Cartersville - A retired man was awoken to his property being invaded by a swarm of police officers - accompanied by drug-sniffing dogs and a police helicopter - interested in the plants in his garden.

The early-morning raid occurred on October 1st, 2014, at the home of Dwane Perry. The first thing he remembers hearing was the whirring of the copter blades and strange men banging on his door.

"I was scared actually, at first, because I didn't know what was happening," said Mr. Perry to WSB-TV.

Agents from the Governor's Task Force for drug suppression had apparently been trolling the skies over the area and observed plants on his property that they deemed suspicious. Based on that intel, a team of Broward County deputies trespassed on Mr. Perry's land to harass and potentially arrest the retiree because of the contents of his garden.

After confronting Mr. Perry, deputies sheepishly realized that the tree-growing plant was actually okra - not cannabis. It has five leaves instead of seven, and produces a vegetable that is popular in southern cooking.

"Here I am, at home and retired and, you know, I do the right thing," Mr. Perry explained. "Then they come to my house strapped with weapons for no reason. It ain't right."

The number of possible contacts with the Ebola patient in Dallas has risen to 80, said Zachary Thompson, Dallas County Health and Human Services director Thursday.

He also said a control order has been issued to the family of Thomas Eric Duncan, the man identified by The Associated Press as the victim of the often-fatal virus. Thompson said that means the family members are confined to their apartment and the front and back areas, such as the patio.

Original story

Parents rushed to get their children from school Wednesday after learning that five students may have had contact with the Ebola patient in a Dallas hospital, as Gov. Rick Perry and other leaders reassured the public that there is no cause for alarm.

The patient, identified by The Associated Press as Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia, arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20 to visit family. Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said county officials suspect that 12 to 18 people may have had contact with Duncan.

Pope Francis has said he believes in angels, telling Catholics around the world to reaffirm their belief in holy guardians.

Speaking to followers at the Vatican on Wednesday, the pontiff said every person has a guardian angel advising them in life.

Stressing they were not imaginary, he said it was only pride stopping people hearing their voices.

"Do not rebel: follow his advice," the Pope said according to the Catholic News Agency.

"No one walks alone and none of us can think that he is alone."

Pope Francis made the comments on the Feast of Holy Guardian Angels, observed by Catholics around the world on 2 October.

He claimed that no person can rightly give moral advice to themselves and should instead rely on direction from angels.

Like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin Is Seen as a Strong Leader Who Isn't Afraid to Confront the West

In the recommended-reading section of Beijing's Wangfujing bookstore, staff members have no doubt which foreign leader customers are most interested in: President Vladimir Putin, or "Putin the Great" as some Chinese call him.

Books on Mr. Putin have been flying off shelves since the crisis in Ukraine began, far outselling those on other world leaders, sales staff say. One book, "Putin Biography: He is Born for Russia," made the list of top 10 nonfiction best sellers at the Beijing News newspaper in September.

China's fascination with Mr. Putin is more than literary, marking a shift in the post-Cold War order and in Chinese politics. After decades of mutual suspicion - and one short border conflict - Beijing and Moscow are drawing closer as they simultaneously challenge the U.S.-led security architecture that has prevailed since the Soviet collapse, diplomats and analysts say.

The former rivals for leadership of the Communist world also increasingly share a brand of anti-Western nationalism that could color President Xi Jinping's view of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Beijing accuses Western governments of stirring unrest there, much as Mr. Putin blamed the West for the pro-democracy protests in Kiev that began late last year.

When Teresa Hooks looked outside the craft room window of her Georgia home one night last week, she saw hooded figures wearing camouflage standing outside.

The East Dublin woman woke up her husband, David Hooks, who grabbed his shotgun, believing burglars who had recently targeted the couple had come back again, reported WMAZ-TV.

The sheriff's deputies burst through the back door about 11 p.m. on Sept. 24 and, seeing David Hooks holding the weapon, fired 16 shots - killing the 59-year-old grandfather.

Authorities said Hooks met deputies at the door and pointed his weapon aggressively at officers as they announced themselves.

But Teresa Hooks said the officers did not knock and never identified themselves as law enforcement, and her attorney said David Hooks was killed behind a wall in the home - not at the door.

Deputies were executing a search warrant as part of a drug investigation based on a tip from one of the burglars accused of stealing a vehicle from Hooks.

The night before the raid, the search warrant stated, Rodney Garrett told investigators he stole a plastic bag from a pickup parked outside the Hooks home, believing it contained cash.


He also stole firearms and a set of digital scales, investigators said.

When communities attempt to police the police, they often get, well... policed.
In several states, organized groups that use police scanners and knowledge of checkpoints to collectively monitor police activities by legally and peacefully filming cops on duty have said they've experienced retaliation, including unjustified detainment and arrests as well as police intimidation.

The groups operate under many decentralized organizations, most notably CopWatch and Cop Block, and have proliferated across the United States in the last decade - and especially in the aftermath of the events that continue to unfold in Ferguson, Missouri, after officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed, black teenager Michael Brown.

Many such groups have begun proactively patrolling their communities with cameras at various times during the week, rather than reactively turning on their cameras when police enter into their neighborhoods or when they happen to be around police activity.

Across the nation, local police departments are responding to organized cop watching patrols by targeting perceived leaders, making arrests, threatening arrests, yanking cameras out of hands and even labeling particular groups "domestic extremist" organizations and part of the sovereign citizens movement - the activities of which the FBI classifies as domestic terrorism.

Courts across the nation at all levels have upheld the right to film police activity. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and photographer's associations have taken many similar incidents to court, consistently winning cases over the years. The Supreme Court has ruled police can't search an individual's cellphone data without a warrant. Police also can't legally delete an individual's photos or video images under any circumstances.

Investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice are probing the death of a mentally ill inmate who died of thirst earlier this year after 35 days in solitary confinement.

An autopsy showed Michael Anthony Kerr died from dehydration March 12 and was receiving no treatment for his schizophrenia, reported WNCN-TV.

The 54-year-old Kerr, who was serving 31 years for larceny and assault after he was convicted as a habitual felon in 2011, had been cited twice in the weeks before he died for flooding his cell, according to records.

Prison staffers are permitted to turn of water to an inmate's sink or toilet for the "misuse of plumbing facilities," according to a written policy of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety.

David Guice, the state commissioner of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice, told the Associated Press that water to Kerr's cell "had not been turned off in the days immediately preceding his death."

But prison officials have so far refused to specify exactly when the water was cut off.

They also refused to say whether Kerr was chained in restraints or if he was too weak to walk in the days prior to his death.

The inmate was found unresponsive in the back of a prison van after he was driven three hours from Alexander Correctional Institution in Taylorsville to a mental hospital at Central Prison in Raleigh.

Prison officials have said since Kerr's death six months ago that they would investigate the events that led to his death, but no report has been issued and officials have not said when one would be.

Two men - one in California, the other in Maryland - are facing multiple federal charges of sexually assaulting and exchanging graphic photos of a six-week-old premature infant brought home by one of the men as the child's foster parent.

According to Courthouse News Service, Stephen H. Schaffner, 34, of Greensboro, Md, conspired with Michael Lutts, 50, of San Diego "to abuse a six-week-old foster child and transmit recorded images and videos of the abuse to Schaffner."

Lutts, a pediatric nurse at a San Diego County Kaiser Permanente hospital and the foster parent of the child, allegedly exchanged graphic and sexually explicit messages with Schaffner, a former clinical professional counselor in Greensboro, within hours after bring the child home.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office in Baltimore, "Over the next several hours, Schaffner allegedly exchanged numerous graphic and sexually explicit messages with Lutts about Lutts engaging in sexually explicit conduct with the infant. Lutts sent Schaffner videos with the infant, including images of an adult performing oral sex on the infant. Schaffner is alleged to have directed Lutts to sexually abuse the infant in order to produce sexually explicit images and videos and send them to Schaffner."

Court house documents state that, in one of the videos, Lutts videotaped himself touching the infant's genitals while masturbating. Images show the hospital tag still attached to the infant's leg. A video recorded a week later showed Lutts naked in his living room with the baby near him while he performed lewd acts upon himself.

FBI agents, who arrested Lutts as part of a child pornography ring, stated the newborn can be heard crying through many of the videos.

An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities

We tend to perceive our identities as stable and largely separate from outside forces. But over decades of research and therapeutic practice, I have become convinced that economic change is having a profound effect not only on our values but also on our personalities. Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and privatisation have taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has become normative. If you're reading this sceptically, I put this simple statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism favours certain personality traits and penalises others.

There are certain ideal characteristics needed to make a career today. The first is articulateness, the aim being to win over as many people as possible. Contact can be superficial, but since this applies to most human interaction nowadays, this won't really be noticed.

It's important to be able to talk up your own capacities as much as you can - you know a lot of people, you've got plenty of experience under your belt and you recently completed a major project. Later, people will find out that this was mostly hot air, but the fact that they were initially fooled is down to another personality trait: you can lie convincingly and feel little guilt. That's why you never take responsibility for your own behaviour.

On top of all this, you are flexible and impulsive, always on the lookout for new stimuli and challenges. In practice, this leads to risky behaviour, but never mind, it won't be you who has to pick up the pieces. The source of inspiration for this list? The psychopathy checklist by Robert Hare, the best-known specialist on psychopathy today.

This description is, of course, a caricature taken to extremes. Nevertheless, the financial crisis illustrated at a macro-social level (for example, in the conflicts between eurozone countries) what a neoliberal meritocracy does to people.Solidarity becomes an expensive luxury and makes way for temporary alliances, the main preoccupation always being to extract more profit from the situation than your competition. Social ties with colleagues weaken, as does emotional commitment to the enterprise or organisation.


Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting their frustration on the weak - in psychology it's known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other.

For the moment, our top public health officials are quite adamant that there absolutely will not be a major Ebola outbreak in the United States. But what if they are wrong? Or what would happen if terrorists released a form of weaponized Ebola or weaponized smallpox in one of our major cities? What would such an event do to our economy? I think that we can get some clues by looking at the economic collapses that are taking place in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone right now. When an extremely deadly virus like Ebola starts spreading like wildfire, the fear that it creates can be even worse for a society than the disease. All of a sudden people don't want to go to work, people don't want to go to school and people definitely don't want to go shopping. There are very few things that can shut down the economy of a nation faster. Considering the fact that our big banks are being more reckless than ever, we better hope that we don't see a "black swan event" such as a major Ebola outbreak come along and upset the apple cart. Because if that does happen, our Ponzi scheme of an economy could implode really quick.

Right now there is just one confirmed case of Ebola in Texas. If they isolated him before he infected anyone else, we might be okay for the moment. But already we are being told that there may be "a possible second Ebola patient" in Dallas...

Health officials are closely monitoring a possible second Ebola patient who had close contact with the first person to be diagnosed in the U.S., the director of Dallas County's health department said Wednesday.

All who have been in close contact with the man officially diagnosed are being monitored as a precaution, Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, said in a morning interview with WFAA-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth.

"Let me be real frank to the Dallas County residents: The fact that we have one confirmed case, there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient," he said. "So this is real. There should be a concern, but it's contained to the specific family members and close friends at this moment."