San Francisco upgraded its power washing of Market Street sidewalks from twice a month to 20 times per month, a rate increasingly hard on the street's homeless population.

What's worse than waking up at 4 am every morning? Waking up at 4 am every morning and watching someone soak your bed with cold water. Unfortunately, if you're homeless and you sleep on Market Street, this recurring nightmare is your reality.

Each morning Tuesday through Saturday, two crews that are made up of employees from the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) clean the sidewalks of Market Street with trash buckets and pressurized water. To start the cleaning, SFPD officers walk down Market Street, wake up sleeping homeless persons, help move them to a water-free area, then signal DPW cleaning trucks to start.

Three of India's four largest states - representing nearly one-third of India's 1.2 billion people - are voting this week on whether to elect well-heeled criminals to parliament.

The population of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, which together is more than the United States, can count 19 wealthy parliamentary candidates charged with sometimes horrific crimes among their choices.

A recent report published by the Association for Democratic Reform (ADR), a public-interest group based in New Delhi, shows that 28% of the candidates running in the three states are crorepatis, individuals worth over Rs 10 million (about $167,000), a huge amount of money when the median annual income is $616.

And 19 of the crorepati candidates are also facing criminal charges, 16 of them serious criminal cases, like murder. For some, like Dhananjay Singh, who is worth Rs 27.7 million (about $462,000), murder is just the beginning.

This guy gets it. Plant a garden this spring, even a tiny one. It really is a revolutionary act.

An employee at the Environmental Protection Agency allegedly downloaded over 7,000 files of pornography on a government computer and watched them two to six hours per day, the agency's investigative unit revealed Wednesday.

"When an OIG special agent arrived at this employee's work space to conduct an interview, the special agent witnessed the employee actively viewing pornography on his government-issued computer," Allan Williams, deputy assistant inspector general for investigations at the EPA, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"Subsequently, the employee confessed to spending, on average, between two and six hours per day viewing pornography while at work," he added.

The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That's the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978.

Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study -- 2009, 2010 and 2011 -- businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first. Overall, new businesses creation (measured as the share of all businesses less than one year old) declined by about half from 1978 to 2011.
The authors don't mince words about the stakes here: If the decline persists, "it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future." This lack of economic dynamism, particularly the steep drop since 2006, may be one reason why our current recovery has felt like much less than a recovery. As Matt O'Brien noted on Wonkblog last week, annual job growth rates have stubbornly refused to budge above 2 percent for the duration of the recovery.

The fruitless search for the missing Malaysian Airlines jet might have to start all over again from scratch if no clues to its fate are found in coming days, it was claimed today.

The international team searching the Indian Ocean for the Boeing 777 are now considering the seemingly impossible scenario of the aircraft having 'landed' somewhere, instead of crashing in the southern Indian Ocean.

'We may have to regroup soon to look into this possibility if no positive results come back in the next few days,' sources within the International Investigation Team were quoted as telling the New Straits Times today.

While the sources have not suggested which country the aircraft might have landed - or crashed - in, the possibility that an entirely new search in a different area is in line with suggestions by the Mail weeks ago that alleged sightings of a low-flying aircraft could have located it in a different place than the ocean.

'The thought of it landing somewhere else is not impossible, as we have not found a single debris that could be linked to MH370,' sources were quoted as telling the paper.

'However, the possibility of a specific country hiding the plane when more than 20 nations are searching for it, seems absurd,' said the sources.

But they admitted that it was difficult to determine if the plane had really ended in the Indian Ocean, despite calculations seeming to point to that direction.

The only bright spot was the release of the OSCE hostages

The last separatist barricade at Kramatorsk was an impressive affair; four giant fuel tankers behind a wall of tyres and stone. The armoured personnel carriers of the government forces, lined up ahead, opened fire without warning; a salvo from a main gun streaking down the street.

The wall disintegrated and burst into flames, the tankers were sliced open as if with a can opener, the severed parts of each one left lying across the road. One round overshot and hit a car, leaving it a smoking heap, another went whizzing by a petrol station. The number of casualties, considering the scale of the damage, was relatively low. There were two dead, the driver of the car and an elderly man still clutching his plastic bag of shopping; around half a dozen were injured, two seriously.

There was an interlude of near silence as people who had thrown themselves to the ground and to the grass verge on the side of the road slowly picked themselves up, glad to be alive, and began to help bloodied figures into cars to be taken to hospital. Those who had thought that the horrific events in Odessa, with more than 40 dead, many of them trapped in a burning building, would lead to a lull in the strife in eastern Ukraine - a pause for reflection - found themselves mistaken.

In Odessa on Friday four people were killed, at least three shot dead, in running battles between Kiev supporters and pro-Russian activists. The clashes ended with separatists holed up in the trade union building. Regional police chief Petro Lutsiuk said more than 130 people had been detained and could face charges ranging from participating in riots to premeditated murder.

The forces of the Kiev administration continued their "anti-terrorist operation" yesterday, with mixed successes but deepening enmity among the many residents who believed themselves to be targeted. Vasyl Krutov, head of a Kiev government's "anti-terrorist centre" behind the operation in the east, told a news conference: "What we are facing... is not just some kind of short-lived uprising, it is in fact a war."

A U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent arrested in Pakistan for trying to board a civilian flight with bullets and a knife in his luggage is being investigated on possible criminal charges, Pakistani authorities said on Thursday.

Joel Cox, confirmed by the U.S. State Department as an FBI agent, was arrested on Sunday at the airport in the southern city of Karachi after trying to board a flight with the knife and 15 9 mm bullets in his luggage, police said.

The case has revived memories of Raymond Davis, an American Central Intelligence Agency contractor who was arrested in January 2011 after shooting dead two men he believed were about to rob him in the eastern city of Lahore.

Many Pakistanis were angry that Davis was released after compensation was paid to the families of the dead and they then pardoned him, a practice allowed under Pakistani law.

Police said Cox had been charged with weapons offences but could still be given bail.

"He's on judicial remand. Questions are obviously being asked, what is he doing with bullets and a knife?" said foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.

Two uniformed Portland police officers showed up at the home of a 9-year-old girl last May, questioned her on the front porch about a fight at a youth club six days earlier, then handcuffed her as she stood in a blue-and-white bathing suit.

They drove her to police headquarters in downtown Portland, where she had her fingerprints and mugshot taken.

Turkey's President has called on Muslim countries around the world to liberalize trade among themselves and reduce customs barriers as soon as possible.

In his opening statement to the 30th meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday, Abdullah Gül said that Islamic countries had yet to capitalize on such potential.

He said: "We need to liberalize trade among member countries and mitigate barriers for customs as soon as possible. The OIC Trade Preferential System is a crucial step towards this objective.

"Even though preparations for the implementation have been finalized to a considerable extent, I regret to say that this important agreement has not been operationalized," he said in Ankara on the opening day of the OIC's Follow-up Committee for Economic and Trade Cooperation (COMCEC).

He pointed out that the number of Preferential Trade Agreements in operation around the world had increased from 70 in 1990 to 258 in 2013.

"I would like to call upon all member countries to accelerate the ratification process of the Trade Preferential System agreements and make necessary arrangements when it comes to the implementation stage", Gül added.