Drug Enforcement Administration agents like to party with the locals while working overseas, according to a report released today by the Department of Justice. The report, released by the department's inspector general, found that for years, several DEA agents stationed overseas held "sex parties" with prostitutes paid for by local drug cartels, likely in Colombia. According to the investigation, the parties were typically hosted at DEA "quarters" leased by the US government, and Colombian police officers also provided "protection for the DEA agents' weapons and property during the parties."

The revelations come as part of a wider investigation of the handling of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment in several DOJ agencies, including Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the DEA, the FBI, and the US Marshals Service. The DOJ's inspector general began its investigation after several Secret Service members were sent home from Colombia in 2012 for alleged involvement with prostitutes in Cartagena during a presidential trip to the Summit of the Americas. After reviewing the alleged sexual misconduct of agents in Cartagena, the OIG called for a broader review of "the nature, frequency, reporting, investigation, and adjudication of allegations of sexual misconduct" across the agency.

The findings of the investigation are damning, to say the least. The Justice Department found that the DEA suffered from a "lack of coordination between the internal affairs offices," murky sexual misconduct and sexual harassment reporting policies, and "weaknesses in detecting sexually explicit text messages and images," all of which seem like fairly important components when making sure your employees aren't attending prostitute orgies paid for by Colombian drug lords.

In another instance uncovered by the report, multiple witnesses reported that a DEA assistant regional director had "solicited prostitutes at a farewell party held in [his] honor." In an interview with the DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility, the director in question claimed that the witnesses must be "100% lying," and the agency did not continue its investigation.

Even in adjudicated cases of sexual harassment, the DEA failed to charge subjects with sexual harassment, instead charging them with other, more innocuous-sounding indiscretions, like "Conduct Unbecoming" and "Failure to Follow Written Instructions." When asked by investigators why the sexual harassment offense category evenexisted, a DEA official "who is heavily involved in the discipline process responded, 'It's for show.'"

The DEA wasn't the only department with lax responses to sexual misconduct. According to the report, the ATF and the Marshal's Service also failed to report risky and inappropriate sexual behavior. Other allegations include an ATF program manager "failed to report allegations that two training instructors were having consensual sex with their students," even after discovering that the instructors had "engaged in substantially the same activities three years earlier;" and that a deputy US Marshal entered a "romantic relationship" with a fugitive's spouse for more than a year, despite requests from supervisors to break it off.

The report also claims that the DEA and FBI did not make the investigation easy for the inspector general's office, allegedly withholding information during initial interviews and "unnecessarily delaying" responses to investigators. According to the report, DEA employees "stated they were given the impression by the DEA that they were not to discuss the case with the [Office of the Inspector General] while the case remained open."

In a statement to Politico Thursday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R) said he wanted all agents involved fired immediately, adding that "anytime you bring a foreign national into your room, you're asking for trouble." The committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the report's findings next month.

Follow Jennifer on Twitter

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Photo via Flickr user United States Mission Geneva

In 2013, a United Nations report estimated that the cocaine trade through West Africa was worth at least $1.25 billion a year. This is higher than the combined government budgets of several countries in the region, which has become an important transhipment point between Latin America producers and consumers in the United States and Europe.

This cash flow threatens to corrode the institutions of the state and undermine economic progress and democratic practice in a part of the world that has only recently emerged from several decades of violent conflict and instability.

The region's political and security institutions are struggling to respond to these threats and are not always well equipped to mount adequate preventive measures. The "war on drugs" strategy, which focuses heavily on the suppression of drug shipments, has not enabled West Africa—or indeed other regions of the world—to meet and overcome the drug threat.

Experience has shown that force alone cannot reduce the drug supply or the criminality and corruption that it induces.

Governments that focus on drug users and small-time dealers often create an unsustainable burden on their criminal justice systems while ignoring the health and social problems that have emerged with increasing levels of trafficking, consumption, and production, which goes on unabated.

