How can any American living here in the supposed "land of the free" honestly believe we still are?

The Connecticut Supreme Court has now ruled that yes, the government has the power to force a minor to undergo chemotherapy treatments even if she doesn't want to.

That's right. The court has unanimously determined that a 17-year-old patient cannot refuse chemotherapy treatment, even if her mother agrees they want to seek alternative treatment, for her Hodgkin's lymphoma.

We aren't just a fascist oligarchy and a police state, but we absolutely a medical tyranny.

Let's just try to overlook the fact (even though it's huge and deserving of its own article) that we even live in a society where the number children getting cancer these days is skyrocketing.

Were accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev imprisoned in another country and barred from speaking to the outside world, he'd doubtlessly be described as "being held incommunicado."

Yet since he's an accused terrorist being held in the United States, the Justice Department-ordered gag on him has barely been noticed. And were anyone to ask why he's forcibly been kept silent, they'd be told he's been subjected to "Special Administrative Measures."

Don't be fooled by the innocuous sound of that. The phrase refers to a law that allows the government to restrict a prisoner's communications in ways that:

"may include housing the inmate in administrative detention and/or limiting certain privileges, including, but not limited to, correspondence, visiting, interviews with representatives of the news media, and use of the telephone, as is reasonably necessary to protect persons against the risk of acts of violence or terrorism."

The law was established to prevent presumably dangerous inmates - those accused of terrorism, espionage, mob or gang activity - from communicating to the outside plans that could result in death or bodily harm.

A Florida man driving toward a bridge over Tampa Bay pulled his car over early Thursday, took his 5-year-old daughter from the back seat, pressed her head to his chest, and tossed her over the rail, according to police in St. Petersburg.

John Nicholas Jonchuck, 25, faces first-degree murder charges. His daughter, Phoebe, fell about 60 feet over the Sunshine Skyway bridge into the bay just after midnight, St. Petersburg police Chief Anthony Holloway said at a news conference

An officer heading home after his shift saw Jonchuck's vehicle speed past at nearly 100 mph, Holloway said. The officer prepared to pull the PT Cruiser over, but by the time he caught up with it, Jonchuck had pulled over on the side of the road.

Holloway said Jonchuck got out and started toward the officer, who pulled his weapon. But Jonchuck went around to the passenger side of the car and got the child out.

The officer "thought he heard the child scream, but he wasn't sure," Holloway said. The officer then saw the man throw the child over, into the strong bay current.

Her body was recovered about a mile from the bridge and hour and a half later. Rescue crews tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead at 2:44 a.m.

Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack once again showed the world that the Western mainstream media can be vigilant ... when it is in the Western interests. A rightful uproar over the deaths of journalists in Paris makes MSM's silence, ignorance and quiet approval of Kiev's atrocities in Donbass all the more apparent. We learn once again that killings by radical Muslims are not OK, but killings by governments are just collateral damage, as long as that government is willing to open up its country to the plunder of Western banks and corporations. Democracy is only about hearing pro-Western voices, other voices are not to be heard, and should be silenced by bombs.

Armed mobs of radical nationalists are only no good when they threaten a pro-Western government and raise the uncomfortable questions about its American supporters. They are perfectly acceptable, as long as their anger, fury and vengeance is directed towards the citizens of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine for not wanting to cut ties with their historic motherland and abandon their culture.

"Hunger" is a word that is often used in connection with poor developing countries, but it is also a word that has become increasingly common in the United States - where, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 49.1 million households experienced food insecurity at some point in 2013. And newly released figures by the U.S. Conference of Mayors serve as additional proof of just how dire the problem remains as the U.S. continues to grapple with the fallout of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. On December 11, the U.S. Conference of Mayors released its 32nd Annual Report on Hunger and Homelessness. The report covered 25 American cities: 71% of them said that the number of requests for emergency food assistance had increased in the last year, while only 25% said that requests for emergency food assistance had decreased. And 84% of the cities surveyed expected emergency food requests to increase in 2015, but many food banks may not have the resources to meet those requests.

Helene Schneider, mayor of Santa Barbara and co-chair of the Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness, warned in the report that Congress will increase hunger in U.S. cities if it defunds federal anti-hunger programs: the report found that in eight of the 25 cities, at least 20% of the emergency food being distributed came from federal funding (in Los Angeles, it was 51%). And if Republicans step up their attacks on food stamps and federal anti-hunger programs after retaking the U.S. Senate in January, hunger in American cities will likely worsen.


Below are ten U.S. cities in which an appalling number of Americans are going hungry.

