A gunman opened fire early Friday at a movie theater in a Denver suburb, killing 14 people and leaving at least 50 other injured, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said.

The shooting occurred during a showing of the latest Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises, police said.

The violence erupted about 12:30 a.m. MDT as the gunman stood at the front of one of the Century 16 theaters at the Aurora Mall.

"Witnesses tell us he released some sort of canister. They heard a hissing sound and some gas emerged and the gunman opened fire," Oates said at a news conference.

One suspect is in custody and there's no evidence of any additional shooters, Oates said.

Diana Reeves was furious when her state legislators caved into threats by Monsanto to sue the state of Connecticut if it passed a GMO labeling law. Lawmakers effectively told Connecticut's voters, who had clearly expressed overwhelming support for GMO labeling, "oh well."

Unlike her gutless state legislators who rolled over, Reeves is determined to keep the fight for transparency in GMO ingredients alive - and she's taking her fight national. She's started a group called GMO Free USA which plans to pressure food manufacturers into revealing which of their products contain GMOs. The ultimate goal is to organize national boycotts of those companies that refuse to switch to non-GMO ingredients.

GMO Free USA is Reeves' first foray into activism. The mother of three was on the fast track at a major accounting firm when her son was diagnosed with cancer. She walked away from her job to take care of him.

"I never looked back," she said. Her son died before he turned five.

"This is one of those things that act as a catalyst, that bring people together," Reeves said. "You learn to live with it, to try to make some good come of it, to find better ways to channel the grief."

Having lost one child to disease, and with two daughters who were also suffering from health problems, Reeves became increasingly interested in the relationship between food and health, About 4 or 5 years ago, she began reading about the potential hazards of GMO. "I started sending emails to my friends, telling them to 'say no to GMOs," she said. "I was probably driving them all crazy."

Then a few months ago, a friend introduced her to NonGMO Hartford, which eventually led to her involvement with the Connecticut Right to Know group which was pushing for a state labeling law. She began distributing information, and campaigning for HB 5117, which included a provision for mandatory GMO labeling.

The elderly are among the hardest hit by the U.S. housing crisis, with 600,000 Americans over the age of 50 facing foreclosure.

The American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) found that to date, more than 1.5 million Americans have already lost their homes - and the elderly are increasingly more likely to join them.

Those over the age of 80 are in the worst condition, with one out of every 30 facing foreclosure. Often having burnt through their savings, receiving an inadequate pension, and dealing with the loss of a deceased spouse's retirement benefits, the elderly struggle to make their mortgage payments.

"These are people who in many instances have never missed a payment in 20 years,"said Rep. Elijah Cummings."You see grown men crying because of the potential loss of a home."

Returning from work or vacation, homeowners across the U.S. are finding themselves locked out of their houses, with their homes broken into and many of their belongings stolen and destroyed.

The culprits? Bank contractors, hired to preserve abandoned properties. These contractors often ignore signs of occupation, including furniture, maintained gardens and turned on lights.

It is illegal for any bank representative to enter a property if they have not retaken it at a foreclosure sale - especially if there are signs of occupation. Yet contractors have been repeatedly ignoring these signs.

"For some reason when these contractors ride by residences and don't see anyone home, they just jump the gun and change the locks,"said Richard Fersch, a Pennsylvania sergeant in charge of foreclosures."They even lock pets inside."

A Kansas man found his parents' furniture missing. A Florida couple had a laptop, iPod and six bottles of wine stolen. In addition to a coin collection, a Pennsylvania couple was missing its pet cat.

The Pentagon will see massive cuts over the next decade to adjust the ever-expanding US deficit. A new study reveals, however, that the immediate impact of those adjustments could cost 2 million Americans their jobs in the next year alone.


The Aerospace Industries Association released the findings of a report on Tuesday that suggest that the automatic cuts in federal spending slated to kick in on January 2 have the potential of being far more damaging than imagined.

The author of the report, Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University and Chmura Economics and Analytics, suggests that while the Obama administration-endorsed sequestration goes about as scheduled, more than 2 million Americans will see their jobs eradicated in just 2013.

"If they are allowed to occur as currently scheduled, the long-term consequences will permanently alter the course of the U.S. economy's performance, changing its competitive position in the global economy," the report warns.

