High school teacher commits suicide; students find her body in classroom

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Students at a California high school reportedly found their teacher hanging from the classroom ceiling on Monday morning in what was described as a suicide.

According to , the 31-year-old woman was discovered in an El Dorado High School classroom by students and faculty at around 8:30 a.m.

Police said the door had been locked when class was scheduled to begin on Monday, so students asked another teacher to unlock the door. Reports said that the teacher was still alive when she was found, and that the students attempted to take her down.

"When police and fire arrived, the teacher was in cardiac arrest," police Lt. Eric Pointe said. "After several minutes, she was declared deceased at the scene."

Students identified the teacher as a photography instructor on social media. However, Raw Story has declined to name the victim until her family is notified.

School officials assembled all of the students in the gymnasium, where they were told that the teacher had taken her own life. Crisis counselors were being deployed to assist teachers and staff. Most classes were expected to go on as scheduled, but officials said that students would be allowed to go home early.

"If you take into account how everyone reacted by crying and being upset you'll see how everyone was completely surprised that it was her," 16-year-old student Leo Amaya told . "She gave no signs of being depressed or sad."

Students said that the teacher said that her father had also taken his own life, and that she often spoke out against suicide.

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Germany: former politician confesses to child porn charges

Former German politician Sebastian Edathy has confessed in court to using his official work laptop to download pornographic videos and images of children from the Internet. He was fined 5,000 euros.

Following Edathy's admission, the Verden District Court in the German state of Lower Saxony on Monday handed the former Social Democrats (SPD) deputy a fine of 5,000 euros ($5,600), bringing the trial to an end.

In order to avoid conviction, chief prosecutor Thomas Klinge had demanded a credible confession of guilt.

"Edathy regrets what happened," his attorney Christian Noll said in a statement on Monday.

The 45-year-old was on trial for downloading child pornography to his work laptop and possessing a book, as well as a CD, which contained images considered "harmful to youths."

Investigators became aware of his activities after his name had appeared on the client list of a Canadian company which was alleged to have distributed child pornography.

Edathy previously denied accusations of being a pedophile and contended that the pictures and videos in his possession were art and not pornography.

The case has resulted in an amendment to Germany's pornography laws, under which it is now a crime to take nude photographs of minors in order to sell or exchange them. The statute of limitations on sex crimes has also been extended.

Edathy rose to prominence in Germany when he headed a parliamentary committee looking into why police and intelligence services failed to stop a neo-Nazi murder spree.

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Dozens of disoriented birds fall out of the sky in Spring Hill, Tennessee

Dead birds

Dozens of birds drop dead out of the sky in Maury County at the same time. A local pizza delivery driver says he has something to do with the fifty or so birds that turned up dead off North Field Lane Saturday. Russell Thomas contacted FOX17 after our story first aired.

Thomas says the birds were flying low and swooped in and bombed his brand new white KIA. He said there is minor damage to his car. Police turned the case over to the TWRA.

Police and wildlife officials are on scene are working to get answers as to how and why this happened.

They are monitoring the area, bagging birds and taking samples for testing.

One witness says the birds were split open from the fall.

Officials on scene say they have never seen anything like this. It is unknown what type of birds these are, but they all seem to be the same kind.

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Outrageous! Court document state Tamir Rice's death was due to his 'failing to avoid injury'

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According to court documents obtained by BuzzFeed's Stephanie McNeal, the city of Cleveland, Ohio is claiming that 12-year-old Tamir Rice's death — as well as the pain and suffering caused to his family by it — was his own fault.

Tamir Rice was shot and killed while playing with a replica gun in a park last November. Rice had been playing with the replica in the park when rookie Officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner pulled up in a police cruiser and, within two seconds, shot him dead.

The incident was captured on video, but neither Officer Loehmann nor his partner knew that when they gave investigators their initial statements, in which they claimed that Rice was with a group of young boys and was waving the gun around with the intention of shooting someone.

The investigation was transferred from the Cleveland Police Department to the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department after Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said it required "an extra layer of separation and impartiality."

Rice's family filed a lawsuit against the city in December, and then another in January after hiring a new set of lawyers.

The city responded to the second lawsuit by claiming that the 12-year-old's death was his own fault, writing that "Plaintiffs' decedent's injuries, losses, and damages complained of, were directly and proximately caused by the failure of Plaintiffs' decedent to exercise due care to avoid injury."

The suffering of Rice's family is, likewise, Rice's fault, as the city claims that "Plaintiffs' injuries, losses, and damages complained of, were directly and proximately caused by their own acts, not this Defendant."

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Google's 'Knowledge Vault' to rank websites based on truthfulness

Search Engine giant Google, the major driver of traffic to the majority of media portals is moving to change the way it ranks websites, declaring that it intends to use known partisan debunking outlets to determine the "truthfulness" of content.

