Andrew Thomas, 26, made a deadly decision to get behind the wheel after he'd been drinking on Thanksgiving night. With his 23-year-old wife, Darien Ehorn in the passenger's seat, Thomas left the Canteena Bar and was immediately pursued by Paradise police officer Patrick Feaster.

In a pursuit that barely lasted a minute, Thomas loses control of his Toyota Four-Runner, hit the median and flipped over. Tragically, Ehorn was ejected from the vehicle and died on the scene.

Officer Feaster then gets out of his vehicle, gun drawn, and as Thomas attempts to get out of the vehicle, in a likely attempt to check on his wife, the cop shoots him in the neck.

Thomas posed absolutely no threat to the officer who was 10-20 feet away from Thomas when he fired. There was no possible way the department could spin the shooting into Feaster somehow fearing for his life. So, they did something entirely different.

They claimed it was an accident.

A 12-year-old's dreams came true when she received a puppy as a New Year's present from Russia's president, after having sent him a letter.

In the true holiday spirit, Olga Maruchshenko, from a small town in Siberia, got the present of a lifetime from Vladimir Putin. He wasn't there in person, but ordered the head of the Republic of Khakassia, where the girl lives with her family, to give Olga a husky puppy after reading the girl's letter.

"My mom knows that I wrote to you, but she doesn't believe that you will read my letter. Even so, I hope and I believe that you will read it," Olga wrote.

The family recently moved to Siberia from Kazakhstan and live on a tight budget, renting a flat.

Utility companies are having a heyday installing electric, natural gas and water AMI Smart Meters, which probably will help many of them—electric power companies, in particular—avoid building new power plants: they can brown-out high demand days or interrupt individual home usage if consumers use more power than utilities think we should—in addition to running up customer tabs for new Smart Meters every several years.

Recently, PASMA (Pennsylvania Smart Meter Awareness) issued two Press Releases days apart, which I think all utility consumers, regardless of where they live, ought to know about since the information deals with the probable unknown monetary side of Smart Meters, as discussed in "Consumers to Pay 'Through the Nose' for Smart Meters Every 6 to 7 Years," and the very scary issue of infrastructure security risks from hackers that Smart Meters pose, as laid out in "Smart Meters Are A Security Risk to the Nation's Power Supply," which tells how a member of the U.S. Congress, who is an electrician, is calling for new and greater scrutiny of Smart Meters "to examine whether they compromise the Nation's energy infrastructure."

According to a US survey, 21 percent of Americans believe that they won't be able to pay off their debts in their lifetime.

A survey of adults in the US has found that 21 percent of people with debts believe they won't be able to pay them off in their lifetime, a proportion which rises to 24 percent of those aged 50 to 64, and 35 percent of those aged 65 and older.

"According to the poll, 21 percent of those with debt predict they will never be rid of it. That's up from 18 percent in 2014 and 9 percent in 2013 who said their debt heading into the holiday season seemed insurmountable," reported Consumer website Creditcards.com, which carried out the survey.

Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw was just found guilty of rape and sexual battery on Thursday. Now, his sentence has been handed down, and he is coming to the harsh realization that being a police officer didn't save him from the 263 year sentence that a jury just handed down to him.

Prosecutors said that Officer Holtzclaw preyed on women who were known to police for having had run-ins with the department in the past. He then told them that if they were to report him, he would have them arrested on charges related to their past.

But Holtzclaw, 29, wasn't feeling so aggressive on Thursday, when he broke down in tears upon hearing the reading of the verdict.

He was convicted of raping 13 women, but was cleared of about half of the total 36 counts against him. He has not had his sentencing set for January, which could likely see him serving the massive sentence as what would amount to life in prison.

Protesters who gathered outside the court earlier this week, demanded that the all-white jury convict the officer based on the physical evidence and the word of the 13 black women, who testified about how they were sexually assaulted.

While the prosecution has easily characterized Holtzclaw as a predator who sought victims living in poverty and with criminal histories that he could hold over their heads, the defense for the rapist cop has said that all of these women have independently invented these rape allegations against the shamed officer.

Holtzclaw, additionally is accused of targeting African American women specifically.

