A self-described "sovereign citizen" was sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison for raping a child.

Chadrus Brown was convicted of rape, aggravated sodomy, and child molestation in the sexual assault of a 9-year-old girl in December 2012.

A woman missing for more than two weeks in a rugged Australian rainforest has stumbled out alive after surviving a chase by a crocodile and eating small fish, officials and reports said Thursday.

Shannon Fraser, 30, went missing on September 21 near the remote Josephine Falls in Queensland state after becoming disorientated, wearing just leggings, a shirt and flip flops.

"This is a dangerous situation for our city," local alderman says
An off-duty St. Louis police officer shot and killed an 18-year-old African American man on Wednesday, prompting overnight protests in the streets of south St. Louis, just a few miles from Ferguson, where unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in August.

Details of the shooting remained unclear on Thursday. In a briefing early Thursday morning, Police Chief Sam Dotson said the man fired three shots at the officer first. The white officer, a six-year veteran of the department who was unharmed in the incident, fired his gun 17 times.

But relatives of the man, who identified him as Vonderrit Myers Jr., said he didn't have a weapon.

"He was unarmed," Teyonna Myers, Vonderrit's cousin, told the St. Louis Dispatch. "He had a sandwich in his hand, and they thought it was a gun. It's like Michael Brown all over again."

Jackie Williams, his uncle, called his nephew's death "outright murder."

The Justice for Mike Brown Coalition held a mid-morning press conference on Thursday, in which State Senator Jamilah Nasheed reportedly said the shooting was "racial profiling gone bad" and that Myers was shot in the back of the head.

The Washington Post reports:

According to police, the officer was working for a private security company at the time, patrolling a specific neighborhood, but was in a St. Louis police uniform when he encountered three men he thought were acting suspiciously about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. When they saw the officer make a U-turn, they fled.

...[The officer] drove through the streets after them and then left his car and chased them on foot. One of the men then turned toward the officer and approached him "in an aggressive manner," Dotson said. The suspect and the officer got into a physical altercation.

Dotson said the man then ran up a hill and fired three times at the officer before the officer returned fire. Investigators recovered a 9mm Ruger at the scene, which Dotson said was used by the 18-year-old, whom he described as "no stranger to law enforcement."

According to the St. Louis Dispatch: "Myers was scheduled to stand trial in November for unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest."

There are some who believe that the next great financial crash will not begin in the United States. Instead, they are convinced that a financial crisis that begins in Europe or in Japan (or both) will end up spreading across the globe and take down the U.S. too. Time will tell if they are ultimately correct, but even now there are signs that financial trouble is already starting to erupt in both Germany and Japan. German stocks have declined 10 percent since July, and that puts them in "correction" territory. In Japan, the economy is a total mess right now. According to figures that were just released, Japanese GDP contracted at a 7.1 percent annualized rate during the second quarter and private consumption contracted at a 19 percent annualized rate. Could a financial collapse in either of those nations be the catalyst that sets off financial dominoes all over the planet?

This week, the worst German industrial production figure since 2009 rattled global financial markets. Germany is supposed to be the economic "rock" of Europe, but at this point that "rock" is starting to show cracks.

And certainly the civil war in Ukraine and the growing Ebola crisis are not helping things either. German investors are becoming increasingly jittery, and as I mentioned above the German stock market has already declined 10 percent since July...

German stocks, weighed down by the economic fallout spawned by the Ukraine-Russia crisis and the eurzone's weak economy, are now down more than 10% from their July peak and officially in correction territory.

The DAX, Germany's benchmark stock index, has succumbed to recent data points that show the German economy has ground to a halt, hurt in large part by the economic sanctions levied at its major trading partner, Russia, by the U.S. and European Union as a way to get Moscow to butt out of Ukraine's affairs. The economic slowdown in the rest of the debt-hobbled eurozone has also hurt the German economy, considered the economic locomotive of Europe.

In trading today, the DAX fell as low as 8960.43, which put it down 10.7% from its July 3 closing high of 10,029.43 and off nearly 11% from its June 20 intraday peak of 10,050.98.

And when you look at some of the biggest corporate names in Germany, things look even more dramatic.

Despite the still confident exclamations from officials that the Ebola pandemic is 'contained', more and more nations are admitting to Ebola-symptomatic cases or bringing infected patients back from Africa for treatment. Australia has its first potential case of the deadly disease, as Bloomberg reports a nurse who returned from volunteering in Africa has developed Ebola-like symptoms. Despite claims that Nigeria's outbreak is over, a Turkish worker there has been hospitalized in Istanbul after signs of high fever and diarrhea. Health officials from Germany confirm a 3rd Ebola patient has arrived in the country - having contracted the disease in Liberia. And finally, just as in the sad case of Thomas Duncan in Dallas, The Guardian reports the infected Spanish nurse went untreated and unquarantined for a week despite reporting symptoms at least three times to hospital officials. It seems the world is ill-prepared for this...