By 2013, the situation had become so alarming that I decided to convene the West Africa Commission on Drugs (WACD), chaired by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, with a membership of distinguished West Africans drawn from diverse sectors of society.

The Commission concluded that the current policies are not only ineffective but actually detrimental to the efforts being made to contain the threats that drugs pose. It also reported that the drugs were not just in transit in the region, but increasingly available to and consumed by the local populations. For instance, the use of cocaine, in one form or another, is on the rise, particularly among young people.

Drug users need help, not punishment. That is why we recommended to treat drug use primarily as a public health issue and to focus on punitive actions towards big-time traffickers and their accomplices, who have mostly remained untouched.

Education, treatment, and decriminalization will serve our societies much more than the continued refusal to see the harmful impact drugs have on the health and wellbeing of our people. In the first place it is West African governments and their peoples that have to deal with this crisis. But Europe and the United States, which are the main market for the drugs transiting through our region, must also share the burden. The Ebola crisis, for example, has shown that supporting West Africa's health infrastructure is in everybody's interest.

As I have maintained in the past, drugs may have destroyed many people, but wrong governmental policies have destroyed many more. Let us not repeat this mistake.

We cannot expect governments to solve all problems on their own. Civil society must also be closely involved as well as the international community, which cannot leave West Africa alone to tackle this menace. It too must play its part.

State institutions, civil societies, and regional organizations must all work together for the maintenance of peace and stability in the region.

Watch the next episode of VICE on HBO, premiering this Friday, March 27, for a close look at the drug trade in Africa.

Follow the Kofi Annan Foundation on Twitter and Facebook.

It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Shaneka Torres

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Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: McDonald's didn't put bacon on a woman's bacon cheeseburger. Twice.

The appropriate response: Complaining. Twice.

The actual response: She fired a gun into the restaurant.

Last month, Shaneka Torres (pictured above) and an unnamed friend ordered bacon cheeseburgers from a McDonald's in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Staff at the restaurant messed up the order, giving Shaneka and her friend regular cheeseburgers. Shaneka complained to a manager at the restaurant, who told her that she and her friend could get free bacon cheeseburgers on their next visit. So far, so good.

They returned later that night, and, once again, asked for bacon cheeseburgers. And, again, they were served cheeseburgers without bacon. Shaneka was super not into this.

According to a report on the local ABC affiliate, Shaneka yelled at a worker, before pulling out a pistol and firing one round into the restaurant from her car.

The bullet shattered her car window, and passed through the restaurant " at about head level" without hitting anyone.

Shaneka was arrested shortly after at her home. She was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, discharging a firearm into a building, and felony use of a firearm.

She appeared in court yesterday, where a jury took less than an hour finding her guilty. She will be sentenced next month, and could face up to seven years in prison.

No word on why the fuck the staff at that McDonald's have such difficulty putting bacon on cheeseburgers.

Cry-Baby #2: An unnamed 12-year-old

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Screencap via Google Maps. Bleach via Wikimedia Commons.

The incident: A woman confiscated her daughter's iPhone.

The appropriate response: Sucking it up until you're old enough to buy your own iPhone.

The actual response: The girl allegedly attempted to kill her mother.

According to a report on Denver's Fox 31, on an unspecified date, an unnamed woman seized the iPhone of her unnamed daughter for unknown reasons.

Some unspecified amount of time after this, the mother drank a smoothie. As she did so, she reportedly noticed that it smelled of bleach. "She thought that her daughter had maybe just cleaned the glass and that there was still bleach left in it," said commander Heidi Prentup of the Boulder County Sherriff's Office. After finishing the smoothie, the woman is reported to have gotten sick.

According to police, the mother realized that the bleach was not accidental a couple of days later, when she drank from a glass of water that also smelled of bleach.

The mother confronted her daughter, who allegedly confessed that she was trying to kill her. "She said that she had wanted to kill her mother because she had taken her iPhone from her," commander Heidi said.

The daughter has been arrested on two counts of attempted murder. The mother did not ingest enough of the bleach for it to be life-threatening.

