John Antoine, an 86-year-old Tasered by a police officer while cooking soup, has been cleared of charges, a court ruled. The elderly man's apartment had been raided by officers searching for his granddaughter's boyfriend, said to be suicidal after running out of medication.

The incident took place while Antoine was cooking soup at his Brooklyn home back in October. Standing in the kitchen with a knife in one hand and an onion in the other, little did he imagine that a group of five armed police officers was about to break into his apartment.

The officers were looking for the 23-year-old boyfriend of Antoine's granddaughter, as the young man was thought to be emotionally disturbed after he ran out of medication.

"The police came in and say, 'You so and so, put down the knife,' and I said, 'Why are you coming in my apartment? What do you want?'" Antoine told NY Daily News. "They wouldn't tell me."

You may find that the below report is, as President Obama might suggest, once again "peddling fiction."

But for the average American, we can assure you that the economic recession is a very real situation.

Walmart, which made its billions serving low to middle income Americans, is struggling and it's because their core customer base is too broke to shop. As Michael Snyder recently pointed out, they are just one of many domestic retailers laying off workers amid falling store sales. But they are certainly the biggest and baddest of the retailers out there. If they are having problems it should be a big red warning sign that despite mainstream cheerleaders telling us not to panic because the economy is still in good shape, we are in for some rough times ahead - in fact, the rough times are a reality right here and now.

Walmart's customers are too broke to shop

Walmart is facing a "perfect storm" that's hurting its sales growth, according to Moody's.

The company's core customers are struggling with flat income levels, andsavings from lower fuel prices aren't translating into more retail spending, Moody's vice president, Charles O'Shea, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

The business is also under pressure from deflation in key product categories, such as food, and the effects of the strong dollar abroad.

"Walmart is facing an almost perfect storm when it comes to top-line growth," O'Shea wrote. "Until the health of the lower-to-middle-income consumer improves, Walmart will continue to face macroeconomic headwinds in the US."

Walmart said last month that it's expecting virtually no sales growth in the coming fiscal year.

Source: Business Insider via Yahoo

RT ranks among the top five most-viewed international news channels in Europe and the US, the biggest study yet of the Russian network's viewership by Ipsos reveals. Seventy million individuals switch to RT TV channels weekly, with 35 million watching daily.

The study was conducted by the world's third largest market research company, based in France, in 38 countries out of the 100+ where RT programming is available. The survey was taken between August-November 2015, just as RT was preparing to mark its 10th anniversary.

"Ipsos has decades of experience in international audience measurement, and we've worked with dozens of premier broadcasters from around the world. We are happy that RT chose Ipsos to conduct their biggest audience survey yet,"said Ipsos Connect MENAP CEO, Elie Aoun.

Europe is the region where RT has the largest audience, with 36 million people watching the channel weekly. Eleven million get their news from RT at least once a week in the Middle East and Africa. In India, Ipsos included only English-language viewers, who constitute about 10 percent of the country's population, and among them 7 million viewers watch RT weekly.

In the US, RT's weekly audience is above 8 million viewers, the study showed, which places the broadcaster among the top-5 international TV news channels.

Russian pilots have long been hailed as the best in the world and Syrians, according to reports in social media, have recently been able to see Russian stunt-flying for themselves.

Video footage published on YouTube appears to show two Russian fighter jets performing a stunt in Syrian skies.


The video is said to have been filmed in the Syrian province of Latakia, which hosts the Hmeymim air base. Russian aircraft, which take part in Moscow's anti-Daesh campaign, are stationed at the base.

A US Air Force veteran from New Jersey has been found guilty by a New York court of supporting ISIS and planning to travel to Syria to fight with the group. The accused is one of about 80 Americans the government has been trying to put away on the charges.

Tairod Pugh, 48, a New Jersey native, stands guilty of providing material support to Islamic State (IS/ISIS, formerly ISIL) and obstruction of justice. He now potentially faces the maximum sentence of 35 years for the crime, after being found guilty by an anonymous jury of eight, the Wall Street Journal reports. The sentencing is scheduled for September 16.

Pugh, who is a Muslim convert, served in the Air Force in the period from 1986 to 1990, the Justice Department said. Pugh was first caught trying to make it to Syria from Turkey in January of last year, but the former Air Force mechanic was intercepted by Turkish security and deported to the US, where the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force acquired a warrant and arrested him at his father's house in Asbury Park, NJ soon thereafter.

Pugh's father appeared taken aback by the verdict. "I didn't expect this," he said after the hearing. Pugh's attorney, Eric Creizman, added: "I feel bad for him and his family. I think the jury gave fair consideration to the evidence. I'm disappointed with the outcome."

But being the first to be successfully tried and convicted of the crime on US soil, Pugh's case represents a high-profile victory, stretching back two years to a wide crackdown on IS supporters on home soil. It took the jury a week of testimony and seven hours to reach a verdict.

Greed, abuse, sexual exploitation, and psychopaths lurk in the shadows of the music and film industries, and even pageants. Child star Corey Feldman bravely came out years ago about having been abused by movie moguls. But these moguls are seemingly untouchable. Power and money hold actors, models and musicians alike hostage, out of fear of having their careers ruined. Going public about abuse in the entertainment world was rare, until recently. Regardless of the threats she received, Kesha Rose Sebert plucked up the courage to come out about her assault, claiming that producer Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald drugged her before taking sexual advantage of her.

