New York - Staten Island's Community Education Council is on record supporting a proposal to hire 300 to 500 retired police officers to serve as plainclothes security guards, carrying concealed weapons and rotating among the city's 1,750 schools.

The 10-member council's vote on Monday night only has the power to make a recommendation to the New York City Department of Education, which means the proposal has little chance of becoming reality.

The department said it will not consider the plan, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation's most outspoken gun-control advocates, last week called it a "terrible idea."

The proposal passed after two hours of comments, for and against, from parents and other speakers from the community and was in reaction to the deadly elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., last month that killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

The proposal also calls for hardened security, including a buzzer system with video cameras and panic buttons, similar to those in banks, that link directly to 911 for use by school safety agents screening visitors entering schools.

On the opening day of a preliminary hearing to determine whether James E. Holmes will stand trial in the July shooting, witnesses struggle to stay composed as they describe trying to help the wounded and dead.

Two veteran police officers who were first to arrive at the Aurora movie theater shooting struggled in court Monday to describe the carnage. Strobe lights from the alarm were flashing as the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises blared on the screen above the screams. Some movie-goers were trying to flee. Others lay motionless on the floor.

But what they remembered most was the blood. There was so much of it.

Aurora Police Officer Justin Grizzle said some people were crawling for safety covered in blood. With a wavering voice he said he slipped on something slick as he made his way into the theater, only later realizing it was blood.

The officers described victims who were shot in the face. Some of the wounded were so badly hurt it was impossible to tell their gender.

Grizzle recounted how he loaded victims in his patrol car and sped them to the hospital because it was faster than waiting for an ambulance. After several trips there was so much blood in his car he could hear it slosh as he sped around corners.

Grizzle and Sgt. Gerald Jonsgaard testified on the opening day of a preliminary hearing to determine whether James E. Holmes will stand trial in the July 20 rampage that killed 12 people and wounded at least 70 others.

The testimony was the first time police witnesses have publicly disclosed details of the shooting and how they responded.

At about 2pm there was a ­sudden ­moment of ­relative quiet in ­courtroom 207. The angry ­exchanges stopped. No one moved ­except the two dozen policemen, in khaki coats, who shoved the lawyers, the journalists and the simply curious aside. "They are coming," a barrister muttered.

There was no need to ask who "they" were. There has been no need through the three weeks since the rape of a 23-year-old medical student in south Delhi, on 16 December. To say that this vast, seething city of 17 million has talked of no one else and nothing else would be an exaggeration.

But there was little sense that anyone was ready to move on. News channels continue to devote hours to issues that received minutes of airtime a month ago; front pages still carry every twist in the investigation; and conversations naturally turn to the woman whose ashes were scattered on the Ganges last week, and to what should be done to the six men who are accused of raping her repeatedly on a moving bus before dumping her on a roadside.

Five of the men - a sixth, a juvenile, is being held separately - had been brought from the high-security Tihar prison in the mid-morning. This was a pre-trial hearing at which they would be presented with the multiple charges against them: rape, abduction, banditry, murder and others. The case would be sent on to a higher court by the metropolitan magistrate Namita Aggarwal. If they are convicted a death penalty seems a certainty.

"It should be a straightforward thing," said SK Singh, a supreme court advocate at the hearing, who said he represented the family of the victim.

By noon the accused were yet to appear. They waited in a cell beneath six floors of land disputes, rent rows, robberies, frauds and traffic offences. In their absence Aggarwal presided over a 20-minute shouting match sparked by the offer of one advocate to defend them. "I know the whole country thinks they are guilty and the evidence is against them ... but their families have contacted me," he said.

Local lawyers, who voted to refuse to represent the alleged rapists, hurled themselves across the room, shouting abuse. "This is a very, very heinous crime and we are human beings living in society," explained Rajpal Kasana, of the Saket Bar Association. The court will have to appoint a lawyer for the men over the coming days.

Eugene, Oregon - A series of explosions hit an underground utility system Monday at the University of Oregon, plunging several student dormitories and other buildings into darkness as crews scrambled to restore power.

Nobody was hurt, but about 3,000 students living on campus had no power in their rooms, university officials said. Campus police stepped up patrols, and the university gave away flashlights. Officials planned to bring in generators, but the task wasn't complete by evening.

University officials said electrical equipment overheated, causing circuits to ignite and melt.

The blasts were audible above the ground and from several hundred feet away. A video clip from the campus showed puffs of smoke coming from a manhole cover, and university officials said smoke also was visible inside the university health building, which was evacuated and closed for the rest of the day. A slight smell of burning rubber lingered outside for hours.

It could take days to permanently repair electrical circuits, university spokeswoman Julie Brown said.

Without electricity to power a television or charge a laptop, students were given additional entertainment options Monday, including a watch party for the college football championship game.

