America

While CNN doesn’t dedicate much time to covering the subject, we’ve repeatedly pointed out that, contrary to what conventional wisdom might lead one to believe, incarceration rates among white Americans have risen since 2000 while incarceration rates for minorities have fallen.

The US prison population is finally shrinking after swelling to more than 2 million people, placing the US among the countries with the largest prison populations. Nearly one in five inmates are incarcerated on nonviolent drug charges.

Earlier today, we mentioned the bizarre story of a San Francisco animal shelter which was using a low cost, high-tech robot security guard to purge homeless people outside its facilities. The San Francisco SPCA branch had contracted Knightscope to provide a K5 robot (the same model which in July committed suicide at a mall fountain) for securing the outdoor spaces of the animal shelter. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

You just can’t make this stuff up. 

A Russian hacker has reportedly confessed that he hacked the DNC and stole Hillary Clinton's emails under the direction of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), claims Russian news outlet The Bell. Konstantin Kozlovsky - a Russian citizen with a hacker group called Lurk, confessed to the theft during a hearing about his arrest in August, along with a handwritten letter in which he admits to acting on the orders of an FSB agent he referred to as "Ilya." 

Sound familiar?

For several decades now the American Midwest has suffered from unprecedented economic decay courtesy of a persistent outsourcing of manufacturing jobs in the automotive and steel industries, among others. As we've noted frequently, that economic decay has resulted in a devastating surge in opioid overdoses that claim the lives of 100s of people each year.