Oh high school graduation time. The kids are all excited and the parents are wavering between proud and anxious and everyone is so involved in the whole process that no one can spare a minute to pity the petty tyrants that infest every high school, who are losing yet another crop of kids to control and bully. These folks, who react poorly to their own waning youth by trying to suck the fun out of being young for teenagers, can be found both in administration and in the classrooms. Are they all people who work in public schools? No. But every public school has them. And every year, these petty tyrants watch another group of kids they've been able to push around for four years slide away from them.

The pain it must cause them, waking up on graduation day and realizing that tomorrow, they have no more control. No more punishing them for having fun. No more enforcing of arbitrary dress codes. No more lectures about how they're rotting their brains with the smart phones and the hip-hop and the TV shows. But before that day comes, the petty tyrants will make one last power grab. They will try to make graduation as unfun as possible, and, of course, scour the earth looking for unauthorized pleasures taken by the students that can now be punished by yanking graduation away from them. You kids think you can just make your jokes and have your laughs, just because school is ending? The petty tyrants will show you who still holds the cards. Grandma will not be seeing you walk across the stage at graduation! How do you like them apples?

New York - The 14-year-old boy sat on the stoop of the Hookah Shop in the Bronx, blood pouring from his chest and filling his lungs, and thought: This is what it's like to die. Moments before 11 o'clock Saturday night, the boy, Javier Payne, had been smashed through the store's plate glass window by a police officer who had stopped him after an altercation with a man on the street, witnesses said.

The boy was bleeding critically and under arrest.

When EMS paramedics arrived at the scene they found the color draining from Payne's face, his clothes soaked in blood and his hands cuffed behind his back. A witness described the police officers on the scene as "nonchalant" about the emergency unfolding in front of them.

"He looked like a young man who was facing down his own mortality," said one city employee familiar with the incident. "This is a kid who was staring at his own doom. He looked like he was going to die. And if he didn't get help when he did, he would have."

An argument ensued between the paramedics and police about removing the teenager's handcuffs so they could treat his injuries. Initially, the police refused, but eventually relented, witnesses said.

One of the paramedics had to hold the boys chest wound closed while they rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center. Medical experts said it may have saved Payne's life.

As he was wheeled into the emergency room Payne was shrieking: "They threw me through a glass window and now I'm going to die, I'm going to die."

Initially, EMS did not rush to the scene because when the officers put the call over they did not indicate that there was a pediatric emergency, a source familiar with the incident said. Instead they used a protocol normally used for drunks.

The office did not issue a "sheet" - an email to the police press corps detailing newsworthy events - on the incident.

Descriptions of Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught's weight condemned by leading opera figures

The opera world has reacted with anger to the disparaging remarks made by several critics about the appearance of the female soprano star of this year's Glyndebourne festival opera, Der Rosenkavalier.

Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught, who is the principal soloist in the Bavarian State opera ensemble, made her UK stage debut at the 80th anniversary season of the opera festival on Saturday, playing Octavian in Strauss's comic masquerade.

But praise of Erraught's performance was overshadowed by descriptions of the singer's weight by leading critics, who labelled her variously as "unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing", (The Times) "dumpy" (The Independent) and with an "intractable physique" (The Daily Telegraph).

Andrew Clark in the Financial Times added: "Tara Erraught's Octavian is a chubby bundle of puppy-fat." The Guardian described her as "stocky".

Leading opera figures have now spoken of their disgust that the 27-year-old, who is a rising star, should be subject to such comments, with several prominent female singers jumping to Erraught's defence.

Writing for the Guardian website, fellow mezzo soprano Jennifer Johnstone, asked: "How, then, have we arrived at a point where opera is no longer about singing but about the physiques and looks of the singers, specifically the female singers?"

She continued: "Barely any mention of her voice, a gloriously rounded and well produced instrument, was made, and there was little comment on her musicianship, dramatic commitment or her ability to communicate to an audience and to move that audience to tears. Comment was also made about another female singer being 'stressed by motherhood'. I, for one, had thought we as a country had moved beyond the point where women were treated as second-class citizens, but clearly overt sexism is still rife, no matter what we are led to believe.

"All singers need self confidence to perform, and so it is on this level that it is particularly cruel and irresponsible of this set of critics to be so completely disparaging of a singer's appearance."

Jennifer Rivera, a world famous American mezzo soprano, also voiced her anger at the critics comments, which she condemned as demeaning the entire art form of opera.

This image of a starving child with nothing to eat but a football has tapped into Brazil's complex relationship with the approaching World Cup.

Paulo Ito, a street artist, painted the mural on a school in Sao Paulo on 10 May and a photo of the artwork has since been shared more than 50,000 times on Facebook alone.

The city has been at the centre of repeated and sometimes violent protests against the government's £6.5 billion spending on the World Cup when the money is so badly needed elsewhere.

"People already have the feeling and that image condensed this feeling," he told slate.com.

"The truth is there is so much wrong in Brazil that it is difficult to know where to start," he said.

