Well, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department isn't using an oracle yet, but it is getting one step closer to Minority Report-style crime predicting. The department has become the latest agency to use big data analytics and data mining to prevent crime by staying one step ahead of criminals.

According to IBM, the company has entered into a partnership with the Fort Lauderdale PD to integrate new data and analytics tools into everyday crime fighting. The new projects will use pattern recognition and anomaly detection tech on existing records like 911 calls, crime records, and building permit activity.

"We're entering a new era of police work where advances in technology are providing us with an additional tool to use in our crime prevention efforts," said Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Frank Adderley in a release. "Integrating advanced data analysis into our operational strategies will help us maximize resources and stay one step ahead of the criminals." The data generated by the new software package is designed to help, among other things, generate new patrol routes and redeploy officers to areas that have more crime activity.

IBM also emphasized that using data cuts costs for police departments and helps them provide the same level of service during a time when they may have fewer resources. The company is one of the leading providers of specialized software for law enforcement.

Prairieburg - Linn County Sheriff's deputies are investigating after someone poisoned six pets in town.

Pet owners say eight to ten meatballs laced with the poison strychnine were placed inside kennels and left outside some homes on East Main Street.

"[Veterinarians] said it was a former rat poison that's fast acting. It can hit in ten minutes to two hours," said dog owner, Bryce Plower.

Plower's dog, Gucci, was killed by the tainted meat early Thursday morning. His other dog, Beckett, was also showing symptoms and being monitored.

"It causes their muscles to stop working. Then it causes their diaphragm to go into a nervous shock. It causes them to breathe heavy and make their heart race," said Plower.

A man in the US flies into a rage and drives his car into his own front room after allegedly discovering his wife had been unfaithful


The footage shows three people standing on the grass in front of the house while the white car spins in the front garden.

The car then makes a beeline towards the house, crashing through the side of it and becoming trapped.

The video was posted on YouTube by Annahill3001 who claims a furious husband did it in response to finding out about his wife's affair.

He wrote: "caught this on the way home from work. Word is the man caught his wife cheating on him and he decided to take things into his own hands bulldozing his own home! CRAZY! THIS GUY IS A MORON!"

The video has provoked a flurry of comments from YouTube users sympathetic to the man's plight.

The video has already been watched over a million times.

DarthKaine666 wrote "well she destroyed his world, so he was helping her finish it ..." while 1320crusier commented "she was gonna get the house in the divorce anyway".

• New figures have been released under Freedom of Information laws

• They show that 323 under-18s were fired on in 2011

• It was also revealed that in 2010, 74 children were threatened by having the Taser's sights trained on them without firing the weapon

Tasers are being used by police against children as young as 11 almost every day, figures have revealed.

Armed officers discharged, targeted or threatened to use the 50,000-volt weapons against youngsters more than 320 times a year - an 11-fold increase from the first year they were cleared for use against under-18s in 2007.

It emerged earlier this year that a girl aged just 12 had been shot by police with a Taser device in St Helens. Other children aged 11 have been threatened by officers with the weapons, forced have admitted.

He's practically a one man band, but Rami Abdurrahman's influence extends far beyond his modest home in this small English city.

The bald, bespectacled 42-year-old operates the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights from his house in the cathedral city of Coventry - and a review of recent media coverage suggests its running tally of killings and clashes is the most frequently cited individual source of information on Syria's civil war for the world's leading news organizations.

"He's just everywhere," said Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "He's the go-to guy for figures. ... I can't think of anybody who comes close."

Abdurrahman, who says he makes his living from a local clothing shop, says the Observatory relies on four unnamed activists in Syria and a wider network of monitors across the country to document and verify clashes and killings. But as the Observatory has increasingly found itself at the center of Western reporting on Syria's civil, some say his figures - and his sources - need more scrutiny.

Opponents say Abdurrahman is in cahoots with the opposition forces bankrolled by Gulf Arab states, skewing casualty figures to keep the spotlight off rebel atrocities. Others contend that Abdurrahman is in league with the Syrian regime. They accuse him of overplaying incidents of sectarian violence to blacken the reputation of those trying to topple President Bashar Assad.

Abdurrahman sees the competing allegations as evidence that's he's being fair; "You know you're doing a good job when all the sides start to attack you," he said in a recent interview.

