Imagine being a 6-year-old boy.

You get off your school bus and begin to walk home.

You are greeted by a man who lures you to his truck.

That man drives off with you and tells you you'll never see your mother again, and that you will be nailed to the wall of a shed.

You are terrified, of course, so you start crying.

The man pulls out a handgun and threatens to hurt you if you don't stop crying.

Then the man binds your feet and hands together with plastic bags and covers your face with a jacket.

He takes you to his house, carries you to the basement, and leaves you there for a little while.

Well this is just bonkers...

Multi-agency armed raid hits Rawesome Foods and Healthy Family Farms for selling raw milk and cheese.

According to a blog posted on the LA Times website:

Guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.

"I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?"

Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities - the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths.

As flames dramatically shoot from the engine of the right wing of a plane, one of the passengers on the window seat had the presence of mind to capture it on a smartphone.

The VivaColombia Flight 8023 scheduled to go from El Dorado International Airport in Bogota to Rionegro was forced to make an emergency landing at its origin after the malfunction.

Passengers heard a bang just after take-off at around 7pm, said news website Las 2 Orillas, and the remarkable amateur footage by a passenger sitting over the wing shows what happened.

A man who stole the purse of a dying elderly woman who was lying in the road having been hit by a lorry is being sought by Greater Manchester Police.

The 82-year-old was killed when she was struck on Leigh Road, Leigh, at about 11:45 GMT on Wednesday.

Police said that after the crash, officers were told a man "was seen to steal her purse before leaving".

The man is described as white, about 6ft (1.8m) tall, between 30 and 40 and of medium build with a brown beard.

Det Sgt Neil Lawless said it was "one of the most disgusting crimes I have ever investigated".

"I find it hard to believe that someone could stoop so low to commit such a horrific offence," he said.

2014 was a harrowing and devastating year for many people living in Israel and Palestine. Violations of human rights, racism, and hatred did not stop after the 2014 Gaza war and today are commonplace. Presently, there is imminent concern for the increasing numbers of wrongfully detained Palestinian children from East Jerusalem and the West Bank who are subject to ongoing state violence, severe psychological trauma, and denied the basic human right to education.

Throughout 2014, increasing numbers of Palestinian youth were targets of Israeli authorities' systematic raids, arrests, and violence. According to DCI-Palestine, an average of 192.8 Palestinian children per month were placed in Israeli military detention facilities from January through November 2014. However, there are likely several hundred more Palestinian minors (under age 18) from East Jerusalem under house arrest or in detention. Many of these children have been arrested during night raids by armed Israeli forces that remove them from their homes in a terrifying and often violent manner. They are frequently handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten, and heavily disoriented when transferred to interrogation. In most cases, the children's parents have no knowledge of their whereabouts, and the detainees receive no legal counsel. Minor detainees are often coerced into submitting a confession for a crime they did not commit. Some children are placed into solitary confinement, which is not only a breach of international law, but also considered a form of torture for minors.


A 2013 UNICEF report identified the maltreatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention as "widespread, systematic, and institutionalized." Sadly few reforms have been made since then. Laws continue to be violated and more children suffer. The Israeli Military Order 1651 defines a child as a person under age 12. Palestinian detainees ages 12 and above can be sentenced in Israeli military courts, which violate international law and Israeli juvenile law. The sentence for stone throwing and other offenses committed by Palestinian minors can result in a maximum of 20 years. These sentencing periods do not include jail time or house arrest prior to the trial. Furthermore, detainees are not permitted to attend school during pre-trial detention.

Two Philadelphia police officers were arrested and publicly criticized by local officials after video proof emerged that they lied about pursuing and beating a man, WPVI-TV reported.

The footage shows Officers Sean McKnight and Kevin Robinson chasing 23-year-old Najee Rivera in their unlit patrol car and knocking him to the ground with a baton before pushing him against a wall and repeatedly hitting him. Rivera can be heard screaming throughout the attack.

"He never resisted. He never struck them," local District Attorney Seth Williams said of the May 2013 incident. "He never fought back. They just started hitting him."

The encounter began when the officers pulled Rivera over. Rivera reportedly fled out of fear for his safety. But the officers originally said that Rivera fell off of his scooter, then tried to grab one of their batons, forcing one of them to hit Rivera in the face. He was originally charged with resisting arrest.

