German police on Thursday raided the homes of nine elderly men suspected of serving as SS guards at the Auschwitz death camp and arrested three of them on allegations of accessory to murder.

The arrests came five months after federal authorities announced they would investigate former guards at Auschwitz and other Nazi-era death camps. Their effort was inspired by the precedent-setting trial of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who died in 2012 in a Bavarian nursing home while appealing his conviction on charges he served at the Sobibor camp.

"This is a major step," said Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, when told of the arrests. "Given the advanced age of the defendants, every effort should be made to expedite their prosecution."

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was the first person convicted in Germany solely on the basis of serving as a camp guard, with no evidence of involvement in any specific killing.

About 30 percent of the 430 billion pounds of food produced in the United States is wasted, an incredible statistic, especially given the lack of landfill space, not to mention the global menace of world hunger.

The shocking statistic gives a new meaning to the term 'junk food,' as Americans are sending 133 billion lbs (60 billion kg) of food to the garbage dump each year. To put it another way, 141 trillion calories annually - or 1,249 calories per capita daily - went uneaten in the United States, according to a report by the US Department of Agriculture.

Abby Martin goes over some of the most egregious laws against the homeless and the different ways cities are dealing with the issue, citing Columbia, South Carolina's mandatory fee to feed homeless people in parks, Osceola County, Florida's 1000+ arrests of the same 37 people for panhandling and sleeping in public and San Francisco's alleged hosing down of the homeless.


Source: RT

The kinky Killing Kittens club is run by Emma Sayle, a blue-blooded pal of Kate Middleton, who has revealed she is bringing her notorious "organised orgies" to Northern Ireland later this year.

Emma claims there are more than 3,000 Killing Kittens members throughout the north and south of Ireland already and says the sole aim of her company is "the pursuit of female pleasure".

"We are planning on doing regular swingers parties, launching in April in Dublin and Belfast," she said.

"We have the Dublin-based team in place, so it's all systems go."

A venue for the Belfast parties has not yet been revealed.

Killing Kittens parties are billed as organised orgies for the young, wealthy and beautiful.

Only couples and single women aged 18 to 45 are allowed to attend, and guests at the champagne-fuelled events must wear masks.

All attendees are strenuously vetted and must provide photographs to make sure their looks are up to scratch.

Celebrity members have included Big Brother and Apprentice star Luisa Zissman, who revealed that she once took part in a 30-strong orgy at a Killing Kittens party.

A Ugandan newspaper published a list Tuesday of what it called the country's "200 top" homosexuals, outing some Ugandans who previously had not identified themselves as gay one day after the president enacted a harsh anti-gay law.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday's signing of the bill by President Yoweri Museveni marked "a tragic day for Uganda and for all who care about the cause of human rights" and warned that Washington could cut aid to the government of the East African nation.

"Now that this law has been enacted, we are beginning an internal review of our relationship with the Government of Uganda to ensure that all dimensions of our engagement, including assistance programs, uphold our anti-discrimination policies and principles and reflect our values," Kerry said in a statement.

The Red Pepper tabloid published the names - and some pictures - of alleged homosexuals in a front-page story under the headline: "EXPOSED!"

Anchorage - A young man's deteriorating health led the state of Alaska to assume full control of his medical care - against his own written will and the against the wishes of his family. Since last October he has been trapped in a hospital, isolated without visitors, on an extensive series of psychotropic drugs, in a condition that continues to diminish.

Medical Misfortune

Bret Byron Bohn is a native Alaskan who loves hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, and most outdoor activities. He lived an exemplary life receiving many awards as a youth, became a member of the National Honor Society, and achieved the distinguished rank of Eagle Scout. He had recently graduated from a program in Aviation Technology.

At 26-years-old, Bohn worked as a field guide for hunters and outdoorsmen on expeditions in the Alaskan wilderness. While otherwise healthy and athletic, his only medical issue was the development of some nasal polyps which impeded his ability to smell. He had them surgically removed, but they grew back. He was prescribed Prednisone - a powerful steroid and immune suppressant - to attempt to regain his sense of smell.