Still, one prominent critic says it boggles the mind that a man living in Coventry is somehow able to count and categorize the dead in Syria hour by hour, every day of the week.

"Something is going on which is quite fishy," said As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of Middle Eastern politics at California State University Stanislaus.

Gurbaj Multani walked into his Montreal school when he was 11 years old and found 300 adults shouting at him.

There was a time in his teens when virtually the whole province was united against him. But through it all, he still liked Quebec. Only now, at age 23, is Mr. Multani contemplating leaving it.

The soft-spoken Sikh, an accounting student at Concordia University, has his name on a 2006 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that broke new ground for religious freedom throughout the country. The entire court supported his right to wear a kirpan - a ceremonial dagger - to school, as long as it was sewn into his clothing.

Mr. Multani may be a harbinger for Quebec's religious minorities, if the proposed Charter of Values that would ban the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in the public-sector workforce becomes law. He thought he had won his fight for good, thought he would live on happily in the province, his right to wear his religious symbols guaranteed. But Mr. Multani also wears a turban, which would run afoul of the charter's provisions if he were to work in the public sector. In effect, the powerful emotions he helped touch off in Quebec have rebounded on him, and may drive him out.

"It's a friendly province," he says, and he doesn't wish to leave. "But when the government doesn't give you a choice, what can I do? Why would I have to choose between my religion and a job?" He fears the private sector would copy the constraints.

The kirpan he wears was once the ultimate symbol of overt religious garb in the province. As a boy, he was kept from school for five months over his wearing of it. Then he won the right at Quebec Superior Court. That's when he returned to his public school and got shouted at - some told him "Go home, Paki," he says.

"That was a little bit discouraging. They don't even know who I am."

The mistress of a Utah doctor accused of killing his wife testified today that their affair was "casual," despite the fact that prosecutors allege she and the doctor exchanged 15 text messages on the day his wife was found lifeless in a bathtub.

Gypsy Willis said she met Dr. Martin MacNeill, a married father of eight children, online around November 2005, however their relationship did not turn sexual until January 2006, she said.

"We would see each other about a couple times a month. There were months when we didn't see each other. It was a very casual thing," said Willis, who wore a tight blazer over a low-cut camisole while on the stand in the Provo, Utah, courtroom.

Willis testified that MacNeill, 57, helped her financially during nursing school around February 2007.

Prosecutors allege MacNeill drugged and drowned his wife, Michele MacNeill, 50, on April 11, 2007, so he could pursue a relationship with Willis.

Dave Herman, the legendary New York morning radio host, was charged on Thursday with trying to lure a 7-year-old girl to the U.S. Virgin Islands for sex.

He was arrested at the St. Croix airport, where he was expecting to meet the girl and her mother after their flight from New York and take them to his vacation home.

The longtime host of "The Dave Herman Rock and Roll Morning Show" on WNEW-FM who had once interviewed John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and considered George Harrison a personal friend, is charged with having chatted online with a woman, "Kris," he believed to be the mother of a 6-year-old named "Lexi." "Kris" was actually a Homeland Security officer.

Erstwhile Republican candidate for president Herman Cain claims that allegations of sexual harassment that torpedoed his campaign in 2012 were the work of Satan, who wanted to block Cain from the White House. Cain made the statements in an interview with RealClearReligion published on Wednesday.

The former Godfather's Pizza CEO and ex-head of the National Restaurant Association told RealClearReligion that running a political campaign is like "drinking from a fire hose." Taking the time to rebut the accusations by four women who accused Cain of sexual harassment, he said, "would have been a huge distraction."

Besides, a greater force was trying to keep him from the Oval Office, he said.

© well photo/Shutterstock.com

Then they handcuffed him before seeking medical attention.

Officers in Sonoma County, Calif., shot dead 13-year-old Andy Lopez Tuesday as he walked home from school carrying a toy rifle.

Just days after a 12-year-old boy in Nevada shot dead his math teacher and himself with an all-too-real handgun, the Sonoma incident reflects not only a troubling epidemic of trigger-happy policing, but a context wherein a young boy carrying a toy rifle is assumed to be carrying a real weapon. Rania Khalek, who highlighted the incident on her blog, questioned "whether or not race played a factor in the decision to shoot."