A high school teacher and activist sued the city of Seattle after a police officer sprayed chemical irritant directly into his face as he left a peaceful rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Jesse Hagopian, who spoke at the event about how black lives matter, was making arrangements by cell phone with his mother to attend his son's second birthday party when he passed a Seattle police officer screaming at passersby.

Video of the Jan. 19 incident shows the officer and some others standing at a police barricade as she orders a small, peaceful crowd - most of whom were walking past the police - to disperse.

Hagopian said officers set up a barricade with their bicycles to prevent protesters from marching, and he said some participants walked through the line - but he did not.

"Stand back, stand back," the officer screams as she holds a canister of pepper spray.

Suddenly, as Hagopian walks past talking on his cell phone, the officer blasts pepper spray - which the video shows hits him and an unidentified woman directly in the face.

Hagopian and the woman immediately duck for cover and the crowd scatters.

"I felt the piercing pain shoot through my eye, my ear drum and my nostril, all over my cheek and face," said Hagopian, whose eye was swollen shut afterward. "I yelled out. My mom was in distress as she heard me yell."

The officer continues to spray the chemical irritant in a sweeping motion toward the crowd, and she again orders the crowd to stand back when some witnesses ask what happened.

Video of the incident was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday, the same day Hagopian's attorney filed a lawsuit against the city.

A spokesman for the police department said he had not seen the video and was unable to comment.

A 17-year-old girl walked into the Longview, Texas police station. Then, only minutes later, police say they were "forced" to shoot and kill her, Thursday night. Now, the police have released surveillance footage that captured the final moments of Kristiana Coignard's life. Cognard walked into the empty lobby and approached the after-hours assistance phone.

"We don't know how she got here," Longview police officer Kristie Brian said. Coignard was connected to dispatch, via the after-hours phone. Dispatch then sent officers out to confront her. But no one knows exactly what was said then. Police, however, say that she "pulled a weapon" and "threatened" them.

We asked what weapon she brandished.

"I don't know what kind it was, yes she did brandish a weapon," Officer Brian said on Friday.

A former Stanford University swimmer has been charged with raping an intoxicated, unconscious woman in an on-campus attack that prosecutors say was witnessed by two cyclists who nabbed him in the middle of the night as he tried to run away.

Brock Allen Turner, 19, who voluntarily withdrew from the school Tuesday, faces five felony counts that could put him behind bars for 10 years. He was booked into Santa Clara County Jail on Jan. 18, shortly after the attack, on suspicion of attempted rape and penetration with a foreign object, both felonies. He has been released on $150,000 bail.

Turner is charged with one count of rape of an intoxicated person, one count of rape of an unconscious person, one count of sexual penetration by a foreign object of an intoxicated woman, one count of sexual penetration by a foreign object of an unconscious woman and one count of assault with intent to commit rape, prosecutor Alaleh Kianerci said Tuesday.

He is to be arraigned Monday in Palo Alto. Turner could not be reached Tuesday and his attorney, Mike Armstrong of Palo Alto, declined to comment.

Turner is not permitted to return to campus, the school announced Tuesday evening.

The Stanford Daily, following up a story by a campus newsletter, The Fountain Hopper, reported Tuesday that an unnamed freshman varsity athlete who had been accused of attempted rape was no longer practicing with the team and that he was not living on campus. A university spokeswoman said Tuesday the victim was not a student.

Kianerci declined to reveal details about the victim, describing her only as "a woman attending an on-campus party."

Turner's arrest comes as campus sexual assaults have attained unprecedented levels of national attention, with activists demanding their colleges do more to prevent assaults and punish offenders. Last spring, Stanford students protested the school's handling of a case in which the accused student -- whom police never charged, but who was found by a Stanford review panel to be responsible for sexual assault -- was permitted to complete his senior year.

Putin backs proposal to give one hectare to each citizen or person willing to move to region in a bid to stimulate economy and boost population.
Ambitious plans to give each resident of the Russian Far East one hectare of land for free have been given the backing of President Vladimir Putin.

The idea was floated by Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev in a bid to help stimulate the economy of the sparsely populated region and entice more people to move across the country.

A total of 614 million hectares of land are currently owned by the state and would effectively be up for grabs in the Far East under the scheme. It could be used for agricultural purposes, for hunting, or as a base for a timber plant or any other business.

The film American Sniper has sent the US public into raptures over the "heroic life" of its autobiographical subject Chris Kyle - who has been described as America's "greatest warrior" soldier.

Last week, the movie premiered in cinemas to rave reviews, earning its director Clint Eastwood a box office smash-hit. Multiple Oscar awards are nominated.

Critics have quibbled about this or that aspect of the cinematography and storyline. But the prevailing impression is that Kyle - a US Marine marksman - was a tragic hero, a guy who honorably served his country during the American war in Iraq.

The film has even been described by some as an "anti-war" movie because it delves into the mental trauma of veterans and the suffering they endure after conflict.

Lost in the discussion is the central issue, which is the criminal nature of American militarism and its destructive impact on millions of innocent people. American Sniper may express certain misgivings about US foreign wars, owing to the psychological consequences on its military personnel.

