More than 64,000 African-American women are currently missing in the United States, according to latest statistics.

Despite representing 12.85 percent of the population, black Americans accounted for nearly 226,000 - or 34 percent - of all missing persons reported in 2012, said an article by Identities Mic, citing FBI figures.

According to the National Crime Information Center, more than 270,000 minorities have been reported missing since 2010, half of them African Americans. Black women and girls comprised more than 64,000 of the missing reports.

The Black and Missing Foundation has also documented the disappearances of these women.

However, there has not been much coverage in the mainstream media about these appearances in the US. Critics say this underlines a racial divide in news coverage of such incidents.

A veteran Connecticut state trooper faces a year and a half in prison after he pleaded guilty on Wednesday to stealing a dying motorcyclist's cash and gold crucifix at the scene of a 2012 crash.

Aaron "AJ" Huntsman, 45, was caught by his own dashboard camera stealing the items belonging to John Scalesse, who was killed on Sept. 22, 2012 after his motorcycle crashed into a construction company truck in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Huntsman, a 19-year veteran of the state police force, pleaded guilty to two felonies: third-degree larceny and tampering with evidence. Superior Court Judge Robert Devlin imposed a term in prison of 16 months and then five years of probation, opposed to the possible 10 years Huntsman could have received.

The former trooper's plea was made under the Alford Doctrine, meaning Huntsman did not admit guilt but is conceding that there is high probability he would be found guilty if the case went to trial. After the plea, the judge then found Huntsman guilty.

Upon sentencing on October 3, Huntsman has the right to argue for a lesser term.

Huntsman left the courtroom on Wednesday "with a big smile on his face following the hearing," the Connecticut Post reported. Huntsman declined to offer comment at the time.

Huntsman was the first trooper on the scene after Scalesse, a former executive of the JAS Masonry, crashed on the Merritt Parkway in 2012. According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Huntsman approached Scalesse as he lay dying and picked up Scalesse's gold chain from a pool of blood. The trooper then took a roll of bills totaling $3,700 from Scalesse's pocket. Huntsman later told Scalesee's father that he did not find any money on the victim, according to the affidavit.

The money was later found under the front seat of Huntsman's cruiser. Connecticut state police said the trooper maintained his innocence even after he was shown the video, from his own dashboard camera, of him taking the money.

"John didn't deserve his memory to be tarnished like this and we are finally glad it's almost over," said Scalesse's mother, Marguerite Scalesse, the Post reported. "After all we have gone through we are glad that he (Huntsman) at least didn't make us go through a trial."

MOAB, Utah - A 78-year-old woman who was reported missing after she failed to show up to an event at a nearby library was found stuck in quicksand, authorities said.

Grand County sheriff's deputies said the woman had water and was in good condition when she was found the night of July 9, about 14 hours after one of her legs sank up to the knee.

Deputies said they searched a bike path at the Courthouse Wash in Arches National Park, where the woman was known to walk. Investigators found her car in a parking area first, then heard her calling out to them and discovered her about a quarter mile up the wash.

Sharon Brussell, who works at Arches, said about four people helped dig her out and struggled because the quicksand kept filling back in. The woman was tired but "extremely grateful" for rescuers, who carried her up to her car in a litter, Brussell said.

Rallies in support of the Palestinian victims of Israel's military onslaught were held across the world's major cities this week. Thousands marched in France, Germany, Argentina, the US, the UK and other countries.

The British capital saw one of the largest turnouts with thousands of protesters rallying outside the Israeli Embassy on Friday. Demonstrators flooded the streets around the building waving placards that read "Gaza: End the Siege" and "Freedom for Palestine."

A group of 17 protesters brought traffic grinding to a halt on Kensington High Street when they scaled one of the city's iconic double-decker buses. The activists suspended a banner from the vehicle, emblazoned with the slogan "Judaism rejects the Zionist state and condemns its criminal siege and occupation."

The same took place in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

US Financial and Political Tap About To Shut Off For Israel Courtesy of BRICS.

Not everything we see is what is moving the big players.

The USA and EU are in a epic brawl for resources and to save the US dollar from being marginalized to keep the current elite in power. What we are seeing is the multi-polar world crashing on the 20th century winners. This is what the conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq, Iran, and others including Gaza are really about.

