In our part of the world, it's not often that potential "collateral damage" speaks, but it happened last week. A Pakistani tribal leader, Malik Jalal, flew to England to plead in a newspaper piece he wrote and in media interviews to be taken off the Obama White House's "kill list." ("I am in England this week because I decided that if Westerners wanted to kill me without bothering to come to speak with me first, perhaps I should come to speak to them instead.") Jalal, who lives in Pakistan's tribal borderlands, is a local leader and part of a peace committee sanctioned by the Pakistani government that is trying to tamp down the violence in the region. He believes that he's been targeted for assassination by Washington. (Four drone missiles, he claims, have just missed him or his car.) His family, he says, is traumatized by the drones. "I don't want to end up a 'Bugsplat' -- the ugly word that is used for what remains of a human being after being blown up by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone," he writes. "More importantly, I don't want my family to become victims, or even to live with the droning engines overhead, knowing that at any moment they could be vaporized."

Normally, what "they" do to us, or our European counterparts (think: Brussels, Paris, or San Bernardino), preoccupies us 24/7. What we do to "them" -- and them turns out to be far more than groups of terrorists -- seldom touches our world at all. As TomDispatch readers know, this website has paid careful attention to the almost 300 wedding celebrants killed by U.S. air power between late 2001 and the end of 2013 -- eight wedding parties eviscerated in three countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen). These are deaths that, unlike the 14 Americans murdered in San Bernardino, the 32 Belgians and others killed in Brussels, and the 130 French and others slaughtered in Paris, have caused not even a ripple here (though imagine for a second the reaction if even a single wedding, no less eight of them and hundreds of revelers, had been wiped out by a terror attack in the U.S. in these years).

Thousands of people rallied in Moldova's capital, Chisinau, on Sunday in the latest act of a long-running anti-government protest demanding snap elections and the government's resignation. Some protesters fought with police, leaving 14 officers injured.

The rally was staged by the right-wing Dignity and Truth Platform Party, the Liberal Reformist Party, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova. Protesters began gathering near the parliament building on Sunday afternoon chanting "Snap elections!" and "Down with the government and the parliament," according to Sputnik.

Members of Dignity and Truth accuse the government of being highly corrupt, dependent on local oligarchs, and responsible for the impoverishment of the population. The party, which is comprised of former politicians and advocates promoting reunification with Romania, also blames the Moldovan leadership for being slow in its efforts to integrate with the EU.

Has something gone adrift within the moral compass of our 'news' reporting? In the past week, 64 Afghans have been killed in the largest bomb to have exploded in Kabul in 15 years. At least 340 were wounded. The Taliban set off their explosives at the very wall of the 'elite' security force - watch out for that word 'elite' - which was supposed to protect the capital. Whole families were annihilated. No autopsies for them. Local television showed an entire family - a mother and father and three children blown to pieces in a millisecond - while the city's ambulance service reported that its entire fleet (a miserable 15 vehicles) were mobilised for the rescue effort. One ambulance was so packed with wounded that the back doors came off their hinges.

But Prince also died this week.

Protests surrounding a rally at Stone Mountain erupted in violence Saturday as demonstrators trying to reach a white power group hurled rocks and fireworks at police attempting to block them.

Eight counterprotesters had been arrested by late morning for refusing to take their masks off, authorities said.

At least one was seen spraying a Georgia State Patrol officer with pepper spray. Others engaged in physical skirmishes with law enforcement officers dressed in riot gear, said John Bankhead, Stone Mountain Park police spokesman.

Happiness can't be downloaded like a cellphone app, Pope Francis has said in a special mass for the teens in the Vatican on Sunday.

"Happiness has no price," the Pontiff said, adding that it's "not an app that you can download on your phones, nor will the latest update bring you freedom and grandeur in love," AP reported.

On Saturday, the head of the Catholic Church has made a surprise appearance before tens of thousands of youths gathered at St Peter's Square for a Holy Year weekend for teenagers.

Despite no earlier arrangements made, Pope Francis heard confessions from 16 youths, aged from 13 to 16 years.

