Riverside County sheriff's deputy Dayle Long, 42, allegedly shot Samuel Vanettes, 36, three times leaving him to die on the floor of the bar in Murrieta, California.

An off-duty police officer has been charged with executing a man in a sports bar - after an argument over a game of darts.

Riverside County sheriff's deputy Dayle Long, 42, allegedly shot Samuel Vanettes, 36, three times, leaving him to die on the floor of the bar in Murrieta, California.

It is reported that Long, who had been drinking alone, struck up a conversation with Vanettes and his friends at Spelly's Bar and Grille before the shooting.

An altercation allegedly broke out after the police officer told one of the friends 'I'm better at darts than you are', Chris Hull, 39, told Patch.com.

'My buddy says, "Aw, you suck at darts". (The man) says, "That's why I'm a cop, I can do whatever I want to do".'

Hull said his friend asked; 'Really, you can do anything?'

The police officer then pulled out his gun, Hull claimed and after the group repeatedly asked him to put it away he 'pops three rounds into my friend Sam'.

A Northern California family victimized in a burglary a few days before Christmas is hoping to at least get their dog back.

The Lancers lost all of the presents under the tree along with their dog when their home in Morgan Hill, southeast of San Jose, was broken into last week, authorities said Sunday.

"It's a very unfortunate thing that somebody would steal from a family, especially at this time of year," said Santa Clara County sheriff's Sgt. Jose Cardoza.

Attempts to reach the family were unsuccessful, but Chris Lancer made an emotional Christmas Eve appeal on KNTV-TV, pleading for the return of the family's dog.

Christmas afternoon, neighbors found a woman's body floating in St. Petersburg's Lake Maggiore. That was just one of a string of crimes over the holiday weekend, proving the most wonderful time of the year can also be the most violent.

Christmas Eve morning, Karen Lyn Biraghi admitted to sheriff's deputies she shot and killed her husband, Alan Biraghi. Marital problems apparently pushed her over the edge and she allegedly shot her husband in the head at point-blank range while he slept on the couch.

Hours later, on Christmas morning in Orlando, two men turned up murdered in separate crimes, but Orlando Police believe the killings are connected.

Meanwhile outside Dallas, Texas, police say a man walked in to a family gathering, shot and killed six of his relatives, then killed himself. Investigators report the shooter committed the violent acts while dressed as Santa Claus.

Two Swedish journalists have been jailed for 11 years in Ethiopia for entering the country illegally and supporting terrorism.

Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson were detained in July after they were captured in Ethiopia with rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).

The men were found guilty of the charges last week.

They say they were just doing their jobs as journalists.

Prosecutors had asked for longer sentences of up to 18 years, but Judge Shemsu Sirgaga, who presided in the case, said 11 years was appropriate.

"This sentence should satisfy the goal of peace and security," the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

An 18-year-old Pittsburgh man is accused of burglarizing a market with three teens, then posted pictures on his Facebook page showing the suspects mugging with some of the loot.

Isaiah Cutler who has been jailed since Friday in the Dec. 12 burglary. Online court records don't list an attorney for him.

Police say Cutler, a 17-year-old and two 14-year-olds stole more than $8,000 worth of cash, cigarettes, candy and checks from the business. About an hour later, police say, Cutler posted pictures of the teens posing with the loot on his page on the social networking site.

The younger suspects have been charged in juvenile court and been released to their parents.

Cutler faces a preliminary hearing Wednesday on charges of theft, burglary and conspiracy.

Source: The Canadian Press

A convenience store clerk who volunteered to work on Christmas Day so the store owners could spend the holiday with their family is one of three people killed by gunfire in Surrey, B.C. over the Christmas weekend.

Two of the victims - both men in their 20s - were identified by police on Monday.

Alok Gupta, 27, was found unresponsive and suffering from an apparent gunshot wound when police arrived at the convenience store in north Surrey late Sunday afternoon.

Sgt. Jennifer Pound of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said Gupta was transported to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Bradley McPherson, 28, was the victim of an early morning shooting outside a house party on Dec. 24.

