Thousands of extra police officers and rigid public order rules will be brought into Westminster on Thursday night over fears the London leg of the global "Million Mask March" against austerity and state surveillance could spill over into civil unrest.

Organized by the global activist network Anonymous, the march has become an annual event. Last year's protest saw scuffles between police and activists, who wore the distinctive Guy Fawkes masks adopted as the movement's motif.

The Metropolitan Police claims demonstrators will target particular businesses and may cause damage to property.

It says it has briefed potentially targeted firms and has promised a "significant policing operation."

A Christian high school principal is being criticized for an op-ed where he says dress codes imposed on young women help protect the "gift" of their virginity, which should be preserved for their "one and only."

The piece, published in MLive by Jim Bazen, principal of Plymouth Christian High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, suggests women and girls can't understand the "more visual" male mind so they need dress codes demanding modesty from them.

"The only way you can help young men not treat young ladies as sex objects is by telling the young ladies to cover up! A young man will not think of a respectfully dressed young woman as a 'sex object' but is more likely to see her for who she is," Brazen writes. "A young man may have no intention to lust, yet when an immodestly dressed girl passes him in the hall, he will think sexual thoughts."

The notion that women are responsible for the actions of men by dressing a certain way has been discredited as victim blaming.

"This idiot should be fired immediately. We don't need [misogynistic] creeps like him punishing young women because he can't control his libido, and doesn't ask the parents of the boys to simply treat girls with respect," one commenter wrote. "What about DEMANDING the boys do so? What about having classroom time teaching our young men that women ARE NOT OBJECTS to be oogled at by male students and teachers."

Famed film director Quentin Tarantino did not walk back any of his comments regarding police killings despite persistent rumors he would apologize publicly in the face of boycott threats by police unions. "What I said was the truth," he said.

Ten days after making brief remarks at an anti-police brutality march, Tarantino gave The Los Angeles Times his first public statement. "All cops are not murderers. I never said that. I never even implied that," said the director of Django Unchained.

Taking part in the Rise Up October protest against police brutality, in New York City's Washington Square Park on October 24, Tarantino told the crowd: "I wanna give my time to the families, however, I do just wanna say, what am I doin' here? I'm doin' here, because I am a human being with a conscience. And when I see murder, I cannot stand by, and I have to call the murdered the murdered, and I have to call the murderers the murderers. Now I wanna give my time to the families. Thank you very much."


The National Association of Police Officers, a lobbying organization representing 241,000 law enforcement officers and over 2,000 police units, as well as 11,000 retired cops and some 100,000 others indirectly associated individuals, took offense to the "murderers" characterization.

A plane has crash-landed near South Sudan's airport shortly after taking off. The aircraft had seven passengers and five Russian crewmembers on board, but only two people survived, local media reports.

The eyewitness saw aircraft lying across the White Nile River, Reuters reports. According to the local radio station's Twitter feed, the crash occurred around 800 meters from Juba airport.

A woman and seven children are among the victims, the National Courier reported.

The plane was headed to Paloich in the Upper Nile region, a source told the local National Courier media outlet.

Despite what Israeli leaders may have you believe, Islamic fundamentalism is not the driving force behind the latest violence.

"Say a prayer before leaving your house, dress in your best clothing. Brush your hair well, and smile for the camera. You may end up as another poster on the bleeding walls of the city. No one is safe from their guns."
— A young Palestinian from Silwan, Jerusalem, October 2015.

This quote was written on Facebook a number of weeks ago by a young Palestinian who has been the subject of dozens of arrests and has spent much of his life in jail, due to political persecution as a result of his participation in protests. Pay attention to the wording: the author treats leaving the house as a nearly-suicidal act, viewing death as an inevitable force in the hands of the (Israeli) ruler. For him, the only means of defense is a short prayer before leaving home. This is where the role of religion begins and ends in the collective consciousness of resistance among most young Palestinians.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums it up neatly.

The sharper ones among you — that is, those who do not think that the news starts and ends with Channel 2′s cheap propaganda — may have noticed that despite the relative "calm" of the last two weeks in Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been on fire for over a year. The fact that more than 70 Palestinians were killed in October (among them dozens killed in the Gaza Strip) testifies more than anything to the fact the current resistance to the occupation will not end soon.

