Kimberly McCarthy

Despite pleas from thousands of protesters, prison officials administered a single dose of pentobarbital and pronounced McCarthy dead at 6:37 pm local time Wednesday. McCarthy, a 52-year-old African-American, had been convicted for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of Dorothy Booth, her 71-year-old white neighbor.

McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who became addicted to crack cocaine, reportedly cut off Booth’s finger in an attempt to steal the retired college professor’s wedding ring. She blamed the crime on drug dealers but was also linked by DNA to the murders of two other senior citizens.

She was first woman to be put to death in the US since 2010 and only the fifth in Texas since 1854. Texas has carried out nearly 40 per cent of America's executions, with more than 1,300 since the Supreme Court resurrected the dormant law in 1976. Governor Rick Perry alone has overseen more than 250 executions during his time in office, according to human rights-focused journalist Rhania Khalek, the most of any governor in history.

“I just wanted to say thanks to all who have supported me over the years,” McCarthy wrote in her last statement. “Thank you everybody, this is not a loss, this is a win. You know where I am going.”

Her final meal was pepper steak, mashed potatoes with gravy along with mixed vegetables and cake.

She became the eighth person to be put to death in Texas in 2013 alone, although after Wednesday 282 more inmates will remain on Texas’ death row. Seven Texan men are scheduled to die in the coming months, according to the Associated Press. McCarthy, the Death Penalty Information Center noted, is the 17th person in America to be put to death in the first six months of 2013.

McCarthy was granted a retrial in 2002 after proving that the original prosecution intentionally excluded African-American jurors. She was again convicted and returned to death row. She was granted a stay of execution in January and then April of this year.

Other states have altogether stopped administering lethal injections. Oregon has not executed a single person since 1997, and California, despite having the nation’s largest death row population at 727, has not carried out an execution since 2006.

Sixty-one per cent of all Americans responded in the affirmative when asked in a 2013 Gallup poll if they support capital punishment. A 2012 Texas Tribune poll indicated that a mere 21 per cent of Texans were opposed to the death penalty, evidence of which came during Governor Perry’s 2011 run for the presidency, when he was roundly applauded for overseeing so many executions.

“I’ve never struggled [to sleep at night] at all,” he said. “In the state of Texas when you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you are involved in another crime that killed one of our citizens – you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas.”

The nationwide decline in executions is, at least in part, attributable to unearthed evidence that has exonerated wrongfully convicted Americans across the country. Earlier this year the National Registry of Exonerations revealed that Texas – and Dallas County, in particular, where McCarthy was convicted – is the national leader in exonerations.

A probe, ordered after that study and published April 2013, revealed that at least 117 people in Texas were imprisoned over the last 25 years for crimes they did not commit.

“Texas has been showcased as the number on state in the nation for wrongful convictions,” state Rep. Ruth McClendon told the Houston Chronicle. “Each conviction of an innocent person reveals a tragic failure of the justice system.”

The city of West, Texas, has filed a lawsuit against the owner of the fertilizer plant that exploded in April, as well as the chemical company that supplied two 100-ton shipments of ammonium nitrate in the weeks before the deadly blast.

The city has filed a suit against Adair Grain Inc. and ammonium nitrate supplier CF Industries, claiming that the chemical shipments were improperly stored and caused the explosion that killed 15 people and destroyed more than 150 homes. A high school, middle school, apartment complex and a nursing home were also destroyed in the April 17 blast.

The lawsuit claims that 30 tons from the first 100-ton shipment of ammonium nitrate had not yet been sold and were being dangerously stored in the plant at the time of the explosion. The city has accused the supplier of failing to properly inspect the fertilizer mixing facility to determine whether hazard mitigation was necessary or to provide recommendations for safe storage. Even though the Illinois-based CF industries knew that the plant was located within a community of homes, parks, and schools, it chose to blindly sell hundreds of tons of the hazardous material to the facility, the suit states.

