It is one thing being rejected or ignored by your holiday romance. It is another thing entirely to fly out to see him in Amsterdam, after weeks of messaging, only to be stood up in the airport with nothing but a text saying the entire affair was a cruel joke and calling you a 'fat ugly pig.'

But this horrific scenario is exactly what 24-year-old Sophie Stevenson says happened to her after she met Dutchman Jesse Mateman, 21, on holiday in Barcelona. She claims the pair slept together, had a "proper romance" and then spoke regularly when she was back home in Stoke. A month later Mateman convinced her to fly out to visit him in Amsterdam for the weekend.

"We were talking up until I got on the plane," Stevenson told the Mail. "But when I arrived, he wasn't there to pick me up. I called him a bunch of times, and he didn't answer. I waited at the airport for two hours and I hadn't heard anything, I was really starting to panic about being abandoned."

Six hours later, she says he messaged her saying 'you were pigged, it was all a joke.'

The number of hate crimes reported to police in the 12 months to March 2017 increased by 29 percent, but there was a reduction in the number of cases leading to prosecutions.

The Brexit referendum and the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge occurred during this period, in which police recorded a total of 80,393 hate crimes.

The figures indicate that the number of hate crimes has continued to rise since then, in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena suicide bombing, the London Bridge and Borough Market van-and-knife rampage, and the Finsbury Park van attack.

The rise, however, contrasts with a notable reduction in the number of people being prosecuted for committing hate crimes.

The BBC has axed Crimewatch after more than three decades.

The programme - which reconstructs unsolved crimes in a bid to gather new information from the public - was relaunched in September 2016 with Jeremy Vine as host.

Daytime spin-off Crimewatch Roadshow will continue to be shown, the broadcaster said.

"We believe the successful Crimewatch Roadshow format in daytime is the best fit for the brand going forward and we will increase the number of episodes to make two series a year," a BBC spokesperson said.

"We are incredibly proud of Crimewatch and the great work it has done over the years and the work Crimewatch Roadshowwill continue to do, and this move will also allow us to create room for new innovative programmes in peak time on BBC One."

A total of 118 police officers died in the line of duty in 2016, reports the FBI. Of these, 52 were accidental deaths and 66 were felony homicides - 62 of which were as a result of gunshot wounds. Of those incidents 51 of the officers were wearing body armor at the time.

The number of US police officers feloniously killed on the job in 2016 is up 61 percent year-on-year, according to the FBI's annual Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) report released Monday. This is the second highest number of felony killings of police officers since 2011, when 72 officers died.

"Every law enforcement officer goes to work knowing that today might be his or her last," US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Monday.

"But last year, we saw a staggering 61 percent increase in the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty because of a felony, and on average, more than 150 officers were assaulted in the line of duty every single day. These numbers are as shocking as they are unacceptable."

We have to admit, we kind of missed not having Hillary to kick around anymore.

She provided some of our best content and headlines, like the one where a Russian priest who is an expert in demonology opined that she showed classic signs of possession, or our various investigations into her health, illegal activity, and election tampering. Those were the days...

So thanks Julian Assange for shoving her back into the limelight, and special thanks to Paul Joseph Watson for this excellent video which we thoroughly enjoyed, and highly recommend.

Jennifer Smith doesn't like the term "accident." It implies too much chance and too little culpability.

A "crash" killed her mother in 2008, she insists, when her car was broadsided by another vehicle while on her way to pick up cat food. The other driver, a 20-year-old college student, ran a red light while talking on his mobile phone, a distraction that he immediately admitted and cited as the catalyst of the fatal event.

"He was remorseful," Smith, now 43, said. "He never changed his story."

Yet in federal records, the death isn't attributed to distraction or mobile-phone use. It's just another line item on the grim annual toll taken by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration [NHTSA]-one of 37,262 that year. Three months later, Smith quit her job as a realtor and formed Stopdistractions.org, a nonprofit lobbying and support group. Her intent was to make the tragic loss of her mother an anomaly.

To that end, she has been wildly unsuccessful. Nine years later, the problem of death-by-distraction has gotten much worse.

The stubborn hero refused to leave his goats ... miraculously, they all survived the firestorm..

At 10:30 pm, Roland Tembo Hendel smelled the smoke from the Tubbs fire that would go on to devastate much of the city of Santa Rosa, California. Hendel surveyed the property by ATV but saw nothing. By 10:55 the sky had turned orange and he told his daughter to get ready to leave; 15 minutes later they saw the first of the flames across the valley.