In the opening days of the month when National Geographic magazine is scheduled to be turned over to 21st Century Fox, the magazine's employees were told to stand by their phones to wait for calls - one by one - to come to Human Resources to learn the fate of their jobs.

A memo sent to all staff on Monday from CEO Gary Knell told the magazine's employees to return to Washington to Geographic's headquarters if possible to wait for an eMail on Tuesday which would give them more information about their employment status.

"No one knows how many will be axed today," a source inside National Geographic told News Photographer magazine this morning. "The staff is sitting by their phones, waiting to be called down to HR."

In a Tweet mid-day today, National Geographic photo editor Sherry L. Brukbacher confirmed that she is one of the staff members who've been let go.

"Experienced National Geographic Photo Editor looking for employment. Fox merger elim [sic] many today. Will miss my amazing colleagues!" - @SBrukbacher. She also Tweeted that she won't be talking to reporters. "Too much respect for my many wonderful colleagues," she wrote.

National Geographic picture editor Kim Hubbard was one of those impacted by today's layoffs. She told her friends in a posting on Facebook, "Thank you for the calls and messages on what has been a surreal and sad day. Over the past five years I've worked with some amazing photographers, designers, writers, editors, and scientists on stories that I am incredibly proud of. Now I'm looking ahead to the next big thing (if you know what that is, please let me know! I'll be with Nat Geo until Jan 31st."

An eMail sent out this morning from Nancy Lee Ott, one of National Geographic Creative's picture editors, to the magazine's photographers confirmed that she was one of the staff let go. Ott's eMail today told the NGS photographers, "You have been the light of my life these last 28 years." She started in the magazine's photography lab with 35mm film and up until today's layoffs she worked in the magazine's image catalog collection.

Veteran National Geographic photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols also left the magazine today. Nichols told The Guardian, "I was getting ready to retire in January. So for me this is kind of a gift. But it's a sad day for my friends who were not as ready." He started at the Geographic in 1996.

Among those who were the first to be let go on Tuesday morning, according to our source, was also one of the magazine's top picture editors and one of the magazine's page designers who - according to several photographers - was "the best designer" on staff.

As time passes, a bona fide message emerges from within the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster scenario, and that message is that once a nuclear power plant loses it, the unraveling only gets worse and worse until it's at its worst, and still, there's no stopping it. Similar to opening Pandora's box, there's no stopping a ferocious atom-splitting insanity that knows no end.

Four years of experience with Fukushima provides considerable evidence that splitting atoms to boil water is outright unmitigated madness. After all, nuclear power plants are built to boil water; yes, to boil water; it's as simple as that, but yet at the same time it's also extraordinarily complex. Conversely, solar and wind do not boil water and are not complex and never deadly (Germany knows).

Giant flames have lit up the skies of the town of Bracknell about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of central London, reportedly consuming an industrial estate. Witnesses have reported multiple loud blasts and train services have been disrupted.

More details to follow.

The town of Svatovo is completely destroyed after a large-scale fire at Ukrainian ammunition depots just in time for the cold, people are fleeing their homes, which Ukrainian authorities are not in a hurry to restore, reports LPR press-service.

"Svatovo fire showed the incompetence of authorities, and fear of responsibility for what happened at all levels of management spiral. It has been more than three days since the fire, and the authorities to this time did not give a decent explanation of the causes of the tragedy. Referring to alleged mythical arson committed by "saboteurs", and maybe it was mice with matches? The nonsense of defence minister Poltorak and his entourage, brainwashing the simple layman, without explaining why a deadly warehouse with more than 3.5 tons of ammunition was located inside the city line without proper security and basic fire extinguishing means. Four people were killed, more than 100 are in hospitals.

What you are about to see is more evidence that the growth of poverty in the United States is wildly out of control. It turns out that there is a tremendous amount of suffering in "the wealthiest nation on the planet", and it is getting worse with each passing year.

During this election season, politicians of all stripes are running around telling all of us how great we are, but is that really true? As you will see below, poverty is reaching unprecedented levels in this country, and the middle class is steadily dying. There aren't enough good jobs to go around, dependence on the government has never been greater, and it is our children that are being hit the hardest.

If we have this many people living on the edge of despair now, while times are "good", what are things going to look like when our economy really starts falling apart? The following are 21 facts about the explosive growth of poverty in America that will blow your mind...