Man accused of using chainsaw to threaten family must obey restraining order

Manuel Delisle, the man accused in a bizarre Quebec road rage incident involving a chainsaw, has pleaded not guilty to armed assault.

Alexandre Hermenier and Karine Cyr say they were driving Sunday in St-Jérôme, Que., just outside of Montreal, when another driver cut them off.

Hermenier decided to follow the man and later tried to block him from leaving the scene while Cyr called police.

Cyr recorded the confrontation with her cellphone and later posted it on her Facebook page. It shows a man approaching the vehicle, swearing and revving a chainsaw.

Delisle was arrested on Monday morning and charged Tuesday at the Court of Quebec in St-Jérôme with armed assault.

He pleaded not guilty and was given a conditional release.

About 420 gallons of oil spilled into the Mississippi River near Convent after a multi-ship collision around 4 p.m. Monday (April 6), according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Coast Guard officials said the Privocean, a 751-foot bulk carrier, broke free from its mooring, drifted downriver and struck the Texas, a 98-foot towing vessel. The Texas was moored at the time.

The Privocean continued to drift down river and struck the Bravo, an 816-foot tank ship, as it was unloading crude oil. That caused an oil spill, both on deck and in the river, Coast Guard officials said.

About 420 gallons of oil spilled into the river, and about 126 gallons spilled on the Bravo's deck, the Coast Guard said. The oil spill on deck was contained and is being cleaned, officials said.

The ship is taking on water, but is anchored by two tugboats.

All attempts to reform mass incarceration through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics, the courts and state and federal legislatures are useless. Corporations, which have turned mass incarceration into a huge revenue stream and which have unchecked political and economic power, have no intention of diminishing their profits. And in a system where money has replaced the vote, where corporate lobbyists write legislation and the laws, where chronic unemployment and underemployment, along with inadequate public transportation, sever people in marginal communities from jobs, and where the courts are a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state, this demands a sustained, nationwide revolt.

"Organizing boycotts, work stoppages inside prisons and the refusal by prisoners and their families to pay into the accounts of phone companies and commissary companies is the only weapon we have left," said Amos Caley, who runs the Interfaith Prison Coalition, a group formed by prisoners, the formerly incarcerated, their families and religious leaders. "Mass incarceration is the most important civil rights issue of our day. And it is time for communities of faith to stand with poor people, mostly of color, who are unfairly exploited and abused. We must halt human rights violations against the poor that grow more pronounced each year," Caley said here. He and other prison reform leaders spoke Saturday at the Elmwood Presbyterian Church.

"We have to shut down the system," said Gale Muhammad, another speaker and the founder and CEO of Women Who Never Give Up. "All the companies that use prison labor have to be boycotted. And we can't stop there. We have to boycott the vending machines in the prisons and the phone companies. We have to stop spending our money. Until we hit them in the pocket they won't listen."

Today the man who first predicted Greek bank deposits would be stolen just issued a second frightening prediction to King World News. This interview takes a second trip down the rabbit hole of Western government lies, deception, theft and eventual collapse.

James Turk: "The 4-day Easter holiday in Western Europe has come and gone without an ECB imposed bail-in on Greek bank depositors, Eric. Greece managed to pay its end of March obligations, but the country is still in a state of suspension. As we discussed in last week's interview, the real test is yet to come.

Two Greek government Treasury bills totaling €2.4 billion mature on April 14 and April 17. But before then, Greece needs to repay €450 million to the IMF on April 9....

"It is noteworthy that the following day, April 10, Greece begins its 4-day Easter holiday, which the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates one week later than the rest of Europe. This 4-day national holiday is wedged in between these critical payment dates, so it becomes the likely period to expect the bail-in of Greek depositors.

A black teenager killed by police outside of Chicago over the weekend was shot twice in the back after attempting to steal an illegal handgun, officials and local media said on Monday.

The Zion Police Department said in a statement that 17-year-old Justus Howell met with another teenager to buy the gun before trying to wrestle it away. The seller, 18-year-old Tramond Peet whose account was the basis of the police statement, said one round was fired during the struggle.

Police said officers responded to the area and chased Howell, who still had the gun, before shooting and killing him. Police said a weapon was recovered from the scene.

The Chicago Tribune newspaper reported the Lake County Coroner's Office said that Howell was killed by two gunshot wounds to the back - one piercing his heart, spleen and liver, and the other striking his right shoulder.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has spent thousands of dollars on steak dinners, hallucinogenic mushrooms and jet skis, according to a report by the local news website DNAinfo.com on Monday.