“The explosion happened when a substantial portion of the thirty tons of ammonium nitrate stockpiled in the fertilizer mixing building was heated to the point of detonation,” the complaint states. “This explosion occurred at approximately 7:50 p.m., some twenty minutes after a fire had been detected in the same building at the fertilizer facility.”

The lawsuit also accused CF Industries of providing outdated safety information to West Fertilizer, and failing to provide a material safety data sheet for either of the two shipments.

After investigating the blast for a month, Texas fire marshals said they could not determine a cause. Investigators have launched a criminal probe, but no one has yet been charged.

The city of West is seeking $17 million in damages for negligence and product liability. The city says it needs the money to fix its streets, water and sewer lines that were destroyed by the explosion. The deadly blast resulted in an estimated $57 million in damages, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has refused to provide funds to help rebuild the devastated town.

But Scott Deatherage, a Dallas attorney specializing in environmental law, told CBS News that this would most likely be a difficult case for the city to win, since the chemical in question is used extensively throughout the US. Ammonium nitrate can be found in products ranging from fertilizer to instant cold packs used as first aid on injuries.

“Consider ammonium nitrate is a very common material sold all over the country, all over Texas, and it’s used everyday,” he said. “So to argue that particular product is somewhat defective is extremely difficult. It’d be like saying gasoline is defective because it exploded somewhere.”

CF Industries provided a statement to WPTV, claiming that there is “no basis for this suit”, but that it was “sympathetic to those whose lives were affected by this unfortunate incident.”

“The CF Industries’ companies will seek dismissal of this lawsuit and otherwise defend the company vigorously in court,” it said in a statement to CBS.

A controversial voter identification law in Texas is expected to go into effect immediately, according to the state attorney general, in the wake of a Tuesday ruling handed down by the United States Supreme Court.

Only moments after the high court invalidated part of the Voters Rights Act of 1965 on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said his state will begin “immediately” honoring local legislation that many say limits the ability for minorities to cast ballots.

Until this week’s SCOTUS ruling, states such as Texas have required federal preclearance to make changes to voting rules. With the invalidating of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 4, however, Texas and other locales are now in the free to enact their own rules for voters without awaiting permission from Washington.

“The section determined which states must receive clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones, like redrawing electoral districts,” Adam Liptak wrote for the New York Times.

In a 5-4 decision this week, however, the court canned that section of the Voters Right Act, prompting Abbott to say his state will at once begin mandating photo ID cards inside of polling places.

"With today's decision, the state's voter ID law will take effect immediately,” Abbott said Tuesday. “Photo identification will now be required when voting in elections in Texas."

“Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government,” Abbott added.

Gov. Rick Perry, who unsuccessfully vied for the GOP’s nod as presidential nominee last year, called the ruling “a clear victory for federalism and the states.”

“Texas may now implement the will of the people without being subject to outdated and unnecessary oversight and the overreach of federal power,” Perry said, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Opponents of the Texas law feared that giving the state the ability to enact its own voter ID program would disenfranchise poor minority voters who would be unable to produce the documentation necessary to obtain a state sanctioned identification card. Last year a federal court said the state law imposed “strict, unforgiving burdens" on many Texas residents, but Tuesday’s ruling out of Washington will let Gov. Perry and his administration soon enforcing the ID program.

"The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation's most important and effective civil rights laws,” Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law chief counsel Jon Greenbaum told The Guardian. “Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades.”

"Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation,” he said.

President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, called the SCOTUS ruling “deeply disappointing.”

Abbott plans to make the ID program mandatory as soon as possible, but Susan Frederick, a legal expert with the National Conference for State Legislatures, told the Houston Chronicle that the attorney general may have jumped the gun.

“For any state to be able to move forward with legislative that is previously adjudicated or dealt with in state court, [officials] certainly have to go back and make sure it didn’t fly afoul of the state constitution or any other currently valid federal law,” she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington (Reuters)

 The United States Supreme Court made two landmark rulings early Wednesday with regard to a pair of controversial laws limiting rights for same-sex couples.

In a 5-4-decision issued Wednesday morning, the high court ruled that that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, overturning a nationwide legislation that limited benefits for same-sex couples.