While on Predisone, he began suffering with the inability to sleep for a prolonged period. After a week of insomnia, his family took him to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. They hadn't realized it at the time, but one of the listed side effects of Prednisone is sleep disturbances (insomnia).

Rather than take him off of the drug that was likely causing the sleep problem, doctors prescribed two more powerful drugs to supposedly calm him down and help him sleep. He was given Zolpidem (brand name Ambien) which treats insomnia, as well as Lorazepam (brand name Ativan) which treats anxiety, depression and insomnia.

After taking the prescribed combination of drugs at at home, Bohn had seizures - potentially because the drugs he took are known to cause seizures. His family took him back to the hospital, looking for answers, and he was given more drugs, and had more seizures. He was put into intensive care.

Gandhi famously noted that:

The greatness of a society and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.

I would agree with that, as well as the obvious observation that a society's greatness can also be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members. This isn't to romanticize homelessness or to condemn it.

It is merely to note that the homeless are fellow human beings going through their own struggles and difficulties. You may not want to provide them food, but some people do, and there should never be an infringement upon such a basic human right as sharing food with someone who needs it.

Civil rights are often lost in societies by politicians scapegoating unpopular minorities. This happened with jews, gypsies, etc in Nazi Germany and we must be very careful the same does not happen here.

One human being should be able to voluntarily give food to another in all cases, without exception.

The concept of a permit needed that costs $120 per week is fascist, anti-human and downright evil.

The government is cracking down on Americans who want better security at nuclear sites - or an end to nuclear proliferation, period.

One wouldn't imagine an 84-year-old nun and a nuclear plant's safety manager having much in common, but whistleblowers and anti-nuclear protesters have provoked harsh rebuke after shedding light on shocking security failures at U.S. nuclear sites.

On Tuesday, Sister Megan Rice was sentenced to nearly three years in prison for breaking into a federal nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Her fellow Catholic activists, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, were sentenced to more than five years in prison because of their history of civil disobedience.

The protesters were also ordered to pay $53,000 for damaging federal property.

The trio doesn't deny trespassing, but most observers of the case against them agree that their actions demonstrated frightening security vulnerabilities at the Y-12 National Security Complex, where they roamed for two hours before being found. (The breach led to increased patrols and firings.)

Rice and her cohorts broke into the "Fort Knox of uranium" two years ago, cutting through fences and vandalizing a bunker that held weapons-grade uranium. The group hung banners, wrote messages such as "The fruit of justice is peace," and splashed human blood on the outside of the building, using baby bottles to "represent the blood of children" the weapons spill.

The IRS targeting scandal is of course multi-faceted, but one of its key elements was the use of comprehensive IRS questionnaires to determine everything from tea-party donor and member lists to the actions and activities of family members and even identifying "persons or entities with which you maintain a close relationship." In other words, the Obama administration IRS was abusing its regulatory authority to essentially discern the inner workings of an entire political and cultural movement.

Last week, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai disclosed the existence of the FCC's new "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," a study that would send FCC researchers (monitors?) into newsrooms across the nation to determine, among other things, whether news organizations are meeting citizens "actual" as opposed to "perceived" information needs. As designed, the study empowers researchers to not only ask a series of questions of news staff, it also provides (in pages 10 and 11) advice for gaining access to employees even when broadcasters and their Human Resources refuse to provide confidential employee information. The Obama administration FCC is abusing its regulatory authority by attempting to discern the inner workings of American newsrooms.

An oil spill has shut down a 65-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Public drinking water intakes were shut down in St. Charles Parish as a precaution, officials said, and the Port of New Orleans was also closed.

Officials assured the public that drinking water "remains safe" in St. Charles Parish, and officials in St. James Parish said intake valves there were protected within hours of the incident.

The spill came from a barge carrying light crude that was struck Saturday afternoon by a tugboat near Vacherie, reported the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Coast Guard officials said they were unsure how much oil had spilled, but they stressed that only a sheen of oil had been reported on the river's surface.

The Coast Guard is working with Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality and ES&H, an environmental cleanup company, to clean up the spill.

They were also deploying booms to prevent the oil from spreading and using planes and helicopters to see where the oil has gone, the newspaper reported.