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Seized drugs stolen from Fribourg police building

“Red-faced police in the canton of Fribourg are admitting that 34 kilograms of hashish and marijuana seized by officers from drug offenders has been stolen from a warehouse. Police had stored 28.6 kilograms of hash and 4.8 kilograms of pot, seized from three different investigations, in a building in Châtillon, near the city of Fribourg. The drugs were likely stolen in late November or early December last year but the theft was only recently noticed, according to media reports. Cantonal police said they discovered that a metal bar on one of the windows at the rear of the warehouse had been sawn off on December 5th.” Continue reading →

Tea Partier Rand Paul Shows Up Obama on Drug Policy

“Despite President Obama’s youthful flirtation with drugs, the Obama administration has repeatedly refused to acknowledge America’s turning tide in the so-called war on drugs. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that a majority of Americans now support legalizing marijuana use. This has become a more mainstream position in recent years as states began to decriminalize the drug, despite federal statute, and as more members of the medical community have affirmed the drug’s medicinal benefits, particularly for those battling chronic or terminal ailments.” Continue reading →

Afghan villagers flee their homes as US drones terrorize them

“Barely able to walk even with a cane, Ghulam Rasool says he padlocked his front door, handed over the keys and his three cows to a neighbor and fled his mountain home in the middle of the night to escape relentless airstrikes from U.S. drones targeting militants in this remote corner of Afghanistan. Rasool and other Afghan villagers have their own name for Predator drones. They call them benghai, which in the Pashto language means the ‘buzzing of flies.’ When they explain the noise, they scrunch their faces and try to make a sound that resembles an army of flies.” Continue reading →

ACLU: Email reveals feds misled judges to abuse wiretapping powers

“Federal law enforcement agents misled judges for years on what type of wiretaps they were carrying out when they requested permission for so-called ‘pen register’ searches, an email obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reveals. Instead of collecting data on incoming and outgoing callers (among other general information), the ACLU said that agents commonly used a vehicle-mounted technology called the ‘stingray’ that intercepts all nearby communications in order to pinpoint the location of a particular signal. The ACLU argues that these devices in effect resulted in a de facto wiretap, when that was not yet authorized.” Continue reading →

US Army vet charged with fighting alongside al-Qaida against Syrian government

“A U.S. Army veteran, who boasted on Facebook of his military adventures with Syrian rebels, was charged Thursday with firing rocket propelled grenades as part of an attack led by an al-Qaida group against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to an FBI affidavit, Harroun, who served three years in the Army before being medically discharged, was engaged in military action in Syria, siding with rebel forces against the Syrian government, from January to March of this year. Harroun is not charged with providing material support to a terrorist group, but instead conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the U.S.” Continue reading →

U.S. flies nuclear-capable stealth bombers over South Korea

“The United States said two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers flew ‘deterrence’ missions over South Korea on Thursday. The deployment of the stealth bombers was clearly meant to deliver a potent message to Pyongyang about the US commitment to defending South Korea against any aggression as military tensions on the Korean peninsula soar. It came shortly after the North severed its last-remaining military hotline with South Korea. US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told his South Korean counterpart that Seoul could rely on all the military protection the United States has to offer — nuclear, conventional and missile defence.” Continue reading →

Creator of drone casualties visualization hopes data will ‘shock’ people

“Wesley Grubbs of Pitch Interactive told HuffPost Live on Tuesday that he created an interactive graph of the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan to highlight civilian causalities. ‘We want to shock people,’ he explained. ‘What we tried to do though with this was not just shock people with the number of casualties, but to shock people with the amount of information that we really don’t know.’ The data visualization illustrates the number of casualties from drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and 2013, categorizing the victims as either children, civilians, alleged combatants, or high-profile targets.” Continue reading →

Police restrain crowd from taking food to be thrown away after supermarket eviction

“Law enforcement officials pushed back hundreds of people who were crowding around a large pile of merchandise outside an Augusta grocery store Tuesday afternoon. But the goods sitting in the parking lot of the Laney Supermarket didn’t make into anyone’s hands. Instead, the food people hoped to take home was tossed into the trash. SunTrust Bank in Atlanta owns the property and they’re sending the merchandise to the landfill after evicting the Chois, the owners of the grocery store.” Continue reading →