We are being discovered because we are the only campaign that will defy the establishment by bailing out young people in the way we bailed out the bankers and bailed out Wall Street, Jill Stein, US presidential hopeful for the Green Party, told RT.

RT: Could you please describe your experience running for president as a third-party candidate?

Jill Stein: Well, it is a very exciting and dynamic time. In many ways what the country needs right now is not only a revolutionary campaign, but a revolutionary political party.

There has been an incredible outpouring of support for his [Bernie Sanders] campaign, likewise for the [Donald] Trump campaign. It is interesting that in both political parties the candidates that are doing well are outsider candidates. People in both parties are repudiating their party leadership, and if you look at polls of the American electorate, the biggest chunk of Americans now have rejected both the Democratic and Republican parties. But what our political system does is suppress political opposition, I am sorry to say. So the media tends not to cover us.

There is a rebellion going on in full swing and we are being discovered especially by young people, because we are the only campaign that will truly defy the establishment by bailing out young people in the way that we bailed out the bankers and we bailed out Wall Street. We're calling out for a bailout of an entire generation of young people - 43 million young people. And it turns out... if they hear about our campaign and come out to vote that is enough to win the race.

The presidential elections of 2016 have several unique characteristics that defy common wisdom about political practices in 21^st century America.

Clearly the established political machinery - party elites and their corporate backers -have (in part) lost control of the nomination process and confront 'unwanted' candidates who are campaigning with programs and pronouncements that polarize the electorate.

But there are other more specific factors, which have energized the electorate and speak to recent US history. These portend and reflect a realignment of US politics.

In this essay, we will outline these changes and their larger consequences for the future of American politics.

We will examine how these factors affect each of the two major parties.

It's not only toxic - it's driven by a right-wing billionaire who profits more from flipping land than drilling for gas

Aubrey McClendon, America's second-largest producer of natural gas, has never been afraid of a fight. He has become a billionaire by directing his company, Chesapeake Energy, to blast apart gas-soaked rocks a mile underground and pump the fuel to the surface. "We're the biggest frackers in the world," he declares proudly over a $400 bottle of French Bordeaux at a restaurant he co-owns in his hometown of Oklahoma City. "We frack all the time. What's the big deal?"

McClendon dominates America's supply of natural gas the same way the Tea Party-financing Koch brothers control the nation's pipelines and refineries. Like them, McClendon is an influential right-wing power broker - he helped fund the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry in 2004, donated $250,000 to the presidential campaign of Rick Perry, and contributed more than $500,000 to stop gay marriage. But unlike his fellow energy czars, McClendon knows how to tone down his politics and present a friendlier, less ideological face to the public. He secretly gave $26 million to the Sierra Club to fight Big Coal, and built a Google-like campus for Chesapeake's 4,600 employees in Oklahoma City, complete with a 63,000-square-foot day care center, a luxurious gym and four cafes manned by cook-to-order chefs. He even voted for Barack Obama because he thought the country needed "an inspirational figure."

At 52, McClendon still looks like the whip-smart accountant he once aspired to be - crisp white shirt, polished shoes, a toss of white hair. To hear him tell it, the cleaner-than-coal fuel he produces will revive our faltering economy, free us from the tyranny of foreign oil and save the planet from global warming. "I have a fossil fuel that makes other fossil fuels obsolete," he boasts. By McClendon's estimate, the industry has drilled more than 1.2 million wells nationwide, yet so far there have been only a few confirmed cases where things have gone wrong - despite dire warnings from scientists and environmentalists that fracking pollutes rivers and streams, contaminates drinking water and turns large swaths of farmland into industrial moonscapes. "Where is the mushroom cloud?" McClendon asks. "Where are the dogs with one leg? Where are the people that have been maimed or hurt?"

He sips his Bordeaux; his own private wine cellar once boasted more than 10,000 bottles. It's a good riff, with some truth to it. But what McClendon leaves out is the real nature of the business he's in. Fracking, it turns out, is about producing cheap energy the same way the mortgage crisis was about helping realize the dreams of middle-class homeowners. For Chesapeake, the primary profit in fracking comes not from selling the gas itself, but from buying and flipping the land that contains the gas. The company is now the largest leaseholder in the United States, owning the drilling rights to some 15 million acres - an area more than twice the size of Maryland. McClendon has financed this land grab with junk bonds and complex partnerships and future production deals, creating a highly leveraged, deeply indebted company that has more in common with Enron than ExxonMobil. As McClendon put it in a conference call with Wall Street analysts a few years ago, "I can assure you that buying leases for x and selling them for 5x or 10x is a lot more profitable than trying to produce gas at $5 or $6 per million cubic feet."

Nearly half of children in the United States live dangerously close to the poverty line, according to new research from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Basic Facts about Low-Income Children, the center's annual series of profiles on child poverty in America, illustrates the severity of economic instability and poverty conditions faced by more than 31 million children throughout the United States. Using the latest data from the American Community Survey, NCCP researchers found that while the total number of children in the U.S. has remained about the same since 2008, more children today are likely to live in families barely able to afford their most basic needs.

