More than 800 people have been confirmed missing or dead by the UN refugee agency in the latest Mediterranean Sea disaster involving migrants fleeing Africa through Libya. Critics say European countries must face responsibility for the crisis.

"We can say that 800 are dead," spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, Carlotta Sami, was quoted by AFP on Tuesday.

The confirmation came after most of the 27 known survivors of the shipwreck were interviewed.

"There were a little over 800 people on board, including children aged between 10 and 12. There were Syrians, about 150 Eritreans, Somalis... They had left Tripoli at about 8am on Saturday," Sami said.

The survivors, who hoped they would be smuggled into Europe from the unsettled region, said there was a stampede at the trawler they were sailing in after a Portuguese merchant ship approached the vessel. The trawler capsized, drowning hundreds of people.

Speaking to RT, Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, decried the conditions the migrants had to endure on "rickety and unstable vessels."

"Many of these people were locked into the vessels and were not allowed to move around and were unable to seek some assistance from larger vessels that flow in the Mediterranean," he said.

The Italian Coastguard has so far confirmed recovering only 24 bodies.

The survivors are said to have been taken to holding centers, while at least two - a Tunisian and a Syrian - were reportedly arrested on suspicion of being members of the smuggling gang responsible for the deadly boat trip. One survivor was taken to a Sicilian hospital.

Neighbors said they seldom noticed the couple in the little house at 225 W. High Ave. Yet the two were desperately reaching out for help.

In a listing on giveforward.com this year, Jodi Speidel wrote that both she and her husband, Randy, had chronic illnesses and had been living without gas heat all winter and without water for a week. With $33 in savings, she said, they were eating one meal a day and didn't have scraps left for their two cats.

"I have turned in every direction possible and don't know what else to do," she wrote. "If you can help, we will be forever grateful and will even pay you back once we get back on our feet."

No one responded on that website or a similar post on gofundme.com.

On Tuesday, the Speidels' landlord found a pink note on the front door of the one-bedroom house warning visitors about carbon monoxide inside.

The couple had taken two charcoal grills into their bedroom; locked the door; and, amid smoldering coals, died of carbon-monoxide poisoning. A suicide note indicates that both had agreed. She was 46 years old and he was 45. The deaths upset neighbors who said they could have offered help had they known.

"It's heartbreaking, like they didn't feel like they had anything," said Danielle Smith, 21, who lives across the street from the house where the Speidels died. "I wish I knew them better because I could have helped them."

One of their daughters, Kira Speidel, 20, in a post last month on gofundme.com, called her parents "the hardest-working people I know, and now that they literally cannot work anymore, they have nowhere to turn to."

People gathered at the W. High Avenue house on Wednesday. A man who said he was Kira Speidel's boyfriend said she was too upset to talk to a reporter.

Several cats prowled the yard; apparently the couple had put them outside before taking their own lives. A police officer confirmed that no animals were found inside.

Convicted former Police Commander Jon Burge has publically condemned a reparations fund that would support victims of police torture, whom he referred to as human vermin and "guilty, viscous criminals." He also believes he will be "vindicated."

For decades, Burge had been accused of running a "midnight crew" of Chicago Police officers who allegedly tortured African American suspects. In 2011, he was convicted of perjury for lying under oath in civil lawsuits connected to that torture.

This month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed to create a $5.5 million reparations fund to compensate victims of police torture.

Burge, who maintained his Fifth Amendment rights when questioned under oath about the alleged torture, criticized the compensation program in an interview with writer and Chicago Police officer Martin Preib, which was published on "The Conviction Project."

Burge directed his remarks at politicians, the media, and alleged torture victims Anthony Holmes and Darrell Cannon as well as the plantiffs' attorney Flint Taylor.

"These private attorneys grow rich because the city of Chicago is afraid to defend the lawsuits filed by these human vultures," Burge said in the interview. "Ask the mayor and City Council members how many relatives of the victims of these crimes they spoke with before deciding on their 'Reparations.' "

A Detroit mother called the police, panicked that her 9-year-old son hadn't returned home. However, it turns out he had been arrested and the police neglected to inform her.

Stephanie Horton's 9-year-old son went off to play with friends and, when he didn't return, Horton assumed the worst and reported him as missing. It wasn't until the next day that police bothered to inform her that Kamian wasn't missing — he was in police custody after being arrested for a home invasion.

Horton was further distressed to learn that her son had been arrested the day she reported him missing.

Officers said they did not have a way of contacting Horton, saying they didn't know her number and that they had gone to her house but she was out at the time. However, that doesn't explain why they didn't inform her when she called.

"I said how could I not be notified until 24 hours later. No explanation, no information, no anything," she told local media.

Turns out, the charges for the home invasion against the third-grader got dropped as well. However, Horton say she is still concerned about her son's activities because of the company he keeps.

"There are some older guys who come and take him and he does what they tell him to do," Horton said. "We have been having a problem with that, coinciding with an officer trying to keep them away from here, but to no avail."

A herd of tule elk move warily along a California coastal hill as a herd of Black Angus cattle graze nearby. Despite the apparent peaceful coexistence, the animals are at the center of a battle for precious grasslands reduced by the state's drought.

Ranchers and farmers who live and work within the 71,000-acre (287-square km) Point Reyes National Seashore, 35 miles (56 km) northwest of San Francisco, want the free-roaming elk fenced in so their livestock do not have to compete for grass.

Wildlife advocates and many park users are opposed after almost half of the majestic elks died while living in a 2,600-acre fenced-in area in the northern part of the park. The park has not yet determined how much land the free-ranging elk herd might be confined to — or even if they would be fenced in.

