Court documents obtained by KRQE on Thursday showed that Lillie Smith, who uses a oxygen tank, was not arrested in 2011 when her son was busted for dealing drugs. As Blount County Sheriff’s Office deputies were severing a warrant on her son, Nathan Jones, officers said that they observed Smith trying to stash marijuana and cocaine, but her medical condition prevented an arrest at that time.

“It’s definitely not something you see everyday,” Sergeant Aaron Williamson told the station. “There were scales, money, narcotics things of that nature that we generally find with drug trafficking.”

But neighbors insisted to KRQE that Smith had only allowed her son to deal drugs out of the apartment where they both lived because she needed someone to take care of her.

The district attorney’s office didn’t buy that excuse and eventually obtained a grand jury indictment in February. Smith was arrested in April and was released on bond. The next court date was scheduled for July.

Smith also has a prior conviction for drug trafficking in the 1990s.

Watch this video from KRQE, broadcast May 24, 2013.

Elderly woman charged for dealing drugs

To be fair, your modern flasher rarely wears a hat.

I can’t promise I’ll be there every week, but today I’d like to start posting a weekly invitation to come to Panda Party again. Summer’s finally here! Let’s Panda Party!

Some of this week’s discussions about disingenuous arguments, sexual harassment, and the tendency of people to be more mad at people for fighting back than for being dicks have been depressing. So I thought I’d end the week on a note of optimism, and link to a story of a sexual harasser who clearly thought he’d get away with it, but didn’t. Scene: Waterford, Wisconsin.

[A woman] contacted the Racine County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 26 after a man reportedly showed up at her door and repeatedly rang her doorbell. When police arrived, they found a man wearing a coat with no clothes underneath, according to the criminal complaint. He allegedly said he was responding to a personal ad from Craigslist.

[A woman] said she had not posted any personal ad online and said at least three people had come to her door attempting to contact her, according to the complaint. One of those individuals also reported seeing an ad on Craigslist, she said.

After talking to the woman, an investigator contacted Craigslist and learned there were six ads posted using a fraudulent email address for her. All were allegedly sexual in nature and were soliciting males for sexual activity.

Luckily, the only guys who showed up were the kinds who let hope triumph over experience when it came to the subject of women inviting strange men over to their houses for kinky sex. That was probably traumatic enough, especially since at least one of them was clearly pushy about it, but this sort of thing could have easily resulted in a sexual assault from some screwed up guy who thought the target had reneged on a “promise”.

Turns out the guy who set her up to be freaked out and possibly assaulted was her neighbor. As with most sexual harassers and abusers, he had a ready-made excuse for why this isn’t what it clearly is. He claims it was “just a joke”. I’m sure he’s used that excuse in the past with lower-level boundary-pushing and sexual harassment and it worked, but sadly for Jason Willis, the cops weren’t fooled. The cops were smarter/less assholish than internet commenters running around squeeing that women are hysterical and eager to “play the victim” for the sole purpose of hurting innocent men that are “just joking” or “just flirting” in the creepiest, most safety-threatening ways possible. The cops got exactly what this was about, and are charging Willis with felony identity theft, with up to three years in prison. Let’s hope the jury doesn’t fall for the same old excuses.

After all, even if you indulge the “just a joke” claim for a minute, it falls apart. If he was stupid enough to think men wouldn’t show up at her house, then basically the point of the “joke” falls apart, as she’d never know about it. So he knew men would show up at her house. At what point, there is no way that he wasn’t trying to scare, intimidate, and possibly hurt her.

This, of course, is what harassers and abusers do. They do things they know aren’t cool to deliberately freak out or make their targets uncomfortable, and the second they’re called out for it, they claim innocence and say that they’re just misunderstood people trying to engage in behavior that is acceptable, like pranks or flirting. But a prank is sending pizzas to someone’s house, not naked men looking for sex. Flirting is engaging someone who wants to be engaged in a social situation, not cornering them in a space where they can’t escape easily. The target is not fooled—if she was, then the intimidation tactics would lose their value—so the rest of us should not be. Luckily, as this story shows, people are increasingly willing to get it, and the same old excuses aren’t working as well as they used to.