Bloomberg reports, a nurse who treated Ebola patients with the Red Cross in Sierra Leone was hospitalized in Australia after developing a low-grade fever, health officials said. She is being tested for the deadly virus.

The 57-year-old volunteer recently returned to Cairns, in the northeastern state of Queensland, where she has been isolating herself and checking her temperature twice daily, Jeannette Young, the state's chief health officer, said in an e-mailed statement. Today, she reported a temperature of 37.6 degrees Celsius (99.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Results of tests for Ebola and other possible infections are expected early tomorrow.

The nurse hospitalized in Cairns was identified as Sue-Ellen Kovack by the Australian newspaper. Kovack returned home two days ago, the newspaper reported.

A German farmer has been putting nappies on his cows in protest at EU legislation that forbids the use of fertilizers on steep slopes. With no bovine-sized diapers available from the local store, white bed sheets with pink ribbons had to suffice.

The idea was the brainchild of Bavarian cattle farmer Johann Huber, who became fed up with an EU directive that did not allow farmers to fertilize slopes steeper than 15 percent. With cow droppings in theory counting as fertilizer, he sarcastically decided to try and abide by EU regulations by making sure that no cow droppings managed to land on the pristine Bavarian slopes.

Here are two cows preparing to sumo wrestle. #eumadnessItellyoupic.twitter.com/MXFtrmrdHP
- Ed Balls (@eddbaIlsmp) October 9, 2014

Huber, whose family farms land near Lake Tegernsee, an hour south of Munich, made sure all 18 of his dairy cows were fitted with the new attire, while he said that Doris the cow "behaved well," speaking to the Telegraph newspaper. However, Mr. Huber had to do a little improvisation, as regular diapers for children were not going to fit an adult cow.

"We have no standard nappies," he said. "They haven't been developed commercially yet."

Vermont mother and her boyfriend were arrested and face murder charges for filling her disabled, 13-year-old son's IV bag with alcohol, police said.

Melissa Robitille and Walter Richter III, both aged 38, were arrested on Tuesday after officials found that Robitille's son Isaac died with a blood alcohol concentration of .146, almost double the legal limit for driving, Vermont State Police said.

An autopsy showed that alcohol was a contributory factor in his death.

The couple reported Isaac Robitille's death to police on Aug. 22, police said. The teen suffered from serious medical conditions and physical disabilities, requiring the help of caretakers, feeding tubes, and IVs to stay alive.

Police determined that the couple put alcohol in the teen's IV bag, and administered it to him.

Robitille and Richter, who are from Hardwick, face second degree murder charges, police said. Bail amounts, arraignment dates and other information was not immediately available.

A school in New York City's suburbs was evacuated on Wednesday after an unknown gas caused students and teachers to vomit in the dining room, according to the local mayor's office.

A total of 152 people with nausea, vomiting and other symptoms were taken to five local hospitals from Yonkers Middle High School, said Christina Gilmartin, a spokeswoman for the Yonkers mayor's office.

Most of the affected were students, although some were teachers and firefighters who responded to emergency calls late on Wednesday morning from the school, which is attended by about 1,700 students.

Officials believe the symptoms were caused by an odorless gas that permeated the dining room's air, Gilmartin said, although further details were not immediately available.

No one appeared to be seriously harmed, Gilmartin said.

"They're being treated for respiratory issues," she said. "Nothing major."

A recent videotaped incident in Washington, D.C., highlights the way race and class matter in police interactions with residents.

The video, which was posted online by the Washington Post, shows white attorney Jody Westby coming to the aid of black handyman Dennis Stucky, who has been stopped by two officers and is sitting on a curb in the upscale Foxhall Crescent neighborhood.

Westby asks the officers - one standing near the curb and another sitting in a patrol car - why Stucky has been stopped, and they tell her he's suspected in a burglary.

The attorney, who had asked her housekeeper to record the incident on a cell phone, demands to know which address the call came from, and she approaches the cruiser to verify the information.

The officer in the car tells her the address, and Westby determines the call was for a nearby subdivision.

An off-duty police officer in St. Louis, Missouri, shot and killed a man after chasing him through a local neighborhood. Citizens are marching near the site close to the Missouri Botanical Garden, chanting slogans as more officers stand by.

The dead man, an 18-year-old young African American, fired at least three rounds at the officer, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson said at a news conference.

Police reported recovering a 9mm Ruger from the scene.

The 32-year-old officer was heading to his second job as a private security guard and was reportedly wearing a uniform. The police officer has served with the St. Louis force for six years.