"Soon after moving to Los Angeles, Dr. Luke began to violently abuse the young Ms. Sebert... Dr. Luke continuously made sexual advances towards Ms. Sebert. He forced Ms. Sebert to take drugs and alcohol in order to take advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated." - Kesha's attorney

If the allegations against "Dr. Luke" are true, he checks most personality traits that characterize a psychopath. A comprehensive timeline on what happened to Kesha Rose can be read here. Since going public, Kesha has been attempting to terminate her contract with Sony. Last month, however, a judge ruled that Kesha could not be let out of her contract with the company and has to stick to her agreement to make six more albums. The singer burst into tears upon hearing the judge's ruling.

At least five people have died in a mass shooting in a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania suburb. Six more are reported to be injured in the late-night shooting.

A police report says officers were responding to a 911 call in the suburb of Wilkinsburg at about 11pm on Wednesday. When they arrived they saw four people dead on the porch of a home where a party was being held.

Four more people were found wounded and taken to hospitals. Of those, one female died at the hospital, two more were reported in critical condition and another female was declared stable.

Neighbors have told KDKA they heard no fewer than 25 gun shots, and saw dozens of shell casings lying about the street afterwards.

A former Marine suspected of shooting an Idaho pastor was arrested outside the White House. His story is not only full of bizarre details ‒ like a manifesto calling to resist "Martians" who are members of Congress ‒ but also disturbing security issues.

Kyle Odom, a 30-year-old from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is suspected of the Sunday shooting of Tim Remington, a pastor from his hometown. But he was only arrested on Tuesday evening in Washington, DC ‒ 2,500 miles away from the scene of the crime ‒ because he was throwing flash drives and other unknown objects over the White House fence.

Odom made his first court appearance on Wednesday, and refused to be extradited to Idaho within the next few days, according to AP. His first hearing will take place April 6 in Washington.

The point-blank shooting occurred a day after Remington led the prayer at a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. The pastor suffered several gunshot wounds, but is expected to survive.

What happens when foreigners who are supposedly in African nations to help people are actually there to do great harm to children? Matthew Lane Durham, 21, an Oklahoma missionary, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for sexually assaulting four children while working in an orphanage in Kenya.

As CNN reported, Durham was sentenced by Judge David L. Russell on four counts of "engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places." Further, he must pay restitution of $15,863, as ABC News reported.

"These were heinous crimes committed on the most vulnerable victims. He was their worst nightmare come true," the judge said.

"In a span of just 33 days," prosecutors wrote, Durham "raped three girls — ages 5, 9 and 15 — at least eight times. During that same time period, he sexually molested a 12-year-old boy twice."

The prosecutors added that the condemned man "not only forcefully sexually abused these children," but "he psychologically damaged them by taking advantage of their trust he received from the children."

Although a jury found him guilty of seven counts in June, the judge acquitted him on three of those counts on the grounds that prosecutors failed to make the case that Durham committed a sexual act with the children involved.

Two years ago, Durham began volunteering at the Upendo Children's Centre to work with neglected children, as he had done three times previously. The organization, which provides housing, clothes and food to neglected children in Nairobi, is funded by an American citizen and recruits volunteers among Oklahoma churchgoers. According to the complaint, Durham requested to stay in the school rather than off-site to be in a "better position to assist the children." A school employee noticed Durham exhibiting strange behavior towards the children, such as "lingering embraces" and "lying beside some of the children on their beds" at night. Durham was confronted by the school, who held his passport and returned it within days, after which time he returned to the U.S. Durham claims his confession was coerced in order to reclaim his passport.

Durham's crimes have reportedly had a chilling effect on foreign volunteers in the east African country who live under a cloud of suspicion. The local community assumes there are more pedophiles lurking among the missionaries, particularly men, and they cannot trust them.

"All I wanted was to follow God's plan for me," Durham told the judge, according to ABC News. "The Upendo kids do not deserve this," Durham said. Meanwhile, Eunice Menja, founder of the orphanage, read a statement in court, calling Durham's sexual abuse "not only a betrayal of the Upendo mission but of the trust Upendo placed in him."

"Matthew Durham defiled the children," Menja said, fighting back tears. "Matthew has no remorse. After he got caught, he still denied."

US officials assured the hack victims of that massive data breach of federal government workers that technology did not exist to misuse stolen fingerprints, but two researchers just changed that.

Michigan State University researchers Kai Cao and Anil Jain have mastered the art of recreating a fingerprint, rendering common cellphone security measures useless, as announced in a paper published last month. While the researchers aren't the first to fake fingerprints, their simple method can easily be replicated in any home office.

The revelation is troubling, coming only months after the Office of Personnel Management notified 5.6 million people that hackers had copied their fingerprints in a massive government data breach. At the time, OPM promised that "federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited."

OPM warned, however, that the possibility that fingerprint records could be used illicitly on a wide-scale "could change over time as technology evolves." As Kai Cao and Anil Jain's research shows, the technology has, in fact, changed.