An Ohio woman was forced to place a 911 call after a boa constrictor she rescued turned on her, wrapped itself around her neck, and began biting her face.

Firefighters raced to the woman's house in the small Ohio town of Sheffield Lake on Thursday and cut the 5 1/2-foot-long serpent's head off with a pocket knife.

The drama began when the unnamed woman placed a frantic 911 call to emergency services about 2pm local time.

At least 6 people have been killed and around 13 wounded in a car bomb blast in Somalia's capital of Mogadishu on Sunday. The explosion was described by Reuters as "huge."

RT spoke to a local journalist, Yahye Young from Mogadishu's Mustaqbal Radio, who said he witnessed first-hand eight dead people strewn across the area where the bomb detonated.

Police have said, however, that the number of casualties is likely to rise.

Photographs and videos shared on social media show the immediate aftermath of the blast, with a burning car visible on the street. One dramatic video shows people carrying the injured away from the scene of the blast.

Since 2009, child marriage has been prohibited at the legislative level in Afghanistan and according to the civil code of the country girls can marry from the age of 16. However, forced marriages are still happening at a much earlier age. Sputnik takes a look at some of the reasons behind this issue.

Recently a heart wrenching video appeared online in which an Afghan man in a rural setting was trying to marry off his daughter by force.

The little girl in front of everyone started screaming that she does not want to get married while her mother, who was also against the marriage was weeping and trying to hold on to her child as the men were dragging the girl away by force.

A US court has ordered the Federal Aviation Authority to review seat sizes after an advocacy group alleged that passengers' lives were at risk due to cost and space-saving initiatives on board commercial flights.

"This is the case of the incredible shrinking airline seat," Judge Patricia Millett wrote in her ruling. "As many have no doubt noticed, aircraft seats and the spacing between them have been getting smaller and smaller, while American passengers have been growing in size."

The seat pitch, or the distance between the back of a seat and the back of the seat in front of an average airline seat in economy class in the US has decreased from 89 cm (35 inches) in the '70s to 79cm (31 inches).

Meanwhile, the average width of an airline seat has narrowed from 46cm (18 inches) to 42 cm (16.5 inches) over the last decade.

This week we're interviewing Professor Stephen Hicks. Stephen is a Canadian-American philosopher who teaches at Rockford University, where he also directs the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. He is the author of two books: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault argues that postmodernism is best understood as a rhetorical strategy of intellectuals and academics on the far left of the political spectrum developed in reaction to the failure of socialism and communism and Nietzsche and the Nazis, an examination of the ideological and philosophical roots of National Socialism, particularly how Nietzsche's ideas were used, and in some cases misused, by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to justify their beliefs and practices.

Stephen maintains a personal website at stephenhicks.org

Join us live from 12pm EST (6pm CEST) for what promises to be a very interesting discussion.

Running Time: 01:36:59

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Veterans hoping to use medical marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder have had their hopes extinguished after Republicans shot down the Veterans Equal Access amendment to allow doctors to discuss medicinal cannabis with patients.

Republicans on the House Rules Committee rejected the 'Veterans Equal Access' amendment this week that would allow Veterans Affairs (VA) doctors to discuss medical marijuana treatment with veterans in states where it is legal.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who sponsored the amendment said he was "bitterly disappointed" veterans had been failed, despite the amendment receiving bipartisan support from 9 Democrat and 9 Republican co-sponsors.

The lawmakers wouldn't let the amendment be included in the House's proposed VA funding bill for next year, meaning it won't even be up for debate on the House floor.

While medical marijuana is legal in 29 states, it remains illegal on a federal level, so VA doctors are prevented from discussing it with patients.

An RT reporter was barred from the Nyansapo Afro-feminist festival in Paris, due to allegations of negative coverage of France's population and even Islamophobia. The festival has been embroiled in controversy for restricting 80 percent of its venue for black women only.

RT's correspondent Charlotte Dubenskij was on Friday barred from attending the festival along with her crew.

"Hugely disappointed to be barred from Nyansapo because I work for RT [and] had been hoping to find out more about the festival and its aims," Dubenskij wrote on Twitter.

VIDEO link:

• A Marxist student group at Swarthmore College disbanded itself earlier this year after realizing that its members were too rich and too white to be real commies.
• A farewell letter from a former member complains that the group's founders were "entirely white, with the exception of one person of color," and that none of them came from "low-income and/or working class backgrounds."

A Marxist student group at Swarthmore College disbanded itself earlier this year after realizing that its members were too rich and too white to be real commies.

According to screenshots confidentially provided to Campus Reform by an individual with access to the group's private Facebook page, the demise of the Swarthmore Anti-Capitalist Collective (SACC) came in the wake of a farewell letter from a member who had decided the group could never be an effective proponent of "unproblematized anticapitalist politics" due to its "history of abuse, racism, and even classism."

A woman in China who had an abortion was shocked to find that the midwife had 'saved' the child and sold him to another family.

In April 2013, 18-year-old Lili from Inner Mongolia found out she was pregnant and didn't tell anyone until she reached 35 weeks.

Accompanied by her brother, she underwent an abortion which she was told was successful. However some three days later she was told by police that the child had been saved by a nurse.

In the 2008 film Valkyrie, Tom Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army colonel who played a key part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The film is a solid portrayal of a fascinating real life story. Hitler had every intention of fighting the war to the end and the colonel feared Hitler's "never surrender" attitude would bring about the destruction of the German homeland. Although Stauffenberg was in the German army during the country's worst years, and even participated in the the invasion of Poland most viewers of the film--not to mention students of history--would agree that Stauffenberg is a hero despite past sins.

Like the colonel-turned-assassin, Robert E. Lee has been viewed by many Americans as an unlikely hero for the past 150 years. The Virginia slaveholder felt torn at the onset of the Civil War, writing years later that, "though [I was] opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern states." As for slavery, the other issue generally seen as the cause of the war, Lee ultimately chose his homestate of Virginia over the Union. Upon hearing word of Virginia's formal secession, he resigned from the U.S. Army and joined the state militia, fighting for the Confederate States of America until his surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865. After the Civil War ended, however, Lee became a leading figure in support of healing the wounds of the country. He always had qualms with secession and there is compelling evidence that he believed the institution of slavery to be morally reprehensible, calling it "a moral and political evil." Thus, the slave-holding Confederate general turned a page in his life after surrendering at Appomattox, and dedicated himself to re-engaging with the North to promote sectional unity.