In a tragic and bizarre incident a University of Alabama student who was naked has been fatally shot after charging a campus police officer early on Saturday morning.

University officials said that the confrontation occurred after the officer went outside the police station to investigate a banging noise that was coming from his office window.

Confronted with 18-year-old Gilbert Thomas Collar who was acting erratically and wearing no clothes, the officer shot the student once in the chest after he repeatedly charged.

Authorities said that the officer attempted to retreat several times in an attempt to defuse the situation but that the officer was left with no choice but to shoot when Collar made one final charge.

Collar, who had only recently enrolled at the University of South Alabama was shot at 1.30 a.m. on Saturday moening outside the USA Police Department on Stadium Drive .

Keith Ayers, a university spokesman, spoke to the media to announced the student's identity, but would not speculate as yet whether the student was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Beijing, China - A labour watch group says thousands of workers at a Chinese factory that makes Apple's iPhones have gone on strike over increased quality control demands and having to work during an extended national holiday.

New York-based China Labor Watch says several iPhone 5 production lines at Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory are paralyzed after 3,000-4,000 workers went on strike after finding the new demands difficult to meet. They're also angry they were being forced to work during the Golden Week holiday.

Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group manufactures iPhones in China. The iPhone 5 debuted in September.

China Labor Watch says workers beat quality control inspectors, who also carried out a work stoppage after management ignored their complaints.

Last month, a brawl involving 2,000 workers broke out at Foxconn's factory in China's Taiyuan city.

Source: The Associated Press and The Canadian Press

A terminally ill bank manager with brain cancer has made her last wishes clear - she wants to die.

Grace Sung Eun Lee even managed to vocalise her wishes, telling her parents and the doctors tending to her: 'I want to die.'

But because the 28-year-old's parents are deeply religious and belong to a Korean Christian church in Queens, they believe that allowing her daughter to choose death over life is a sin.

The rift in beliefs has led to an agonising legal battle for the family.

Speaking with the New York Daily News, Ms Lee's mother, Jin-ah Lee, said: 'Despite all this confusion, (my daughter) wants to go to heaven. I keep telling her she can get better.'

Her daughter is currently at Long Island North Shore Hospital, hooked up to breathing tubes that are keeping her alive. She is paralysed from the neck down due to the tumour on her brain stem.

Bees at a cluster of apiaries in northeastern France have been producing honey in mysterious shades of blue and green, alarming their keepers who now believe residue from containers of M&M's candy processed at a nearby biogas plant is the cause.

Since August, beekeepers around the town of Ribeauville in the region of Alsace have seen bees returning to their hives carrying unidentified colourful substances that have turned their honey unnatural shades.

Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation and discovered that a biogas plant 4 kilometres away has been processing waste from a Mars plant producing M&M's, bite-sized candies in bright red, blue, green, yellow and brown shells.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun's view that the theories of evolution and the big bang are "lies straight from the pit of Hell" is getting more exposure than he might have expected, thanks to a video above that was made at a church-sponsored banquet in Georgia and distributed by a progressive political watchdog group.

The Georgia Republican is already well-known as an outspoken conservative Christian, due in part to his unsuccessful campaign to have 2010 declared "the Year of the Bible." But the latest comments have taken on an extra dab of controversy because Broun, a medical doctor, calls himself a scientist in the video and chairs the House Science Committee's panel on investigations and oversight.

America, you have become a nation of enablers and apologists for tyranny and mass murder. You condemn the Nazi and gulag guards of times past even as you celebrate your own mercenaries and torturers, even as you explain away, if not outright cheer, the unspeakable crimes committed by your sons and daughters. You don't care who you kill, as long as your soldiers are paid, and your munitions, bomb and tank factories are humming.

Safely ensconced in academic luna parks, your leading intellectuals lean slightly right or left, but never enough to rock this blazing gunboat, lest they sour the cocktail parties or, god forbid, have their tenure revoked. Mouths stuffed with antipasti, they're expert at sidestepping Israel's prolific crimes, 9/11, Bin Laden's faux death or the parasitic Federal Reserve, and as another joke election nears, they're all gung ho about candidates who back illegal wars and banking frauds, since each is supposedly the lesser of two evils.

For the past five presidential elections, winning candidates have won 52.9%, 50.7%, 47.9%, 49.2% and 43% of the popular votes respectively, so there hasn't been an overwhelming mandate for any of them, but with the runner ups from the other major party often close behind, and in 2000, actually ahead in the popular vote count, the two-party system has gotten a stranglehold on our public life and pocketbooks. As for our senators, only two are not Democrat or Republican. An American election, then, is basically a rigged referendum for this thoroughly corrupt and murderous system, and simply by voting, you will give it the green light to go on killing and looting. Every four years, we're railroaded into sanctioning endless war and bottomless corruption. If disappointed, we're then steered by our brainwashing and dumbing down media to a near clone of our current rapist.