Police in Toronto say a local pastor has been charged after a woman was sexually assaulted during an exorcism.

The police said 53-year-old Pastor Wayne Marlon Jones of the United Spiritual Baptist Church offered what he referred to as "spiritual guidance" sessions to a woman between May 2011 and May 2013.

The woman was allegedly also tricked into giving Jones property and money. Jones has been charged with sexual assault and three counts of fraud over $5,000 dollars.

"We are encouraging anyone who has additional information to come forward to police," said Toronto Police spokesman Meaghan Gray.

Jones, born in Trinidad and Tobago, came to Canada and founded the United Spiritual Baptist Church in 2000, which the Toronto Sun reports appeared to be vacant earlier this week.

"Bishop Dr. Wayne M. Jones is a man who believes in gratitude, and because of this, he always talks about how grateful he is to everyone who has touched his life in some way to get him to where he is now," says his profile on the church's website.

A Seattle woman who suffered a broken eye socket after a police officer punched her in the face while handcuffed in the back of a patrol car filed a $1m claim against the city, alleging assault and arrest without probable cause. The incident was captured by a patrol-car dashboard camera.

Seattle police officer Adley Shepherd responded to the scene of a domestic dispute in June 2014, where he arrested Miyekko Durden-Bosley, then 23. The woman allegedly became verbally abusive with the officer, and Shepherd can be heard accusing her of "escalating" the situation on camera. Shepherd handcuffed Durden-Bosley, and she appears to be tossed into the back of a patrol car.

Almost immediately after Durden-Bosley lands in the back seat Shepherd yells "She kicked me!" and lunges into the back seat of the car, on top of the woman, the video shows.

Shepherd punched Durden-Bosley so severely that she suffered a concussion and a broken orbital socket. Durden-Bosley told Seattle's KING5 that she had headaches and blurry vision from the punch seven months later. She told KING5 that she doesn't remember whether she kicked the officer.

Many Escanaba residents awoke Monday to find themselves without power after an explosion at a nearby utility plant substation

Around 1:30 a.m. Feb. 2, an explosion at an Escanaba Power Plant substation caused widespread power outages across the city, according to the Escanaba City Electric Department.

With the failure of the substation's main transformer, officials noted the repairs are expected to require a significant amount of labor to fix .

As crews work to repair the damaged electrical equipment, city staff are warning residents to expect rolling blackouts the next few days. Residents are advised to keep their heat at elevated levels, but to conserve energy elsewhere whenever possible.

The Escanaba School District was forced to close today as well, due to a lack of power.

Release into air ongoing, under investigation

Noranda Alumina officials say they believe their nearly 55-year-old refinery in St. James Parish has been releasing mercury into the air without a permit, possibly since operations began in 1959.

The Tennessee-based owners of the once-bankrupt Kaiser Aluminum complex on the Mississippi River are asking state regulators for permission to release up to 250 pounds of mercury per year. That would make the plant one of the largest mercury polluters of Louisiana's air while Noranda officials figure out what is causing the air releases, state and federal records show.

Noranda officials told the state Department of Environmental Quality in April and May that they believe the mercury is rising from steam vents tied to plant heat exchangers, although DEQ has not permitted the release of mercury into the air from anywhere at the plant.

"If so, the facility has probably always emitted these small amounts of mercury to the atmosphere, and the emissions can be expected to continue into the future," Noranda Alumina President David P. Hamling wrote to DEQ on May 28.

John Parker, Noranda vice president of communications, said the emissions are not a risk to the public. Company officials have since "been working with DEQ at DEQ's pace to set up monitoring protocols for this," he said.

Bryan Johnston, senior environmental scientist in DEQ's Air Permits Division, said "there is no indication at this point that there is anything to be concerned about."

But the air permit that Noranda is asking for would make the plant Louisiana's second largest air emitter of mercury or mercury compounds, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Toxic Release Inventory data. In 2013, the latest year for which data has been reported, only NRG's Big Cajun II coal-fired plant in New Roads, which released 486 pounds, would have surpassed the 250-pound limit Noranda is now seeking.

"Two-hundred-fifty pounds of mercury per year is not an insignificant amount because mercury is so highly toxic at very low concentrations," said John Walke, director of the clean air program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group.