"These data challenge the prevailing beliefs that many still hold about what poverty looks like and which children in this country are most likely to be at risk," said Renée Wilson-Simmons, DrPH, NCCP director. "The fact is, despite the significant gains we've made in expanding nutrition and health insurance programs to reach the children most in need, millions of children are living in families still struggling to make ends meet in our low-growth, low-wage economy."

Oklahoma City, OK — Aubrey McClendon, former chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corporation, died in a fiery car crash on Wednesday — the day after being indicted on federal antitrust charges.

McClendon was known as either a pioneer of the U.S. shale oil industry boom — or derided as the King of Fracking — depending on whom you ask. But, Tuesday's indictment was not the first time he'd had trouble with the law concerning his enormously profitable business practices.

McClendon had issued a statement prior to his death, reported by Zero Hedge, in which he vowed to fight the charges:

"The charge that has been filed against me today is wrong and unprecedented. I have been singled out as the only person in the oil and gas industry in over 110 years since the Sherman Act became law to have been accused of this crime in relation to joint bidding on leasehold. Anyone who knows me, my business record and the industry in which I have worked for 35 years, knows that I could not be guilty of violating any antitrust laws. All my life I have worked to create jobs in Oklahoma, grow its economy, and to provide abundant and affordable energy to all Americans. I am proud of my track record in this industry, and I will fight to prove my innocence and to clear my name."

Dylan VanCamp is in hot water - and jail - for using an infamous US military torture technique against his girlfriend in an attempt to find out if she was faithful.

The 22 year-old Wisconsin man is charged with six felonies and three misdemeanors, including suffocation, battery, and stalking, for a series of attacks over their seven-month relationship.

A month into the relationship, VanCamp is said to have waterboarded the anonymous woman for "speaking with a boy" on a social media site, Smoking Gun reported.

The woman told police she "could not breathe" and "felt like she was drowning" after one such attack.

The jealousy-filled boyfriend apparently dragged his then-girlfriend from the shower into the bedroom, punched her in the head, and held a knife to her face.

The mystery around the disappearance of the passenger jet with 239 aboard may be nearing a resolution.

A 16-year old Nashville resident is accused of shooting his grandmother, sister and nephew because he did not want to leave his bed to head to school. He also tried to shoot his mother, but she managed to escape.

"There was a quarrel about getting up and getting ready for the day when (at some point) the 16-year-old ran to a closet, got a 9mm handgun and started firing," said Kris Mumford, spokeswoman for the Nashville police.

Police responded to a report of an active shooting at 7:17am on Tuesday. Six nearby schools were placed on lockdown, Metro Schools spokesman Joe Bass said.

The boy, whose name has not been released yet, shot his 67-year-old grandmother, Earline Hill, twice. He also wounded his 12-year-old sister and 6-year-old nephew.

Video footage shows a Baltimore school police officer slapping, kicking and cursing at a high school student, prompting the chief of the police department and two of its officers to be put on administrative leave.

The short clip posted to Facebook on Tuesday was covertly filmed via smartphone by another student at Reach Partnership School, and shows an unidentified officer swearing at a young man while slapping his face three times.

"Go the f**k home!" the officer yells. A second officer can be scene behind the attacker, making no effort to stop his coworker. The officer can then be seen kicking the teen in the back, saying: "get the f**k out of here!"

Officials are investigating the case, Schools spokeswoman Edie House Foster said Wednesday. She confirmed that the officer in the video was among those placed on leave, calling his behavior "unacceptable and appalling."

Israeli authorities Wednesday demolished a Palestinian-owned building in Jerusalem, as well as demolished residential structures and animal barns near Nablus, local sources said.

In Jerusalem, Israeli police accompanied by bulldozers broke into at-Tour neighborhood in the city, where they demolished a three-story building under the pretext of construction without a permit. The demolished building comprised six apartments, WAFA reported. Israeli authorities had not issued a notification regarding their intent to demolish the building.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops stormed the village of Tana, East of Nablus, and proceeded to demolish a number of Palestinian-owned residential structures and animal barns, also for being built without an Israeli permit. The village is located in Area C in the West Bank, under complete Israeli control.

Issuance of construction permits by Israeli authorities for Palestinians in Area C and in Jerusalem, unlike for Israeli settlers, requires unreasonable fees that most Palestinians cannot afford to pay. Over the course of 2015, Israel demolished 521 structures in Area C as well as in East Jerusalem, displacing 636 people, according to the UN monitoring group OCHA.

The vast majority of these demolitions were carried out on the grounds of construction without a permit. Between 2010 and 2014, only 1.5 percent of applications for building permits in Area C were approved by Israeli occupation authorities, OCHA adds.