Pound said the shootings were not gang related or linked to each other in any way, and police do not yet have any suspects.

Meantime, a 54-year-old woman who suffered a gunshot wound to the chest at a north-end apartment early Sunday morning has not been identified by police.

Congress attacks the constitution

The US Congress has ended the year 2011 by assaulting the constitution. The attack came in the form of the 2012 National Defence Appropriations Act (NDAA), which passed both the House of Representatives (14 December) and the Senate (15 December) by large margins despite having an attached provision (the "Homeland Battlefield Bill") that allows the United States military to take into custody and hold indefinitely without trial any American citizen designated a "terrorist suspect".
　
As if to make sure that everyone knew just what they were voting for, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina who supports the legislation, said on the Senate floor: "The statement of authority to detain does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as a battlefield, including the homeland." That means US citizens designated terrorist suspects are stripped of their protections under the constitution. They simply fall into a judicial black hole. Ironically, Congress did this to the country on the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights.

At first it seemed that President Barack Obama was prepared to veto the bill so as to prevent this attack on citizen rights. But this proved to be untrue. What Obama was really interested in was language that prevents the military from interfering with the work of the FBI in cases of suspected terrorism. Actually, this should add to our worries because the FBI has a disturbing record of manufacturing terrorists out of poor and disgruntled US citizens. Given the numerous scams and entrapment scenarios the bureau runs, we will probably see a macabre two-step dance where the FBI makes the terrorists and the military takes them away, never to be seen again outside of Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay has become Washington's version of Devil's Island.

Clashes erupted on Monday between police and several hundred ultra-Orthodox Jews from a town near Jerusalem who are campaigning for men and women to be segregated, an AFP journalist said.

Israeli police had stepped up their patrols in Beit Shemesh following unrest sparked by discrimination against women imposed by a radical fringe of the town's religious Jews.

Several demonstrators were taken in for questioning after police, and journalists were roughed up and insulted by ultra-Orthodox men telling them to "clear off," the journalist said.

There were also shouting matches between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews.

Each day around this nation, and indeed the world, one can find endless stories of horrific animal cruelty---torture and murder so vile it defies imagination---conceived of and carried out by kids as young as 3 years old. There appears to be a proliferation of fresh-faced psychopaths, spawning faster than the poisonous spores of a Frankenstenian experiment gone awry. Why and how does such evil take root?

The problem is pervasive and multifaceted, but the most obvious cause for such blatant disregard for life is a lack of compassion and empathy passed on from parent to child. Generations of individuals perpetuating cruelty toward non-humans based on a multitude of flawed and erroneous notions, including the following:

• Religious bias -- The mainstream and exceedingly rancorous belief that animals were put here to [ab]use, objectify, murder and consume based on twisted religious doctrines which purportedly give mankind "permission" to do so predicated on his so-called "superiority."
• Tradition --- The mindless argument that because generation upon generation have perpetuated acts of barbarism, these acts are somehow justified, and therefore should be unquestioningly accepted and permanently sanctified.

This holiday season, as you walk through a public area (any mall, grocery, or restaurant will do), start counting the people you see. Look in their faces, listen to their conversations, and try to appreciate each of them not just as strangers, but as fellow human beings. When you get to 40 (making sure to include at least 29 women and children), consider that this is the minimum number of civilians whose lives were brought to violent ends by U.S./NATO bombs during the recent military intervention in Libya, according to The New York Times.

Keep counting until you get to "perhaps more than 70" and consider that these 30-plus people represent the margin of error in the Times analysis; this uncertainty about even the number of completely innocent people we have killed is a reality of "humanitarian" war, in which we drop hundreds of thousands of pounds of high explosives from the skies upon the people we are "helping" below.

Of course, this estimated civilian death toll doesn't take into account the innocent people killed by other forces in the Libyan conflict, which was an inevitable result of turning an entire country into a war zone. Nor does it reflect the deaths of the actual combatants, who should be neither ignored nor forgotten; just ask the parents of any American soldier killed in one of our many wars. In fact, ask any parent, period.