It's now been six months since Colorado enacted its historic marijuana legalization policy, and two big things have already happened:

1. Colorado's cash crop is turning out to be even more profitable than the state could have hoped.

In March alone, taxed and legal recreational marijuana sales generated nearly $19 million, up from $14 million in February. The state has garnered more than $10 million in taxes from retail sales in the first four months - money that will go to public schools and infrastructure, as well as for youth educational campaigns about substance use.

According to his latest budget proposal, Gov. John Hickenlooper expects a healthy $1 billion in marijuana sales over the next fiscal year. That's nearly $134 million in tax revenue. Sales from recreational shops are expected to hit $600 million, which is a more than 50% increase over what was originally expected.

2. Denver crime rates have suddenly fallen.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating an early morning shooting that injured several people.

Indianapolis Metro Police confirm seven people shot in Broad Ripple early Saturday morning.

Major UK shareholders in BP have joined together to sue the British energy giant in the US over lost earnings from the infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig blast in 2010. The case is the first in the US, where awards are much bigger than in the UK.
The new litigation is led by Pomerantz Law, which has brought together 32 major BP shareholders from various countries, though mostly from Great Britain, who acquired their shares before the 2010 accident in the Gulf of Mexico and sustained financial losses as a result of the collapse in the value of shares that followed the disaster.

The Deepwater Horizon blowout caused the value of London-based BP shares to immediately plunge by over a half, and even today the shares have not recovered to their restored to their 2010 level.

"The fact that UK pension funds who bought stock on the London Stock Exchange can now participate in bringing claims in the US raises the prospect of recoveries where significant losses have been incurred," Pomerantz lawyer Jennifer Pafiti told the London Evening Standard.

So far only those investors who bought their BP shares on the US market, for example at the New York Stock Exchange, were allowed to file lawsuits in US courts. A number of rulings in Texas courts now appear to have opened the way for British investors to have their cases heard in the US under English law, however.American judges generally impose much higher fines than their British counterparts, so Pomerantz's lawsuit could potentially cost BP billions of dollars.

"All of the plaintiffs' securities claims relating to the Deepwater Horizon accident are meritless and we will continue to vigorously dispute them," a BP spokesman in London said Friday night, as quoted by The Guardian.

Among the new litigants preparing lawsuits against BP are over a dozen British and European pension funds, including a pension fund of BP's principal rival, Royal Dutch Shell.

It may not destroy your soul, but it turns out heavy metal music can be hazardous to your brain. At least in some rare cases.

German doctors say they have treated a Motorhead fan whose headbanging habit ultimately led to a brain injury, but that the risk to metal fans in general is so small they don't need to give up the shaking.

Last January, doctors at Hannover Medical School saw a 50-year-old man who complained of constant, worsening headaches. The patient, who was not identified, had no history of head injuries or substance abuse problems but said he had been headbanging regularly for years - most recently at a Motorhead concert he attended with his son.

After a scan, doctors discovered their patient had a brain bleed and needed a hole drilled into his brain to drain the blood. The patient's headaches soon disappeared. In a follow-up scan, the doctors saw he had a benign cyst which might have made the metal aficionado more vulnerable to a brain injury.

Every day, somewhere in this supposedly free county, some version of this script is played out: A police officer spies an individual committing a harmless but "illegal" act, aggressively pursues the subject, inflicts physical violence on the victim, then escalates that violence to lethal or nearly lethal levels when the victim doesn't immediately submit to the state-licensed aggression.

We could refer to this as the "From Malum Prohibitum to Murder" model of police escalation. Citizens who aren't killed in such encounters can expect to be punished for the impudence they display by surviving. Police officers responsible for the actual crimes of violence will not face prosecution, owing to the evil doctrine of "qualified immunity." A recent episode in Florida resulted in several charges - including attempted murder - against a man whose only apparent "offense" was to refuse to submit to a beating by a police officer.

The assault began when an officer named Ronald Cannella who had attempted to pull over a man named Livingston Manners for allegedly running a stop light dragged the driver from his vehicle and threw him to the ground in a gas station. It's quite likely that Manners, in justifiable fear for his safety, sought a well-lit area for the encounter with the brigand.

