If you want to buy a piece of land, then you have to pay a price that the owner is willing to accept. But too often, government doesn't have to play by the same rules — and in Arizona, one town is trying to use that special treatment to acquire a utility company branch at a bottom-dollar price.

Last year, Bullhead City filed a ballot initiative (Prop 415) with Mohave County to use eminent domain to acquire a branch of the private utility company EPCOR. The valuations on the costs of the utility company varied widely — ranging around $55 million according to the city to $130 million according to EPCOR. The city's valuation relied on public records, views of the system from behind a chain-link fence, and other questionable methods (other abuses aside from those addressed in this post can be read here).

Eminent domain — the power of government to confiscate private property for the so-called "public good" — is often little more than legalized theft. While Arizona has taken steps to ensure its residents enjoy the strongest protections for property rights in the nation, even the Goldwater Institute's home state has experienced its share of eminent domain abuse. Bullhead City's move to acquire the EPCOR branch is just the latest example.

Eva Bartlett traveled to Crimea to see firsthand out how Crimeans have fared since 2014 when their country reunited with Russia, and what the referendum was really like.

In early August I traveled to Russia for the first time, partly out of interest in seeing some of the vast country with a tourist's eyes, partly to do some journalism in the region. It also transpired that while in Moscow I was able to interview Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry.

High on my travel list, however, was to visit Crimea and Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) — the former a part of Russia, the latter an autonomous republic in the east of Ukraine, neither accurately depicted in Western reporting. Or at least that was my sense looking at independent journalists' reports and those in Russian media.

Both regions are native Russian-speaking areas; both opted out of Ukraine in 2014. In the case of Crimea, joining Russia (or actually rejoining, as most I spoke to in Crimea phrased it) was something people overwhelmingly supported. In the case of the Donbass region, the turmoil of Ukraine's Maidan coup in 2014 set things in motion for the people in the region to declare independence and form the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.

A senior councillor has urged the people of St Helens to "look after our neighbours" as the coronavirus health crisis deepens.

Cllr Anthony Burns, cabinet member for public health, leisure and libraries, stressed the importance of pulling together during a meeting of the People's Board, which features a rang of partners from across the borough.

During a discussion about the borough's suicide rate, Cllr Burns warned the coronavirus outbreak is adding to peoples' existing worries.

What is the best way to get away with murder? In the United States especially, it is to wear a badge. Police officers who shoot innocent citizens are seldom brought to book. In the UK, police shootings do happen, but they are extremely rare. Domestic murders on the other hand are sadly all too common. Men murder their wives and lovers; women murder their husbands and lovers. The big difference is that when a woman is the perpetrator rather than the victim, there will always be some mischief-maker waiting to cry foul, to turn the perpetrator into the victim and the victim into the perpetrator.

One such mischief-maker is the lawyer Harriet Wistrich; she's done this quite a few times over the years, and is hoping to do it again soon with two women: Farieissia Martin and Emma-Jayne Magson (pictured above with the tattooed chest). Like Sally Challen who put a hammer in her handbag then battered her estranged husband over the head twenty times, they are guilty as sin. Years after Challen's conviction, she told Wistrich's lover and collaborator Julie Bindel how Richard Challen had raped her on a number of occasions. Yet she still went back for more. At her trial in 2011, the jury heard how she had accessed his e-mails, monitored his Facebook page, and his voicemail messages. She asked a neighbour to spy on him, yet curiously, all this was later interpreted as him stalking and harassing her.

The Martin case was discussed here in a recent article. Magson is cut from the same cloth, a violent woman who took a knife to the man with whom she lived. So how does Miss Wistrich plan to spring Martin and Magson from prison?

Both these women were convicted of murder on overwhelming evidence, and normally new evidence will not be admitted on appeal. The same provision applies broadly in the United States and most countries that have fair criminal justice systems. However, under the Criminal Appeal Act, 1995, fresh evidence can be admitted subject to two broad criteria. It must be evidence that is "capable of belief" and evidence that was not available at the time, or if it was available at the time, there must be a reasonable explanation for its not being adduced at trial. No one is entitled to more than one trial.