The Good Old Party spooks the upper and middle classes by threatening, If you don't vote for us, the Dems will take your hard-earned cash and give it to the freeloaders, crackheads and other miscellaneous losers, while the Democrats, in turn, scare the lower rungs by snarling, If you don't vote for us, the Republicans will let your retired, diapered ass rot under a bridge, on a piece of cardboard, but lordy, lordy, lordy, it is already happening, but let us not sweat the details.

For the first time in Walmart's 50-year history, workers at multiple stores have gone on strike, even though their jobs are not protected by a labor union.

More than 70 Los Angeles Walmart workers from nine stores walked off the job Thursday, workers and labor organizers told The Huffington Post.

About 250 workers and supporters protested outside the Pico Rivera Walmart store, carrying signs that read, "On Strike for the Freedom to Speak Out" and "Walmart Strike Against Retaliation." The workers said their complaints about working conditions and low pay have been met with threats, suspensions and terminations.

The strikers said they plan to return to work Friday. Some of the workers will speak at LA City Hall Friday to relay Walmart's response to the strike. The strike was coordinated by OUR Walmart, a labor group backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) that defends Walmart workers' rights.

Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman told HuffPost that the protest was insignificant and claimed that less than five workers walked off the job. "This rally is just the latest publicity stunt by the UFCW to seek media attention in order to further their political agenda and financial objectives," he said. "Our stores in the community are staffed up and open for business as usual today. This event is not a factor," he added.

Walmart workers have recently filed more than 20 charges of unfair labor practices across the country with the National Labor Relation Board, according to Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change at Walmart, the campaign behind OUR Walmart. The charges, mostly filed in recent weeks, allege that workers have either been fired or had their hours reduced after activity with OUR Walmart. Workers also allege that they have been told not to talk to OUR Walmart organizers and that doing so could shut down stores, leaving employees without a job, Schlademan told HuffPost.

ArcelorMittal gives government two months to find a buyer before it shuts last blast furnaces in historic industrial region

In a valley lashed by wind and rain in the industrial heartland of north-east France, steelworkers blockading the local foundry see their action as a last stand to save their jobs, their factory, their region's economy - even the entire French steel industry.

As thunderstorms raged in the area this week, the symbolism was potent: the picket-line bonfire hissed and went out. The tent where protesters had taken refuge from the elements ditched its concrete anchors and threatened to blow away. "Let go of nothing," someone shouted as men grabbed tent poles. The others laughed.

There is little humour to be had these days outside the ArcelorMittal steelworks in Florange, where the "temporary" closure of two blast furnaces was declared permanent on Monday, with the loss of 629 jobs. Bitter jokes and anger are directed at the Indian-born, British-based Lakshmi Mittal, owner of the world's largest steelmaking company. "That man is a predator," said Edouard Martin, head of the CFDT union at Florange where he has worked for 32 years. "He's not an industrialist, he's a financier.

On the eleventh day of action against TransCanada's demolition of forest, land and family farm property in East Texas, actress Daryl Hannah joined Eleanor Fairchild to defend her farm from the heavy machinery TransCanada is using to prepare the environment for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The two ran out and put their hands up in front of the machinery.

Fairchild, who the Tar Sands Blockade describes as a "feisty 78-year-old great-grandmother," put her hands up in the air, along with Hannah, to say, "Stop!" While standing in the way of an excavator there to clear trees, she declared:

...Get off my land, period. And, I don't want tar sands anywhere in the United States.

I am mad. This land is my land and it's been our land since '83. Our home is on it. They're going to destroy the woods and also they could destroy the springs.

It is just devastating but it is also not good to have that tar sands anywhere in the United States. This is not just about my land. It's about all of our country.

It needs to be stopped...

Gasoline station owners in the Los Angeles area including Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) are beginning to shut pumps as the state's oil refiners started rationing supplies and spot prices surged to a record.

Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) stopped selling gasoline on the spot, or wholesale, market in Southern California and is allocating deliveries to customers. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) is also rationing fuel to U.S. West Coast terminal customers. Costco's outlet in Simi Valley, 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, ran out of regular gasoline yesterday and was selling premium fuel at the price of regular.

The gasoline shortage "feels like a hurricane to me, but it's the West Coast," Jeff Cole, Costco's vice president of gasoline, said by telephone yesterday. "We're obviously extremely disheartened that we are unable to do this, and we're pulling fuel from all corners of California to fix this."

Spot gasoline in Los Angeles has surged $1 a gallon this week to a record $1.45 a gallon premium versus gasoline futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That's the highest level for the fuel since at least November 2007, when Bloomberg began publishing prices there. On an outright basis, the fuel has jumped to $4.3929 a gallon.