Moments later, the court dismissed an appeal regarding Proposition 8, a decision that will once again legalize same-sex marriage in the state of California.

Both decisions out of Washington are already being hailed as important steps in ensuring equality for same-sex couples across the United States.

With regard to the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, the court ruled on Wednesday that the federal government must recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. Gay couples will receive access to numerous federal benefits such as tax breaks and survivor assistance aid. Such benefits were previously only afforded to heterosexual couples.

Under DOMA, the federal government recognized marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman, although same-sex marriage is legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia.

President Barack Obama was en route to Senegal when the ruling was announced at 10 a.m. Wednesday, but weighed in from his official Twitter account.

Today's DOMA ruling is a historic step forward for #MarriageEquality. #LoveIsLove — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 26, 2013

 Thirty minutes later, the justices said that defenders of the California law prohibiting gay marriage on a state level could not appeal an earlier ruling from a lower court that struck down the ban.

"We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of the majority decision. "We decline to do so for the first time here."

"We have no authority to decide this case on the merits, and neither did the Ninth Circuit," he added.

As a result of the 5-4 decision to not weigh in on the matter, same-sex unions in California will likely resume shortly.

“The Supreme Court has dismissed a closely-watched appeal over same-sex marriage on jurisdictional grounds, ruling Wednesday private parties do not have ‘standing’ to defend California's voter-approved ballot measure barring gay and lesbians couples from state-sanctioned wedlock,” CNN’s Bill Mears wrote from Washington. “The ruling permits same-sex couples in California to legally marry.” 

 A divided US Supreme Court voided a central part of the Voting Rights Act, a law put in place during the Civil Rights movement to prevent historically racist states from creating obstacles to voting, Tuesday.

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the Supreme Court’s opinion in Shelby County vs. Holder on Tuesday. The 5-4 decision, evidence of clear partisan lines in the nation’s highest court, was celebrated by Southern states and criticized by President Barack Obama for declaring federal oversight on state election changes unconstitutional. Roberts did not specify which, if any, part of the Constitution the rule violated.

Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), invalidated by Tuesday’s decision, explained the formula used by Congress to identify regions of the US subject to extra scrutiny when local lawmakers try to change election rules. Section 4 was the precursor to Section 5, which gives the federal government the power to “preclear” any state or local changes in election rules that could potentially prevent minorities from voting.

Both the Justice Department and individual voters were able to file suit if they believed a state or local municipality was instituting a law that would put undue burden on a specific demographic, a protection that saw its end on Monday.

Under the formula, Congress singled out states based on their history of past abuses. Most of the states affected by the ruling are in the South, where politicians frequently signed laws meant to silence the black population by way of making their votes count less through redistricting and other tactics. The VRA of 1965 nullified the systemic discrimination allowed by the Jim Crow laws, adopted in the century following the abolition of slavery.

States that prevented African Americans from, in addition to other infractions, registering to vote, voting of running for office were singled out by Section 4.

The Supreme Court’s majority ruled that, because the VRA was enacted decades ago, Congress must use updated criteria to determine which states are subject to the federal oversight. In a seeming contradiction, the Court cited the VRA’s success in protecting an equal voting system as a reason to void Section 4. 

Mario Tama / Getty Images / AFP

  Roberts asserted that “things have changed dramatically” over time. Since 1965 voter registration, voter turnout and the number of African American political leaders have all vastly increased, Roberts claimed, “in large part because of the VRA.” Yet Roberts and four other justices called for new criteria not “based on decades-old data” and voter suppression methods, such as literacy tests, that have been rendered irrelevant by Section 4. Roberts' claims are wrong, though, some reporters pointed out on the day.

“The regions covered by the part of the Act that was struck down, Section 4, have, in recent years, been twice as likely as those not covered to have proven violations under other sections of the Act,” wrote The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson.

Without a new formula for Section 4, which most experts agree is unlikely after years of Congressional gridlock and polarization, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act cannot be implemented.

