Can hear them on CNN, described as a large crowd outside the White House.

A pickled human toe, the centrepiece of a bizarre Yukon drinking ritual, was swallowed last Saturday night in an apparent act of bravado by a departing American worker.

snip

Just before midnight, the man entered Dawson City’s Downtown Hotel and ordered a “Sourtoe cocktail,” a 40-year-old rite-of-passage in which a drink of the patron’s choice is served along with a preserved human toe.

Normally, the ritual calls for the drinker to merely touch the toe with their lips while downing the drink.

But, Mr. Lee said the man instead swished the toe into his mouth, washed it down with a beer chaser and then slapped $500 onto the bar — the Downtown Hotel’s going fine for toe-swallowing.

“I said ‘Where’s the toe?’ and he says ‘I swallowed it,’ and then immediately headed over to the bar and started bragging,” said Mr. Lee.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/08/27/mysterious-american-worker-pays-500-to-swallow-toe-at-yukon-bar/

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d28_1377814804

Source: LA Times

A 235-foot-tall rocket carrying a top-secret spy satellite roared to life and blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, leaving a thick white plume as it cut across the morning sky.

The launch took place Wednesday at 11:03 a.m. PDT at the picturesque base, which is located along the Pacific Ocean.

After countdown, the Delta IV Heavy rocket's three main engines ignited and climbed into skies. The hydrogen-fueled engines — each roughly the size of a pickup truck — were guzzling nearly a ton of propellants per second to provide 17 million horsepower.

Although little is publicly known about what exactly the rocket will be carrying into space, analysts said it is probably a $1-billion high-powered spy satellite capable of snapping pictures detailed enough to distinguish the make and model of an automobile hundreds of miles below.

Wednesday’s mission, designated NROL-65, has been on schedule for months.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-biggest-rocket-launch-20130828,0,723303.story

An exotic-looking “big cat” is no longer roaming a northwest Detroit neighborhood.

Several residents called animal control officers after seeing the feline — by some reports described as nearly four feet tall — roaming the streets.

“It got out of its owner’s home about a month ago through a screened-in window. So, we have been out there day and night, trying to set traps out to get this cat,” Laura Wilhelm-Bruzek, with Paws for the Cause Feral Cat Rescue, told WWJ Newsradio 950.

Wilhelm-Bruzek said she spoke to reporters on Saturday who said the cat was killed.

“They gave me a picture of a cat that was deceased, that was shot by a neighbor. So, we already had a good suspicion that the cat was deceased,” she said.

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/08/27/big-cat-causing-stir-in-detroit-is-shot-dead/

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/25/200325/nsa-having-flashbacks-to-watergate.html#storylink=cpy

Source: France 24

British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Sunday warned that any evidence of a chemical attack by the Syrian regime may have already been destroyed.

"The fact is that much of the evidence could have been destroyed by that artillery bombardment," he cautioned during a press conference after Damascus gave its green light to a mission by UN inspectors.

Read more: http://www.france24.com/en/20130825-syria-chemical-attack-evidence-may-have-been-destroyed-hague

EDINBURG—U.S. Border Patrol agents from the Rio Grande Valley Sector confiscated an estimated $14.3 million worth of marijuana in multiple seizures over Aug. 15-16.

Agents assigned to the Falfurrias Checkpoint made the largest seizure on Aug. 15. During an immigration inspection of the driver of a tractor-trailer, a Border Patrol K-9 detected the presence. Agents found more than 10,300 pounds of marijuana hidden inside the trailer.

Another large seizure occurred on Aug. 16 when agents assigned to the Rio Grande City Station spotted a truck traveling away from the Rio Grande. When the driver of the pickup spotted Border Patrol agents and a helicopter from the Office of Air and Marine, he made an abrupt U-turn and sped back to the river.

At the river’s edge the driver and a passenger abandoned the truck and crossed the river to Mexico. Inside the vehicle agents found more than 1,500 pounds of marijuana.

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So far for fiscal year 2013, agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector have seized more than 700,000 pounds of marijuana.

http://www.progresstimes.net/news/general-interest/4893-border-patrol-agents-seize-nearly-9-tons-of-marijuana-in-2-days.html

The Obama administration has pressured landlords, banks and credit card companies to cut off services to medical marijuana dispensaries. Now the administration may have found a new target: armored car companies that carry cash for the pot clubs.

The executive director of Oakland's huge Harborside Health Center, already fighting a federal eviction suit, has used armored cars to pay tax collectors and other creditors because he can no longer use checks or credit cards. On Wednesday, he said, the armored car company told him it was terminating service on the orders of an unnamed federal agency.

The National Cannabis Industry Association said the same thing happened to several dispensaries in Colorado within the past month, under pressure from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Colorado and California are among 18 states that have legalized the medical use of marijuana.

"We don't have any written document that the DEA has actually sent to the (armored car) companies. We know that the services have stopped" for most Colorado dispensaries, said Steve Fox, the cannabis association's director of government relations.

http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/U-S-heat-on-armored-car-firms-to-drop-pot-clubs-4758848.php

More shameful behavior, cracking down on sick people and making the legal cannabis trade dangerous.

With big profits on the line, the drug industry is pulling out campaign-style dirty tricks to keep selling the meds that cooks turn into crank.

Shake and bake did two things. It took a toxic and volatile process that had once been the province of people with Breaking Bad-style knowledge of chemistry and put it in the bedrooms and kitchens of meth users in rural America. It also produced the most potent methamphetamine anywhere.

If anyone wondered what would happen if heroin or cocaine addicts suddenly discovered how to make their own supply with a handful of cheap ingredients readily available over the counter, methamphetamine's recent history provides an answer. Since 2007, the number of clandestine meth sites discovered by police has increased 63 percent nationwide. In Kentucky, the number of labs has more than tripled. The Bluegrass State regularly joins its neighbors Missouri, Tennessee, and Indiana as the top four states for annual meth lab discoveries.

As law enforcement agencies scramble to clean up and dispose of toxic labs, prosecute cooks, and find foster homes for their children, they are waging two battles: one against destitute, strung-out addicts, the other against some of the world's wealthiest and most politically connected drug manufacturers. In the past several years, lawmakers in 25 states have sought to make pseudoephedrine—the one irreplaceable ingredient in a shake-and-bake lab—a prescription drug. In all but two—Oregon and Mississippi—they have failed as the industry, which sells an estimated $605 million worth of pseudoephedrine-based drugs a year, has deployed all-star lobbying teams and campaign-trail tactics such as robocalls and advertising blitzes.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/meth-pseudoephedrine-big-pharma-lobby