He had a pattern of looking for victims with criminal records or a history of drug use or sex work. This targeting continued for seven months while he worked the 4pm to 2am patrol, according to the Raw Story.

For all but one of his alleged victims, police investigators claim, Holtzclaw used his position on the force to run background checks for outstanding warrants or other means by which to coerce sex.

Prosecutors are now trying Holtzclaw for 36 counts including rape, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy and stalking, to which Holtzclaw has pleaded not guilty.

Holtzclaw's new defense has aggressively called into question his accusers for nothing more than their marijuana use, or drinking. In one case, their "checkered past" was simply having a suspended drivers licenses.

One women's abuse advocate said that, "officers count on no one believing the victim if she reports."

Andrew Rios's seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed the antipsychotic Risperdal, a drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults, and rarely used for children as young as 5 years.

When Andrew screamed in his sleep and seemed to interact with people and objects that were not there, his frightened mother researched Risperdal and discovered that the drug was not approved, and had never even been studied, in children anywhere near as young as Andrew.

"It was just 'Take this, no big deal,' like they were Tic Tacs," said Genesis Rios, a mother of five in Rancho Dominguez, Calif. "He was just a baby."

A senior Iranian cleric has warned that Turkey's illegal deployment of troops to northern Iraq would be detrimental to Ankara and the entire region. "There is no logic behind this issue (troop deployment)," Hojjatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi said in an address to worshipers at weekly Friday Prayers in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

He added that the Muslim people of Turkey would not be happy with their government's wrong approach toward neighboring states and Muslim nations, calling on Turkish officials to focus on their own country's security and economy and to respect Islamic values as well. Iran condemns Turkey's deployment of troops to Iraq and recommends Turkish officials to stop carrying out measures which would lead to their country's isolation, he said.

Turkey deployed last Friday hundreds of troops and heavy weaponry to areas around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which is now occupied by the Daesh Takfiri group. Iraq has strongly condemned the deployment, branding it as a blatant violation of its sovereignty. Iraqi officials have threatened to take action against Turkey at the United Nations Security Council.

In light of the ongoing demonization of Islam across much of Western society, many have asked the question; where are all the "moderate" Muslims to repudiate extremist Islamic fundamentalism? Well here they are.

While almost certain not to be reported in the corporate main stream media, nearly 70,000 Islamic clerics issued a religious fatwa condemning terrorism, from their annual meeting in Ajmer, India during the Urs festival. The festival is a yearly gathering of Muslim clerics held to commemorate the death of Moinuddin Chishti, a Sufi Islamic cleric and scholar.

Additionally, the religious leaders asked the media to stop referring to the terrorist groups as Muslim, with the idea being that true believers of Islam do not support extremist perversions of the religion.

Since the Paris attacks, the Western media and political landscape has been rife with bigotry, hate and xenophobia, with Donald Trump leading the charge by calling for a halt to all Muslim immigration into the United States, basing admittance on a religious litmus test.

The percentage of people in the United States who are concerned about terrorism has risen to the level it was in the weeks following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a new poll.

Nearly 80 percent of Americans say a terrorist attack is "very or somewhat likely in the next few months," according to the New York Times/ CBS News poll released Thursday. It was 78 percent in late September 2001. Following the attacks by in Paris and in San Bernardino, California, 19 percent of registered voters view the threat of terrorism as the top issue facing the country. Forty-four percent of the public says an attack is "very" likely to happen in the next few months, the most in New York Times or CBS News polls since October 2001, just after the 9/11 attacks.

The poll also found that 70 percent of Americans now call the ISIL terrorist group a major threat to US security and believe the fight against the group is going badly. The US public has little faith in President Barack Obama's handling of terrorism and the threat from ISIL, with 55 percent of Americans disapproving of his handling of terrorism.

MPs of the Verkhovna Rada in Kiev launched a brawl during a speech by Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk. The PM later said there were "a lot of morons," so he would not comment on the incident.

The fight began between MPs from the president's Petro Poroshenko Bloc (PPB) and Yatsenyuk's People's Front (PF).

It allegedly all started when Oleg Barna (PPB) went up to the tribune while Yatsenyuk was giving a speech, presented him a bouquet of roses and then tried to carry him off the stage.