A man found unconscious in a California motel room who left US authorities baffled when he woke up only speaking Swedish, has been identified by a member of a Swedish medieval society as one of their kin

"I first met him when we were both members of a Middle Ages association called the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA) in the 1980s. He went by the name of Strongbow," Johan Cassel of the SCA told The Local on Monday.

Cassel explained that the man identified in US and Swedish media reports as Michael Boatwright spent several periods living in Sweden before they lost contact in the late 1990s, adding that Boatwright learnt to speak Swedish fairly well.

"He could speak pretty good Swedish, although you could hear that he came from an English-speaking country. He had an accent," Cassel said.

The SCA is an international association that brings together people with an interest in the Middle Ages and members typically engage in range of activities, such as jousting. According to fellow member Olle Sahlin, Boatwright was active in the SCA's European chapter and was an early member of the Swedish Jousting Team.

"He organized a jousting exhibition for Saab and Scania's anniversary in 1985. I was one of the extras clad in a costume from the Middle Ages," Sahlin told The Local.

Sahlin explained that the SCA was launched in Sweden in the early 1980s and joined up with a Europe-wide movement that was dominated by servicemen and women of the US armed forces based in Europe.

"The SCA is divided up in districts, principalities and kingdoms. We are in the principality of Nordmark, in the Kingdom of Drachenwald," Sahlin told The Local.

Johan Cassel also recalled having met Boatwright while competing in jousting events and reports that the American, who originates from Florida, was a pretty accomplished performer.

Prices for certain kinds of food have doubled five days into the Ramadan fasting month, prompting the president to scold his ministers for their failure in preventing the inflation.

One of the more significant increases has been the price of beef, which jumped from between Rp 50,000 and Rp 60,000 ($5 and $6) to Rp 110,000 and 120,000 per kilogram on Sunday.

Meanwhile, some traders have been selling chicken meat at Rp 45,000, up from Rp 25,000, and the price of chilli has risen to Rp 100,000 from Rp 50,000 per kilogram.

In several Bogor markets for instance, traders have complained that sales of beef have dropped by half because it has become difficult to make sales at such a high price.

"Rp 110,000 is the highest price I have ever sold since I started selling beef 10 years ago," said Syahroni, a beef seller at the city's Jambu Dua market on Sunday.

The Indonesian Merchants Association (Ikappi) also confirmed that in general the price of beef had increased by almost 40 percent to Rp 120,000 per kilogram, while chicken meat surged to Rp 42,000 from Rp 27,000 per kilogram per kilogram.

An investigation into how the teenager died began as it emerged that the plane's pilot Lee Kang-kuk, 46, was training and in the process of getting a licence for the Boeing 777, which he was landing at that airport for the first time.

One of two Chinese schoolgirls who died in a plane crash in San Francisco may have survived the disaster only to be run over by a fire engine or ambulance.

An investigation into how the teenager died began as it emerged that the plane's pilot Lee Kang-kuk, 46, was training and in the process of getting a licence for the Boeing 777, which he was landing at that airport for the first time.

He had logged only 43 hours at the controls on nine flights in that aircraft. More than 180 people were injured, 49 of them seriously, when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 hit a sea wall at the start of the runway, ripping off its tail, on Saturday.

Tens of thousands of Greeks have abandoned their workplaces on Tuesday and rallied in front of parliament in the capital Athens against government plans to satisfy foreign lenders by firing public sector employees.

It is the third and the largest general strike the crisis-hit country has experienced since the start of the year.

The 24-hour walkout came a day before the Greek MPs vote on a series of unpopular reforms, which the European Union and International Monetary Fund say are obligatory if Greece want more financial aid.

"The public sector still composes a major part of the Greek economy. These jobs are protected by the constitution since the end of the 19th century," RT's correspondent, Egor Piskunov, reports from Athens.

An 11 year old boy named Terry Smith Jr. disappeared from Menifee California on Saturday July 6^th 2013. My family and I were involved in the search effort and my daughter is a classmate and acquaintance of the boy's older brother. I will share my observations of the events of this past week to the best of my ability in case you are unfamiliar with this story.

Terry, known as JuJu, lived with his mother Shawna Smith and her lesbian partner Denise, his 14 year old half-sister Mary Atilano and his 16 year old half-brother Skylar Atilano, in a small rural community about half-way between, and a bit east of, Los Angeles and San Diego. Once a small farming town from California's early days, Menifee has grown to approximately 80,000 residents in the last few decades and only recently incorporated as a city. Terry's home was located in area that has seen very little change during the development boom and is referred to as "Old Menifee". That area is known for having pockets of poverty, with drug use rampant among a certain percentage of the population that is made up of mostly "old time" families that have lived in the valley since well before the boom. Terry's home is located in one of those pockets just south of the center of "Old Menifee", the Menifee Market.

