palestinian armed struggle evoke the condescension expressed by colonial overlords toward the resistance of indigenous peoples. "Palestinians have a culture of hate," commentators blast on American TV screens. "They are a people who celebrate death." These familiar accusations, quick to roll off tongues, are both highly effective at framing public discourse and insulting as racist epithets.

Bolded emphasis in all quotations is my own.

I have often found discussions about Hamas very difficult so when I read the following I recognized something immediately:

The prevailing inability or unwillingness to talk about Hamas in a nuanced manner is deeply familiar. During the summer of 2014, when global news rooms were covering Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip, I watched Palestinian analysts being rudely silenced on the air for failing to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization outright. This condemnation was demanded as a prerequisite for the right of these analysts to engage in any debate about the events on the ground. There was no other explanation, it seemed, for the loss of life in Gaza and Israel other than pure-and-simple Palestinian hatred and bloodlust, embodied by Hamas.

Totally absent from any discussion, it seems, is any serious consciousness of the "broader historical and political context of the Palestinian struggle".

Whether condemnation or support, it felt to me, many of the views I faced on Palestinian armed resistance were unburdened by moral angst or ambiguity. There was often a certainty or a conviction about resistance that was too easily forthcoming.

Oh yes. Black and white. Right and wrong. Good and evil. The simplistic paradigms that have always guaranteed the perpetuation of ignorance and suffering.

A knife-wielding man has attacked pupils at the entrance of a primary school, killing two children, and leaving two more people injured.

A 29-year-old male attacked three students and one female parent with a knife at the Shanghai World Foreign Language Primary School around 11:30am local time on Thursday, according to police.

The victims were immediately taken to hospital, where two boys succumbed to their injuries and died. The third pupil and the parent have no life threatening injuries, according to local media.


The attacker, who was arrested at the site, was reportedly a jobless man, who vented his anger at society. A video purportedly showing the arrest emerged online.

Boosting the sanctioned economy of North Korea would not be easy or cheap, but there are geopolitical benefits for South Korea, according to research by Citibank analysts.

Citi estimated that $63.1 billion would be needed to rebuild transportation and infrastructure. Among the costs is an estimated $24.1 billion - needed for 28 railroad projects, $22.8 billion would be required for 33 road projects and 16 power plant projects would cost around $10 billion. The immediate building costs would require an estimated $11.6 billion.