But in indulging "heroes" like Chris Kyle, the insidious effect is to glorify American war-making. This reinforces American narcissism about its "exceptionalism" as a nation that is intrinsically good, superior and which has the prerogative to wage wars wherever it deems necessary for its "national interests" regardless of international law or morality.

Over one million Iraqis were killed during American military occupation of that country from 2003-2011. The fraudulent pretext for that war - Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - has been amply documented and is irrefutable. That makes US involvement in Iraq an epic crime, a war of aggression, or, to put it plainly, a state-sponsored terrorist cataclysm.

The arrests came quickly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. There was the Muslim man suspected of making anti-American statements. The Middle Eastern grocer, whose shop, a tipster said, had more clerks than it needed. Soon hundreds of men, mostly Muslims, were in American jails on immigration charges, suspected of being involved in the attacks.

They were not.

After shootings last week at a satirical newspaper and a kosher market in Paris, France finds itself grappling anew with a question the United States is still confronting: how to fight terrorism while protecting civil liberties. The answer is acute in a country that is sharply critical of American counterterrorism policies, which many see as a fearful overreaction to 9/11. Already in Europe, counterterrorism officials have arrested dozens of people, and France is mulling tough new antiterrorism laws.

Many European countries, and France in particular, already have robust counterterrorism laws, some of which American authorities have studied as possible models. But the terrorist rampage at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices and the Hyper Cacher market prompted calls to go even further. Valérie Pécresse, a minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy, said France needed its own version of the USA Patriot Act, which gave the United States more authority to collect intelligence and pointed America's surveillance apparatus at its citizens.

Politicians and civil rights advocates on both sides of the Atlantic bristled at that suggestion, and at a string of arrests in which French officials used a new antiterrorism law to crack down on what previously would have been considered free speech. One man was sentenced to six months in prison for shouting support for the Charlie Hebdo attackers. Up to 100 others are under investigation for remarks that support or tried to justify terrorism, authorities said.

Dominique de Villepin, the former French prime minister, warned against the urge for "exceptional" measures. "The spiral of suspicion created in the United States by the Patriot Act and the enduring legitimization of torture or illegal detention has today caused that country to lose its moral compass," he wrote in Le Monde, the French newspaper.

A Utah teenager said she was told to wear a coat or shawl over her dress at a school dance because her shoulders were exposed.

Gabi Finlayson said a representative from Lone Peak High School told her as she arrived that she must cover her shoulders, which were exposed by her sleeveless dress, reported KUTV-TV.

The teen said she was embarrassed and didn't want to make a scene, so she went to her car to retrieve a winter coat that she wore during the event.

"Somehow my shoulders are sexualized - like it's my responsibility to make sure the boys' thoughts are not unclean," said Finlayson, whose dress extended from just below her neckline to below her knees.

A new bill has been proposed which would allow police officers to enter any home, regardless of whether or not they have a warrant, if there is a pit bull on the property. Even worse, the bill would allow officers to shoot and kill the dog if only a handful of conditions were met. The Huffington Post reported that measure would make Mississippi the only state in history with a policy against a specific dog breed.

House Bill 1261 not only says police may enter homes without warrants, but they could actually kill the animal if they determine the dogs are "not under proper restraint when on the premises of its owner" or if they are not wearing vaccination tags and "attempts to peacefully capture the dog have been made and proven unsuccessful."

Paris experienced a commuter chaos on Wednesday night, after an outraged passenger attacked a train driver on the RER A regional train line on the outskirts of the French capital.

In the suburb of Torcy, the passenger set off the train alarm system after his hand got stuck in the closing doors, and then head-butted the driver, who had left his cabin to reset the alarm system.

OH.MY.GOD 0_0 Saint Lazare via @_yavin_ #RERA pic.twitter.com/RK0vW0P97W

- Daisy Lorenzi (@D_Lorenzi) January 29, 2015

The passenger then fled, and the train driver had to be taken to hospital with a broken nose, French newspaper Le Parisien reported.

Ici c'est Paris... RER A down... pic.twitter.com/g2iaQHbTLe

- Thierry Debarnot (@ThierryDebarnot) January 29, 2015

Ok - believe it or not, this really shows how the new younger generation of police are anti-society and just insanely pro-government beyond common sense. With cities and municipalities dead broke, confiscating cash from people pretending it is somehow tainted without any proof under Civil Asset Forfeiture was bad enough. Now they are really going over the top. This is not an isolated incident. Towns in the North East are targeting teenagers who traditionally made money during winter shoveling snow.

The police even in Philadelphia are targeting kids as they are in New Jersey. Many towns demand a license with paperwork and fees of $50+ to be paid to shovel snow. These corrupt politicians are hungry for money and any possible piece of loose change they want to grab. Just how far will society allow this type of corruption go before they throw-the-bums-out?

From FATCA to targeting teenagers shoveling snow, these people are destroying everything that held society together. They look upon us as the great unwashed - just scum to be exploited. This is really going way too far.