Which of these folks is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A guy allegedly shot someone for bringing him the wrong brand of beer and someone called an amputee a "cry baby one leg" in an argument over parking.

Winner: The amputee-hater!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Last night's TV ding dong between David Cameron and Ed Miliband was the first of four in the run up to May's General Election. It'll be interesting to see if the debate will be able to sustain the utterance of this much nothingness for three more rounds.

Ahead of the event Cameron had decided against participating in any direct debate between himself and the leader of the opposition, for fear of Ed Miliband appearing like a Prime Minister in waiting—or at least that was the claim, possibly put about by Labour PR SPADs. That meant that rather than the kind of duel we saw ahead of the 2010 General Election—the catalyst for "Cleggmania" and a thousand Guardian love letters—what we got was the bizarre spectacle of both men being individually quizzed by Jeremy Paxman before separately taking questions from a live studio audience alongside Sky's Kay Burley. What was billed as a "battle" was in fact a highly choreographed effort to avoid anything of the remotest interest actually taking place. For the most part, it worked.

While the evening was far from memorable, there were several moments which told the viewer something about not only both men, but the shriveled, shallow state of our national politics and how it sits alongside a mainstream media, which acts more as a mirror for the privilege of our alleged representatives than an inquisitor holding them to account.

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That was most evident when the ever-puzzled Paxman pointed out to Ed Miliband that his predictions on unemployment, wages, and inflation had proved, in the final analysis, incorrect. While Paxman's Waitrose rottweiler brand of journalism has led to him being lauded as one of the outstanding political journalists of his generation, his tacit claim of wages having gone up under this government—when they have in fact declined by as much as 8 percent—shows how out of touch and just plain wrong he can be.

Nevertheless, Paxman said this nonsense with an assured authority. It is that unyielding sense of certainty, which seems to be the basis of so much in British politics. Where ignorance is mutual, confidence is king. And on issues which much of the electorate may be unaware or ill-informed, the quizzical, furrowed Paxman is broadcast as a nation's sage.

There were fleeting moments that tied the personal stories of both men to their "pragmatic" (read: opportunistic) politics. One such instance was when Paxman asked the Prime Minister—a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth II, who got a phone call of endorsement from Buckingham Palace when he was going for an interview at Tory HQ—whether he would be able to live on a zero-hours contract. After some initial groans, he offered a rather predictable reply, "Some people choose to live on a zero-hours contract." Just like how almost one million people choose to go to food banks, 700,000 can choose between any number of zero-hours jobs with flatlining wages. Choice and meritocracy, British style.

That the Prime Minister's answer to such a pertinent question was the same as it would have been five years ago shows that on low pay and falling living standards, his party has no answers beyond an almost religious faith in the market sorting itself out.

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While hardly the polar opposite that right-wing press depict him as, Ed Miliband does have some vaguely interesting things to say about energy bills, the minimum wage, and in-work poverty. Given all that, why did Paxman chose to focus on his brother instead, a political question that was last interesting in 2010? "They see you as a North London geek" the former BBC Newsnight anchor said as he sunk into his chair, never more at ease with the utter predictability of what passes for British politics, "who cares, who does?" replied the Labour leader, which seemed a fair question.

There is a good chance that the result of May's General Election will throw up an unlikely and unstable government. The political center of British politics is crumbling as some older Tory, and to a lesser extent Labour, voters look to UKIP. Meanwhile the Greens are disproportionately popular among the young, a cohort of potential voters who have seen their wages fall the most, and who tend to see Ed Miliband as representing the very least the Labour Party should be offering in terms of progressive policies. Events in Scotland since the late 1990s have shown that with ideas, will, and determination, anything is possible. The SNP currently have six MPs. This election, they look set to win 43 of Scotland's 59 seats. The political changes seen north of the border—where the Conservative Party currently hold one seat—will likely move south over the following years.