Roberts also wrote that Congress “cannot justify the considerable burdens created by Section 5,” despite overwhelming numbers in each chamber voting to reauthorize the VRA in 2006. In the seven years since that renewal, 31 discriminatory voting laws were blocked by Section 5, according to The Nation magazine, with six of the nine southern states covered by Section 4 enacting new voter suppression laws since 2010.

“Texas’ voter ID law, which was blocked under Section 5 by a federal court last year and could disenfranchise up to 800,000 registered voters without government-issued photo ID, will immediately go into effect,” wrote Ari Berman in The Nation. “The states of the Old Confederacy will return to the pre-1965 playbook, passing new voter suppression laws that can only be challenged, after years of lengthy litigation, in often-hostile Southern courts, with the burden of proof in those subject to discrimination, rather than those doing the discriminating.” 

Mario Tama / Getty Images / AFP

  Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, who serves in one of the states previously covered by Section 4, announced Tuesday that the “process for implementation of Constitutional Voter Identification begins today.”

Chief Justice Roberts was joined in his opinion by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. Each of the Justices in the majority was appointed by a Republican president, while the dissenters were appointed by Democrats. 

President Obama said he was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling.

“Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA,” Ginsburg wrote in her dissent. “Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled … One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation’s signal piece of civil-rights legislation.”

Ginsburg, appointed by former president Bill Clinton in 1993, noted that the “racial polarization in voting” means the issue is especially pressing today. While Ginsburg delivered her remarks, though, Alito visibly rolled his eyes in dismissal, leading to gasps from several audience members.   

“His treatment of the 80-year-old Ginsburg, 17 years his senior and with 13 years more seniority, was a curious display of judicial temperament, or, more accurately, judicial intemperance,” wrote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. “Typically, justices state their differences in words – and Alito, as it happens, had just spoken several hundred of his own from the bench. But Alito frequently supplements words with middle-school gestures.”   

Congressional leaders pledged discussions on Section 4 over the summer, but admitted doubts over whether Republicans and Democrats would be able to agree on the issue. 

AFP Photo / Mark Ralston

 Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence. A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial.

According to the San Diego Reader, which reported on Tuesday that a judge had opted to prevent Olson’s attorney from "mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial,” Olson must now stand trial for on 13 counts of vandalism.

In addition to possibly spending years in jail, Olson will also be held liable for fines of up to $13,000 over the anti-big-bank slogans that were left using washable children's chalk on a sidewalk outside of three San Diego, California branches of Bank of America, the massive conglomerate that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008-2009 in a bid to keep it solvent after bad bets went south.

The Reader reports that Olson’s hearing had gone as poorly as his attorney might have expected, with Judge Howard Shore, who is presiding over the case, granting Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard's motion to prohibit attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the United States' fundamental First Amendment rights.

"The State's Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights," ruled Judge Shore on Tuesday.

Upon exiting the courtroom Olson seemed to be in disbelief.

"Oh my gosh," he said. "I can't believe this is happening."

Tosdal, who exited the courtroom shortly after his client, seemed equally bewildered.

"I've never heard that before, that a court can prohibit an argument of First Amendment rights," said Tosdal.

Olson, who worked as a former staffer for a US Senator from Washington state, was said to involve himself in political activism in tandem with the growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

On October 3, 2011, Olson first appeared outside of a Bank of America branch in San Diego, along with a homemade sign. Eight days later Olson and his partner, Stephen Daniels, during preparations for National Bank Transfer Day, the two were confronted by Darell Freeman, the Vice President of Bank of America’s Global Corporate Security.

A former police officer, Freeman accused Olson and Daniels of “running a business outside of the bank,” evidently in reference to the National Bank Transfer Day activities, which was a consumer activism initiative that sought to promote Americans to switch from commercial banks, like Bank of America, to not-for-profit credit unions.

At the time, Bank of America’s debit card fees were among one of the triggers that led Occupy Wall Street members to promote the transfer day.