Yesterday, the BRICS countries made pacts and created a new world bank excluding USA and EU. This is NOT titillating news and does not make it to prime time but is the biggest news event in the last decade, maybe even the last 50 years, because it is earth shattering for the financial systems and will have effects in every society worldwide

International passenger flights are avoiding Eastern Ukrainian airspace, following the crash of a Malaysian Airlines plane in Donetsk. Airlines are also redirecting their flightpaths to avoid the area where flight MH17 crashed, according to Flightradar24.

NOTAM has also informed US airlines not to fly in the Ukraine area.

BREAKING: Other flights in area of Malaysia Airline flight shot down seem to be changing course pic.twitter.com/E04Ak3y7FU

- AirLiveNet (@airlivenet) July 17, 2014

A number of airlines around the world have announced they are going to reroute flights to avoid Ukrainian airspace. The list of companies includes Russian Aeroflot, UTair and Transaero, German Lufthansa and Turkish airlines.

The drastic long-term drop in Americans' trust for government since the 1950s periodically evokes pearl-clutching on the center-left. Liberal radio talk show host Leslie Marshall recently tweeted, as apparent cause for concern, a Pew Research poll finding the percentage of the public that trusts government to "do the right thing" most of the time or "pretty much always" at 19% in 2013 (by way of background, it peaked at 77% in 1965). She linked to a piece by Julian Zelizer at CNN ("Distrustful Americans still live in age of Watergate," July 7), lamenting the low level of faith in government ("which is necessary for a healthy society") as a cultural inheritance from Vietnam and Watergate and calling for political forms to root out corruption, restore public trust and render the political system once again functional.

It's something most students learn in elementary school -- the United States is made up of 50 states and the District of Columbia. But Cox Media Group reporter Justin Gray found out it's a lesson that an Orlando agent with the Transportation Safety Administration seems to have missed.

Gray, who lives in Washington, D.C., was flying out of Orlando International Airport when a TSA agent said Gray's District of Columbia driver's license wasn't a valid form of identification. Gray said his license is legal and up-to-date, but the TSA agent didn't seem to know what the District of Columbia was when Gray arrived at the security checkpoint over the weekend.

When Gray handed the man his driver's license the agent demanded to see Gray's passport. Grays told the agent he wasn't carrying his passport and asked why he needed it.

The agent said he didn't recognize the license.

ETN received information from an air traffic controller in Kiev on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

This Kiev air traffic controller is a citizen of Spain and was working in the Ukraine. He was taken off duty as a civil air-traffic controller along with other foreigners immediately after a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine killing 295 passengers and crew on board.

The air traffic controller suggested in a private evaluation and basing it on military sources in Kiev, that the Ukrainian military was behind this shoot down. Radar records were immediately confiscated after it became clear a passenger jet was shot down.

Military air traffic controllers in internal communication acknowledged the military was involved, and some military chatter said they did not know where the order to shoot down the plane originated from.

Obviously it happened after a series of errors, since the very same plane was escorted by two Ukrainian fighter jets until 3 minutes before it disappeared from radar.

Radar screen shots also show an unexplained change of course of the Malaysian Boeing. The change of course took the aircraft directly over the Eastern Ukraine conflict region.

A Malaysian airliner was brought down over eastern Ukraine on Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard and sharply raising the stakes in a conflict between Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels in which Russia and the West back opposing sides.

Ukraine accused "terrorists" - militants fighting to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia - of shooting down the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with a heavy, Soviet-era SA-11 ground-to-air missile as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.


Leaders of the rebel Donetsk People's Republic denied any involvement, although around the same time their military commander said his forces had downed a much smaller Ukrainian transport plane. It would be their third such kill this week.

The scale of the disaster affecting scores of foreigners could prove a turning point for international pressure to resolve a crisis that has claimed hundreds of lives in Ukraine since pro-Western protests toppled the Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February and Russia annexed Crimea a month later.

Reuters journalists saw burning and charred wreckage bearing the red and blue Malaysia insignia and dozens of bodies strewn in fields near the village of Hrabove, 40 km (25 miles) from the Russian border near the rebel-held regional capital of Donetsk.

Despite the shooting down of several Ukrainian military aircraft in the area in recent months, including two this week, and renewed accusations from Kiev that Russian forces were taking a direct part, international air lanes had remained open.