To behold the bland, bizarre politics on offer from Cameron and Miliband—and the agonizingly inert questions of Paxman—was almost to observe a foreign country. The defining issues of the next several decades: climate change, the end of American Empire (and with it a measure of global stability), and the seeming failure of capitalism to elevate living standards anywhere in the Global North since 2008 are all, in their own ways, fascinating and merit our full attention.

What was on show last night was not politics, but a pantomime which could not be less interested in the "little" realities of everyday life—like your wages or zero hours contract—nor the big picture thinking required to overcome the defining challenges of our generation. At least on the 2nd of April, the agreed date for the seven-party debate on ITV, the grey of Cameron and Miliband will be broken up with Nigel Farage and Nicola Sturgeon trying to get a look in. The residue of two-party politics that stuck itself to our TV screens last night will soon be wiped away by the excitement of multiple politicians, some of whom might have some energy, or say something worthwhile, or at least farcical. Let's count ourselves lucky, because a repeat of last night would be too much nothingness to bear.

Related – Cameron Vs. Miliband: Who Won the Debate That Wasn't a Debate

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In a new episode of VICE Meets, we sit down with Nick Cave to talk about the release of his new book, The Sick Bag Song.

The book was written by Cave as he and the Bad Seeds undertook a mammoth tour of 22 cities across America, and in it you can feel all the exhaustion, romantic longing, musings, memories, and moments of significance such a marathon entails. It's an epic poem, written—quite literally, on sick bags—in the manner of The Wasteland meets Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Here, on an empty airplane, VICE's John Doran talks to Cave about his wife, his home, and his childhood, the "dreaded" act of songwriting, and his artistic influences—from American poet John Berryman, right through to the Bible.

Cave's book will be available exclusively from thesickbagsong.com, in all kinds of special editions and formats.

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Photo via Unharm.

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

The New South Wales (NSW) Police drug dog presence at this month's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was substantial, as it has been in previous years. After having marched in the parade Tom, who prefers to keep his last name private, made his way to the after-party. The 28-year-old health industry worker arrived at the Moore Park event wearing a large backpack, only to be confronted by an officer with a dog.

"The handler was on the other side of the crowd. He made eye contact with me. I was nowhere near the dog, but as I was walking in and joined the line, he walked through the crowd towards me. He put his hand on my backpack before the dog even indicated and then the dog sat down," he told VICE.

Tom was then led away by police officers to a tent nearby, where he was subjected to persistent questioning and his bag was searched. He was then told to take off his clothes and squat before the officers. No drugs were found on him, as he didn't have any.

"It's anxiety provoking. I know a lot of people who avoid major parties like that because of the sniffer dogs, even if they're not planning on taking any drugs," Tom said. "If you have drugs or not, there's still the potential there to take you off and subject you to that humiliating experience."

But the LGBTQI community is not the only marginalized group to be targeted by the NSW Police Dog Unit.

Last year, NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge obtained figures from the NSW Police Minister outlining that in 2013 17,746 people were searched by police after being indicated by dogs. And of these searches 64 to 72 percent were false indications, where no drugs were found. In cases where drugs were found most were of small amounts for personal use, with only 2.44 percent of positive searches resulting in a supply conviction.

"There are people being heavily over policed by the use of drug dogs. A passenger getting off at Redfern station is six and a half times more likely to be searched than a passenger getting off at Central. What distinguishes those populations is that Redfern has a very large Aboriginal population and a large young student population," Shoebridge said. "Redfern is over policed. They've got a higher false positive rate and a lower detection rate."

Ray Jackson, president of the Indigenous Social Justice Association, said Redfern station is the most heavily searched area by drug dogs in Sydney. And while there are a lot of university students, the police mainly target Aboriginal people, especially the youth. "The coppers use this as a tool to further harass people. There have been instances where they've been taken from Redfern station over to the police station and they've been stripped searched and nothing is generally found. So I don't know why they continue to do it," he said.

Jackson, a Wiradjuri man, explained police are also conducting dog searches in and around the Department of Housing blocks in nearby Waterloo. Tenants, visitors, and tradespeople are all subject to being searched and this is terrifying some of the older tenants.

