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VANCOUVER -- Police said they were looking for a suspect after more than a dozen Syrian refugees were pepper sprayed late Friday night in Vancouver. The attack happened outside the Muslim Association of Canada Centre during a "welcome night" event for newly-arrived Syrian refugees. City police said a crowd of men, women and children had gathered outside the MAC centre when a man wearing a white-hoodie apparently rode by on a bicycle and sprayed 15 to 30 people. Witnesses said several of those who were hit started coughing and complaining of burning eyes. Police said that a number of people...

Dude flipped cop off to test his 1st amendment rights to freedom of expression = not a good idea Saratoga Springs police released the camera they had confiscated on Saturday, showing officer Nathan Baker pepper spraying a man sitting in his car before grabbing the man’s arm and twisting it out the window. Officer Baker claimed he was arresting Adam Rupeka for disorderly conduct. Rupeka had flipped him off while driving past him. And while the New York statute for disorderly conduct includes a line about making an “obscene gesture,” the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses New...

Okay. Doesn't fall under "Breaking News" but, I don't post articles very often. So, I drop off my Alki friend so he can do some walk in/walk out bail thing at the Sheriffs Department. I'm bored and spy a Thai restaurant across the street. At first my thoughts were just about some delish lemongrass soup. So I walk in and order their lemongrass soup. But, they offered a twist I hadn't been offered at othe Thai restaurants "You want regular or spicy?". "Huh? Why I'll take spicy. I love spicy anything" I responded Well, they tried to talk me out...

Central-east Mexico gave birth to the domesticated chili pepper—now the world's most widely grown spice crop—reports an international team of researchers, led by a plant scientist at the University of California, Davis. Results from the four-pronged investigation—based on linguistic and ecological evidence as well as the more traditional archaeological and genetic data—suggest a regional, rather than a geographically specific, birthplace for the domesticated chili pepper. That region, extending from southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca to southeastern Veracruz, is further south than was previously thought, the researchers found. The region also is different from areas of origin that have been suggested...

Dear FRiends,This day is Erev Yom Kippur, (Yom Kippur Eve,) usually commemorated with two festive meals, the giving of charity, and asking others for forgiveness. This is to ask YOUR forgiveness for not explaining why all of my pings have stopped without anyone knowing why. I wouldn't exactly call this a 'vanity', more like an explanation and apology to all of you who have added your names to any of my lists for why you don't get those oh, so many pings anymore.Below is what this post started as. And THIS is how it ended. I figured it was better...

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the hottest peppers in the world are the Carolina Reaper peppers grown in South Carolina by Ed Currie of PuckerButt Pepper Co. Currie spent more than four years working with students at Winthrop University to alter a sweet hot pepper from the Caribbean and give it more zip. During tests at Winthrop, the Reaper averaged just shy of 1.6 million Scoville Heat Units. To put that in perspective, a standard jalapeno pepper registers around 5,000 on the Scoville scale. The previous record holder, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper, was measured by New...

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — The Southern California maker of a popular hot sauce has been ordered to cease operations that have allegedly emitted harmful odors into the surrounding community, after residents’ complaints of health problems prompted a lawsuit. A state court judge issued a decision late Tuesday finding that Huy Fong Foods Inc., the manufacturer of cult-favorite Sriracha “Rooster Sauce” and other chili sauce products, must “make changes in its site operations reducing odors and the potential for odors” at its Irwindale, Calif., factory. The injunction is slated to take effect on Dec. 9. Bloomberg Enlarge Image The company, which...

Sriracha lovers united for the first-ever Sriracha Festival on Sunday in downtown Los Angeles. They came in droves with a line wrapping around the long city block outside Lot 163, where participants came armed with cameras, dressed in red T-shirts, and one, wrapped in a full Sriracha bottle costume. Melissa Joves from Cerritos made her own costume by wearing a red sriracha shirt with a rooster on it, red pants, red tennis shoes and a green hat. Wearing sunglasses and a smile, she peered out of the green head piece and proudly grasped her new copy of "The Veggie Lover's...

Eating chili peppers can help burn brown fat, research shows. What do low and chili peppers have in common? They both could help burn fat, a new study shows. Exposure to cold and consumption of chemicals found in chili peppers both appear to increase the number and activity of so-called brown fat cells, which burn energy, rather than store it as typical "white" fat cells do, said Takeshi Yoneshiro, a researcher at Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. The study is the first to show that brown fat activity can be induced in people who appeared to...

Spicy Soup Burns Hole Straight Through Man's Stomach Doctors in China were dumbfounded after seeing the case of a 26-year-old man whose spicy food burned a hole in the wall of his stomach. For some more adventurous eaters, spicy foods are often an exciting dish to try. After all, though urban legends had proclaimed that eating spicy foods could give you an ulcer, the credit for that belongs to the Helicobacter pylori. That is why doctors in the Hubei province of China were dumbfounded after seeing the case of a 26-year-old man whose spicy food, they say, burned a hole...

