"People across the country are starting to see the real Walmart," said Q Knapp, a Texas Walmart worker who went on strike Wednesday. "And that's why I will continue to stand up because the time for change is now."

Indeed. If there were ever a time to make change at the nation's largest private employer, it's now. Walmart's overwhelming contempt for workers, expressed through its continued low wages and poor benefits, its retaliation against workers who organize, and its sole goal of profit - even pushing Black Friday deals up two hours to begin on 6pm Thanksgiving Day - has caused outrage. The outcry against Walmart's working conditions has been quickly picking up steam, becoming a national topic of conversation right in time for the 1,500 Black Friday protests scheduled across the country, where people will rally in front of stores to demand respect and fair treatment.

Knapp, who has worked at Walmart for 19 years, said she went on strike because she was "tired of being disrespected." She said that when her brother went to the hospital after having a heart attack, she received Walmart's approval to spend time in the hospital with him. But when she returned to work, she was disciplined for being absent. Knapp said she has also witnessed a fellow coworker get terminated after fighting for better working conditions.

"Walmart is a bully, and the only way to fight back against a bully is to speak up," Knapp said. "The message to Walmart is simple: we will not be silent."

And they haven't been. The workers are making a lot of noise and sparking a nationwide dialogue. Here are seven signs that their actions are turning the tide on workers' rights.

There is no Palestinian without a personal and familial history of injustice that was caused by, and is still caused by Israel.

Anyone who has worn a uniform past or in present, whether speaking on the record or off, immediately "knows" that the latest terror attack and what looks to soldiers as the latest attempted terror attack does not signify the beginning of a third Intifada. Or, they "know" it does signify such a beginning, and it's all because of the peace negotiations or because of Palestinian incitement, or both. Relying on the knowledgeable military brass is a fixed Israeli reflex; it is part of the balance of power and part of how the Israelis exert control over their subjects.

Whoever said 100,000 Palestinians have unfinished business with the Israel Defense Forces took it a step further creating the impression that he really knows and thinks, and does more than calculate tallies. But the starting point for calculation is somewhere else completely: There is no Palestinian whose score with the State of Israel is settled - whether he lives in forced exile or whether he lives within the borders of Israel, or in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. There is no Palestinian without a personal and familial history of injustice that was caused by, and is still caused by Israel. Just because the Israeli media does not report on all the injustices Israel causes day in and day out - even if only because they so numerous - does not mean they go away and neither does the anger they cause. Therefore, according to the correct calculation, the number of attacks by Palestinian individuals is relatively microscopic. This small number shows that for the vast majority of Palestinians - passing, murderous and hopeless revenge is not an option.

The world's first recreational marijuana retail license was granted to a dispensary in Colorado this week -- so start saving up, because the Rocky Mountain High will soon be for sale.

Annie's, located in the mountain and gambling town of Central City, was the recipient of the historic license.

The Central City pot shop is owned by Strainwise, which owns eight dispensaries in Colorado and hopes all eight shops are approved for the recreational license, according to Westword.

Erin Phillips, a spokesperson for Strainwise, told The Huffington Post that the dispensary company received a local license for Annie's and are waiting for approval of the state license for the pot shop.

The first recreational marijuana shops in Colorado will open their doors for the first time in U.S. history on Jan. 1, 2014.

"Colorado is moving forward and leaving marijuana prohibition behind," Mason Tvert, communications director for Marijuana Policy Project and co-director of Colorado's marijuana legalizing Amendment 64 campaign, told HuffPost. "For the first time in history, those who sell marijuana are receiving licenses from the state instead of rap sheets. Marijuana will be sold to adults by legitimate, taxpaying businesses instead of drug cartels in the underground market."

"It will not be long before voters and lawmakers in other states decide to adopt similar policies," Tvert added. "Marijuana is an objectively less harmful than alcohol, and it is finally starting to be treated that way."

Riding a bicycle on a sidewalk - that's the crime that left 20-year-old City College student D'Paris Williams battered after he was attacked by the San Francisco police.

Last Friday, Williams was riding his bicycle down the sidewalk on the street where he lived. He was coming back from the Make a Wish Foundation's Bat Kid festivities when two plainsclothes officers approached him. Uptown Almanac, a blog about San Francisco culture, described the scene:

The officers said something to DJ about riding his bicycle on the sidewalk as he was pulling up to his home in the complex. It is unclear whether the officers identified themselves or not, but did proceed to get out of their car, grab DJ from behind as he was entering the home and beat him for no apparent reason. A police search uncovered a cupcake and juice that DJ had just purchased from the corner store. ... He was immediately taken to S.F. General Hospital for treatment, and then to the 850 Bryant police station. ... Furthermore, three residents came to DJ's aid when they saw officers beating him up, only to find themselves also under attack by officers. By this time, uniformed backup had arrived on the scene. Including DJ, a total of four individuals were beaten and arrested by officers.

Williams' family said that Williams could not hear the officers because he was listening to music through his headphones. Williams sister, who was carrying a newborn, witnessed the scene. She was also pushed by officers when she approached the door where her brother was assaulted. After officers shoved Williams' head in his door, they dragged him to continue the beating.

Philip Chism, 14, has been indicted. The 14-year-old is charged as an adult with murder in the death of Massachusetts math teacher Colleen Ritzer. He raped and killed her in a school bathroom before dumping the body in woods behind Danvers High School, cops say.

