A man has died after being shot by an officer outside a police station on 39th Avenue and Cactus Roads Saturday morning, officials said.

The Phoenix Police Department told ABC15 that a 30-year-old man was throwing rocks at a police cruiser as he was walking on a sidewalk. The officer turned his car around to make contact with the man, but by the time the officer made his way back, the man was already at the police station.

The biggest cities in the US are struggling from a lack of homeless shelters and food pantries as they appear unable to cope with the rising number of homeless people nationwide, a study by the US Conference of Mayors revealed on Tuesday.

The past year has marked the year of homelessness in the US as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Seattle — America's most populated areas — hosted a huge jump in the number of people on the streets, according to the Hunger and Homelessness study. Washington, D.C. ranks first in the list of cities with homeless as figures say it has 28 percent more homeless and 60 percent more transient families. The demand for food for the hungry rose 27 percent over last year's.

The survey said that across twenty-two cities including Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, homelessness rose by 1.6 percent overall and handouts increased by 3 percent over the past year.

A US researcher and social activist has criticized the United States for spending trillions of dollars on wars, destroying countries but failing to resolve the homelessness crisis that hits America's most vulnerable citizens.

Dennis Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday while commenting on reports which say an increasing number of US cities are declaring states of emergency as homelessness is becoming more prevalent and a serious issue to deal with.

A prominent Syrian journalist and filmmaker, who produced anti-Islamic State documentaries was gunned down by unknown assailants in broad daylight in Gaziantep, Turkey. This is the third assassination of a journalist in the country over the last three months.

Naji Jerf, editor-in-chief of the Hentah monthly, known for his documentaries describing violence and abuses on Islamic State-controlled territories (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) was shot and killed near a building housing Syrian independent media outlets in the Turkish city of Gaziantep. His death was originally reported by a group of citizen journalists he was working with.

Jerf recently completed a documentary investigating violence and crime in the IS-held parts of Aleppo for the RBSS group ["Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently"]. The film won a Committee to Protect Journalists'(CPJ) International Press Freedom Award in November.

Daffy Donald proposes to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., while journalist Glenn Greenwald recently reported on the frightening upsurge in attacks on Muslims. As I write these words, I am listening to John Williams' score for the movie "Schindler's List." The music never fails to move me deeply. Whatever historical flaws or misrepresentations the film might have, the undeniable suffering of the Jewish people, along with millions of political dissidents and other "undesirable" human beings—the Untermenschen in Nazi parlance—is an escapable part of our history. And now the fascists and neo-Nazis among us aim to reawaken the very same mentality that led to the unimaginable cruelty and barbarity of their predecessors during World War II.

What is particularly distressing in this recent outbreak of blind prejudice among a growing number of my fellow Americans is their apparent ignorance of our country's role in generating the humanitarian crises affecting Syria, Iraq and other Islamic countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Were it not for our almighty benevolence and exceptional commitment to bringing democracy to the oppressed and downtrodden, an untold number of innocent human beings would still be with us, here on Earth, living their lives, practicing their faith, loving and being loved. But our savage, power-driven, myopic leaders insist on carrying out their interventions, always according to God's plan or some equally demented design formulated in think tanks and board rooms and the halls of Congress with the noble goals of regime change and absolute control of energy resources firmly in mind.

With protesters thronging the streets of Chicago demanding police accountability and clamoring for the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the city's police union is frantically trying to destroy decades of records documenting police misconduct. As is always the case, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) sees "officer safety" as the highest priority - including protection from legal accountability.

"I protect all my members, and I will continue to do that," Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago FOP, explained to CNN.

Since the War on Drugs began in earnest under Nixon and Reagan, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has ruined millions of lives for nonviolent, victimless behavior. The DEA's drug crusade is not limited to the homeland either, as it also has sole responsibility for pursing international drug investigations.

After 9/11, among the many travesties of the Patriot Act was a little-known section that gave the DEA powerful new abilities, under the guise of "narco-terrorism." The agency says that these new pursuits are promoting national security, and it uses the purported success to lobby Congress for more funding.

However, according to ProPublica, these narco-terrorism cases are merely staging threats, not stopping them. Many targets of the DEA have no actual involvement in terrorist groups and are the hapless victims of entrapment.

Quentin Tarantino made headlines last week when he was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly and Howard Stern. During those interviews, Tarantino stuck to his guns about his recent comments about police by saying he "completely rejects" the "bad apples" argument that only a small number of police officers behave inappropriately on the job.

Is Tarantino right? Are there any good cops left?

Here is a quick two-question quiz for you to try on anyone you know in law enforcement, to see if he is one of those rare, possibly mythical creatures known as a "good cop." These are people you know and feel comfortable asking - we at The Free Thought Project do not advise speaking to police officers if not necessary:

1) Have you ever witnessed a fellow officer committing a crime?
2) If so, what did you do about it?

The honest answers, for almost every cop in the country, are "yes" and "nothing." There are a few—very, very few—former cops who can say "yes" and "I reported it." And that's why they are former cops: because they "betrayed" the Bullies in Blue, because they still had some affinity for truth and justice. And if, as a cop, your loyalty to your fellow gang members—no matter what they do—doesn't outrank silly things like principles, then you're toast. If you're lucky, you'll merely be fired.

Is there any cop in the country who can honestly say that he has never witnessed a fellow officer committing a crime? Frankly, no. The seriousness of the crimes may vary, but absolutely all cops break the law (just as almost everyone else does). For example, how often do you see cops driving the speed limit? And how often do you see state troopers doing 20 over the limit? While speeding may be a relatively trivial offense, it does show the mentality of the badge-wearers. If they catch you doing it, they will turn on those red and blue lights (which, as everyone knows, means "stop or we will hurt you"), and then they will rob you by way of a "citation." Meanwhile, when they speed, or drive like idiotic maniacs, they know that no one is going to ticket them.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has recently voiced concerns that children are not receiving the proper brand of brainwashing and indoctrination from the government. Morgan called for a review of homeschooling and suggested that thousands of children are being "radicalized" by their parents.

"There has always been the freedom in this country for people to educate their children at home. Many people do it very well, but we need to know where the children are and to be certain that they are safe. For every parent doing a brilliant job, there may be someone filling their child's mind with poison. We just don't know. We don't have reliable figures,"a Department of Education spokesman said

The Department said that they were also concerned about what was being taught in private Muslim schools, and that they were intending to crack down on those as well.

"We have provided Ofsted with extra inspectors to eradicate extremism in education. We are working with them to address their concerns about home education being exploited, while safeguarding the rights of parents to determine how and where to educate their children," the spokesperson said.

The government in any country is not concerned with the health and well-being of children, and they do not spend billions on education for the good of the children or the parents. They invest so much in schools, and care so much about them, because they want to be able to train children to be obedient citizens and indoctrinate them into the system of control that they are living under. In most schools, whether they are in Europe, America or North Korea, students are presented with a skewed, biased and nationalistic view of history. Generally, the historical curriculum in government school is skewed to portray the establishment in a positive light. History lessons make warmongers look like martyrs because the warmongers have control over the formation of these lessons.

Okinawa officials on Friday filed a lawsuit against the central Japanese government in a new bid to block the slated construction of a U.S. military base in the prefecture's Henoko region.

"We will do whatever it takes to stop the new Henoko base," Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga said during a press conference Friday. "Okinawa's argument is legitimate, and I believe that it will be certainly understood."

Residents and officials charge that the Japanese government's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism illegally intervened in Onaga's order earlier this year that halted preliminary work on the base. The prefecture said that the ministry acted unlawfully when it suspended Onaga's permit cancellation for work needed to move the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to its slated spot in Henoko.