Residents of a small central California city are asking for a response from officials after the local police department has been attributed with fatally shooting two suspects in a span of just 11 days this month.

The Tuesday afternoon shooting death of man alleged to have attempted to burglarize a Salinas, CA home and then expose himself to the person inside marks the second time this month - and third time this year - that officers there have come under fire for what some are calling excessive force.

A local newspaper, the Monterey Herald, reported on Wednesday that Salinas residents were responding angrily to the previous day's incident in light of video footage published online showing local law enforcement officials firing the fatal shots at the man from point-blank range. The victim was not immediately identified by police.

According to the Herald, cops were alerted of an attempted break-in on Tuesday afternoon after a female caller told 911 that a man was not just trying to enter her home, but was trying to kill her dog and had exposed himself.

Paris - French medical authorities have ordered a prestigious laboratory to suspend its activities after it lost more than 2,000 test tubes containing the SARS respiratory virus.

The Pasteur Institute reported the tubes missing last month from one of its labs, but insisted in a statement that the tubes do not pose any infection risk.

The institute asked the ANSM medical safety agency to carry out inspections at the lab.

ANSM chief inspector Gaetan Rudant said Tuesday that its inspectors did not find the tubes but did find "dysfunction" in the way the lab tracked its material.

The ANSM ordered the lab's activities suspended and a "tube-by-tube" inventory of all material at the Pasteur Institute.

SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, infected about 8,000 people in 2003, killing nearly 800.

Source: Associated Press

From Chapter 15 of The Money Bubble, by James Turk and John Rubino:

Banking didn't start out as a reckless, parasitical plaything of a moneyed and politically-connected aristocracy. In the beginning, in fact, bankers weren't even bankers. They were jewelers and goldsmiths who had to maintain their inventory with vaults, guards etc., and offered storage services to others with valuables to protect. So the original banks were, in effect, very safe warehouses.

Eventually some goldsmiths noticed that the paper receipts they gave to their customers to evidence the valuables left in storage began to circulate as currency alongside their countries' coins. A shopkeeper accepting these receipts in payment knew that he could go to the goldsmith to redeem them for gold and silver, and also recognized that a paper receipt was more convenient to use as currency than were pieces of metal. Gradually these receipts became a widely-accepted form of payment, circulating among buyers to sellers and saved like other forms of wealth.

The goldsmiths then noticed something else about their new paper-money invention: Only a tiny fraction of their clients asked for the return of their valuables in any given period, which led to a bright - but legally and morally-dubious - idea. Why not start issuing receipts in excess of the gold and silver on hand? The goldsmiths could spend this currency themselves or lend it to others - thus inventing the business/consumer loan. Henceforth the total gold and silver in the vault (the goldsmith's reserves) would equal only a fraction of the receipts circulating as currency.

Schererville - A federal lawsuit alleges that police officers forged the results of a breath alcohol test and then forcibly penetrated a man's body with a catheter to extract his bodily fluids.

William B. Clark, 23, gave a disturbing account detailing official police misconduct and invasive, forced medical procedures.

Clark, of Crown Point, was pulled over on the evening of May 20, 2012, while driving on U.S. 30 near its intersection with U.S. 41, on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Schererville Police Officer Matthew Djukic initiated the traffic stop, and Officer Damian Murks responded in a separate vehicle. Mr. Clark was asked to perform a Breathalyzer test, which he did.

The suit alleges that the results of the breath test were falsely reported to create a pretext to arrest Clark. The legal limit in Indiana is 0.08 BAC, police claimed Clark's was 0.11 BAC. While on the scene, Officer Djukic searched the interior of Clark's car with a canine, a process Clark says was done illegally.

Mr. Clark was then taken to the St. Margaret Mercy Hospital in nearby Dyer, Indiana. Clark submitted to a blood test, the lawsuit states, which showed that his BAC only 0.073 - below the legal limit. The blood test is the most accurate method to measure blood-alcohol content.

New York City Police and federal authorities have arrested at least 70 people in what's being billed as one of the largest online child pornography busts ever.

According to the Associated Press, among those arrested are a rabbi, a Boy Scout leader, a little league baseball coach, a nurse, and a police officer, with most the arrests originating in the New York City area. In addition to charging dozens of men with exploting and photographing children, one New Jersey woman was also detained for allegedly using Skype to place her child in "compromising positions."

If you believe that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction, you really need to read this article. As we look toward the second half of 2014, there are economic red flags all over the place. Industrial production is down. Home sales are way down. Retail stores are closing at the fastest pace since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. U.S. household debt is up substantially, and in 20 percent of all U.S. families everyone is unemployed.

In so many ways, what we are witnessing right now is so similar to what we experienced during the build up to the last great financial crisis. We are making so many of the very same mistakes that we made the last time, and yet our "leaders" seem completely oblivious to what is happening. But the warning signs are very clear. All you have to do is open your eyes and look at them. The following are 27 huge red flags for the U.S. economy...

#1 Despite endless assurances from the Obama administration that we are in an "economic recovery", the number one concern for U.S. voters is "Unemployment/Jobs" according to a recent Gallup survey.