In the wake of the South Carolina "Assault on Spring Valley High" a number of other high profile cases of school cops abusing students are coming to light. One of those has recently resulted in charges being filed against a school police officer who punched a student in the face for not having a hall pass.

But in what Democracy Now calls "one of the most shocking cases of police brutality inside a school," 17-year-old Noe Niño de Rivera was tasered by police, resulting in him spending 52 days in a medically induced coma.

It all happened back in November 2013, but the details of this case are only now coming to light.

Now, de Rivera has been left permanently brain damaged. As a result, last year Bastrop County in Texas settled a federal lawsuit with the de Rivera family for $775,000.

Watch the interview below with Democracy Now and the de Rivera family attorney, Adam Loewy...

Chinese police have reportedly arrested members of a gang who kept mentally disabled women in a pigsty before selling them as brides.

Police in northern China have detained members of a gang who held mentally impaired women in a pigsty in order to subsequently sell them as brides to men from impoverished areas, media reports said. The pigsty was located at the Shandong province, where buyers typically paid up to 100,000 yuan ($15,000 USD) for each "bride", aged between 20 and 30, police said.

The women were bought from their families in southern China for 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan ($500 — $800 USD) on promises that they would be married to well-to-do suitors, the South China Morning Herald newspaper reported.

"Once you mention a girl would be married into a good family, their parents don't ask too many questions," the newspaper quoted one of the detainees as saying. He added that mentally disabled girls were considered a burden by their families, who did not even try to get in touch with their dear ones after they were sold.

The buyers were mainly older poor men who could not afford a conventional marriage, a police spokesman said.

He added that the gang was tracked after the two men travelling with one of the women on a train from the Guangxi autonomous region to northern China attracted the attention of railway police who then arrested them. The gang is believed to have collected more than 600,000 yuan ($100,000 USD) in two years from trafficking the women.

The Ziosk tablets on the tables have cameras and microphones built in to the top left corner of the device . Next time you visit check it out. Its extremely creepy. Everyone is being spyed on. I discovered this tonight and it is very disturbing...

You can order, pay your bill and even play games on tablets some restaurants now have at the table. But one of our viewers, Howard Fergarsky noticed a camera on a tablet and wanted to know if the restaurant is watching him.

"Is this a camera or something" our undercover producer asked a Chili's server. "Oh no, it's not," she answered. Despite what the Chili's server is telling our producer, there is a camera on the restaurant's tablet on the table. "I found the camera. Why is it there?" Fergarsky asked. "It doesn't need to be there."

He and friend, Cheryl Keith are afraid restaurants like Chili's, Red Robin and Applebee's which now have tablets for ordering, paying for food, even entertaining your kids with games could also be spying on us, watching and eavesdropping on our conversations or listening to what we're saying about their servers or food. "It concerns me that we're not seeing the hidden risks," said Keith.

Scores of people rallied in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Turkey's southeast, to protest the results of Sunday's parliamentary snap poll. The rally turned into clashes with police, prompting security forces to deploy tear gas.The rally blocked a road near Diyarbakir's center and some of the demonstrators threw stones before police responded with tear gas, Reuters reports. Security in the largest city in the south east had been beefed up all day in anticipation.


Sunday saw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development party winning in the snap poll with the pro-Kurdish opposition falling close to the 10 percent threshold required to enter parliament.


The snap parliamentary election was called in Turkey after the previous vote in June failed to produce a government.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Paris, Saturday, to show their support for Russia and the Syrian government.

Silver utensils - reportedly taken from the Reich Chancellery - belonging to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were auctioned off for high prices in Germany. The lots included silver plates, wine cups and even Eva Braun's powder box, all marked with swastikas and Hitler's initials. All the lots were auctioned off on Saturday in the city of Kirchheim unter Teck by Andreas Thies' auction house, Bild reports.

The bid included cut glasses, a silver plate, one silver cigar box and matchbox and Eva Braun's powder compact. Each item was explicitly marked with a combination of swastika, Reichsadler (the 'Imperial Eagle', used as a symbol by Nazi Germany) and Hitler's initials'AH'. The powder box, which reportedly belonged to Hitler's companion Eva Braun, was marked with her initials 'EB'. The buyer of the items remains undisclosed, perhaps due to the sensitive nature of the bid itself, but it's known all the lots were sold for quite high prices.