"It was just an empty threat," says Olson of Freeman’s accusations. "He was trying to scare me away. To be honest, it did at first. I even called my bank and they said he couldn't do anything like that."

Olson continued to protest outside of Bank of America. In February 2012, he came across a box of chalk at a local pharmacy and decided to begin leaving his mark with written statements.

"I thought it was a perfect way to get my message out there. Much better than handing out leaflets or holding a sign," says Olson.

Over the course of the next six months Olson visited the Bank of America branch a few days per week, leaving behind scribbled slogans such as "Stop big banks" and "Stop Bank Blight.com."

According to Olson, who spoke with local broadcaster KGTV, one Bank of America branch claimed it had cost $6,000 to clean up the chalk writing.

Public records obtained by the Reader show that Freeman continued to pressure members of San Diego’s Gang Unit on behalf of Bank of America until the matter was forwarded to the City Attorney’s office.

On April 15, Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard contacted Freeman with a response on his persistent queries.

"I wanted to let you know that we will be filing 13 counts of vandalism as a result of the incidents you reported," said Hazard.

Arguments for Olson’s case are set to be heard Wednesday morning, following jury selection.

Aidge Patterson of the LA Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant leads a protest rally outside a pretrial hearing for Johannes Mehserle, the former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer charged with murder in the shooting death of Grant in Oakland, California last year, at the Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles on March 26, 2010. (AFP Photo)

 The City of Oakland and Alameda County have agreed to settle a class action lawsuit by paying out $1.025 million to 152 people arrested in 2010 while protesting the leniency of sentence for a white transit officer who shot dead an unarmed black man.

City Council members voted to approve a settlement of $850,000, Oakland City attorney's spokesman Alex Katz said, while Alameda County will pay out $175,000 to put a class action lawsuit filed by the National Lawyers Guild to rest.

The deal received preliminary approval from District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco on June 13, but must clear a final approval hearing slated for September.

The settlement of the case potentially brings to conclusion one of three class action lawsuits resulting from the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) reaction to protests stemming from the Oscar Grant case and Occupy Oakland.

The arrests were made at a November 2010 rally staged to protest the lenient sentencing of Johannes Mehserle, a Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART] police officer who fatally shot Oscar Grant on a train platform on New Year day in 2009.

Mehserle received a two-year prison term for involuntary manslaughter after shooting Grant in the back, as he was allegedly resisting arrest while unarmed and lying prostrate on the platform. The shooting drew nationwide media attention and a dramatization of the last 24 hours of Grant’s life premiered earlier this year.

According to the lawsuit, both the city and county failed to follow state law or their own rules during the detention and arrest of protesters after police intervened to halt a planned march to a nearby BART station on November 5, 2010.

Protesters then said after being detained, they were forced to sit in Alameda County Sheriff's Office buses and later in holding cells for up to 24 hours without ever being formally booked.

One of the plaintiffs, National Lawyers Guild legal observer Dan Spalding, said in a statement the protesters were never given a warning or an opportunity to leave.

“I tried to tell the officers that I was a legal observer, but they handcuffed me and put me on a sheriff’s bus,” local affiliate CBS San Francisco cites Spalding as saying.

"We brought the lawsuit in order to protect the constitutional right to dissent in Oakland," said Rachel Lederman, lead attorney in the case for the National Lawyers guild.

The four named plaintiffs in the case will receive $9,000 under the settlement, Lederman said. Others in the class action suit can apply to receive around $4,500 apiece. The attorneys will get $300,000.

In the other two cases related to both the slaying of Grant and Occupy Oakland, police have been accused of using excessive force and unlawful mass arrests during demonstrations on October 25, 2011, November 2-3, 2011, and January 28, 2012.

In the January 28 incident, police arrested more than 400 people outside the Downtown Oakland YMCA.

In July, the Oakland City Council is set to consider a proposed settlement resulting from police violence during the November 2011 protest.