Currently, Google rankings are determined by the number of incoming links to a web page, meaning that if a story becomes popular it can be driven to the top of search results, and by viewed by millions of people.

However, this is a little too democratic for the liking of some, who only like to get their "facts" from pre-approved sources.

The proposed solution, according to a Google funded research team is to compute a "Knowledge-Based Trust score" for every web page, based on Google's own "Knowledge Vault", an automated database that determines "facts the web unanimously agrees on," according to the New Scientist.

"A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy," says the research team.

In short, any web pages that provide information that contradicts or questions Google's own established "truth", will be bumped down the rankings.

In addition, some of those working on "truthfulness" ranking technology have expressed a desire to verify or rebut web pages by cross-referencing them to other sources, such as Snopes, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. These websites exist and profit directly from debunking anything and everything. What's more, they have been previously exposed as highly partisan.

It is a move that will set alarm bells ringing for fans of alternative media websites, such as , which are regularly attacked by the professional debunking websites merely for questioning official narratives, and popularising underreported information.

Presumably, the meters of truthfulness and trustworthiness ultimately implemented by Google will stem from government accounts and it's mouthpiece mainstream media reports. The rise of the alternative media has directly correlated with the routine exposure of misinformation, propaganda, and outright lies emanating from these institutions.

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Homan Square cops alleged to have used heroin to make suspect 'talk'

© Alex Freeman

Indeed, for some there is “no outlet” from Homan Square.

One of the more troubling aspects of the Homan Square interrogation facility is the death of John Hubbard who is said to have died of an accidental heroin overdose while in police custody after buying drugs from an undercover officer.

Prior to the other revelations about Homan Square, it would have just been assumed that the cops were incompetent and let the suspect shoot up the evidence. Then it would have been assumed that they were lazy when parts of the file missing. After the explosive revelations about the facility, the public has to wonder how a suspect was capable of shooting up while inside of a police facility. It is highly unlikely that a suspect on the verge of overdose would be out attempting to purchase narcotics. The only likely scenario is that he injected, or someone else injected him with, the narcotics inside the police facility.

In light of the situation, The Fifth Column began reaching out to other victims of Homan Square. One of those was Jose Gonzales. During our interview he relayed his story:

That's when they told the handcuffed and shackled Jose that they were going to inject him with heroin to make him talk.

The story was confirmed by documentation involving the misdemeanor and by witnesses to his abduction and return. What was said inside the interrogation room can only be confirmed by the cops. I have to admit that in light of Chicago Police Department's implausible explanations related to the heroin overdose that happened while in custody, I didn't even call the department for comment. Eventually journalists reach a point where they are tired of being openly lied to by government officials.

The Fifth Column is currently interviewing scores of people that were detained in Homan Square, and those stories will be released at a later time. It became a priority to make this story public immediately once a Fifth Column journalist in Chicago was able to confirm that officers at Homan Square do, in fact, have access to heroin via the Homan Square evidence locker that stores narcotics seized in the city.

So the reader has to think critically. In the case of John Hubbard, who died of a heroin overdose in the facility, is it likely that police allowed him to shoot up the only evidence of his crime? Or is it more likely that Hubbard was uncooperative and they injected him with heroin in an effort to make him more relaxed and receptive to interrogation?

Either way, Hubbard died in a facility that routinely denies people basic constitutional protections. The Chicago Police Department has a duty to its citizens to close the facility and to arrest all of the officers that violated the rights of suspects. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a duty to conduct a probe of the facility in relation to the use of Heroin as a method of enhanced interrogation.

The denials by the Chicago Police Department reek of a government organization that is waiting for the scandal to blow over. The Fifth Column now has access to enough former detainees to run one story a week until sometime in late 2016. We will not allow this story to blow over. The legal process in the United States is designed to be transparent. Any attempt at subverting the rule of law and the basic rights of people in the city will be met with a constant barrage of media attention. This facility must be closed and those behind the abuses must go to prison.

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Hundreds of hibernating snakes disturbed by construction workers in Delta, British Columbia

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Garter snakes

Close to 500 garter snakes are getting settled in a new winter home, after their hibernation den was disturbed by construction in Delta, B.C.

Residents alerted crews reinforcing the dike near Beach Grove this week that there was a ball of sleeping snakes under some rocks, reported

Biologists were called in to rescue the serpents, who were then brought to the Wildlife Rescue Association of B.C. (WRA), said the group's Facebook page.

The snakes are cozy in groups of 20 in plastic tubs with damp wood shavings and a dish of distilled water, said the WRA. During hibernation, known as brumation, snakes drop their body temperature so they don't have to use much energy.

"We don't have to feed them ... they just need to be kept cool and they should be happy in the tubs," WRA spokeswoman Yolanda Brooks told the

The serpents will be released back into their habitat around April.

The rescue centre only sees one or two snakes every year, but Janelle VanderBeek of the WRA told CBC: "They are actually really cute for snakes.

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