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!” Francis said earlier this week.

“Folks,” said Colbert Thursday, “as America’s most famous Catholic, I am the Pope of basic cable.”

And as such, he said, he has tried to embrace the new Pope and endeavored to follow the pontiff’s example. When Francis washed the feet of the poor, Colbert said, “I sent some homeless guys through a car wash. I even sprang for the wax.”

But Wednesday’s homily from the Pope, in which he said the God even loves atheists, was apparently too much for Colbert.

“What the flock?” he demanded. “Even atheists?!”

“What’s next? The Lord redeems Lutherans?” he said. “It’s madness.”

Was all that time on his knees as an altar boy for nothing? he asked. All the standing and sitting and kneeling every Sunday? Ash Wednesday, in which, he said, that smudge on his forehead, he thought, was “the hand-stamp for Club Heaven?”

“After busting my apse in the vineyard of the Lord,” he said, “some godless good guy can just swoop in at the eleventh hour and and get redeemed? I want a refund!”

Watch the video, embedded below via Comedy Central:

With online porn readily available, sex scenes are no longer prized by producers who look to action sequences or special effects to fill the gap.

“The Paperboy” in which Nicole Kidman played a woman sexually attracted to Death Row prisoners and the sex surrogate film “The Sessions” with Helen Hunt are examples of recent films with sex that flopped at the box office.

Michael Lavey, of the Los Angeles-based sales agents Taylor & Dodge, told AFP the need to pull in younger audiences was driving an explosion of violence on our screens.

“I think that young kids are just immune to violence. It’s video games, it’s almost (as if) you’ve got to have some violence for them to go (to the cinema),” he said.

“Directors could be more restrained (in their use of violence) but the smart ones are going to do what people like me say works. If they’re open to that feedback they’re going to make money,” he added.

A number films screened at Cannes over the past 10 days — including China’s “A Touch of Sin” (Tian Zhu Ding) and Japan’s “Shield of Straw” (Wara No Tate) — have shocked audiences with their levels of violence.

Mexican director Amat Escalante was forced on the defensive after his ultra-violent film “Heli” left many critics feeling queasy.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives” was equally blood-spattered with one critic describing it as a “sickening pornography of violence”.

Many at a press screening found the Bangkok-set revenge drama starring the bankable Ryan Gosling almost unwatchable.

And even co-star Kristin Scott Thomas described it as “hyper violent and quite disturbing” adding “this kind of film is really not my thing”.

Edmee Cuttat, film critic for the Geneva Tribune daily, who has covered the festival for two decades, said she had witnessed an increase not in the level of violence but in the level of “gratuitous violence”.

She described “Heli” as “appalling” and said she was unable to watch “Only God Forgives” in which a man in one scene is pinned to an armchair with knives and then stabbed in the eye.

“What I don’t like is gratuitous violence. I don’t find it useful but perhaps the directors think it corresponds with the era,” she said.

Gratuitous violence would appear to have replaced gratuitous sex as a marketing tool.

Sex scenes were once written into scripts “no matter what the plot”, Vincent Bruzzese, president of the film division of market research company Ispos, was quoted as saying earlier this year by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper.

But now producers tended to ask “do we really need the sex? Can we fill the space with special effects instead and keep the family-friendly rating?”, he added.

Indian director Dibakar Banerjee said he preferred films that used only violence essential to character and plot such as Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull”.

“That film is about a violent man who deals with everything in his life through one answer, one response. That violence is necessary.

“(But) sometimes filmmakers use violence as a way of showing off and attracting a kind of notoriety because that’s the fastest way of getting written about,” he said.

In other cases, he added, it was just “there for the lack of a better idea”.

French-born Australian filmmaker Chantal Denoux urged directors to remember the power of what was not shown.

“It is a bit like sex. Sometimes it is completely important to see the violence, however sometimes now you have the feeling it is gratuitous,” she said

“Hitchcock never shows anything but we are terrified. If the shower scene (in “Psycho”) was made today we would see blood everywhere. I think the imagination is more important,” she added.