They quickly gathered up the dogs and cat into the car, but Odin, their "stubborn and fearless" goat-guarding Great Pyrenees refused to leave his charges.

"Even under the best of circumstances it is nearly impossible to separate Odin from the goats after nightfall when he takes over the close watch from his sister Tessa. I made a decision to leave him, and I doubt I could have made him come with us if I tried. We got out with our lives and what was in our pockets," recounts Hendel in a Facebook post.

"Cars behind us on Mark West Springs Road were pouring flames out of the windows as they roared down the road. Later that morning when we had outrun the fires I cried, sure that I had sentenced Odie to death, along with our precious family of bottle-raised goats."

As soon as they could return, they sneaked past evacuation roadblocks to find a smoldering wasteland of forest, every structure was gone. But among the charred ruins, Odin and the goats appeared ... and a few baby deer that Odin had adopted during the ordeal as well.

"Eight goats came running to see us and get cuddles and kisses. Dixon has a burn on his back the size of a nickel. Other than that they are perfectly fine." says Hendel. "Odin's fur is burned and his whiskers melted. He is limping on his right leg. And he has adopted several baby deer who huddle around him for safety and water from their trough, which is miraculously intact and full of relatively clean water."

Here they are after the initial reunion:


In the ensuing days, Hendel has managed to sneak back into the evacuated area and get the goats out. They are all resting comfortably at a shelter barn, and Odin has been given a clean bill of health by the vet. The family set up a fundraising page, and has already raised enough to rebuild their pumphouse and filtration system, build a new barn, and repair the fence around the perimeter of the property.

As for the deer, they left them with a two-week supply of food and water. Hendel writes:

"With this in mind, we have decided that going forward, for every $1 we receive, 50 cents will go toward a replacement trailer for Odin's and Tessa's goats, and 50 cents will go to the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue Center, where we once took downed animals we found on our land. This will provide care for animals affected by this tragedy, that Odin could not care for himself. Once the trailer is covered, all remaining funds will go to SCWRC."

In a catastrophe that has seen so much devastation, stories like this bring some light to a steady stream of otherwise grim news. Maybe Odin and the goats were just lucky, maybe Odin used his herding prowess to save the goats and deer. But regardless, the image of those sweet goats and Odin's selfless wagging tail among the charred moonscape of the Hendel's property is salve for a rough week.

"Odin has lived up to his namesake," says Hendel. "Pray for him and his charges. He is our inspiration. If he can be so fearless in this maelstrom, surely so can we."

Follow Odin and the goats' progress on Hendel's Facebook page; donations for Odin, Tessa and their "family of misfit rescue goats" can be made here.

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Central bankers have never done more damage to the world economy than in the past 10 years. One may argue this is because they never had the power to do that. If their predecessors had had that power, who knows? Still, the global economy has never been more interconnected than it is today, due mostly to the advance of globalism, neoliberalism and perhaps even more, technology.

Ironically, all three of these factors are unremittingly praised as forces for good.

But living standards for many millions of people in the west have come down and/or are laden with uncertainty, while millions of Chinese now have higher living standards. People in the west have been told to see this as a positive development; after all, it allows them to buy products cheaper than if they had been made in domestic industries.

But along with their manufacturing jobs, their entire way of life has mostly disappeared as well. Or, rather, it is being hidden behind a veil of debt. Still, we can no longer credibly deny that some three-quarters of Americans have a hard time paying their bills, and that is very different from the 1950s and 60s. In western Europe, this is somewhat less pronounced, or perhaps it's just lagging, but with globalism and neoliberalism still the ruling economic religions, there's no going back.

An Atlanta mother accused of killing her two young sons put them in an oven and turned it on, according to an arrest warrant.

Authorities said that Lamora Williams called police Friday night, Oct. 13, and said her children were dead.

Authorities arrived and found the bodies of 1-year-old son Ja'Karter Penn and 2-year-old Ke-Yaunte Penn.

A third boy, 3-year-old Jameel Penn Jr., was also found. He was unharmed.

The father of all three children, Jameel Penn, says Williams called him to tell him that his children were dead.

The Honolulu City Council unanimously passed a bill making it illegal on Oahu to smoke in vehicles while children are inside.

The bill was approved Wednesday and Mayor Kirk Caldwell said he plans to sign it into law.

Those in opposition say the bill intrudes on people's private lives, while backers say those younger than 18 years old have no choice but to stay in a vehicle if an adult is smoking.