An alleged new-age cult, run by a former bankrupt who claims to be Leonardo da Vinci reincarnated, is expanding its multimillion-dollar enterprise with the help of Brisbane's medical mainstream.

Universal Medicine, whose practitioners offer controversial treatments to ward off cancer including "esoteric breast massage", is drawing a growing number of clients to its Brisbane clinic via referrals from eye and lung surgeons, rheumatologists and GPs.

UniMed Brisbane is based in a historic $1.75 million, 10-room former Fairfield homestead from the 1860s, now co-owned by Universal Medicine founder Serge Benhayon.

The one-time tennis coach founded the group, which has 2000 mainly female followers, after emerging from bankruptcy over an unpaid lease on a Sydney tennis centre in 1998.

He now boasts interests in property worth $7.4 million and an enterprise that turns over at least $2 million a year, extending from its NSW base in Goonellabah to north Queensland and Europe.

Mr Benhayon's supporters include Kenmore dentist Rachel Hall, whose "holistic" clinic, dotted with da Vinci illustrations, attracts Universal Medicine followers from as far as the UK and Germany. Universal Medicine, which teaches followers to avoid the "negative energy" in everything from cheese and alcohol to sleeping late, sells merchandise from books to pillow cases, holds concerts, Vietnam retreats and "relationship workshops" that gross up to $36,000 a session.

But the group has come under fire from family members of devotees, who say Mr Benhayon holds a Svengali-like sway over members' patterns of diet, sleeping, exercise, the music they listen to and sexual behaviour.

They claim Universal Medicine has led to the breakdown of at least 42 relationships.

A prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial said this week that he believes defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. tampered with the famous "bloody glove" that was a key piece of evidence in the football star's acquittal.

During the celebrated murder trial, Simpson tried on bloody gloves and held up his hands in front of the jury box to let everyone see the leather bunched up around his broad palms. That demonstration became a powerful symbol for the defense, summed up by Cochran: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

Several jurors cited the too-tight gloves as a key reason for voting to acquit Simpson. But this week, Christopher Darden, one of the prosecutors on the case, told Reuters news service and a law school audience that he believes Cochran manipulated the glove.

According to the news service:

On Thursday, during a panel discussion about the trial at Pace Law School in New York City, Darden, a member of the prosecution team, declared: "I think Johnnie tore the lining. There were some additional tears in the lining so that O.J.'s fingers couldn't go all the way up into the glove."

Darden said in a follow-up interview on Friday that he noticed that when Simpson was trying on a glove for the jury its structure appeared to have changed. "A bailiff told me the defense had it during the lunch hour." He said he wasn't specifically accusing anyone, adding: "It's been my suspicion for a long time that the lining has been manipulated."

The glove incident was seen as the pivotal moment in the 1995 trial.

In a new book Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco explore the poorest pockets of the United States. In West Virginia they found communities ravaged by drugs.

During the two years Joe Sacco and I reported from the poorest pockets of the United States, areas that have been sacrificed before the altar of unfettered and unregulated capitalism, we found not only decayed and impoverished communities but shattered lives. There comes a moment when the pain and despair of constantly running into a huge wall, of realizing that there is no way out of poverty, crush human beings. Those who best managed to resist and bring some order to their lives almost always turned to religion and in that faith many found the power to resist and even rebel.

City says it uncovered new evidence of misdeeds during last spring's standardized tests. Students texted one another answers during tests.

As part of Stuyvesant High School's continuing crackdown after a high-profile cheating scandal, 66 students are now facing suspension, the city announced Friday.

Over the summer, the city uncovered new evidence of misdeeds during last spring's standardized tests, officials said.

The massive cheating ring saw students texting one another answers during Regents exams, the Daily News first reported in June.

In July, just six students at the elite school were facing the most severe punishment. The bulk of the students who'd received text messages were stripped of their leadership positions and the privilege of leaving campus during lunch.

Stuyvesant's new principal, Jie Zhang - who took over after longtime principal Stanley Teitel's resignation this summer - announced she's working with students on the possibility of creating an honor code.

Kent, Washington - The Federal Aviation Administration confirms that a piece of metal that fell to the ground in a Kent, Wash., neighborhood was part of a Boeing 767's landing gear door.

Witnesses say the refrigerator-size panel hit the ground and skipped about 30 feet before stopping in a street Friday morning. No one in the neighborhood about 15 miles south of Seattle was hurt.

Neighbors say a cargo jet flew low over the area at about the same time the part came down.

Photos on news station KOMO's website show part of an identification plate on the object that has the word "aircraft" along with a serial number.

FAA officials aren't saying if they've located the plane that the part came from.

Source: KOMO TV and The Associated Press

The LAPD has adopted a new official policy that considers photography a suspicious activity and urges policy to report photographers as potential terrorists.

The next time a tourist snaps a picture of the famous Hollywood sign, their photo won't be the only item added to the annals. The LAPD considers photography a suspicious activity, and trying to take certain shots may add a page to your personal file.

A memo released last month by Police Chief Charlie Bucks re-categorizes certain behaviors - including photo shoots in public spots - to constitute suspicious activity, which is enough to have cops file a report, open an investigation and forward any further information about a suspect to the federal authorities - all over just an itchy shutter finger.

