A 30-year-old Kentucky man who claimed to be a youth pastor is facing charges that he sexually abused a 16-year-old boy, and then threatened to kill him with witchcraft if he told.

The Commonwealth Journal reported that a 16-year-old male told Eubank Police investigators that Polly Ann Church of God youth pastor Rex Allen Murphy made sexual contact with him. The abuse allegedly happened at the church and at the suspect's home for a period of at least 6 months.

Eubank Chief of Police Colin Hatfield called the accusations "very graphic and to the point."

"The victim stated that the suspect told him on numerous occasions that by brushing his skin or shaking his hand...he could tell his sins by the power he has. He comes from family of warlocks," Hatfield explained to WKYT.

The police chief noted that Murphy had threatened the boy with witchcraft if he told his parents about the abuse.

"He was very scared, because the suspect, in the victim's eyes, had been threatening his life in the form of Wicca, witchcraft, black magic," Hatfield pointed out to WLEX.

In an interview with police, Murphy asserted that he "thought he would be able to help the victim with his battle with homosexuality because he, too, had experimented with homosexuality," Hatfield said. Murphy allegedly told the boy that he could see his sins by touching him.

The Weekend of Resistance, part of Ferguson October's four days of uprising for Michael Brown, wrapped up on Monday with a day of many demonstrations, direct actions, and arrests. It was named "Moral Monday", and was organized as a day calling for mass uprising all over St. Louis. Hundreds of activists traveled from around the country to participate in the resistance.

The civil disobedience began with a march from Wellspring Church to Ferguson Police Department lead by religious leaders, including scholar and activist, Dr. Cornel West. As the leaders and activists marched through the rain and cold to the station they read out the names of those we have lost to police brutality nationwide.

Upon arriving at the station, the peaceful protestors were met by a line of 40-50 officers, who they marched right up to- demanding they repent for their sins of killing black youth.

Soon after, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou- organizer of the march, along with Dr. Cornel West crossed the police line.

"I didn't come here to give a speech, I came here to go to jail!"
Dr. West declared at an event on Sunday evening.

#Ferguson PD not interested in Cornel West's words. #FergusonOctober pic.twitter.com/IQwA2Q8TL4
- Robert Cohen (@kodacohen) October 13, 2014

New York City police unions are arguing that they should have the right to continue the appeal of a federal judge's 2013 ruling that deemed unconstitutional the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy.

Lawyers for the unions are due to appear before US appeals court judges on Wednesday, according to AP, where they will counter a previous ruling that said the unions did not ask soon enough to be included in the lawsuit against the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy, found to have disproportionately targeted minorities throughout the city.

Last August, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD's 4.4 million stops from 2004 to 2012 - of which 80 percent were of black or Hispanic individuals who made up more than half of total frisks - were done in violation of the Fourth Amendment and singled out targets for their race, violating the Fourteenth Amendment. A lawsuit filed in 2004 by four men, all minorities, became the class action case against stop-and-frisk.

Released documents show that New York City shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to settle civil rights lawsuits involving the New York Police Department(NYPD).

The documents - released by the New York City Law Department - show more than 12,000 cases since 2009 where the city paid out $428 million in police-related settlements. The records were released after a Freedom of Information Act request was made by MuckRock, asking the department just how many civil rights lawsuits were filed against the city when the police department was listed as a defendant over a five-year period.

While the list will require further review since the case histories are not provided, the Gothamist has argued that not all the settlements seem to be the result of police misconduct. The largest payout of $11.5 million went to Google engineer Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, who was nearly killed in 2009 when a tree branch fell on him in Central Park. Another large settlement went to the family of Ronald Spear, who died after being beaten by Rikers Island guards - officials who work for the Department of Corrections, not the NYPD. Without those two cases, though, there are still several thousand cases in which the NYPD was listed as a defendant.

Are police a costly liability? RT @StacyLeMelle: $428 Million in NYPD-Related Settlements Paid http://t.co/M477e1GJD4 via @intelligencer

- AliasHere (@AliasHere) October 13, 2014

Meanwhile, many of the lawsuits filed were found to have alleged false arrest, the New York Daily News discovered in an analysis of lawsuits filed against the city and the NYPD over a decade. Scores of cases involved injured people who had criminal charges against them thrown out, and people who lost or almost lost their jobs, kids, pets, or homes.

Russian news outlet Ria Novosti recently featured an interview with Professor Francis Boyle, University of Illinois College of Law, implicating the United States military-industrial complex in the current Ebola outbreak which the World Health Organization claims has now taken over 4,000 lives in West Africa.

Via Ria Novosti:

"US government agencies have a long history of carrying out allegedly defensive biological warfare research at labs in Liberia and Sierra Leone. This includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is now the point agency for managing the Ebola spill-over into the US," Prof. Francis Boyle said.

"Why has the Obama administration dispatched troops to Liberia when they have no training to provide medical treatment to dying Africans? How did Zaire/Ebola get to West Africa from about 3,500km away from where it was first identified in 1976?"