1. Memphis

In 2010, a study by the Food Research Action Center declared Memphis to be the hunger capital of the U.S. and found that 26% of its residents had suffered from food insecurity at some point during the previous 12 months. And four years later, Memphis had the worst hunger problem of the 25 cities examined in the U.S. Conference of Mayors' new report: 46% of the requests for emergency food assistance in Tennessee's largest city - almost half - were being unmet. Food pantries in Memphis are overwhelmed with requests, and according to the report, they are having a hard time "securing funds to purchase the food needed to meet the need." Unemployment, low wages and poverty were cited as the main causes of hunger in Memphis, where the official unemployment rate is 7.5% and 26.2% of its residents are living below the poverty line. And the Conference of Mayors noted that in 2015, "city officials expect requests for food assistance to increase moderately and resources to provide food assistance to decrease moderately."

Canadian radio star Jian Ghomeshi was charged with three more counts of sexual assault in a court appearance on Thursday in a widening sex scandal that has prompted suspensions at the country's national public broadcaster.

The three new charges, linked to three more women, bring the total number of charges facing Ghomeshi to eight and the number of complainants to six. A publication ban prevents naming any of the women.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp fired Ghomeshi as host of Q, an internationally syndicated CBC Radio music and arts program, in October. The CBC said it had seen graphic evidence that he had injured a woman in what Ghomeshi said were consensual sex acts involving bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism.

Ghomeshi, 47, who interviewed a long roster of A-list celebrities including Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand and Paul McCartney in seven years at the helm of Q, initially defended his sexual tastes as a "mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey," referring to the bestselling erotic novel.

Sheriff's deputies arrested a homeowner as they broke up a large house party in Poway where underage people were allegedly drinking Friday night, authorities said.

Deputies were called to a home on Avenida Del Valle near Avenida La Valencia at 10:30 p.m. about underage drinking at a party, said sheriff's Sgt. Angela Pearl.

When the deputies arrived, they saw minors walking up and down the street, some of them carrying alcoholic beverages, the sergeant said. The deputies found a 17-year-old boy passed out in a bathroom and a 19-year-old passed out in a closet. Both of them were turned over to their parents.

There were about 150 to 200 people at the party, she said.

A resident at the home, Jeffrey Lake, 48, was arrested on charges of violating the city's "social host" ordinance, Pearl said. The law makes it illegal to provide an environment where underage drinking takes place, regardless of who provides the alcohol.

Lake is an attorney who has handled medical marijuana cases and ran unsuccessfully for the Poway City Council in 2004.

Minors found to be drinking at the gathering were released to their parents, the sergeant said.

The resident will also be charged $3,600 to recover the department's expenses during the call, including the deputies' time, authorities said. Pearl said five deputies and a sheriff's helicopter responded to the call.

The man accused of throwing his 5-year-old daughter off a bridge early Thursday had been acting strangely hours before, calling his attorney "God" and asking her to translate a Bible in Swedish, according to sheriff's documents.

Attorney Genevieve Torres said she met with John Jonchuck on Wednesday to discuss the custody case for his 5-year-old daughter, Phoebe, who was found dead in Tampa Bay after police said he tossed her into the water.

Torres was so worried about Jonchuck and Phoebe that she reported the odd statements to police. They interviewed Jonchuck and his daughter as he was picking her up from a church day care and both appeared to be in good health. Jonchuck said he didn't want to harm himself or anyone else, the documents said.

"She was smiling and appeared healthy, properly clothed and happy," according to the documents.

A little more than twelve hours later, police said Jonchuck threw his daughter over a bridge.

Police are hunting a gunman who shot dead a policewoman and seriously hurt a street sweeper in the second "terrorist act" in France in as many days.

The attacker wore a bullet-proof vest and carried a handgun and automatic rifle in the shooting in Montrouge just south of Paris on Thursday morning.

But there were no indications so far it was linked to Wednesday's attack on the Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead, including two police officers.

The latest shooting happened after police and maintenance workers were called to the scene following a traffic accident involving a grey Clio just before 8am (7am UK time).

The gunman opened fire and the trainee policewoman - who was around 20 - was shot dead. A street sweeper was seriously injured.

Witness Ahmed Sassi, 38, who was watching from his kitchen window, said it was "a scene of panic".He said he saw "a police officer standing in the road. A man with dark clothes shot them at point blank range, while continuing to run."

The shooting is now being treated as a "terrorist act" by the French authorities. Security forces detained a man soon afterwards but he was not the shooter, police said.

The aircraft landed without problem at 5.26pm, and passengers disembarked as normal

A British Airways Dreamliner has touched down safely at Heathrow after declaring a "pan" - a level of urgency short of a full-scale emergency. It is believed one of the engines had been shut down.

Flight BA103, a routine service to Calgary, had taken off from the airport shortly after 4pm with 213 passengers on board. The Boeing 787 had travelled about 120 miles north-west and was over Derbyshire at a height of 35,000 feet when it turned around to return to the London area.

The jet flew circuits over Buckinghamshire in order to burn fuel before landing.

It is understood the captain declared a "pan", indicating an urgent safety concern but not a full-scale emergency that a mayday call would signify. In a statement, British Airways said: "The flight crew requested a priority landing as a precaution".