In an interdepartmental statement dispatched on August 16, Beck writes, "Taking pictures or videos of facilities/buildings, infrastructures or protected sites in a manner that would arouse suspicion in a reasonable person" is enough of a red flag to have authorities file a suspicious activity report, or SAR. According to departmental policies, those SAR files are then sent into a Consolidated Crime and Analysis Database (CCAD), where they are occasionally added to a Crime Analysis Mapping System (CAMS) for further investigation. From there, intelligence can be stored in a Information Sharing Environment (ISE) Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Shared Space and accessed at fusion centers across the country, such as the LA area's Joint Regional Intelligence Center, where other intel is interpreted, dissected and divulged by agencies like the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security.

A devastating global food crisis unlike anything we have ever seen in modern times is coming. Crippling drought and bizarre weather patterns have damaged food production all over the world this summer, and the UN and the World Bank have both issued ominous warnings about the food inflation that is coming.

To those of us in the Western world, a rise in the price of food can be a major inconvenience, but in the developing world it can mean the difference between life and death. Just remember what happened back in 2008. When food prices hit record highs it led to food riots in 28 different countries. Today, there are approximately 2 billion people that are malnourished around the globe. Even rumors of food shortages are enough to spark mass chaos in many areas of the planet. When people fear that they are not going to be able to feed their families they tend to get very desperate. That is why a recent CNN article declared that "2013 will be a year of serious global crisis".

The truth is that we are not just facing rumors of a global food crisis - one is actually starting to unfold right in front of our eyes. The United States experienced the worst drought in more than 50 years this summer, and some experts are already declaring that the weather has been so dry for so long that tremendous damage has already been done to next year's crops. On the other side of the world, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have all seen their wheat crops devastated by the horrible drought this summer. Australia has also been dealing with drought, and in India monsoon rains were about 15 percent behind pace in mid-August. Global food production is going to be much less than expected this year, and global food demand continues to steadily rise. What that means is that food inflation, food shortages and food riots are coming, and it isn't going to be pretty.

The United States exports more food than anyone else in the world, and that is why the entire globe has been nervously watching the horrific drought in the United States this summer with deep concern.

It has been the worst drought in more than 50 years, and it has absolutely devastated corn crops all over the nation. According to Bill Witherell, the U.S. corn crop this year "is said to be on a par with that of 1988 crop, the worst in the past thirty years."

Last summer, a drunk Arizona police officer named Robb Gary Evans drove himself to a bar, flashed his badge to avoid paying cover at the door, and then walked up behind a woman, put his hand up her skirt, and ran his fingers over her genitals. A jury convicted him of sexual abuse, a felony with a maximum sentence of 2 and a half years in prison, and Evans was fired from the police force after an internal investigation.

Nevertheless, Arizona trial Judge Jacqueline Hatch, who was appointed to the bench by Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), decided that Evans' actions did not warrant jail time - sentencing him probation and 100 hours of community service. Evans also will not have to register as a sex offender. Yet, while Judge Hatch apparently did not view the disgraced former cop's actions as particularly serious, she had some very harsh words for the woman he assaulted:

The NYPD was responding to the armed robbery when a cop and the fleeing shop worker fatally collided, police said. The loot: $700 in cash, scratch-off lottery tickets and Newport cigarettes. 'He didn't have his hands up and they shot him,' the victim's cousin said. 'They didn't say nothing. They just shot him. He was just trying to run away because he was scared.'

An unarmed bodega worker fleeing a botched armed robbery at his uncle's Bronx store was "accidentally" shot and killed by a cop answering a 911 call early Friday, police said.

Reynaldo Cuevas, 20, was mortally wounded when the officer's gun went off after the bodega worker plowed into the cop as he rushed out of the robbery scene at full speed, said NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Cuevas, 20, was shot once shortly after three masked gunmen burst into the Nathalie Deli & Grocery in Morrisania as the bodega was shutting down at 1:50 a.m., according to witnesses and the victim's relatives.

A security video captured Cuevas crashing full-tilt into the officer, who was outside the deli with his weapon in his hand.

"Mr. Cuevas ... ran full-speed into the officer," Kelly said. "The two became entangled, at which point, we believe, the officer accidentally discharged his weapon."

The artist who created the HOPE poster that came to symbolize Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign was ordered to do 300 hours of community service Friday for a criminal contempt conviction but was spared jail time.

Shepard Fairey, 42, of Los Angeles nodded his head several times and said "OK" as U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas told him he must commit no crimes during two years of probation and must pay a $25,000 fine to the U.S. government.

During remarks before the sentence was announced, Fairey called his decision to fabricate evidence in a civil lawsuit he brought against The Associated Press in 2009 the "worst thing I've done in my life." He also apologized.

"I am deeply ashamed and remorseful that I didn't live up to my own standards of honesty and integrity," he said. After the sentencing, Fairey hugged his lawyers, was kissed by his wife, and shook hands with more than a dozen friends who packed into the small Manhattan courtroom.

Maas said the sentence needed to send a message to others who might destroy or fabricate evidence in a civil case that the consequences of covering up what they did is far worse than telling the truth.

But he said Fairey's considerable charity work over a long period of time mitigated the need for prison on a misdemeanor charge that carried a maximum potential sentence of six months.