The Point Reyes National Seashore is one of the few parks in America with agricultural operations, some of them dating back to the 1800s. They were purchased by the federal government to create the preserve and the lands were leased back to the same families for agriculture.

Five years ago Monday, 11 men died on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig—despite Chelsea Manning's effort to save their lives.

Let me explain.

The BP drilling rig blew itself to kingdom come after the "mud"—the cement used to cap the well—blew out.

The oil company, the federal government and the industry were shocked—shocked!—at this supposedly unexpected explosion in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country's largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison.

"These findings are appalling and chilling in their indictment of our criminal justice system, not only for potentially innocent defendants who have been wrongly imprisoned and even executed, but for prosecutors who have relied on fabricated and false evidence despite their intentions to faithfully enforce the law," Blumenthal said.

- From the Washington Post article: FBI Overstated Forensic Hair Matches in Nearly All Trials efore 2000

The American justice system is broken. Completely and totally broken. This has been one of the key themes here at Liberty Blitzkrieg since inception, and I've come to realize that the death of the rule of law is the single most important issue facing our society at this time.

This site has focused on the increased use of selective prosecution in these United States. If you are poor, disenfranchised, or a dissident, the full force of the law will rain down on your skull like a thousand tons of bricks. We have seen this repeatedly in cases such as the South Carolina man who was fined $525 and fired from his job when he failed to pay for a $0.89 soda refill. We saw it in the case of Aaron Swartz, the child prodigy was driven to suicide by overly aggressive and ambitious feds.

Finally, we saw it in the case of Barrett Brown, who was threatened with over a century in jail for essentially exposing the criminality of certain very rich and/or powerful individuals.

On the other side of the fence, we see that anyone associated with the power structure can do whatever they want with zero repercussions. We saw this in the case of General David Petraeus, who received a slap on the wrist for passing on highly classified information to his mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell. We saw it in how DEA agents were't even fired from their jobs despite participating in sex parties filled with prostitutes that were paid for by drug cartels, and sometimes taxpayer funds. Most despicably, we have seen it in the explosive use of deferred prosecution agreements when it comes to all the bailed out Wall Street banks, thus ensuring that no senior bankers went to prison and that their bonuses would be forever protected.

Giant corporations and the wealthy are naturally united in their hatred of the $15 minimum wage. Surprising, however, is the strong opposition sometimes encountered by workers who make barely above $15 an hour.

The anti-$15 logic of these workers varies. Some simply repeat the misinformation they hear on the media, that a higher minimum wage would cause mass inflation and unemployment, regardless of the fact that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor there is no evidence to support these claims.

Some workers against $15 say such an increase isn't fair, since they haven't had a raise in years and have worked hard to get what little they have. Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly untrue that people "get ahead" when they work hard. The economy has fundamentally shifted in the last 30 years to the point where the average fast food worker is now 29 years old.

Opportunities to earn a living wage have shrunk exponentially. According to a recent study 43 percent of the U.S. workforce earns under $15 an hour. There are simply not enough high wage jobs to leap into; the leaping is now going in the opposite direction.

A new Illinois law is threatening parents who leave their children home alone if they are 13-years-old or younger. The new Illinois law states that parents who leave 13-year-olds home are guilty of neglect, and subject to arrest, as well as their children being taken away by police.

The new law states that "any minor under the age of 14 years whose parent or other person responsible for the minor's welfare leaves the minor without supervision for an unreasonable period of time without regard for the mental or physical health, safety, or welfare of that minor" is now considered "neglected."

This is the strictest law related to child neglect in the entire nation. Most states do not have a minimum age for leaving children home alone.

In three states, 12 is set as the minimum age. Once you are a teenager, even they say you are old enough to be left home alone.

Three other states set the bar at 8-years-old. Kansas says 6 is the minimum age. But more than 30 states say it is all very relative and the State should not define neglect based upon a sweeping generalization of age.

The Illinois law says that any child left home "without supervision" for "an unreasonable period of time" is being left "without regard for his or her mental or physical, health, safety or welfare."

The law, seemingly intentionally, neglects to define "unreasonable period of time" or "regard for the mental or physical health, safety or welfare." This way, police get to discriminate and determine who they think is being "unreasonable." Do you think they will make this call in affluent areas or poor ones?

We all know the answer to this question.

The law was written to discriminate against those communities which are already disempowered.

Furthermore, the law says that taken children away can be done by police without a warrant.

Even if a court later decides that the parents were in the right, the damage to the children and family has already been done. As well, it puts the onus on innocent parents to prove their innocence, based on police subjectively deciding that they think a 13-year-old left at home is being "neglected."

Nearly all 13-year olds are capable of being left at home while their parents are at work or run out to the store. This law disproportionally targets single-parent households, where one parent is unable to stay at home with a child in this case. As well, lower-income households in general seem to be the target of the legislation.

As this is in Illinois, it is worth noting that Chicago Public Schools have the shortest school days in the nation. This would mean that the working poor would have to fork over money for daycare for their 13-year-olds, or face arrest and having their children taken away. Put simply, this is absurd.

Pesticide poisoning was the likely cause of the mysterious deaths of at least 18 people in a southwestern Nigerian town earlier this week, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

The "current hypothesis is cause of the event is herbicides", WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in a tweet.

"Tests done so far are negative for viral and bacterial infection," he added.

The victims began showing symptoms early last week in what Ondo state spokesman Kayode Akinmade called a "mysterious disease", prompting fears of a new infectious disease outbreak in a region ravaged by Ebola.

The victims, whose symptoms included headache, weight loss, blurred vision and loss of consciousness, died within a day of falling ill in the town of Ode-Irele, in southwestern Ondo state.