The city of Zurich will open Switzerland's first-ever drive in "sex boxes" tomorrow as part of a controversial attempt to reduce open street prostitution, protect sex workers and prevent organised crime.

Nine of the so-called "sex boxes", each equipped with alarm buttons, a security guard presence, and able to accommodate only one car at time, are to open in the city's Sihlqai district where residents have long complained about on-street prostitution.

Michael Herzig, a Zurich social services director who supervises the city's sex workers, defended the move: "Prostitution is a business. We cannot prohibit it, so we want to control it in favour of the sex workers and the population," he said

"If we do not control it, organised crime and the pimps will take over," he added. Just over 52 per cent of Zurich's voters approved of plans to introduce sex-boxes in a referendum held in March last year. The boxes cost the equivalent of €1.7m (£1.4m) to install and €560,000 a year to run.

A spokesman for the Raleigh Police Department says a police officer was enforcing a city ordinance when he reportedly told, without explanation, a group of volunteers Saturday that they could be arrested for serving breakfast to the homeless.

Love Wins Ministries posted on its website Saturday that the officer approached them as they were preparing to pass out free coffee and sausage biscuits to more than 70 homeless people in downtown Raleigh.

"This morning we showed up at Moore Square at 9:00 a.m., just like we have done virtually every Saturday and Sunday for the last six years," the ministry's pastor and director, Rev. Hugh Hollowell, wrote in a blog post. "Today, officers from Raleigh Police Department prevented us from doing our work, for the first time ever. An officer said, quite bluntly, that if we attempted to distribute food, we would be arrested."

Hollowell said the officers wouldn't tell the group which ordinance they were violating, but simply told them they had to leave.

Police spokesman Jim Sughrue said in an email Sunday that no one was arrested and that the group was "simply informed of a city ordinance that prohibits the kinds of actions some groups have been engaged in at the park."

"Work is ongoing with those involved, some of whom are developing alternative sites," Sughrue said. "Ultimately, the ordinance is a city issue, of course, and when final determinations are made, the police department works with everyone to handle things in the smoothest way possible."

Love Wins is one of a number of nonprofits who help feed the homeless near Moore Square on weekends.

Todd Pratt, a volunteer with Human Beans Together, said his group was also notified recently that it could no longer serve the homeless on public property. On Sunday, the group moved to a private parking lot across the street from Moore Square, but police also asked them to leave that area.

"We had lots of volunteers and lots of hungry people and nowhere to go," Pratt said.

William McLaurin, who owns the private lot, allowed the volunteers to stay, but said he was worried about liability issues in the future.

Berrie Alston and Raheen Andrews say they are grateful for meals from volunteers.

"This is the only place that some people can go for a meal," Alston said. "They are trying to push us out of the park."

Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who has been in hospital since early June with a lung infection, is showing "great resilience" although he remains in a critical but stable condition, the presidency said on Saturday.

"While at times, his condition becomes unstable, the doctors indicate that the former president has demonstrated great resilience and his condition tends to stabilise as a result of medical interventions," it said in its latest update on the condition of the 95-year-old anti-apartheid hero.

"Doctors are still working hard to effect a turnaround and a further improvement in his health and to keep the former president comfortable," the presidency added in the statement.

Snakes found in 5 cramped bins, left without water

A Brantford, Ont., couple were charged with three counts of animal cruelty after 40 ball pythons and five eggs were found unattended and dehydrated in plastic containers earlier this month.

Police found the snakes in five plastic storage bins at the Bell City Motel on Colborne Street in Brantford, west of Hamilton.

The pair both face one count of causing distress to an animal, failing to provide care necessary for an animal's general welfare and failing to provide enough water.

The snakes ranged from 30 centimetres to 1.3 metres in length.

A gunman went on a shooting spree across Union County, Fla., Saturday, killing three people, including himself, police said.

Hubert Allen, Jr., 72, a longtime employee of Pritchett Trucking, Inc., shot four former co-workers, according to a statement from the Union County Sheriff's Office.

Allen allegedly shot and killed a former co-worker, Rolando Gonzalez-Delgado, 28, at an unspecified location around 9:20 a.m., police said.

He then traveled just a short distance away and allegedly gunned down Marvin Pritchett, 80, the owner of the trucking company, according to the statement.