The US president mounted a firm defence of his covert drone war as legal and just in a major speech on counterterrorism policy on Thursday but warned that undisciplined use of the tactic would invite abuses of power.

Islamabad said it welcomed some aspects of Obama’s address, particularly his acknowledgement that “force alone cannot make us safe”, but it remained firm on its long-held public stance on unmanned missile attacks in its tribal northwest.

“The Government of Pakistan has consistently maintained that the drone strikes are counter-productive, entail loss of innocent civilian lives, have human rights and humanitarian implications and violate the principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Obama said he had approved new guidelines stating that drone strikes can only be used to prevent imminent attacks and when the capture of a suspect is not feasible and if there is a “near certainty” that civilians will not be killed.

According to Britain’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, CIA drone attacks in Pakistan have killed up to 3,587 people since 2004, up to 884 of them civilians.

At least three people were fished out but there were no reports of serious injuries or fatalities in the incident, which may have been caused by a high-sided truck hitting a bridge span, a spokesman said.

Pictures showed a large mangled section of the bridge, which carries the Interstate 5 highway over the Skagit river north of Seattle, collapsed into the water, with traffic and crowds of people visible on the end nearest land.

“People and cars in water,” Mark Francis, spokesman for the Washington state highway patrol, said on his Twitter feed. The police did not immediately return calls seeking more details, including on potential casualties.

The four-lane road bridge, built in 1955 according to reports, is some 60 miles north of Seattle. The I-5 freeway runs up the US West Coast, north from the scene of the collapse to the Canadian border towards Vancouver.

At least two cars were in the water, and three people were rescued from vehicles, Marcus Deyerin, spokesman for the Northwest Washington Incident Management Team, told the Seattle Times.

Rescuers believed they had pulled everyone involved out of the water, but they were not sure, he added, saying the section of bridge collapsed around 7:00 pm (0200 GMT Friday).

A law enforcement source cited by the Seattle Times said about 150 yards (140 meters) of freeway collapsed, sending a car, a truck and a trailer into the water some 120 feet (40 meters) below.

“It’s a hell of a ride,” the source was quoted as saying.

Reports suggested the collapse may have been triggered by a large truck hitting some part of the bridge structure.

“We are looking at a potential over-height load,” Travis Phelps, a spokesman for the Washington State Department of Transportation, told Kiro 7 television.

Witness Dale Ogden told KING 5 television he saw the truck strike the bridge. “I was less than 50 feet away from the truck when it hit it… I had just passed it in the fast lane southbound and it had an oversized load.

“It was approximately 12 feet wide and over 14 feet tall …I saw the truck strike the right corner of the bridge. It almost tipped the truck over but it came back down,” he said.

“It tipped it up to about a 30-degree angle to the left and it came back down on its wheels and almost instantaneously behind that I saw girders falling in my rearview mirror.”

The IEA also said Europe’s biggest economy should make greater use of natural gas to smoothe the transition and reduce the use of coal to meet its carbon reduction targets to combat climate change.

Given the scale of the “Energiewende” or energy shift, the size of the German economy and its location at the heart of Europe, the agency said in a regular review that further steps are needed “to maintain a balance between sustainability, affordability and competitiveness”.

Chancellor Angela Merkel decided after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident to phase out nuclear power by 2022, an about-turn that started with the immediate closure of the eight oldest plants.

Since then Germany has accelerated a boom in wind farms, solar power and biofuels, promoted by subsidies and legal reforms, with the goal of gaining half of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

Legal reform in 2000 “has proven very effective in introducing renewable energies; notably electricity generation from biomass, wind energy and solar photovoltaics,” the report said.

However, the Paris-based IEA pointed to a political debate in Germany about discounts given to industry, which have been financed in part by higher power bills for consumers and a tax surcharge.

“The costs and benefits need to be allocated in a fair and transparent way among all market participants, especially households,” the report said.

It also pointed to the geographic spread between the renewables’ supply and demand. While most wind farms are in Germany’s coastal north, the highest demand is in the industrial south and west.

