Oscar Pistorius, the South African Olympian who shot and killed his girlfriend on Valentine's Day last year, was found "negligent" in the killing Thursday, but was acquitted of murder charges before the court recessed for the day without a final verdict.

Judge Thokozile Masipa halted the proceedings before delivering a ruling on a lesser charge of culpable homicide and said she would resume the proceedings on Friday.

"It's clear that his conduct was negligent," Masipa said.

But the judge said she did not find sufficient evidence to prove the prosecution's contention that Pistorius intended to kill Reeva Steenkamp after the couple had an argument, though she did conclude that the athlete was negligent in firing his weapon four times through the door of the bathroom in his residence, in which Steenkamp had locked herself.

For his first film project American filmmaker Miguel Francis chose the highly controversial subject of Crimea and how it was reunited with Russia. He travels to the beautiful Peninsula to see the current situation first hand and to explore its history and cultural heritage. He takes in some of Crimea's tourist attractions and historical sites while talking to local people about their attitudes to becoming Russian citizens.

A cemetery worker in a town in southern Spain has been suspended after a photo of him posing with an exhumed corpse went viral on social media.

The mummified body of a man who died 23 years ago had been moved from his grave to allow the burial of his wife alongside him in the family tomb in Guardamar del Segura.

The niece of the deceased had arranged for the grave to be extended. Clemente, the gravedigger, opened the tomb to begin his usual job of breaking up the corpse to allow another body to fit into the same space.

For reasons unknown, the niece then took a photo on her mobile of Clemente holding up the body alongside another man, said to be the corpse's nephew by marriage, who is grinning broadly.

A Ukrainian gang that took medical waste that included body parts and disease testing samples for cremation dumped it all in local woodlands instead of burning it.

The gang reportedly made hundreds of thousands of pounds collecting medical waste including amputated limbs and aborted foetuses from hospitals in Zaporizhia Oblast in southern Ukraine.

They also collected other biologically hazardous waste including parts from veterinary surgeries and laboratory samples awaiting safe disposal.

The gang's activities were uncovered when surprised mushroom pickers spotted sack-loads of amputated limbs dumped around the woods.

Hundreds of thousands of Catalans have flooded the streets of Barcelona in the region's national day to demand the right to vote on independence from Spain. The demonstrators have formed a big V in red and yellow, symbolizing "vote."

People who wanted to make their voices heard, were wearing red and yellow, the traditional Catalonian colors during La Diada, the Catalan National Day. Almost half a million Catalans have signed up to form a "V for vote," a show of support for the right to decide on their independence from Spain.

"It would be the people's triumph if we were allowed to vote. If we live in a democracy we should be allowed to vote," Montserrat, a 58-year-old homemaker, told Reuters.

U.S. police are operating a co-ordinated scheme to seize as much of the public's cash as they can

On its official website, the Canadian government informs its citizens that "there is no limit to the amount of money that you may legally take into or out of the United States." Nonetheless, it adds, banking in the U.S. can be difficult for non-residents, so Canadians shouldn't carry large amounts of cash.

That last bit is excellent advice, but for an entirely different reason than the one Ottawa cites.

There's a shakedown going on in the U.S., and the perps are in uniform.

Across America, law enforcement officers - from federal agents to state troopers right down to sheriffs in one-street backwaters - are operating a vast, co-ordinated scheme to grab as much of the public's cash as they can; "hand over fist," to use the words of one police trainer.

You can't assemble a totalitarian war machine and expect it to never come home. Sooner or later, all those military-grade weapons end up in your own back yard. Pointed at you.

Over the last several decades, we've seen the rise of militarized law enforcement. From no-knock raids to Ferguson under armed occupation, America is beginning to look a lot less like the peaceful land of the free and more like a land where only the brave dare venture. Even sleepy little towns in New Hampshire are getting armored assault vehicles, despite hundreds taking to the streets in protest. Weapons of war are in our streets, and they're here to stay.

Many ardent critics of America's transition into the land of checkpoints and armored personnel carriers supported military interventions and occupations abroad. The argument goes, fight them there so they don't come here. Heavily-armed patrols and universal inspections are easier to tolerate when they aren't in your back yard, especially when accompanied by the expectation that they will never, ever, happen at home.