Shortly before 1am on November 3, Scott Campbell was shot by police with a less-lethal round while filming a stationary police line during an Occupy Oakland protest. The shooting, incidentally, was documented from a point-of-view perspective by Campbell’s own camera. University of South Carolina criminal justice Professor Geoffrey Alpert told the Oakland Tribune that, "Unless there's a threat that you can't see in the video, that just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force."

A state-run internet provider in a central Russian region has blocked two leading media web-sites after a court ruled that they were publishing instructions on how to offer bribes to civil servants. Popular Russian internet daily Gazeta.ru reported on Tuesday that access to its web-site had been blocked by Rostelecom in central Russia’s Ulyanovsk Region.

Rostelecom replied to the newspaper’s enquiry that it had limited the access to 15 internet resources, including Gazeta.ru and web-site of another popular newspaper - Komsomolskaya Pravda after a district court in Ulyanonsk ruled that these sites were distributing materials that “promoted bribery and undermined the authority of the state power”. The case was instigated by local prosecutors who demanded action citing the Law on Information that allows to selectively block internet content “in order to protect the basics of the constitutional state, morals, rights and lawful interests of third persons as well as the protection of national defense and security potential”.

Prosecutors claimed that they had discovered information on ways to give bribes and on conditions under which bribing is necessary as well as advice on various ways to evade responsibility for this crime. However, neither the prosecutors’ lawsuit nor the court verdict contained precise links to the content in question.

Both Gazeta.ru and Komsomolskaya Pravda said they were unaware of the hearings and of the verdict and learned about the blocking from their readers. Some of the readers who reported the problems said they had to change their internet provider to continue reading their favorite news sites. Apparently, other ISPs in the region did not heed the court decision.

After the story broke Ulyanovsk prosecutors said they were surprised that the provider blocked the resource as a whole instead of only blocking the pages with violating materials. They also added “the screen shots of all materials had been made in the witnesses’ presence and passed to the judge”. In turn, Rostelecom told Gazeta.ru that it could only block the web-site as a whole. A company representative also expressed bewilderment over the fact that in this and similar cases prosecutors targeted Rostelecom and completely ignored other internet providers.

Rostelecom covers about 39 percent of the internet services market in Ulyanovsk Region. Gazeta.ru lawyers said in a statement that their daily never breached any law, saw no reasons for content blocking and did not exclude that they would appeal the court decision. Gazeta.ru is one of the most popular news sites in Russia with about 10 million visitors monthly. Komsomolskaya Pravda is the heir of the superpopular Soviet-era newspaper with about 18 million monthly visitors.

Following weeks of mass protests nationwide that persisted into the weekend, Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff has proposed a referendum for political reform in a bid to subdue public dissatisfaction that has brought a million Brazilians onto the streets.

On Monday, Rousseff pledged to invest 50 billion reais ($25 billion) on public transportation projects, holding discussions with state governors and mayors to find ways to defuse the demonstrations that have sprouted in some 80 municipalities across Brazil.

Protesters planned to continue gatherings in Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, while small pockets of violence were reported over the weekend in smaller cities, such as Salvador.

A demonstrator shouts slogans during a protest for better public services, a new political system and against the Brazilian PEC37 draft law, a proposed constitutional amendment that would take away the power of independent public prosecutors to probe crimes making it harder to combat corruption, in Rio de Janeiro downtown on June 24, 2013.(AFP Photo / Yasuyoshi Chiba)

In a bid to appease the major demands at play among the protesters, Rousseff met with representatives of the Free Pass Movement, a group that advocates for free public transport and which was instrumental to organizing initial protests triggered by proposed hikes to bus and subway services across the country.

In Sao Paulo, many of the throngs of demonstrators complained of insufficient investment in underground rail, currently a very limited service in relation to the size of the bustling metropolis, the largest city in Brazil and the world’s seventh-largest city by population.

Over the weekend, the more than 250,000 protesters that took to the streets voiced their opposition to legislation known as PEC 37, which would transfer power from federal prosecutors to investigate crimes.

