Facebook Opens Up Your Inbox to Outsiders, For a Fee

Want to send me a Facebook message? But you’re not my Facebook friend?

Pay up.

The social network is overhauling its in-house messaging system with a new set of filters that it says will help users reach out and poke each other more effectively; you can see details here. Part of the overhaul: A test that will allow some users to ping people they’re not friends with, if they’re willing to spend a dollar.

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach. “Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him. “Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied. “Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor. Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote. They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?

New legislation in Washington state went into effect this week that legalizes for the first time in ages the possession of marijuana. Federal law still says otherwise, though, setting up the Justice Department to make some serious determinations. Even as smoking up became protected by state law in Washington starting Thursday, coast-to-coast prohibition as provided by a long-standing federal ruling remains on the books. For marijuana advocates in the Pacific Northwest, the lifting of the ban is a pretty big victory.

The city of Chicago is asking a judge to erase a landmark verdict that found there exists a code of silence in the police department that leads officers to protect rogue colleagues — a legal move that critics say is calculated to deny others suing over alleged police abuse from citing the decision as a precedent.

City officials are seeking to pay Karolina Obrycka $850,000 if a federal judge will overturn last month's jury verdict. (So, of course Karolina is wants the verdict vacated too - very clever)

Stoners aren’t known for their memory prowess but a new review suggests that drugs similar to marijuana’s active ingredients may hold promise for preventing— or even reversing— brain aging and possibly Alzheimer‘s and other degenerative brain diseases.

The Wall Street Journal report calls the Turkish gold payments a “loophole in Western sanctions” which ban Iran from receiving payments in US dollars, but it’s far more than that. A “loophole” at least operates within the framework of the policy. Abandoning the US dollar to circumvent the entire policy is a thumb in the eye to US legitimacy, and the global banking system.

Republican Mike Coffman, A64 opponent, to back federal exemption bill, which would require the federal government to respect state's and citizens' rights with regard to "marijuana"--essentially ending the war on pot in states which choose to do so.

Think you have the right to try and stop a fire from coming on to your property? Think again.

What the hell is going on? I leave the country for a couple of weeks and when I get back there’s like 5 times the police abuse stories I’m used to. I generally try to handle the question with kid-gloves because I know for most people the term “Police State” triggers all kinds of cognitive dissonance and they’ll just stop listening. But it’s getting so bad, and so common, I’m starting to think we don’t have time for kid-gloves anymore. So, new approach. This time I’m not pulling punches. Just pure escalation.

Several political signs in Transylvania County are causing some voters to stop and think about this year's presidential race.

"Nobody For President" signs are along Highway 280 in Brevard. Who put the homemade creations in ground is unknown at this time. But the signs are creating voters to think about this year's election