From Gandhi to guns: An Indian woman explores the NRA convention

Guns are not a part of the culture of my homeland, except perhaps for the occasional Bollywood movie in which the bad guy meets his demise staring down the wrong end of a barrel.

My childhood in India was steeped in ahimsa, the tenet of nonviolence toward all living things.

The Indians may have succeeded in ousting the British, but we won with Gandhian-style civil disobedience, not a revolutionary war.

I grew up not knowing a single gun owner, and even today India has one of the strictest gun laws on the planet. Few Indians buy and keep firearms at home, and gun violence is nowhere near the problem it is in the United States. An American is 12 times more likely than an Indian to be killed by a firearm, according to a recent study.

Rich murder suspect is freed on bail as man accused of welfare fraud stuck in jail

Joseph Warren sees no sunlight and never gets fresh air. The 60-year-old San Francisco man, locked up for more than a month, said he has become suicidal, rarely eats the jail food and tries to sleep as much as possible when he’s not crying in his small cell. As a gay man, he is afraid he will be assaulted in the shower.

Warren is awaiting trial on welfare fraud charges. Charged with stealing roughly $5,000 from the government – an accusation he denies – a judge recently set his bail at $75,000, which he can’t afford. His only options are to plead guilty or stay incarcerated.

In the same region, another criminal defendant is preparing for trial in a very different setting. Tiffany Li, a wealthy real estate heir who is accused of conspiring to murder the father of her children, is able to remain on house arrest after posting $4m in cash and pledging $62m in property for her bail. She has a multimillion-dollar mansion 10 miles south of Warren’s jail.

The parallel cases moving through the San Francisco Bay Area’s courts have shone a harsh light on a system that critics say is fundamentally flawed and unconstitutional, where wealth can buy freedom even for those accused of the most serious offenses while others facing minor charges are jailed indefinitely simply for being poor.

US test-fires ICBM traveling 4,000 miles to South Pacific

The U.S. Air Force test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile which traveled over 4,000 miles before splashing down in the South Pacific after launching early Wednesday from a base in California.

The nuclear-capable missile was unarmed, according to the Air Force, and comes amid increasing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The Minuteman III missile blasted off at 12:03 a.m. Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

The test was long-planned, according to defense officials. When asked about the timing of the test amid the threats surrounding North Korea, one official told Fox News, "If we had canceled the launch, that would be a story too."

Nordstrom Touts Its Mud-Covered Jeans For Men

Perhaps to try and top last month’s debut of clear-kneed mom jeans from Top Shop, this month Nordstrom is shifting its focus to dads, with its faux mud-covered Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans from PRPS. With a price tag of $425, one might have thought the jeans would also come with a free trip to the rodeo.

Good news though, you can buy a muddy jean jacket to match the muddy jeans, also from PRPS, also for $425.

Nordstrom touts its “deep caked-on, baked-in muddy smears” as a core benefit.

According to Nordstrom, the jeans with dirt on the legs“embody rugged, Americana workwear that's seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you're not afraid to get down and dirty.” Yes, the mud is faux mud.

Free speech came to fisticuffs before alt-right white nationalist Richard Spencer could even begin his speech at Auburn University.

Students encircling the brawl said a Spencer supporter began jawing with an antifa, or anti-fascist, protester over Spencer's right to speak. A punch was thrown. The men spun through the crowd, swinging fists and grasping for headlocks before thudding to the ground.

It was over in seconds with both men in cuffs -- one of them bloodied -- and carted off to jail.

Auburn had tried four days earlier to cancel Spencer's speech Tuesday night. But a federal judge forced the public university to let him exercise his First Amendment rights.

CLEAR IT
Bullets are the parts of the gun that cause damage. If they are not in the gun, they cannot shoot out of the gun and tear through a lampshade or some pancakes or your buddy’s butt or a kid.

CHECK IT
“Checking” is when you make extra sure you really did the thing you thought you did. Did you do the thing? If you did, you can say “Check!” Or not. You don’t have to say that.

LOCK IT
Locks are a way to separate guns from The Wrong Hands. The Wrong Hands could belong to a kid or a criminal or a jittery cowboy or a cute monkey in a sailor hat. There are a lot of Wrong Hands out there. Like, tons.

ARE YOU OPPOSED TO ME OWNING A GUN?
Nope. There are over 300 millions guns out there in America with another 6 million sold every year. We’re not trying to be involved in who’s allowed to own what. We’re just opposed to accidental holes in stuff. Whether they’re in furniture or people or a pizza, we hate accidental holes. We’re staunchly opposed to them.

Trump on pace to surpass 8 years of Obama's travel spending in 1 year

Donald Trump's travel to his private club in Florida has cost over an estimated $20 million in his first 80 days as president, putting the president on pace in his first year of office to surpass former President Barack Obama's spending on travel for his entire eight years.

The outsized spending on travel stands in stark relief to Trump's calls for belt tightening across the federal government and the fact that he regularly criticized Obama for costing the American taxpayer money every time he took a trip.

Given variations in each trip, estimating the security costs around a presidential trip is difficult. But a 2016 Government Accountability Office report about a four-day trip Obama took to Florida in 2013 -- one similar to Trump's trips -- found the total cost to the Secret Service and Coast Guard was $3.6 million.