Those proposed reforms were seen as a symptom of endemic corruption for the country, on the heels of an investigation that unraveled the biggest corruption case in Brazil's history - the "mensalão" cash-for-votes scheme that came to light in 2005, and ensnared the highly popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The timing of that legislation meant that it was added to an already lengthy list of demands by protesters, which all focus on what is seen as misdirected public spending on glitzy sporting events like the 2014 World Cup and the FIFA Confederations Cup, at the expense of public services. 

Thousands of people march during a protest on Consolação Street in Sao Paulo, Brazil on June 22, 2013 .(AFP Photo / Daniel Guimaraes)

 Rousseff has been quick to welcome peaceful protests, and on Monday announced her government’s intention to focus on five policy “pacts” for the country, including fiscal stability, a public referendum to form a Constituent Assembly for reform, and investment in education, health and public transportation.

Just prior to the nationwide protests Rousseff’s government had introduced a plan to hire medical professionals from abroad, a plan that was not well received by Brazil’s medical community as it was seen to introduce unfair competition for available positions. In response, the president stressed that Brazil’s doctors would always be considered ahead of international applicants.

It remained unclear whether the latest announcements would be seen as resolving the demands of protesters, many of which have vowed to stay on the streets until they feel concrete measures are being taken to reform Brazil’s political system and tackle corruption.

During her remarks on Monday, Rousseff pointed out that Brazil’s demonstrations were a reflection of social inclusion, and that “now the people on the streets want more.”

A federal lawsuit filed against the city of Chicago and its local law enforcement agency alleges that two police officers sodomized a man with a revolver while he was illegally detained for several hours last year.

Delivery driver Angel Perez says in recently filed legal documents that he was assaulted repeatedly by Chicago Police Department Officer Jorge L. Lopez and another cop during a traumatizing experience last October that has prompted him to sue the city and those involved for excessive force, failure to intervene and emotional distress.

According to the lawsuit first reported Monday by Courthouse News, Lopez and a colleague locked Perez in a cell for several hours and sexually abused him with a handgun during the second of two days he spent in the custody of the Chicago PD.

The ordeal started for Perez on October 22, 212 when he was allegedly picked up by Lopez and another officer and taken in an unmarked police car to the city’s Harrison Street Police Station for interrogation.

"Two officers began assaulting the plaintiff with questions regarding robberies and drug dealers in the Taylor Street area," the complaint states. "Plaintiff responded that he did not know anything about robberies or drug dealings in the Taylor Street area and again and repeatedly requested that the officers call his lawyer. Plaintiff's lawyer was never contacted and the questioning continued. The officers were particularly interested in why the plaintiff had the telephone number of an individual by the name of 'Dwayne' in his telephone."

According to Courthouse News, Perez was released from police custody after two hours. One day later, however, he received a phone call from Lopez instructing him to meet at a nearby parking lot in order to sign some paperwork. Once again, Perez says he was assaulted and taken back to the police station where he was handcuffed to a bar and placed in ankle shackles by Lopez and another man identified only as “Sergeant.”

"Plaintiff was held against his will in the room for several hours handcuffed and shackled, and not free to leave the custody of the defendants,” the complaint continues. There Perez was allegedly in the presence of upwards of six officers who told him he’d be moved to another facility “to be raped by gang members” if he didn’t assist them.

The officer, it continues, “would plant evidence on him and his family members if he continued to refuse to cooperate with them. Still, further that if he did not cooperate they would charge him a conspiracy to obstruct justice.”

Perez then says he was told to make contact with the man named Dwayne that was brought up during the previous day’s interrogation. When he refused to make the phone call, the officers reportedly got violent.

“After a period of time refusing to call or text Dwayne, the officers began to pull and contort the plaintiff's body while he was handcuffed to the wall and shackled at his ankles, causing the plaintiff severe pain. At one point, the Sergeant sat on the plaintiff's chest and placed his palms on the plaintiff's eye sockets and pushed hard against them, causing plaintiff severe pain. The Sergeant also drove his elbows into plaintiff's back and head causing severe pain. Defendant Lopez was in the room at the time and did not intervene.”

