Translated from German for RI by Mihajlo Doknic

Last week Florian Harms, chief-editor of SPIEGEL ONLINE, explained to his declining readership what goals the editors have set for this year. The goal is to "even better inform the readership about current world events", and to continue to practice "journalism based on clear rules and principles."

According to TrafficEstimate.com, Spiegel.de has lost 14.6% of its traffic over the course of the last year. The losses actually wipe out gains made as the Ukraine conflict began to heat up. Later, as Spiegel's bias made itself evident, German readership began an exodus, resulting in a nearly-20% drop over the course of five months.

Last year those Spiegel principles led above all to a steep decline in readership. While there is no sign of self-criticism in his post, Mr Harms explained what this highly regarded SPIEGEL-journalism actually is.

With lawmakers preparing to vote on a bill blocking parents from skipping vaccinations for their children, prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at the Sacramento screening of a film linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal and warned that public health officials cannot be trusted.

"They can put anything they want in that vaccine and they have no accountability for it," said Kennedy, who walked onto and left a Crest Theater stage to standing ovations, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wednesday afternoon will see the first hearing for a bill eliminating the personal belief exemption parents can cite in order to avoid vaccinating their kids. Senate Bill 277 was prompted by soaring exemption rates in some schools districts and outbreaks of long-dormant diseases like measles and whooping cough.

A businessman from Ukraine, who recently left the country, told the German magazine "Der Tagesspiegel" that after the events on Maidan Square the situation has significantly deteriorated.

The situation in the country became much worse after Maidan events, a Ukrainian businessman who recently left the country told the German magazine "Der Tagesspiegel."

The man, called "Vadim" by the magazine, said that corruption and bribery became even more widespread than before, with bandits demanding higher "protection fees," which were a usual practice in the Ukrainian business sector in previous years.

For a short period of time, the situation changed in a positive way and they were "in the seventh heaven," Vadim said. But then the bandits again came to power, and "the new mafia," working in conjunction with the corrupt police, became even stronger.

"Earlier there were men with Kalashnikovs who came and demanded money. Today, they come with an official letter from corrupt officials with whom they work and ask for more."

Vadim claims that laws adopted by the new Kiev government to combat corruption are just a fiction.

He also said the mafia in Lviv tried to blackmail him after he refused to pay the bribe. The bandits threatened to poison his guard dogs and hang out the flag of the People's Donetsk Republic on his house.

The smart grid isn't coming. It's already here.

Everywhere people's houses are being fitted if they already haven't with smart electric meters and smart water meters. These meters communicate real-time usage data via radio frequency (which comes with its own set of health problems).

Essentially, consumption of utilities in your home is being big brother tracked and traced at all times on the smart grid.

Sure, it was sold to everyone as a "smart" solution for keeping consumption in check, that it would decrease utility bills because people could use it to check out how much they use and find smart ways to cut down. (How many people are really even doing that, by the way?)

Jurors in the trial of 21 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are hoping to return a verdict on Wednesday, following weeks of testimony in the Boston Marathon bombing trial.

Tsarnaev faces either life in prison or the death penalty.

Here are five stunning questions that were not asked during this historic trial in Massachusetts...

In a video posted online on April 4, a Hunt County sheriff's deputy is seen brutally assaulting a woman in front of her crying children as she screams out in pain while informing the officers that she is pregnant.

A white North Charleston police officer was arrested on a murder charge and the FBI opened a civil rights investigation Tuesday after video surfaced of the lawman shooting eight times at a 50-year-old black man as he ran away.

Walter L. Scott died Saturday after Patrolman 1st Class Michael T. Slager, 33, shot him in the back.

The video footage, which The Post and Courier obtained Tuesday from a source who asked to remain anonymous, shows the end of the confrontation between the two on Saturday after Scott ran from a traffic stop. It was the first piece of evidence contradicting a statement that Slager released earlier this week through his attorney.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement that FBI investigators would work with the State Law Enforcement Division, which typically investigates officer-involved shootings in South Carolina, and the state's attorney general to investigate any civil rights violations in Scott's death. North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said during a news conference that Slager had made a "bad decision."

"When you're wrong, you're wrong," Summey said. "If you make a bad decision, don't care if you're behind the shield or just a citizen on the street, you have to live by that decision."

WARNING: Unedited, graphic footage of the April 4, 2015, shooting of Walter Scott by North Charleston Patrolman 1st Class Michael Thomas Slager taken by an anonymous bystander.

Authorities say a rite of passage at a Waxahachie fire station crossed the line, leading to felony sex charges against five volunteer firefighters.

The firemen were arrested Monday on accusations that they used a sausage to sexually assault a man at the station in January, officials said. A woman is also accused of recording the deed on a cellphone.

The alleged attack occurred Jan. 20 at the Emergency Service District 6 Volunteer Fire Department in Waxahachie, Texas Rangers spokesman Lonny Haschel said. The victim reported the incident to authorities last week.

Officials at the 26-member department did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Five men were charged with aggravated sexual assault in the case: Keith Edward Wisakowsky, 26; Casey Joe Stafford, 30; Preston Thomas Peyrot, 19; Alec Chase Miller, 28; and Blake Jerold Tucker, 19.

Brittany Leanne Parten, 23, was also arrested and charged with improper photography or visual recording.

Washington— A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him shooting and killing an apparently unarmed black man in the back while he ran away.

The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, had said he feared for his life because the man took his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man — Walter L. Scott, 50 — fled.

The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.

The shooting comes on the heels of high-profile incidents of police officers using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere around the country. The deaths have sparked a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.

A White House task force has recommended a host of changes to the nation's police policies, and President Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., to cities around the country to try to improve police relations with minority neighborhoods.

If you have not heard of the Quiverfull movement, I'll sum it up by saying that Quiverfull is an all-encompassing vision of a big, happy, godly family which affects every aspect of a so-called True Believer's life. Probably the most recognizable Quiverfull family in America is reality TV's Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting fame.

You'll find Quiverfull families in nearly all types of churches in every community. Quiverfull is simply the "pro-life" idea that truly godly families will "trust the Lord" with their family planning. Children are viewed as unmitigated blessings ("As arrows in the hand of the mighty man, so are the children of ones youth, happy is the man who hath his quiver full of them:" Psalm 123), so couples are willing to have as many children as the Lord chooses. All methods of conception control are considered a lack of trust in God to provide for the "children of the righteous."

At the heart of Quiverfull is patriarchy: the ideal of biblical headship and submission. This is the belief that by God's perfect design, the father is the head of the home. The father serves as protector, provider and shepherd for his wife and children. He is primarily responsible for the wife's and children's physical, emotional and spiritual well-being and with such responsibility comes the (divinely granted) commensurate authority over the members of his household. According to this view, God works through the father and he serves as an intermediary for his wife and children. Honor, obedience and submission are highly valued qualities because they are necessary to maintain order and work together to accomplish the Lord's vision for a godly family.

This emphasis on patriarchy guarantees that, to the degree in which a Christian family puts Quiverfull ideals into practice, the family is living a dysfunctional relationship dynamic which necessarily involves mental, emotional and spiritual abuse.

This was my life for over 16 years. Shunning birth control resulted in seven children, who we homeschooled and sheltered from "godless society." But these days, I think Christian fundamentalism is just as bizarre as you do. After deconverting, I started a blog, No Longer Quivering, as a way to process my Quiverfull life and try to understand how I'd come to embrace such a fanatical lifestyle. Over time, NLQ has grown into a movement of women escaping and healing from spiritual abuse. I've met many people whose lives and families have been devastated by this ideology, and the stories they tell are heartbreaking.