As it turns out, that expectation was foolish. The war has come home. To begin with, America's civilian law enforcement increasingly benefits from tactics, training, and close ties with its military. Train cops with Navy Seals and give them a "war" on drugs to fight, and it's hardly surprising when officers begin to view the people more like enemy combatants than civilians. With dispositions and training more suited to fighting a war than keeping the peace, it's easy to see how an otherwise peacefully-solved conflicts could escalate into violence and death.

Next, state and city police departments are stocking up with some heavy equipment. Much of this is either direct military hand-me-downs or made available through federal grants. This means that federal defense spending approved under the assumption that none of it would be used against Americans is being employed for just that purpose. Local government, always aware of the popularity cost of raising taxes and fines to fund various projects, simply can't say no to free stuff.

Finally, many military-style operations, though carried out by local law enforcement, are funded by the federal government. A prime example of these are so-called sobriety checkpoints, where police are paid by federal money to hold regular checkpoints arbitrarily detaining motorists. Slowing traffic and harassing citizens in a sleepy little town is hardly something that would be deemed cost effective in a city budget meeting. Provide the funding for free, however, and the objections simply wither away.

Morgantown, West Viginia - A kind-hearted woman with a cellphone captured the horrific scene of a man choking on his own blood, in front of his children, while pinned under three cops.

According to police they were responding to a report of child abuse. Police say when they approached Jeffery Bane, 39, that he appeared to be under the influence of narcotics. They claim that Bane began to fight police officers, kicking one and trying to spit on others.

This is why, police say, they were forced to pepper spray, beat and kneel on Bane as he choked on his own blood pleading for help.

Bane was charged with disorderly conduct, obstructing an officer and battery on an officer.

If you were to read only the report, you would think that police took down a vicious criminal that day.

However, according to Bane and his family, it was the police who did the attacking.

According to Bane's nephew, Josh Bane, he was walking to the park with his children when police approached and attacked him.As my uncle and his two children headed towards the store before heading to the park together they crossed an intersection to the other side when the stroller became hung up on the curb. As the light changed, to keep his children out of harms way he hurriedly put his two year old on the curb, told her to stay put and pulled the stroller up on the curb.

In this moment someone mistook my uncles actions to keep his kids safe as child abuse. The police were then called and approached him down the street and began to question him. Assuming because of his appearance he was high on narcotics with out reason they began to sub due him, macing and beating him in the head as he fell to his face were he was then held with a great amount of force by two officers double his size as a third one landed on his torso.

For the the next ten minutes as my cousins watch unattended, my uncle pleads and cries out in pain for the lack of breath and agony being applied to him.

Unknown to the police my uncle suffers from Huntington's disease. For those unfamiliar it is very similar to Parkinson's. So as he lay there uncontrollably moving due to his terminal condition, he is forcefully detained to the point of screaming for help. He is spitting blood and drowning in it and the officer holding his head only applies more pressure and instructs him to "quit spitting".

Reaction to news that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their second child. If we were to rebuild society now, would we start by putting an old lady who does nothing in a palace and lavish her with riches?

Fox host and right-wing buddies want the nation to get its priorities straight. Wait till you see what those are

It was with much sadness and disbelief that the right wing greeted the news the other day that the so-called wave of criminal children surging over America's border to destroy everything that's good and decent about us seems to have crested. The director of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, made the announcement on Monday, saying that "the worst is over, for now." He explained that the numbers of kids arriving from Central America peaked in May and June and has substantially dropped since then and he credits the administration's public relations campaign in their home country with explaining why these kids are better off in their own anarchic, gang-infested countries than here in the land of the free. It's a foreign policy to be proud of.

But that was small solace to the true guardians of the American Way of Life who know very well that the nation has already been infiltrated by an enemy so cunning it is even able to fool sharp observers like George Will and Brit Hume into arguing they should be treated with compassion.

But they weren't fooled. These so-called children are nothing but stealthy foreign invaders who are even now forming sleeper cells from within their ... sleeping cells. Indeed, these champions of our proud cultural heritage saw through the president's Machiavellian plan to distract the public with passenger planes being shot out of the sky, invasions, beheadings and general chaos around the globe.

The Protector of Real America Laura Ingraham noticed as long ago as July that the only network adequately covering the "massive dispersal" of immigrants around the nation was Fox while all the other networks were "diverting attention" in the media to foreign policy stories like the downed plane in Ukraine and the war in Gaza.