The silver cigar box - apparently part of the Fuehrer's personal table service - went for €25,000, thus being the most expensive item. Eva Braun's powder box was sold for €6,000 Euro with two wineglasses and a silver plate being snapped up for €3,600 and €2,500 respectively.


All the items sold at the auction belonged to Adolf Hitler and were found at his residences in Berghof and Obersalzberg, as well as at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, according to auctioneer Andreas Thies. Auctions of such sort frequently spark controversy among the German public, as the Nazi past is still a sensitive issue. In Germany and Austria public demonstration of Nazi symbols is forbidden by law and unwelcomed by society.

Bild's contributor, Stefan Hauck, believes that auctioning items such as these - given they belonged to the leader of the Third Reich - is not illegal but 'disgusting' whatsoever. He adds it is an issue of respect towards victims of the Nazi regime 'to enact a legislation that would prevent beneficiaries from making profit in this perverted way.'

A 10-month-old girl gazing at the planes in St. Petersburg airport before departing to Egypt - this picture of Darina has become the symbol of the plane crash in Sinai on social media. People continue to bring flowers to mourn the tragedy.

Darina Gromova was among the 224 people who died on Kolavia flight 7K9268. It was returning from Egypt's Sharm El-Sheikh resort to Russia's St. Petersburg on Saturday morning when it suddenly vanished from radar over the Sinai Peninsula.

Her parents - mother Tatiana and father Aleksey - were also among those killed in the crash.

"Main passenger. #family. #darinagromova. Pulkovo International Airport Saint-Petersburg New Terminal 1," wrote Tatiana hours before their plane took off from St. Petersburg to Sinai. Little did she know that this photo would become the grieving symbol of the tragic flight.

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Sicily protesting against Trident Juncture 2015, the largest military maneuvers in more than a decade, which NATO claims are designed to adapt the alliance to "emerging security challenges."

The protesters marched through the streets of the city of Marsala, less than 10 miles (16km) from Vincenzo Florio Airport. The airport is a base for the 37th Wing of the Italian air force and is one of the forward operating bases (FOBs) used by NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control.

Organized by the "No war, no NATO" group, activists from all corners of the Italian island marched with banners reading "Sicily is not laboratory of the war" and "Sicily is no war zone". People urged the Italian government to better invest in education and the medical sector rather than military activity.

Accompanied by police in riot gear, the procession blocked traffic in the city center as protesters proceeded to reach Victory Square. A large portion of the crowd expressed concern with NATO activities disturbing the local tourism industry.

The US-led Trident Juncture 2015 military exercises which began on October 19 involve 36,000 troops from 30 countries. More than 160 aircraft including fighter jets, helicopters, surveillance planes, and drones, operating from 15 air bases in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, the three Allies hosting Trident Juncture are also taken part in the maneuvers. The exercises are the biggest NATO military exercise to take place since 2002.

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A black American man has applied for refugee status in Canada claiming he risks being killed by police in his home country because of his race.

Kyle Lydell Canty, 30, filed a claim for asylum and told a hearing of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board that black people in America were "being exterminated at an alarming rate".

To back up his claim Mr Canty used the examples of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the death of Eric Garner, who was put in a choke hold by police in New York.

Mr Canty told the hearing in Vancouver: "I'm in fear of my life because I'm black. This is a well-rounded fear."

According to the IRB he submitted a "significant amount of evidence" to back up his claim, including video footage of his own interactions with police in six US states where he had lived.

Used to be, stats on how much television the average person watches in a given day were pretty horrifying. Hours of people's lives, gobbled up in front of the never ending stream of propaganda on the "boob tube"...

But these days we have computers! And tablets! And smart phones! (Oh my...)

Now a study by led by Nottingham Trent University has found that the average person is checking their smart phone a whopping 85 times a day. And many of them don't even realize how often they are doing it. People get up in the morning and check it first thing, and it is the last thing they look at before they close their eyes to go to sleep at night.