The community first became aware of Terry's disappearance on Sunday July 7^th. The initial story circulating was that Terry's mother left for the evening at 7:30pm on Saturday to play on her pool league at a local bar and left 11 year Terry in bed, with his older brother Skylar looking after him. She returned late and did not check in on Terry until the next morning at 10:30 am when she realized he was missing. She notified police and news spread quickly in town that a small autistic boy had possibly wandered off and was lost in the rocky and desolate hills of Menifee in 100F temperatures wearing only basketball shorts and no shirt or shoes. Bloodhounds had traced his scent to the end of the dirt road near the family's home. Here is the Riverside County Sheriff's press release with a list of agencies that assisted in the effort.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Senator Rand Paul, Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley (also sponsor of his state's Stand Your Ground law), along with a host of other Republicans, argued that had the teachers and administrators been armed, those twenty little kids whose lives Adam Lanza stole would be alive today. Of course, they were parroting the National Rifle Association's talking points. The NRA and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative lobbying group responsible for drafting and pushing "Stand Your Ground" laws across the country, insist that an armed citizenry is the only effective defense against imminent threats, assailants, and predators.

But when George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, teenage pedestrian returning home one rainy February evening from a neighborhood convenience store, the NRA went mute. Neither NRA officials nor the pro-gun wing of the Republican Party argued that had Trayvon Martin been armed, he would be alive today. The basic facts are indisputable: Martin was on his way home when Zimmerman began to follow him - first in his SUV, and then on foot. Zimmerman told the police he had been following this "suspicious-looking" young man. Martin knew he was being followed and told his friend, Rachel Jeantel, that the man might be some kind of sexual predator. At some point, Martin and Zimmerman confronted each other, a fight ensued, and in the struggle Zimmerman shot and killed Martin.

Palm Springs - Four months after he was found unconscious in a Palm Springs, Calif., motel, doctors are looking into the mystery of a Florida man who awoke with no memory of his past and speaking only Swedish.

Michael Boatwright, 61, woke up with amnesia, calling himself Johan Ek, The Desert Sun reports. Boatwright was found unconscious in a Motel 6 room in February. After police arrived, he was transported to the Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs where he woke up.

Hospital officials said Boatwright may have been in town for a tennis tournament in the Coachella Valley. He was found with a duffel bag of exercise clothes, a backpack and tennis rackets.

He also carried four forms of identification - a passport, a California identification card, a veteran's medical card and a Social Security card - all of which identified him as Michael Thomas Boatwright.

Palm Springs police have documented his information in case anyone lists Boatwright as missing or wanted, authorities said.

In March, doctors diagnosed Boatwright with Transient Global Amnesia, a condition triggered by physical or emotional trauma that can last for several months.

The rare mental disorder is characterized by memory loss, "sudden and unplanned travel," and possible adoption of a new identity, according to the Sun.

This was some battle going on in that car, a cage match of warring colognes. Tevin Thompson, tall and soft-cheeked, had basted himself in Curve, swiped from the back of his parents' dresser, where the old man kept his more expensive smell-goods. Leland Brunson, small and snarky, the runt of the four-kid crew, was bumping Chanel and a couple of clashing lotions and smelled like mixed inserts from three men's mags. Jordan Davis, the prince - he of the red-hot girlfriend and every fly snapback sold online - was drenched in Armani and looking right. And Tommie Stornes, at the wheel of his Durango - well, who ever knew what Tommie was wearing? He kept the whole scent counter at Macy's in his car. True, he'd taken hours to get coifed and dressed to go girl-hunting at the mall, but as these boys liked to say, you can't rush greatness.

They hit the Town Center mall around 5 p.m. and found it hip-to-hip with Christmas shoppers. On this, the first evening after Thanksgiving, all of Jacksonville was out and about, walking of the torpor of candied yams at the fanciest galleria in northern Florida. The boys did their best impression of premium shoppers, four well-raised black teens from middle-class homes trying hard to stand out by blending in. They talked to - but whiffed with - a few of the upscale "honeys," browsed the stores for high-priced sneakers that they mostly owned already (Tevin bought a new pair every payday; Jordan, who'd just landed his first after-school job, was breaking his father's wallet with his shoe game) and began to make their way toward the exits. Then Jordan spotted Aliyah, his beautiful, on-off girlfriend, who was finishing up her shift at Urban Outfitters. They'd been on the rocks for weeks over the silliest teenage nonsense - he'd bought roses on her birthday but wouldn't bring them to school, convinced his friends would clown him till graduation. Now, though, she smiled at him, and Jordan's heart went clattering around his rib cage. "They needed to get back together so he'd stop talking about her," says Tevin. "Every . . . …single . . . …day, it was Aliyah this, Aliyah that. We're all like, 'Damn it, dude: Just call her already.