Spanish police fired rubber bullets and charged protestors in central Madrid early Friday at the end of a huge demonstration against economic crisis measures.

Thick smoke hung in the air from plastic bins set alight by protestors chased by police, who hit them with batons when some tried to reach the heavily-guarded parliament at the end of a mostly peaceful march.

AFP reporters at the scene said dozens of protestors lingered, some throwing bottles at police, near the Puerta del Sol, the big square at the heart of the city where a march of hundreds of thousands wound up late Thursday.

A police official told AFP that officers arrested seven people and six people were injured.

Earlier, workers protesting against crisis pay cuts and tax hikes filled the streets of several Spanish cities, yelling and whistling in anger as they branded the government's latest crisis measures "robbery".

International banking giant HSBC may have financed terrorist groups and funneled Mexican drug money into the US economy through its lax policies, a damning Senate report reveals. The bank's bosses have apologized for the misconduct.

David Bagley, HSBC's Head of Group Compliance, admitted during a Senate subcommittee hearing that the company had made a number of lapses, adding that he planned to resign.

"I recognize that there have been some significant areas of failure," Bagley told the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. "I have said before and I will say again: despite the best efforts and intentions of many dedicated professionals, HSBC has fallen short of our own expectations and the expectations of our regulators."

Irene Dorner, CEO and President of the bank's American operation (HBUS), told the panel that HSBC deeply regrets the lapses in oversight, apologizing for the company's mistakes.

Mark Rober, an engineer at NASA with apparently a lot of spare time on his hands, designed an experiment in which he placed rubber animals on the side of the road to see how many cars go out of their way to run over them - and the results are not reassuring.

Rober found that about 6 per cent of the 1,000 drivers he observed would swerve out of their lane just so they could squish an animal, albeit a rubber one, with their vehicle.
The young engineer, decked out in a white lab coat, alternately placed a rubber spider, a tarantula, a turtle and a snake - with a leaf as a control object - on the shoulder of a road.

In an entertaining YouTube video below, presenting his findings in the form of charts drawn with colorful crayons, Rober points out that 94 per cent of the motorists stayed their course and ignored the animal in the road.

The remaining six per cent, however, deliberately ran over the critters, although they were placed outside their driving path and presented no danger to them even if they were real.
'One thing that might explain the higher numbers here - in case people question my methods - is that I used a tarantula,' Rober points out in the video below.

A new book examining the dark side of keeping killer whales in captivity has slammed SeaWorld for its treatment of the enormous beasts and for massive safety failings which still haunt the world famous marine parks.

Claiming that the 12,000 pound animals are self harming and that staff are inadequately prepared for another killer whale attack incident, Death at SeaWorld has been published two-and-a-half years after the death of trainer Dawn Brancheau in Orlando.
Brutally butchered in February 2010 by a killer whale named Tilikum, the book states that such an event was inevitable and that these kinds of tragic occurrences will continue if the animals continue to be treated in the same way.

Written by New York City reporter David Kirby, Death at SeaWorld claims that killer whales kept in captivity suffer immense emotional and psychological trauma and spoke to former trainers and campaigning animal rights advocates to present his damning case.

Staff interviewed by Kirby told him of killer whales destroying their teeth on metal gates and then subsequently having those teeth removed by staff wielding power drills.

In addition, he claims that calves are separated from their mothers causing both parent and child massive distress and in one instance almost leading to a fatality as an irate mother took out her anger on a trainer at SeaWorld's San Diego headquarters.
Furthermore, Kirby claims that staff are instructed to get Tilikum to come out of the water and roll and then masturbate him with a gloved hand, collecting the semen for the park's artificial insemination program.

Oakland, California - Bay Area drivers could one day be tracked using a GPS-like device in their cars and taxed per miles driven - a scenario which is part of a proposed long-range study aimed at finding ways to reduce traffic and pollution, while also raising revenues.

Members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments are scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether or not to authorize a study of the proposal. Under the plan, drivers would have to install trackers in their vehicle and officials would tax drivers for every mile they travel.

Randy Rentschler with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission said this is a 20-year look at what may be best for transit funding and as always, there is going to be a concern from consumers about government tracking.