Lopez eventually called up his acquaintance and attempted to initiate a drug deal, but only after things escalated between him and the officers.

"After several hours of verbal and physical torture, defendant Lopez and the Sergeant were alone in the room with the plaintiff,” the complaint continues. “The officers told plaintiff that if he refused to cooperate with them that they were going to give him a 'little taste' of what he would be getting at the Cook County jail. They put plaintiff over a chair and pulled down his pants and defendant Lopez said, 'I hear that a big black nigger dick feels like a gun up your ass.'”

"Then defendant Lopez and/or the Sergeant, knowing their actions created a strong likelihood of great bodily harm and mental anguish, inserted a cold metal object, believed to be one of officer's service revolvers, into the plaintiff's rectum, causing the plaintiff severe pain and humiliation. The two officers laughed hysterically while inserting the object into the plaintiff's rectum.”

"The Sergeant then said 'I almost blew your brains out.' The officers told the plaintiff that they would continue to insert the gun into his rectum until he cooperated with them.”

The complaint attests that Lopez soon began crying and agreed to cooperate with the officers. He then made the drug deal and broke off all contact with the officers while attempting to file a report with the Independent Police Review Authority.

"At no time on either October 20, 2012 or October 21, 2012, prior to plaintiff's seizure and torture, did the plaintiff commit a crime," Perez says in the complaint.

The Obama administration has admitted to spying on two Icelandic citizens with ties to WikiLeaks in the latest revelation pertaining to both the US government’s widespread surveillance practices and its war against the whistleblower website. Documents surfaced on Friday showing that the United States Department of Justice demanded that Internet giant Google provide federal investigators with the personal emails sent and received by two Icelanders once involved in WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website under investigation for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified US documents.
Herbert Snorrason and Smári McCarthy, both known publically as one-time associates of the website, released Justice Department-issued search warrants and court orders for their Gmail accounts on Friday that had up until recently been kept under seal. The documents compelled Google, the owner of the Gmail service, to provide metadata and content pertaining to emails that have passed through the accounts of both men. The documents are redacted in part and are absent of information confirming that the intelligence is sought pursuant to the investigation of WikiLeaks, but Snorrason wrote on his website “it’s not a tricky guess” to figure out why they were targeted.
“All this is pretty much par for the course; I had assumed that I was caught in the dragnet cast around Julian Assange,” Snorrason wrote.

A team of volunteers, including McCarthy, readied the footage for an April 2010 release just weeks before Manning was arrested and charged with disclosing classified intelligence. “It was chaotic and hectic and also sort of very varyingly frayed nerves,” McCarthy said of working on the film in a scene from the just-released movie We Steal Secrets. “It wasn't really cloak and dagger stuff, it was just, you know, yes, another cool project.” In a July 2010 interview with journalist Sam Knight, McCarthy discredited the notion that WikiLeaks volunteers were being surveilled to a significant extent. “I know that it is nonzero. Beyond that it’s hard to estimate,” he said. “I am aware of one person being approached by an undercover US official requesting information about Julian Assange’s whereabouts, but that had absolutely no effect. Honestly, I think the US federal government has a lot of better things to do than trying to monitor WikiLeaks. One suggestion would be that they open up their document repositories and datasets before WikiLeaks does.” Publication of the DoJ documents come amid an escalating scandal involving the US government’s questionable surveillance practices that have pitted President Barack Obama and his administration against the American public and press. Documents leaked by The Guardian newspaper throughout the month of June have exposed evidence that the Nation Security Agency and other authoritative bodies have continuously accumulated information about the telephone habits of millions of Americans daily while also shining light on the little-known FISA court’s secret and undeniable requests for email and other intelligence, similar to what's seen in the court orders sent to Google. President Obama and officials from the NSA and DoJ have applauded the surveillance programs and contest to their constitutional legality, despite a myriad of complaints from privacy-concerned citizens and civil liberties groups.

Ok, technically it isn't a leak Google is allowed to send it but I'm guessing @smarimc's publication is considered a leak by the government.
— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) June 21, 2013