Allen then allegedly confronted another former co-worker, Lewis Mabrey, Jr., 66, driving a farm tractor. Allen allegedly fired one shot from a small bore shotgun, which struck Mabrey in the left arm and his side.

Mabrey was rushed by emergency responders to University of Florida Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Fla., where he is slated to undergo surgery late Saturday for a broken arm and other injuries. He is listed in fair condition, according to hospital spokeswoman Michelle Perkins.

Allen then went to the Pritchett Trucking Company premises and shot a third co-worker, David Griffis, 44. Griffis was stuck in the stomach and rushed to the UF hospital for immediate surgery, according to police. He is listed in critical condition, Perkins said.

Authorities are investigating a motive and circumstances for the shooting, the release said. Investigators believe Allen acted alone.

An eight-year-old boy who had reportedly just finished playing computer game Grand Theft Auto IV shot and killed his grandmother as she sat watching television.
The child, from Slaughter, Louisiana, retrieved the family gun after finishing a session on the violent simulation and then shot the 90-year-old woman in the back of the head, US police said.

The pensioner was confirmed dead at the mobile home, with detectives revealing the boy had told them he shot his grandmother by accident.

A Russian man who has been detained on suspicion of having killed an official in central Russia says he had aimed at a crow, Russia's investigative committee said Sunday.

The head of a village administration in the Kaluga Region was fatally shot on Tuesday morning while on the way to her office on a scooter. "A clap sounded, and after that the scooter fell together with the woman," the statement said.

A passenger plane overshot the runaway at Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Sunday, but no one was hurt in the incident, a police spokesman said.

The Boeing-737 landed at about 12.35 p.m. local time on a flight from Rhodes, Greece. No injuries were reported among 170 passengers and seven crew members.

A police spokesman said the aircraft has landed "in the grass." The passengers are being evacuated.

With each passing day, it seems the United States of America, "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" is becoming more and more like the Communist Russia I learned about in elementary school where people weren't allowed to grow their own food unless the State "allowed" it.

In this latest crackdown on citizens simply trying to provide for themselves using the most basic of skills - gardening - the USDA's Rural Development Agency is forbidding Rosie, an industrious 4-year old girl in South Dakota from using a small, unused area outside her subsidized housing unit to grow green vegetables.

Rosie's mother, Mary (names changed to protect the child's identity), is single and severely disabled. She and her daughter live on a fixed income disability payment of $628/month. The garden vegetables growing just outside her backdoor lovingly tended by Rosie provide a fresh and healthy addition to their diet that they could not otherwise easily afford.

Rosie started the garden in May 2013, but now the property management company has ordered the garden be removed this week!

The reason?

The property management company claims that gardening goes against the rules set by the USDA's Rural Development Agency which forbids residents to have structures of any kind within landscaped areas. It seems to me that the practice of growing vegetables by the most needy in our society would take precedence over landscaping, wouldn't you agree?

I wonder if the USDA plans to establish "rules" about breathing air in subsidized areas too?

The Federal bureaucracy seems to think that it owns those individuals who receive any sort of government assistance and that their behavior is completely within its jurisdiction to control no matter how ridiculous or blatantly un-American the power-tripping "rules" they decide to put in place may be.

Police in New York pushed to make it a felony for a citizen to kill a police dog, yet what happens when a police officer kills his own dog?

Apparently, not much.

Bennettsville, South Carolina police officer Robert Miller left his dog named "Tank" in his police cruiser with the windows rolled up and no water when he went to do some paperwork at the police department. He completely forgot he left Tank in his car and the dog, which by the way no doubt cost tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to train, died a horrible death from heat stroke.

Was the officer charged with negligent homicide? Animal cruelty?

Of course not, he faced no charges. Instead he got a meager 90-day suspension and was forbidden from being a K-9 officer.

A tax-slave citizen in Maryland who did exactly the same as this officer by leaving her dog in her hot car when she went to the mall for some 90 minutes was just charged with animal cruelty, specifically for "confinement in an unsafe manner," she's facing 90 days in jail and $1000 fine, and her dog lived and is seemingly doing just fine.

There are two sets of laws in this country, those for the rulers, and those for the ruled.