The security and surveillance state, after crushing the Occupy movement and eradicating its encampments, has mounted a relentless and largely clandestine campaign to deny public space to any group or movement that might spawn another popular uprising. The legal system has been grotesquely deformed in most cities to, in essence, shut public space to protesters, eradicating our right to free speech and peaceful assembly. The goal of the corporate state is to criminalize democratic, popular dissent before there is another popular eruption. The vast state surveillance system, detailed in Edward Snowden's revelations to the British newspaper The Guardian, at the same time ensures that no action or protest can occur without the advanced knowledge of our internal security apparatus. This foreknowledge has allowed the internal security systems to proactively block activists from public spaces as well as carry out pre-emptive harassment, interrogation, intimidation, detention and arrests before protests can begin. There is a word for this type of political system - tyranny.

If the state is ultimately successful in preventing us from mobilizing in public spaces, then dissent will mutate from nonviolent mass protests to clandestine and perhaps violent acts of resistance. Some demonstrators have already been branded "domestic terrorists" under the law. The rear-guard effort by a handful of activists to protect our rights to be heard and peaceably assemble is perhaps the most crucial, though unseen, struggle we currently are engaged in with the corporate state. It is a struggle to salvage what is left of our civil society and our right to nonviolent resistance against corporate tyranny. This is why the New York City trial last week of members of Veterans for Peace, along with other activists, took on an importance that belied the simple trespassing charges against them.

The activists were arrested Oct. 7, 2012, while they were placing flowers in 11 vases and reading the names of the dead inscribed on the wall in New York's Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza after the official closing time, 10 p.m. The defiance of the plaza's official closing time - which appears to be enforced against political activists only - was spawned by a May 1, 2012, protest by Occupy Wall Street activists. The Occupy activists had attempted to hold a meeting in the plaza and been driven out by police. A number of Veterans for Peace activists, most of them veterans of the Vietnam War, formed a line in front of the advancing police that May night and refused to move. They were arrested.

Over the last 48 hours, there has been a sustained effort to smear Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old African-American who was shot dead by George Zimmerman a month ago. Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, said, "They killed my son, now they're trying to kill his reputation."

Thus far these attacks have fallen into two categories: false and irrelevant. Much of this leaked information seems intended to play into stereotypes about young African-American males. Here's what everyone should know:

1. Prominent conservative websites published fake photos of Martin. Twitchy, a new website run by prominent conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, promoted a photo - purportedly from Martin's Facebook page - that shows Martin in saggy pants and flipping the bird. The photo, which spread quickly on conservative websites and Twitter, is intended to paint Martin as a thug. As Twitchy later acknowledged, it is not a photo of Trayvon Martin. [Examiner]

2. The Sanford Police selectively leaked irrelevant, negative information about Martin. The authorities told the Orlando Sentinel this morning that Trayvon was suspended from school for ten days "after being found with an empty marijuana baggie." There is no evidence that Martin was under the influence of drugs at the time of his death, nor would prior possession of marijuana be a reason for killing him. It's unclear what the relevance of the leak was, other than to smear Martin. [Orlando Sentinel]

3. On Fox News, Geraldo said that Martin was dressed "like a wannabe gangster." Bill O'Reilly agreed with him. The sole evidence is that Martin was wearing a hoodie. Geraldo added that "everyone that ever stuck up a convenience store" was wearing a hoodie. [ThinkProgress; The Blaze]

4. Without any evidence, prominent right-wing bloggers suggested that Martin was a drug dealer. Right-wing blogger Dan Riehl advances the theory, also advanced in a widely linked peice on a site called Wagist. There does not appear to be any evidence to support this claim whatsoever. [Riehl World View]

5. Without any evidence, a right-wing columnist alleged that Martin assaulted a bus driver. Unlike Zimmerman, Trayvon has no documented history of violence. This allegation continues to be advanced by a blogger on the Examiner even after the real reason was leaked to the police and confirmed by the family. [Miami Herald; Examiner]

6. Zimmerman's friend says Martin was to blame because he was disrespectful to Zimmerman. Zimmerman's friend Joe Oliver said that Martin would not have been shot to death if Trayvon had just said "I'm staying with my parents." Of course, Zimmerman was not a police officer, and Trayvon had no duty to tell him who he was or where he was going. [NBC News]