In a dormitory near the blast, pitch-black stairwells became obstacles for students trying to get to class, said Camila Rowland, a freshman majoring in psychology.

If someone were to ask you for an example of a "totalitarian society", how would you respond? Most Americans would probably think of horribly repressive regimes such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Communist China, East Germany or North Korea, but the truth is that there is one society that has far more rules and regulations than any of those societies ever dreamed of having.

In the United States today, our lives are governed by literally millions of laws, rules and regulations that govern even the smallest details of our lives, and more laws, rules and regulations are constantly being added. On January 1st, thousands of restrictive new laws went into effect all over America, but most Americans have become so accustomed to the matrix of control that has been constructed all around them that it does not even bother them when even more rules and regulations are put into place.

In fact, a growing number of Americans have become totally convinced that "freedom" and "liberty" must be tightly restricted for the good of society and that "the free market" is inherently dangerous. On the national, state and local levels, Americans continue to elect elitist control freaks that are very eager to tell all the rest of us how to run virtually every aspect of our lives.

According to Merriam-Webster, the following is one of the ways that the word "totalitarian" is defined: "of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures". And that is exactly what we are witnessing in America today - nearly all aspects of our lives and of the economy are very tightly controlled by a bunch of control freaks that just keep tightening that control with each passing year.

We still like to call ourselves "the land of the free", but the truth is that we are being transformed into a totalitarian society unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Where will we end up eventually if we keep going down this road?

The boss of an energy giant that has doubled its prices in just seven years could pocket a £13million payoff.

Phil Bentley, who is to leave British Gas within months, has presided over above-inflation hikes that have pushed average bills past £1,300 a year.

The latest punishing rise of 6 per cent comes as millions endure the greatest squeeze on living standards since the 1920s.
In stark contrast, 53-year-old Mr Bentley's potential windfall would be enough to pay a typical family's gas and electricity bill for 9,500 years.

Figures from the watchdog Consumer Focus put the average bill at £735 in 2006 - a year before Mr Bentley became managing director. Today it is £1,353 - an increase of 84 per cent.

Special Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement identified and arrested two suspects in a child pornography cases less than 24 hours after releasing photos of the alleged abusers to get the public's help in finding them.

Federal agents and officers of the Los Angeles Police Department took Letha Mae Montemayor, 52, into custody on Thursday night after identifying her by both her facial appearance and her tattoos, which were present in the photographs depicting alleged child abuse. Montemayor was arrested hours after ICE placed photos of "Jane Doe" on line.

ICE officials say the incriminating photos of the suspect had been widely circulated and are believed to have been taken approximately 11 years ago. According to court records, the photos depict the suspect and an unidentified male allegedly abusing a young girl believed by authorities to be about 13 years old.

The images first surfaced in a 2007 investigation by ICE agents in Chicago, but agents had run out of leads to identify the alleged perpetrators and their victim before asking for the public's help.

A middle finger light display has a neighborhood in the news today. A woman placed the display with holiday lights on her roof as a message to one of her neighbors -- whom she says stole her dog. On Jan. 7, ABC News reported that Sarah Childs is now asking a judge to let her keep her offensive (to some) lights up.

"She says police threatened her with fines and arrest because of the lights. She and the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana sued the city and police (sic)," ABC News reported. The argument that the display is not protected by the constitution is being made by the city.

Owners of wrongfully repossessed houses could now get up to $125,000 as ten major US banks agree to settle federal complaints. This will end a foreclosure review process begun by a 2011 enforcement action.

Under the new agreement, those people who had their homes seized and then sold would get the biggest pay offs, while banks who failed to modify people's loans in light of a change of income would get off more lightly. The settled compensation is anywhere between $1000 and $125,000.

The initial 2011 enforcement review was ordered because banks and mortgage companies had bypassed steps in the foreclosure process and had mishandled people's paperwork.

The banks involved include the Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, MetLife Bank, PNC Financial Services and Sovereign.

Monday's settlement was announced by the Office for the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve and covers up to 3.8 million people who had their homes repossessed in 2009 and 2010.

The marriage of a 90-year-old man to a 15-year-old girl has sparked condemnation from human rights and social media activists throughout Saudi Arabia, while the groom insists that he has committed no crime.

The girl, who was sold by her parents for almost $20,000, reportedly became terrified of the man on their first wedding night. After locking herself in her room for two days, she managed to escape and return to her parents.

In an interview, the 90-year-old man insisted that his marriage was "legal and correct," and that he had paid a dowry of $17,500 to marry her, pan-Arabic news website Al Arabiya reported.

He said that on his first night with the bride, she went into the bedroom before him, locking the door from the inside so he could not enter, making him "suspicious about some kind of conspiracy" between the bride and her mother.

Friends of the bride's family said that she was frightened on the wedding night, and escaped to her parents' house after locking herself in the room for two consecutive days.

The man has vowed to sue his in-laws to return either the girl or the dowry.