A former Baltimore cop who has since blown the whistle on abuse and corruption he witnessed on the force called the prosecutor in the Mike Brown case corrupt.

Michael Wood, who was a police officer for 11 years before retiring with an injury last year, blasted onto the national scene last month when he began tweeting illegal and violent things he saw his colleagues do to citizens.


On Wednesday, Wood went on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast to discuss law enforcement. When discussing the need for due process in police shootings, Wood called Robert McCulloch, the prosecutor who led the investigation into the shooting by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson of unarmed black teenager Mike Brown, a criminal.

"He's a criminal. He criminally covered up that indictment. There's no way around it," Wood said. "That's what they did and no one seemed to care."

A former youth pastor was accused this week of sexually assaulting a girl over a five year period, beginning when she was 12 years old.

The St. Louis Dispatchreported that former Ballwin Baptist Church youth pastor Cameron Patterson, who also worked as an after school program supervisor for Wentzville School District, was charged on Wednesday in Lake Saint Louis with two counts of felony child molestation.

Court records indicated that Patterson had sexually assaulted the victims "hundreds of times" beginning at the age of 12 and continuing until she was 17 years old, The St. Louis Dispatch noted.

Patterson reportedly used email to apologize to the victim, court documents said.

A Dallas police officer received a three-day suspension after putting his arm around a 14-year-old teen and telling him "I will break your f*cking neck," WFAAreports.

The altercation — which took place last October and was recorded by the teen without the officer's knowledge — came after officer Terigi Ross and his partner responded to a 911 call that ended in a hangup.

According to authorities, the teen's stepmother made the call over a towed car and then hung up thinking the conversation was over. After speaking with the woman, Rossi decided to handcuff her and told her she was being arrested.

When confronted by the teen over why she was being arrested, Rossi grew angry and began threatening the teen, telling him he was going to end up in a foster home before launching into an expletive-filled rant.

Baltimore's mayor has fired the police commissioner because of a recent crime spike. In the last two months, there have been 73 murders in the city. The firing coincides with a police union report critical of the department's role during the riots.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake commended police commissioner Anthony W. Batts for his service, citing improvements in transparency and accountability at City Hall on Wednesday.

"Over the past three years, Commissioner Batts has served our city with distinction," she said,according to the Associated Press.

Chicago police are calling for increased gun controls after another deadly Fourth of July weekend saw 65 people shot, 10 of them fatally. A 7-year-old boy was among the dead. At one point, police said they were confiscating an illegal firearm every hour.

Thirty people were shot across Chicago from dusk on Saturday until dawn on Sunday, after Independence Day celebrations. One of them was Amari Brown, seven, killed in his front yard late Saturday night in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

"It's scary to think you can't even be outside in the front yard because you fear for your safety. It's really ugly right now," a neighbor who wished to remain anonymous told DNA Info.

Chicago police say Amari was killed by a "bullet meant for his father," Antonio, described as a ranking member of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang. Antonio Brown had been arrested 45 times, most recently in April on charges of gun possession.

It sounds too ridiculous to even be satire. A Michigan judge recently sent three children to a local detention center after they refused to attend a court-ordered lunch with their father.

The judge even went so far as to compare the oldest boy - 15-years-old - to Charles Manson!

The other two siblings were 10 and 9.

"You're very defiant, you have no manners," the judge said to the oldest.

"There is no reason why you do not have a relationship with your father. Your father has never been charged with anything. Your father's never been convicted of anything. Your father doesn't have a personal protection order against him. Your father is well-liked and loved by the community, his co-workers, his family [and] his colleagues. You, young man, have got it wrong. I think your father is a great man who has gone through hoops for you to have a relationship with you."

Since their father was so "well-liked" they judge decided to lock the kids up for not liking him.

Maya Eibschitz-Tsimhoni and Omer Tsimhoni had recently gone through a very ugly divorce. The boys weren't particularly fond of their father after some of the things that happened during the course of that divorce.

We live in a strange world. Check out just the recent news: putative European "democrats" support Nazis and don't seem to notice that the latter are using weapons of war, including chemical munitions, multiple-rocket launchers and ballistic missiles, against cities. We live in a world were it is apparently quite normal for the IMF/ECB/etc. to continue to send money to a bankrupt country in the midst of the civil war in total violation of their own statutes, but where an EU/NATO member like Greece cannot even get a few days worth of credit extension. In the USA homosexuals will now be "playing marriage" and continue to adopt children to pretend to be viable couples. In the Middle-East the Israelis are happily continuing to commit acts of piracy on the high seas while Canada wants to pass a law making criticizing Israel a punishable form of "hate speech". Besides being revolting, is all this not just plain crazy?!

