Another gun-wielding toy has had its weapon seized by airport security. After a cowboy sock monkey Rooster Monkburn had his tiny harmless weapon seized last year, a Woody doll underwent similar probe at London's Heathrow Airport.

Healthrow traveler John Hazen posted a picture of his son's figurine to the social-media website Reddit on Tuesday showing a security official removing the doll's gun. "At Heathrow, security just confiscated his 'weapon,' keep the world safe boys,"​ Hazen wrote on the site. The doll does not usually come armed with gun - it was an accessory the family added.

A Heathrow representative did not confirm whether the gun was confiscated but said if the seizure did occur, it would be "a bit overzealous," according to the Huffington Post.

Hazen said that he brings the Woddy doll with him when he travels for work and sends pictures of it perched at different locations around the world to his son before going to bed.

Video has been obtained by KPIX 5 showing a BART police officer who repeatedly used a stun gun to subdue a passenger in front of other riders.

A woman who witnessed the incident, who did not want to go on camera, told KPIX 5 the man was harmless and that the officer used the stun gun for no reason.

The video, which was taken on the evening of January 29th, begins with the BART officer giving the man a stern warning on a train at the San Bruno station.

"Sir, get off the train. Get off the train, Sir!" the officer said.

OJ Simpson has gone on hunger strike in prison, saying, 'I used to live my way, and now I'm going to die my way,' sources have claimed.

The jailed former football star, who is serving out a kidnapping, assault and robbery sentence in a Nevada prison, is reportedly so depressed that he wants to 'just sit down in a corner and die'.

Sources spoke to the National Enquirer about Simpson's hunger strike and worsening health. His attorneys have yet to respond to a request for comment.

The source claimed that Simpson, 66, who is eligible for parole in 2017 after having an appeal for a new trial turned down last year, wanted to die so that his children would be able to get his millions.

John Travolta has revealed that he was assigned round-the-clock Scientology minders after the death of his teenage son four years ago.

The 59-year-old Hollywood star was accompanied by representatives from his church every day for two years in order to help him through the ordeal.

Jett Travolta died at the age of 16, in January 2009, after suffering a seizure in the Travolta family holiday home in the Bahamas and hitting his head on the bath.

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee announced Tuesday that his state will not use the death penalty while he's in office. In neighboring Oregon, Gov. John Kitzhaber made a similar move in 2011, and last year, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper issued an executive order halting an impending execution, and said there was "a legitimate question whether we as a state should be taking lives."

While a majority of Americans (55%) favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder, according to a 2013 Pew Research survey, that number has declined significantly over the last two decades. In 1996, about three-quarters of the U.S. public (78%) favored capital punishment. Meanwhile, the share of those saying they oppose the death penalty has risen from 18% in 1996 to 37% in 2013.

The vote on Thursday by Belgium's House of Representatives removed all age restrictions on the right of the incurably sick to end their lives, a vote that has caused considerable controversy.

Ahead of the vote, Socialist Senator Philippe Mahoux, the author of Belgium's 2002 "right to die" legislation and himself a doctor, called euthanasia "the ultimate gesture of humanity" and "not a scandal." He added that "the scandal is illness and the death of children from disease."

Mahoux had called for widening his law to include minors because medics had already helped children in pain die as a question of mercy - just illegally. The draft bill had stated that a child must have "a capacity of discernment and be conscious" on requesting to die.

Georgetown - A pediatrician known for his research on paranormal science and near-death experiences with children was convicted Thursday of waterboarding the daughter of his longtime companion by holding her head under a faucet.

The jury deliberated for about six hours before returning its verdict against Melvin Morse, 60.

Morse was charged with three felonies - two for alleged waterboarding and one for alleged suffocation by hand. He was convicted of one felony - waterboarding in the bathtub - and five misdemeanors. Jurors reduced the second waterboarding charge to a misdemeanor and acquitted Morse of the suffocation charge.

Morse showed no reaction as the verdict was read. He was ordered to surrender his passport and will remain out on bail until his sentencing, set for April 11.

Morse faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, but a lesser punishment is likely under state sentencing guidelines. Each misdemeanor carries a maximum of one year in prison but typically results in probation. The felony reckless endangerment conviction for waterboarding carries a maximum of five years in prison but a presumptive sentence of 15 months.

Prosecutor Melanie Withers said she was "very gratified" by the verdict, and that she was on her way to speak with the victim, now 12 years old.

Morse declined to comment and referred questions to his attorneys.

"He maintains his innocence to this day," said attorney John Brady.

Morse's lead defense attorney, Joseph Hurley, said he planned to appeal.

The girl and her mother, Pauline Morse, testified that Melvin Morse used waterboarding as a threat or a form of punishment. Waterboarding has been used in the past by U.S. interrogators on terror suspects to simulate drowning. Many critics call it torture.

Defense attorneys argued that "waterboarding" was a term jokingly used to describe hair washing the girl did not like.

A Delaware doctor and his wife were arrested this week after their daughter told authorities that she was punished by "waterboarding," police said.

The 11-year-old girl told police that her father, pediatrician Melvin Morse, would hold her face under a running faucet causing the water to shoot up her nose, the Delaware State Police said.

The punishments happened at least four times over a two-year period and the girl's mother, Pauline Morse, witnessed some of them and did nothing, police said.

Morse specializes in near-death experiences in children and wrote a book about the subject called Closer to the Light in 1991.

"In hundreds of interviews with children who had once been declared clinically dead, Dr. Morse found that children too young to have absorbed our adult views and ideas of death, share first-hand accounts of out-of-body travel, telepathic communication and encounters with dead friends and relatives," a reviewer wrote about the book.

Morse was also interviewed by CNN's Larry King about the subject, and he runs a nonprofit organization called The Institute for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.

Missing teeth. Lung disease. Extreme hormone levels.

Four years after BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, gushing some 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the region is rife with death and disease, according to a major U.S. study.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, is the first of its kind since the devastating spill.

"I've never seen such a high prevalence of very sick animals," lead author Lori Schwacke of the Medical University of South Carolina noted. "There is disease in any wild population. We just haven't seen animals that were in such bad shape as what we saw in Barataria Bay."

"The U.S. worked hard to create the American dream of opportunity. But today, that dream is a myth."
Economist Joseph Stiglitz, Financial Times

If you follow the financial news, you already know that the American people are on an epic downer. Just check out some of these headlines I pulled up in a five minute Internet search and you'll see what I mean:

"Gloom and doom? Americans more pessimistic about future" Las Vegas Review

"U.S. Standard of Living Index Sinks to 10-Month Low; Expectations for future standard of living drops more than current satisfaction" Gallup

"Americans Still Pessimistic About Economy - Almost 70 percent think the economy is in bad shape" Time Magazine

'Slipping behind': Are we becoming a nation of pessimists?" NBC News

Income Inequality in the United States Fuels Pessimism and Threatens Social Cohesion" Center for American Progress.

And here's my personal favorite:

"NBC/WSJ poll: 60 percent say fire every member of Congress" NBC News