Currency investors and money managers have started exiting the US dollar for the first time since mid-2014 as neither the US economy, nor central bank policy, nor corporate earnings have provided any evidence that buying into the greenback will be profitable anytime soon.

As US corporate quarterly earnings figures have proven to be a disappointment for a third consecutive quarter, and macroeconomic data indicate the broader economy is increasingly exposed to the risk of recession, US hedge funds' bearish bets on the greenback are outweighing bullish positions for the first time since July 2014. Investors are exiting the US currency for one more reason: the Federal Reserve's dovishness on policy, stemming from the weak performance of the economy, with the Fed's April policy meeting likely to end with interest rates unchanged. Subsequently, the dollar's weakness opens opportunities for US enterprises to regain some of their international competitiveness, which they lost to the greenback's rally in the last 18 months, while pushing oil and commodity prices higher, to the relief of select emerging markets.

The number of US hedge funds' selling positions on the dollar surpassed buying ones by a total of 21,567 contracts in mid-April, according to data provided by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The greenback is thus poised to slide against its eight major peers for the first time since July 2014, easing the currently rife imbalances in international trade, relieving emerging markets somewhat, and exacerbating disinflationary pressures for Japan, where the yen's strength is hitting exporters' competitiveness.

The Albuquerque Police Department (APD) released bodycam footage showing 10 officers firing at a man driving an SUV after they cornered him in a yard. The cops involved in the shooting told investigators they thought the driver, 20-year-old Rodrigo Garcia, had run over their lieutenant when, in fact, she had been knocked over by a falling fence.

48 rounds were fired at Garcia, with seven striking him, including one in the head that required part of his brain to be removed. Doctors said his injuries will severely affect the quality of his life.

Garcia, who was wanted on charges of vehicle theft, felony in possession of a firearm and drug charges, had eluded officers the day before. He tried to flee again on May 29, but was not armed and there was no indication that he tried to run over an officer.

"But he seemed so nice and normal!" How many stories about psychopaths and serial killers include a comment similar to that? The problem is that a lot of sadistic monsters know how to feign compassion and humanity when in public, when the cameras are rolling, but when they are alone with their victims their true selves are revealed. Another problem is that positions of "authority"—politician, police officer, etc.—are magnets for sociopaths. And when someone who likes to hurt others gets into such a position, that makes him far more dangerous.

Consider the case of Cheryl Yurkowski, a young mother living in Ontario, Canada. After an argument at a nearby restaurant involving herself, her husband and her husband's mother, she comes home and goes to bed. Her husband comes home separately and, being intoxicated, and not knowing that Cheryl is already at home in bed, he is yelling on the phone. A neighbor calls the Kawartha Lakes police department, and Sargent Janette Drew and officer Mark Ryan Donaldson show up.

Following the persistent shortage in fuel supply and the harsh economic climate, there has been an average of 50 per cent hike in the prices of consumer goods and buyers are complaining bitterly.

In some Lagos markets visited by our correspondent, including Oyingbo, Iddo, Mile 12, Alade and Ipodo, prices of some food items like tomato puree, rice, vegetable oil and seasoning had increased substantially.

Our correspondent found out at the Ipodo Market that a carton of Indomie was sold for N1,500 as against the former price of N1,000; a retail pack of Gino tomato puree (70gm), formerly offered at N1,250, went for N2,700, while a five-litre keg of vegetable oil previously sold for N1,800 was offered for N2,500.

Similarly, the price of a small bag of Semovita, which before now was N900, has gone up to N1,500. The big one is also selling for N2,400 instead of N1,800.

A small tuber of yam that sold for N250 before is now going for between N450 and N500.

Without giving any reason whatsoever, the entire Green Mountain Police department in Colorado has quit.

The chief of police announced his resignation on Tuesday and he was quickly followed by all the other officers. It has now been 4 days and, remarkably, the town of Green Mountain Falls does not look like a scene out of Mad Max.

"In an election year there's always some people who choose to stay and some people who choose to go, and I think that happens at every level of government," Green Mountain Falls Mayor Jane Newberry said.

Despite giving no reason, it is likely that the department disagreed with the local politics and reacted by abandoning their duty as public servants — thereby illustrating the irrelevance of their job in the first place.