"The department purchases gift certificates from various restaurants and gives them to officers as part of a citywide employee appreciation program that rewards civil servants for good work," NYPD spokesperson Stephen Davis told DNAinfo.com.

The report noted that the NYPD spent $3,400 at Gallaghers Steakhouse in May 2014. In addition, the Department spent $600 on meals at Brooklyn's famed Peter Lugar Steakhouse in 2012, and $300 last year at Mark Joseph Steakhouse.

Lights went out at the State Department, White House, Capitol and many other places in Washington, DC, in a puzzling series of power outages. Terrorism is not suspected, officials say.

Power went out at the State Department during the question-and-answer session on Iran nuclear talks.

Power goes out at @statedept during @mariehark briefing during q and a on #Iran nuclear deal transparency issues...

— Matt Lee (@APDiploWriter) April 7, 2015

After the initial confusion, the briefing continued.

The State Department press briefing continues in darkness. Power outage pic.twitter.com/Ph9Zytt7Hp

— Gayane Chichakyan (@Gayane_RT) April 7, 2015

Acting State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, continued the session under what appeared to be light from a smartphone.

Pepco's current outage map for downtown DC pic.twitter.com/8o4PRyUayo

— erin mccann (@mccanner) April 7, 2015

California judge cut a child rapist's potential life sentence last week, saying the man had not meant to harm the toddler girl.

Kevin Rojano was convicted Dec. 3 of sodomizing a child younger than 10 and lascivious acts with a minor, and he was initially sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

But Orange County Superior Court Judge M. Marc Kelly trimmed 15 years off Rojano's sentence, saying it would be cruel and unusual punishment to impose the maximum prison term because the 20-year-old lacked "callous disregard for (the victim's) well-being," reported the Orange County Register.

Prosecutors said Rojano was playing video games June 4 in the garage of his Santa Ana home when a 3-year-old relative wandered in, and investigators said the man became sexually aroused by the child and assaulted her.

The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. . . . You have owners. — George Carlin, The American Dream

According to a new study from Princeton University, American democracy no longer exists. Using data from over 1,800 policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page concluded that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of - or even against - the will of the majority of voters. America's political system has transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where power is wielded by wealthy elites.

"Making the world safe for democracy" was President Woodrow Wilson's rationale for World War I, and it has been used to justify American military intervention ever since. Can we justify sending troops into other countries to spread a political system we cannot maintain at home?

The Magna Carta, considered the first Bill of Rights in the Western world, established the rights of nobles as against the king. But the doctrine that "all men are created equal" - that all people have "certain inalienable rights," including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - is an American original. And those rights, supposedly insured by the Bill of Rights, have the right to vote at their core. We have the right to vote but the voters' collective will no longer prevails.

In Greece, the left-wing populist Syriza Party came out of nowhere to take the presidential election by storm; and in Spain, the populist Podemos Party appears poised to do the same. But for over a century, no third-party candidate has had any chance of winning a US presidential election. We have a two-party winner-take-all system, in which our choice is between two candidates, both of whom necessarily cater to big money. It takes big money just to put on the mass media campaigns required to win an election involving 240 million people of voting age.

In state and local elections, third party candidates have sometimes won. In a modest-sized city, candidates can actually influence the vote by going door to door, passing out flyers and bumper stickers, giving local presentations, and getting on local radio and TV. But in a national election, those efforts are easily trumped by the mass media. And local governments too are beholden to big money.

Five consecutive years of budget cuts have left the Internal Revenue Service with 18,000 fewer employees, many of whom feel besieged this filing season by angry taxpayers waiting in long queues for help that is often inadequate, the National Treasury Employees Union said on Monday.

IRS employees at taxpayer assistance centers tell union officials they "get yelled at, have papers thrown at [them], and are spoken down to [because] the demand is too high for the resources available," National President Colleen Kelley told reporters in a conference call.

According to Kelley, a front line worker in Pittsburgh said fewer than 40 percent of calls are answered. "That's a horrible percentage, and it certainly does not instill confidence in the federal government," the employee told union officials.

Staff at a Van Nuys, Calif., taxpayer assistance center said taxpayers are frustrated from standing in line and are "sore from sitting, hungry because there's no food, thirsty because our water fountain is disgusting, and usually end up with parking tickets," Kelley said.

Another IRS customer service representative heard callers crying on the phone after being placed in a queue or subjected to a "courtesy disconnect" and told to call back later, she said, noting a 26 percent cut in phone center staff over the past five years. Phone equipment is "antiquated" and taxpayers with questions that in the past would have been handled by a subject-matter specialist are being referred to the IRS website, she said.