The 14-year-old accused of murdering his young math teacher at Danvers High School allegedly raped 24-year-old Colleen Ritzer before killing her, prosecutors said Thursday in outlining a first-degree murder indictment against Philip D. Chism.

Chism, a top junior varsity soccer player at the Massachusetts school, allegedly attacked Ritzer after she asked him to stay after school in October to prep for an upcoming test. The teen is accused of stabbing Ritzer to death in a school bathroom before dumping her body in a patch of woods behind the school.Chism is charged as an adult on the murder count, the Essex County district attorney wrote in a statement, and faces the aggravated rape and armed robbery charges as a juvenile.

He allegedly stole her credit cards, iPhone and her underwear after sexually assaulting Ritzer with an object and killing her, prosecutors contend.

The girl, believed to be between 5 or 6 years old, was discovered in a crib that was altered to serve as a type of cage. She was discovered in only a diaper and t-shirt and eating her dried skin.

UPDATE: Since this story was originally published in 2011, Brian and Shannon Gore plead guilty to aggravated malicious wounding and child abuse charges in March 2013. They were later sentenced to a total of 30 years in prison.

A young girl was found caged and attempting to eat herself in a mobile home in Virginia, and cops say her parents are responsible.

The malnourished girl, believed to be either 5 or 6, was discovered in a crib that was converted into a makeshift cage after police arrived at the home in Gloucester County to investigate a burglary last week.

The girl's parents, Brian and Shannon Gore, were arrested and charged with felony child abuse. The mother was also charged with attempted capital murder.

City of Ashkelon is rocked by car bombs targeting crime family as businesses associated with mobsters are bulldozed

Simon was standing in his shop in sight of Ashkelon's football stadium when he heard the bomb go off.

At first, said Simon - who declined to give his surname - he thought it was a Palestinian missile from Gaza, a short distance along the coast. "I shut the shop and smoked a cigarette to calm myself," he said. After a few minutes, puzzled he had not heard the air-raid siren, he stuck his head out of his door to see the flaming shell of a car. Its passenger, and the target of the blast, was a member of prominent Israeli crime organisation the Domrani family.

The car bomb on Ort Street, close to a school, was not a solitary incident. In the space of a fortnight spanning the final week of October and the beginning of this month, two car bombs detonated in the southern port city, both targeting Domrani family members.

Ashkelon is not the only Israeli town to be rocked by mob violence this year. On 7 November, a device attached to the car of a prominent state prosecutor, well-known for pursuing Israel's crime families, detonated in Tel Aviv.

This rise in incidents has inspired a fierce debate that reached a climax last week with a call from Israel's hawkish public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, for the use of anti-terror tactics usually reserved for Palestinian militants - including administrative detention - against Jewish Israeli crime families. As he made his call, several high-profile arrests took place and a number of businesses associated with mobsters were bulldozed in Ashkelon.

A pretty nightie, a new lipstick, a fresh toothbrush: Doris Racher noticed that small things she had bought for her 96-year-old mother, Eryetha Mayberry, a dementia patient at a nursing home in Oklahoma City, had been disappearing. Ms. Racher assumed the culprit was another resident who sometimes wandered into her mother's room and fell asleep in her bed.So in 2012, Ms. Racher placed a motion-activated camera in her mother's room. It looked like an alarm clock, and Ms. Racher nearly forgot about it.

About two months later, the family decided to pore through the recordings.

The camera had not caught the petty thief. But it captured something else:
An aide stuffed latex gloves into Mrs. Mayberry's mouth, while another taunted her, tapping her on the head, laughing. Hoisting her from her wheelchair, they flung her on a bed. One performed a few heavy-handed chest compressions. On Nov. 1, propelled by the outcry over the Mayberry case, Oklahoma became the third state - along with New Mexico and Texas - to explicitly permit residents in long-term care facilities to maintain surveillance cameras in their rooms.In the last two years, at least five states have considered similar legislation.

Google's chief internet evangelist, Vint Cerf, suggests that privacy is a fairly new development that may not be sustainable. "Privacy may actually be an anomaly," Cerf said at an FTC event yesterday while taking questions. Elaborating, he explained that privacy wasn't even guaranteed a few decades ago: he used to live in a small town without home phones where the postmaster saw who everyone was getting mail from. "In a town of 3,000 people there is no privacy. Everybody knows what everybody is doing."

Rather than privacy being an inherent part of society that's been stripped away by new technology, Cerf says that technology actually created it in the first place. "It's the industrial revolution and the growth of urban concentrations that led to a sense of anonymity," Cerf said. Cerf warned that he was simplifying his views - "I don't want you to go away thinking I am that shallow about it" - but overall, he believes "it will be increasingly difficult for us to achieve privacy."

Earl Sampson has been stopped and questioned by Miami Gardens police 258 times in four years.

He's been searched more than 100 times. And arrested and jailed 56 times.

Despite his long rap sheet, Sampson, 28, has never been convicted of anything more serious than possession of marijuana.

Miami Gardens police have arrested Sampson 62 times for one offense: trespassing.

Almost every citation was issued at the same place: the 207 Quickstop, a convenience store on 207th Street in Miami Gardens.

But Sampson isn't loitering. He works as a clerk at the Quickstop.

So how can he be trespassing when he works there?

It's a question the store's owner, Alex Saleh, 36, has been asking for more than a year as he watched Sampson, his other employees and his customers, day after day, being stopped and frisked by Miami Gardens police. Most of them, like Sampson, are poor and black.