"Democratic" countries are ruled by the 1% but "authoritarian regimes" like Russia, Iran or Syria all undeniably have the support of the masses (and the eternal hatred of the local wannabe 1%ers!).

And it is not just politics - this insanity reaches much deeper into our society. Men are not supposed to be manly any more, while women are now told that femininity is being stupid and submissive. Honor is now passé, as is obedience, kindness, faithfulness and humility.

We are supposed to be sexually free, yet there is a huge multi-billion dollar industry fully dedicated to cater to sexually dysfunctional people (sexually happy people need neither porn nor Viagra!). We are supposed to be politically free, but somehow the policies of our rulers seem to never change. We are supposed to be intellectually free (freedom of speech!!) and yet with each new generation the already disgraceful level of crass ignorance of the average citizen is getting worse and worse.

Euphoric reaction to superstar tech businesses is rampant — so much so that the tech industry is in denial about looming threats. The tech industry is in a bubble, and there are sufficient indicators for those willing to open their eyes. Rearing unicorns, however, is a distracting fascination.

The Perfect Storm

Raising funding for tech startups has never been so easy. Some of this flood of money has been because of mutual funds and hedge funds, including Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global Management. This is altering not only the funding landscape for tech startups, but also valuation expectations.

There are many concerns that valuations for businesses are confounding rationale. Entrepreneurs and their investors are deviating from more traditional valuation and performance metrics to more unconventional ones. Another cause cited for increasing valuations is the trend of protections for late investors that cause valuations to inflate further. The combination of a number of these factors has put the sector into a state of artificial valuations.

Meanwhile, the companies themselves are burning through cash like there is no tomorrow. Throwing money at marketing, overheads and, in particular, remuneration has become the accepted investment strategy for startup growth. All this does is perpetuate the vicious cycle of raising more money and spending more money. For the amounts that some of these businesses have raised, the jury is still out on actual profitability.

New regulations aimed at rolling back Brazil's obsession with Cesarean sections took effect Monday, with the government hoping it can steer the country from its status as a world leader in C-section births.

The rules and a campaign called "Childbirth is normal!" address what Health Minister Arthur Chioro has dubbed an "epidemic" of Cesareans, currently accounting for more than half of births in this nation of 200 million.

About 84 percent of Brazilian mothers on private health care undergo the operation, in which the baby is delivered through a small incision in the mother's abdomen -- often for no other reason than the convenience of being able to choose the date.

In public hospitals, that figure is approximately 40 percent.

This still tops the 32 percent rate in the United States and is massively higher than World Health Organisation recommendations of 10 to 15 percent.

Brazil's new rules require doctors and hospitals to share information with patients, notably the number of Cesareans they have already carried out.

When they fail to give requested information, the health insurance companies face fines of up to about $8,000.

Making patients better informed will help diminish the rush for C-sections, health officials say.

"Childbirth is one of the most important moments in the life of a woman and her family," said Jose Carlos de Souza Abrahao, director of ANS, a specialized health ministry agency.

"By informing her of the risks that could come with an unnecessary surgical procedure, she will be more sure in her decision regarding the delivery, choosing what's best for her health and for her baby's health."

A western Michigan woman heads to court Tuesday after being arrested for failing to renew her dog's license.

Becky Rehr says she drove to the Kalamazoo County sheriff's office June 23 to prove that she's recently renewed the license for the family's 11-year-old dog, Dexter. Rehr's 14-year-old daughter waited in the car as her mother was arrested, fingerprinted and held for three hours, The Kalamazoo Gazette said.

"They frisked me and put me in this intake cell with all these inmates in orange jumpsuits," Rehr said. "I was pretty nervous."

Failure to license a dog is punishable by up to 90 days in jail and $100 fine.

County animal control Director Steve Lawrence said his office gave the 47-year-old Cooper Township woman numerous phone, mail and in-person notices of the need to renew the license. The last was a phone warning that a warrant would be requested unless she got a license by May 28.

A hearing on the misdemeanor case is scheduled Tuesday before District Judge Christopher Haenicke.

"We prefer not for this stuff to go to court," Lawrence told The Associated Press. "It's just a $10 license. For some reason, some people like to make it hard for themselves."

Rehr said she had "every intention of taking care of it. But with the end of the school year and my job, it just totally got put on the back burner."