MALMO, SWEDEN — Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets. Decline partly put down to strong focus on rehabilitation and more lenient sentences for some offences

Prison numbers in Sweden, which have been falling by around 1% a year since 2004, dropped by 6% between 2011 and 2012 and are expected to do the same again both this year and next year. Photograph: Paul Doyle/Alamy

Sweden has experienced such a sharp fall in the number of prison admissions in the past two years that it has decided to close down four prisons and a remand centre.

‘We have seen an out-of-the-ordinary decline in the number of inmates,’ said Nils Öberg, the head of Sweden’s prison and probation services. ‘Now we have the opportunity to close down a part of our infrastructure that we don’t need at this point of time.’

Prison numbers in Sweden, which have been falling by around 1% a year since 2004, dropped by 6% between 2011 and 2012 and are expected to do the same again both this year and next, Öberg said.

As a result, the prison service has this year closed down prisons in the towns of Ã…by, HÃ¥ja, BÃ¥tshagen, and Kristianstad, two of which will probably […]

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Fracking outfit Range Resources slapped Texas homeowner Steve Lipsky with a $3 million defamation suit to bully him into silence about his polluted water but Lipsky is fighting back. Lipsky is a wealthy man, not used to being bullied, but the frackers think they can use their control of the state of Texas to bulldoze him. They have bought off the Texas Railroad Commission that supposedly regulates fracking in Texas, and intimidated the USEPA into inaction so they don’t intend to let minor matters like safe drinking water, private property rights and the first Amendment get in the way of their pursuit of profits.

On October 10, 2013, the Fort Worth Court of Appeals ruled that Range Resources could move forward with their defamation suit against Lipsky, based in part on accusations that Lipsky is misleading the public about being able to set his water on fire

In 2010 the EPA issued an emergency order over Lipsky’s contaminated water, but then retracted the order a little over a year later with no justification. An AP investigation discovered that Range had successfully pressured the EPA into submission. Although the EPA had water chemistry measurements that showed Lipsky’s water was […]

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Bloomberg reports that Texas Armoring, a San Antonio-based company specializing in armoring vehicles for the super-rich (the biggest in the world), is enjoying an unprecedented sales boom.

Currently, they armor about 200 vehicles per year. In the next five years, the company’s CEO, Trent Kimbell, expects that number to double.

‘If you’re rich and need protection, you are going to come to us to armor your vehicle,’ Kimbell says. The part about being rich makes sense. Including the vehicle, the low-end cost is $80,000, the high-end is $500,000. Protection itself ranges from being fortified against handguns all the way up to repelling an AK-47 and M-16.

Not surprisingly, politicians and celebrities are a large part of the clientele, including Steven Segal and Mel B (aka ‘Scary Spice’). Not every customer lives in the United States. Executives who fear kidnapping in places like West Africa are also clients.

Kimbell says his company offers what he describes as ‘James Bond-type accessories.’ These include smoke screens and electrified door handles.

Kimbell says the increase in demand for his product is connected to an increase in the perception that threats are on the rise.

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When Absalom Jordan hears the crack of gunfire outside his home in Southeast Washington, he reacts in an instant. ‘You get away from the windows and get down,

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Want to know why the Tea Party so eager to grievously wound the Republican Party? The answer is as simple as it is counterintuitive: its leaders view themselves as modern prophets of the apocalypse.

In the aftermath of the great government shutdown of 2013, the Tea Party continues to cause heartburn for establishment Republicans. Consider the results of last week’s elections, which offer clues to the internecine GOP battles that lie ahead. Although it’s much too early to draw hard conclusions, Chris Christie proved that a moderate, common-sense Republican could win in deep blue New Jersey, while in purple Virginia the wild-eyed social reactionary Ken Cuccinelli failed to gain traction outside his uber-conservative Christian-right base.

Yet the Tea Party is willing to defy overwhelming negative public opinion, wreck the government, risk plunging the world economy into chaos and invite political defeat. The driving force behind this destructive strategy is that Tea Party zealots answer to a ‘higher calling.

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