The graphic footage, filmed by body cameras worn by the elite troops and broadcast on national television, must lead to the soldiers being tried for murder.

Australians always look forward to celebrating Anzac Day, but this year it will be different because a pall of shame has fallen over our armed forces thanks to a jaw-dropping TV expose aired this week that showed elite Aussie soldiers murdering Afghan civilians in cold blood when they were supposed to be protecting them from the Taliban.

While a four-year inquiry into the behavior of its soldiers in Afghanistan, by the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force, is still to deliver on its investigation, the chances of alleged war crimes being swept under the rug thanks to lying soldiers misguidedly protecting their comrades, misinformation from witnesses, or from a political cover-up, have just been blown out of the water.

Thanks to whistleblower Braden Chapman, a former army intelligence officer who witnessed the atrocities first hand in 2012, no one can ignore the reality of what happened as the Aussie Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) stormed the dusty villages of Afghanistan in search of those it considered legitimate targets.

Marvel is completely dripping with soy. Not tired of having the lowest sales figures at any point in history, the woke comic book publisher is now doubling down with its foray into social justice with the introduction of an all new comic book called "The New Warriors" that features not one, but three social justice-infused characters, two of which are named "Snowflake" and "Safespace."

Yes, you read that correctly. They're naming the characters precisely after what pretty much every normal person on the planet refers to social justice warriors derogatorily.


As the comic's creator, who himself looks like the spitting image of the Nu-Male Wojak made fun of by the likes of PewDiePie and Paul Joseph Watson, Daniel Kibblesmith explains:

Amazon whistleblower Meghan King has been working off and on at the GSP-1 warehouse in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where she has been injured twice, since 2012. She spoke this week with the World Socialist Web Site about the effect of the pandemic on her life and her co-workers' lives.

Warehouse workers have already tested positive in Spain, Italy, and in the US state of Washington. A recent online petition calling for measures to prevent the spread of the virus has been signed by 1,500 Amazon workers.

With millions of people quarantined or otherwise confined to their homes, orders through Amazon have mounted precipitously. In the UK, where Amazon employs approximately 27,000 workers, warehouse workers report being subjected to compulsory overtime to meet increased demand.

On Friday, schools in Meghan's area closed, and many Amazon workers are now staying home to care for their children. In Meghan's case, she cares for three children. Management has indicated that workers will not be penalized for not showing up in March, but at the same time, workers are not receiving paid time off.

How will she survive without pay? "That's a good question," Meghan says. "I live paycheck to paycheck now. Many working class families, they have a buffer. I quite literally live paycheck to paycheck. Three weeks with no income and I'm screwed."

She claims Epstein had made promises to always support her financially.

Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend and long-time employee of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has filed a civil lawsuit against the late financier's estate seeking reimbursement of her legal fees and personal security costs. Maxwell, who has been accused in several lawsuits filed by Epstein's alleged victims of facilitating his abuse, claims Epstein had repeatedly made "clear and unambiguous" promises to always support her financially, according to a court filing in the United States Virgin Islands.

"Maxwell reasonably and justifiably relied on Epstein's promises and put her trust in Epstein that he would fulfill his promises," according to the lawsuit filed in Superior Court in St. Thomas last week and made public on Wednesday.

A gang of thugs smashed a Sainsbury's shop front in south London in a nighttime raid as supermarkets come under huge pressure amid coronavirus fears.

Six men tried stealing alcohol from the New Kent Road store in Elephant and Castle at around 10.50pm yesterday by 'concealing spirits in their clothes'.

Police said that Sainsbury's staff confronted the men, who became 'hostile and threatening' and fled outside before trashing the store front.

Plunging oil prices could be headed a lot lower - possibly below zero, according to one Wall Street analyst.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the U.S. benchmark, fell by more than 10 percent Wednesday to near $24 a barrel, a level last seen in April 2002.

"Oil prices can go negative," wrote Paul Sankey, managing director at Mizuho Securities.