Judge fines protester who got a mouthful of pepper sprayBy KATU.com Staff Published: Dec 21, 2012 at 9:49 PM PST PORTLAND, Ore. - An Occupy Portland protester who was blasted in the face with pepper spray was found guilty this week of ignoring police orders and will now have to pay a fine. **SNIP** A judge has now fined Nichols $260 for not listening to police and following their orders that day.

Still Occupying: Looking back on a year of pepper spray, parks, even some petitionsBy Phill Courtney Posted: 10/13/2012 12:13:43 PM PDT One year later, the reviews are decidedly mixed. Some say the Occupy movement failed because there's been no fundamental, nor even a discernible change in how our country's run because they didn't have a plan, while others argue that Occupy succeeded and is still succeeding because it gave a voice to those who are too often voiceless. But perhaps the truth, as if often does, lies somewhere in between. **SNIP** One of Occupy's most important messages is that it...

Bernell Benn said he was simply in line at a Rite Aid pharmacy Thursday afternoon to pick up his medicine. He was chatting on the phone with his mother when he noticed that a man had cut in front of him. What happened next at the store in the 3600 block of Tidewater Drive is in dispute. Benn, in a jailhouse interview, said he was defending himself when he fatally shot that man in a gunfight. "I came to the store just to get my medicine," said Benn, who was crying as he was led into the interview at Norfolk...

College Pepper-Spraying Incident Begs Question: Who Will Pay for 'Free'?By Paul Roy | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 1 hr 41 mins ago COMMENTARY | Exactly what are our children learning in college these days anyway? On Tuesday, April 3, a group of students at Santa Monica College, a community college, were protesting a proposed fee hike for some of the most popular courses. This led to some arrests and the use of pepper spray by the local police. According to a report in the Associated Press, the students were chanting, "No cuts, no fee, education should be free." This statement...

Students angry over pricey courses pepper-sprayedBy GREG RISLING | Associated Press – 2 hrs 37 mins ago SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A state agency that oversees California's community colleges asked the attorney general on Wednesday to assess the legality of a school's plan to charge students more for popular classes. The move comes the morning after Santa Monica College police pepper-sprayed demonstrators as students angry over the plan tried to push their way into a meeting of the school's trustees, authorities said.

Trade Secrets Act keeps pepper spray ingredients "secret"Story Created: Feb 06, 2012 at 6:28 PM FORT MYERS, Fla. - Law enforcement officers rave about pepper spray as a way to get compliance without drawing their guns. In recent weeks we've seen it gain scrutiny as law enforcement uses it as a way to control crowds at occupy events. But if you think it's natural and made of peppers, you're only about two-percent right. In fact, some ingredients in pepper spray are a highly guarded trade secret. **SNIP** Mesloh says no one regulates this industry to keep it from happening, not...

Pepper-Spray Used at UC Davis Becomes 'Hit' on AmazonBy Shailesh Shrivastava November 29, 2011 5:56 AM EST Since a campus policeman pepper-sprayed Occupy protesters at the University of California, Davis, the campus has been witnessing protests almost every day. **SNIP** The pepper spray Lt. John Pike used has become famous since the brand name and product id have now been registered in people's mind. Amazon users have posted many creative pictures under the product "Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray." The sarcastic comments as the product review also show that people are in no...

Joseph Wambaugh solves the great UC Davis pepper-spraying incident Forget hiring Bill Bratton. You can learn all you need to know by reading the papers. In light of the terrible financial crisis at our California universities, I feel the need to rescue UC Davis, whose administrators are, according to The Times, negotiating a price with the Kroll security firm in New York for none other than former LAPD Chief Bill Bratton to fly West and tell us what went wrong on the day that students were pepper sprayed. I can save the university a hefty Kroll consulting fee by suggesting...

SEATTLE (AP) — A downtown march and rally in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement turned briefly chaotic as police scattered a crowd of rowdy protesters — including a pregnant 19-year-old and an 84-year-old activist — with blasts of pepper spray. Protest organizers denounced the use of force, saying that police indiscriminately sprayed the chemical irritant at peaceful protesters. The Occupy Seattle movement released a written statement late Tuesday expressing support for "a 4-foot 10-inch, 84-year-old woman, a priest and a pregnant woman who as of this writing is still in the hospital." Dorli Rainey is an activist who...

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- San Diego police on Friday used pepper spray to break up a human chain formed by anti-Wall Street demonstrators at a downtown plaza where they've camped for a week. Police in the early morning began removing about a half-dozen tents after warning demonstrators their personal belongings couldn't stay in the Occupy San Diego camp. Demonstrators can continue protesting without the tents, tarps and tables, authorities said. One man was arrested before 8 a.m. for interfering with a police officer after he sat down and refused to take away his tent, police Lt. Andra Brown said. After...