Germany is planning to massively expand its transmission and distribution networks, a costly process complicated by local opposition in many places to the new power infrastructure.

“To date, Germany’s record with regard to the construction of new grid infrastructure is patchy and planning and consenting procedures present a major stumbling block,” said the IEA.

In the global effort to halt climate change, melting ice caps and rising seas, Germany has pledged to cut its carbon emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 — and by 95 percent by 2050.

Ironically, a drop in the price of coal, one of the biggest polluters, along with the rise of cheap renewables, has seen coal make a comeback at the expense of cleaner-burning natural gas.

“As a result of weak carbon prices and high gas prices in Europe, existing gas-fired plants have lost competitiveness, and evidence suggests that some are being taken off-line,” said the report.

The IEA said gas plants now “struggle to make a return despite the flexibility they offer to the market” in terms of quickly evening out troughs in the fickle supply of weather-dependent renewables.

“The strategic role of natural gas in the Energiewende needs further clarification,” said the IEA, “and greater thought should be given to its use and place in the electricity supply mix of the future.”

The comments by Kim’s emissary Choe Ryong-Hae were reported by the official Xinhua news agency and came a day after Chinese state television quoted him as saying Pyongyang wants peace and is willing to engage in talks.

The North engaged in months of sabre-rattling after the United Nations strengthened sanctions against it following am atomic test in February, its rhetoric at times reaching fever pitch with threats of nuclear war.

Analysts see Beijing, Pyongyang’s sole major ally and key economic benefactor, as having the most influence over it, but relations have deteriorated with China backing the UN move.

Choe, a vice marshal and director of the Korean People’s Army’s General Political Bureau, is said to be a close confidant of Kim, who has led North Korea for more than a year.

At Friday’s meeting with Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful Central Military Commission, Choe said Pyongyang was willing to work with all parties to solve problems through dialogue, Xinhua said.

But he also mentioned that peace on the peninsula and in Northeast Asia was not guaranteed, the report said, an apparent reference to the lack of a peace treaty ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice.

The United States and South Korea say dialogue with the North depends on it ceasing its provocations and taking steps towards implementing prior agreements to scrap its nuclear programme.

Those countries, along with China, Russia and Japan have worked since 2003 to persuade the North to abandon atomic development in exchange for aid and security guarantees but the process, known as the six-party talks, has been stalled for years.

Fan, meanwhile, told Choe that in recent years tensions on the peninsula around the nuclear issue had intensified conflicts among the parties and jeopardised peace and stability, Xinhua said.

On Thursday, Choe told Liu Yunshan, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s highest-ranking body, the Politburo Standing Committee, that the North was willing to accept Beijing’s proposals to develop dialogue with other parties.

Earlier this year, North Korea threatened to launch nuclear missiles towards the United States and its state media outlets engaged in furious criticisms of rival South Korea, before it shut a landmark joint industrial facility.

The conservative leader took office in December but has yet to move into the 11-room brick home in central Tokyo, the longest holdout among any of his predecessors, according to local media.

Several former prime ministers have reported experiencing unusual phenomena at the mansion which was centre-stage for two failed but bloody coups in the 1930s.

Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi once told reporters: “I’ve never encountered any ghosts, although I want to see them.”

Some first ladies have also refused to live in the mansion over fears its was inhabited by spirits.

“There are rumours that the official residence is haunted by ghosts. Is it true? Does Prime Minister Abe refuse to move to the official residence because of the rumours?” an opposition lawmaker asked in a letter to Abe’s cabinet.

The lawmaker said the decision could delay Abe’s response time in emergencies because the residence is next door to his executive office.

Abe’s cabinet issued a terse written statement on Friday, saying: “We do not assent to what was asked.”

In May 1932, a revolt by naval officers ended in the murder of then prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai and the plotters’ surrender to military police.

Several years later in 1936, about 1,400 rebel troops killed several political leaders and seized the heart of Tokyo’s government district including the official residence for four days.

The decision to ban the insecticides, made by chemicals giants Bayer and Syngenta, “marks another milestone towards ensuring a healthier future” for bees, EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said.