"Why is the CDC not better-prepared for this emergency after the US government spent about $70 billion since the anthrax attacks of October 2001 to prepare for this exact contingency?" Boyle said.

On Election Day, Tennesseans will vote on whether or not to amend the state constitution to permanently ban income and payroll taxes in the Volunteer State. But even if the resolution fails, it is unlikely the legislature will institute new taxes.

Republican state Sen. Brian Kelsey sponsored the resolution putting the amendment on the ballot and heads the 'Yes on 3' committee urging its ratification. He said not having an income tax makes Tennessee "more fiscally responsible" and that permanently banning one would appeal to businesses, according to the Associated Press.

"Not having an income tax has already brought jobs to Tennessee, and permanently banning an income tax will bring even more jobs to the state," Kelsey said.

"I killed that lady," the 10-year-old boy told a Pennsylvania state trooper, after a 90-year-old woman was found dead in the home of the boy's grandfather. Tristen Kurilla, a fifth grader, made the chilling confession Saturday, police said, after his mother brought him to the Pennsylvania State Police Barracks in Honesdale, about 140 miles north of Philadelphia.

Now, Kurilla is being held at the Wayne County Correctional Facility and charged as an adult with criminal homicide, the Wayne County district attorney's office said. The boy is separated from adult offenders and is being constantly supervised, CNN affiliate WBRE reported. The boy admitted to grabbing a wooden cane, holding it against 90-year-old Helen Novak's throat for several seconds and punching her in the throat and stomach, according to the police affidavit.

Kurilla told police he was angry at Novak because she had yelled at him when he entered her room. He said he wanted to ask her a question. Were you trying to kill her? the trooper asked the boy.

"No, I was only trying to hurt her," Kurilla replied, according to the affidavit.

The boy was ordered to be held without bail after his arraignment and is set to appear in court October 22. Bernie Brown, his lawyer, said he was petitioning the court to get the fifth-grade Damascus Elementary School student out of jail, WBRE reported.

A surveillance video posted online shows a group of teens trashing a Brooklyn store Saturday night, the store's owner said. Dozens of teens gathered outside of Gourmet Butcher on Troy Ave. near Carroll St. in Crown Heights before several rushed into the store and knocked over shelves and pushed products to the floor, a video posted on CrownHeights.infoon Monday shows.

The Store's owner, Yanki Klein, told CBS 2 the vandalism happened on Saturday around 9 p.m., only hours after he reopened his store following the Jewish holiday Sukkot.

"They screamed, they yelled, they made noise, whatever," Klein told CBS 2.

The owner told the station one of the teens also assaulted his 23-year-old brother. Police said they were investigating an assault at the location, but did not have details on the vandalism or if the attack could be bias-fueled. The assaulted man, who was punched in the head, declined medical attention at the scene, police said.

For four years, the only life Paula Corb and her two daughters have known is the one inside their 2000 Mazda minivan - stopping once in a while for take-out, groceries and gas.

Corb and the girls Alice and Emily are among 214,000 "unsheltered" homeless people in America, meaning they sleep in places not intended for human beings to sleep, like bus stations, abandoned buildings, parks or cars. For them, making a pit stop for gas is the equivalent of paying rent.

"We go on about a four-block radius," Corb explained. "It's $5 to $10 a day. You see, that's $70 a week times four. I mean, that's more than we really have got."

The vast majority of the country's 71,000 homeless families live in shelters, but almost 10,000 are living life like the Corbs.

For two decades, Paula Corb, her engineer ex-husband and two daughters lived in a four-bedroom house just outside of Santa Barbara. She described their life as a "fairy tale." But after her eight-year divorce, Corb went broke. The money from selling the house - at the bottom of the housing market - went to her debts and her lawyers. And as a homemaker for more than 20 years, she's had trouble finding work. The family packed up their stuff and moved into the van, where they live off of food stamps, gift cards for gas and food and Alice receives a Social Security disability check.

"It was scary. It was depressing," said Alice Corb, 22, the older daughter, of the first night living in the van. "I just kept thinking, 'How could this have possibly happened?' And this mantra in my head just repeated over and over: 'I want to go home.' And I just kept avoiding this one thought in my head that says, 'You don't have a home to go back to.'"

Regional or widespread war, terrorism, cyber attacks, etc., are all useful vehicles to conjure mass confusion, and can also be used as scapegoats for the eventual downfall of our economy. That said, a viral pandemic truly surpasses them all in effectiveness. All other tragedies could easily be tied to the first "domino" or "linchpin" (as Rand Corporation calls it) of Ebola transmission, but the strategy goes deeper than this.

This is an incredibly useful strategy when used on the ignorant. And as I pointed out last week in my column, "U.S. government fails to stop yet another invasion," it's a sad fact that most of the people you meet in this life are fundamentally and functionally ignorant.

So I believe the spread of Ebola may be desired by certain power brokers. Here's why.