Americans are tired of "constant terrorist warnings" issued by the US government, which are the direct result of Washington's "wrong-headed" foreign policy, a political analyst says.

US intelligence officials say they are concerned al-Qaeda is trying to develop a new and sophisticated bomb that could go undetected through airport security.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security ordered the enhancement of security measures at selected overseas airports with nonstop flights to the US.

"The warnings are coming right on the eve of the 4th of July holiday, this patriotic holiday in the United States," said Daniel Patrick Welch in a phone interview with Press TV.

"The American people are exhausted from this constant terrorist warnings and the warning of the next great 9/11," he added.

The news just shows "how disastrous and wrong-headed the US policy has become or has always been actually," Welch said.

"In erecting this massive security state," he pointed out, "the only thing they have managed to foil so far are the plots that they themselves have concocted."

"They have caught people that they have enticed into a trap and caught them before they acted."

The analyst said that the security threats represent a foreign policy blowback resulting from US wars and interventions.

"If you keep funding the same organizations in Iraq and Syria and all over the world eventually the genie is going to come back and bite you."

"It [warning] could be a false flag or it could the obvious result of wrong-headed policy. It really doesn't make much of a difference to people flying," Welch said.

The authorities seek to keep the population "scared and subservient to the people in power," he concluded.

I have been traveling to East Asia (and many other parts of the world) for more than 25 years and over that time one of the things that has always struck me is how intelligent the general public in countries like Japan appear to be. It's not that there aren't dummies in East Asia, but it always seems that the average level of education and ability to think about the world intelligently and critically is impressively widespread. I've often thought about why this is the case and also why the same seems more difficult to say about the U.S. The answer, I think, can be found in a comment science fiction writer Isaac Asimov made about the U.S. while being interviewed in the 1980s: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Amid growing Palestine-Israeli tensions, 12 more EU states have joined European heavyweights - such as the UK, Germany and France - in urging their nationals to refrain from doing business in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The group of those who issued warnings for their citizens on includes: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

The European nations stated that Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights are illegal and hamper a peaceful settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Involvement in business activities in the area carries both financial and reputational risks for investors, they warned.

The European states also pointed out that the EU "will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties".

Soot found in the lungs of an East Jerusalem youth, whose funeral drew thousands on Friday, means the teenager was still alive and breathing when he was burned, according to the preliminary results of an autopsy.

The autopsy, carried out by Israeli doctors in Tel Aviv and attended by a Palestinian forensic expert, revealed that over 90 percent of the boy's skin was burned and he suffered a head injury.

"The direct cause of death was burns as a result of fire and its complications," Palestinian Attorney-General Mohammed Al-A'wewy was quoted as saying by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

Fire dust material was found in the boy's respiratory system, which means "the boy had inhaled this material while he was burnt alive." The final report on the autopsy will be issued following more lab examinations of the body's tissue samples.

Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, was kidnapped Wednesday in his neighborhood in Arab East Jerusalem. His charred body was found several hours later in a forest on the outskirts of the city.

A shocking video, showing Israeli police officers savagely beating 15-year-old Palestinian-American Tarek Abu Khdeir - cousin of Mohammad Abu Khdeir who was burnt alive in East Jerusalem - has prompted outrage in the Palestinian community.

The video shows two officers striking the detainee, who was handcuffed and lying on the floor. One of the officers seems to be sitting on the Palestinian, while his colleague is kicking and punching him. The youth is eventually dragged away by the police.

The video of Tarek's beating has surfaced as the funeral was held Friday for his cousin, Mohammad Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped in the same area and burned alive.

The beating, shot from two different angles by people filming from their windows, took place on Thursday evening in Shuafat, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

One of the videos was broadcast on the Palestine Today television channel.

The second video posted on Facebook by Quds News Network shows the same incident.

Tariq has since been arrested and held without charge, according to his family and the rights group Addameer, as reports the Ma'an News Agency.

According to a police spokesman, the incident featured in the video occurred while six "masked rioters" were being arrested. Three of them were alleged to have been carrying knives.