Over the last three years, the largest expansion of drug dog operations has been the NSW Police Transport Command, who patrol the City Rail network. These searches have resulted in an 80 percent false positive rate. According to Will Tregoning, director of harm reduction organization Unharm, these searches are more likely to target people from a lower socioeconomic background, who have more tendency to be using public transport.

"Someone sees the drug dog operation and takes all their drugs at once in order to avoid detection, which was clearly implicated in the death of James Munro at Defqon 1 in 2013." - Will Tregoning

Drug dog operations are also commonly carried out at music festivals and dance parties, with accounts of up to six dogs being deployed at one event, accompanied by 50 to 60 officers. Tregoning warns that such operations rarely deter attendees from taking illicit drugs but more often have other effects that increase the risk of overdose.

"Preloading, taking all your drugs before you go to an event in order to avoid detection, is very risky behavior," he told VICE, going on to outline the risk of panic-based overdose. "Someone sees the drug dog operation and takes all their drugs at once in order to avoid detection, which was clearly implicated in the death of James Munro at Defqon 1 in 2013."

Further adverse effects are instances where people swallow bags containing drugs, which can subsequently burst. Others may switch to less detectable substances, which can lead to people moving away from relatively harmless drugs such as marijuana to substances such as GHB, which is potentially more harmful.

A spokesperson for NSW Police told VICE that the Dog Unit deploys dogs when requested by local area and specialist commands for operations at public events, on the public transport network and at licensed premises.

"Drug detection dogs are effective at identifying the presence of odor of prohibited drugs," the spokesperson said. "Drugs are a major contributing factor to crime across NSW, therefore any and all efforts by NSW Police to detect prohibited drugs is worthwhile."

But Shoebridge believes drug dog operations are being conducted so that police and the government can be seen to be taking effective action against drugs, in order to appease certain segments of the community.

"They know it has no impact on supply. They know it has adverse impacts in terms of users responding by preloading or by consuming their drugs in an instant when they see the dogs. This is about being seen to do something on the war on drugs that they are patently losing," he said.

This last summer season of music festivals has been notable for large scale drug dog operations. The standard operating procedures for NSW Police outline that every dog deployed at an event must be accompanied by 12 officers. Shoebridge feels this is an extraordinary misallocation of police resources that could be better directed to public safety in other areas where it is needed.

Follow Paul on Twitter.

Our third season of VICE is currently airing Fridays on HBO, and we've got a sneak peek of tonight's episode to get you excited. So far this season, we've investigated climate change, police militarization, and more. This week, we follow the cocaine highway from the streets of Venezuela to Caribbean drug smuggling boats to desert territories controlled by Islamic extremists until finally ending up in the noses of partiers in Europe. Then, we look at the boom in one of the world's newest billion-dollar industries: gestational surrogacy. Check out this exclusive clip and catch the full episode tonight.

Watch VICE Fridays at on HBO at 11 PM, 10 PM Central.

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Brady Grumpelt, business savant. Photo by Mack Lamoureux

Brady Grumpelt holds his glass high.

"Gentlemen, to evil," he proclaims, and with that we down our shot of Jameson.

He's pretty nonchalant for a man who earned $80,000 off gummy dicks in one day.

On March 4, while half cut on whiskey, Grumpelt bought the domain dicksbymail.com hoping to have a little corner of the internet where anyone can pump in $20 and, as a result, a person of their choosing would receive a literal bag of peckers alongside a letter instructing the reciever to eat them. It all started out as a simple joke that Grumpelt came up with at his bartending job on Whyte Ave. Initially, the idea was far more vulgar than it's current state. The first version involved sending someone, not gummy pricks, but a cheap dildo with a letter that said "go fuck yourself." Grumpelt felt that might of been a tad extreme and decided instead to go with the willies. It was a good idea, one that got Grumpelt a few sales here and there. That all changed when one of his friends, one of the first recipients of a bag of choads, took a picture and posted it on imgur.

That's when the internet lost its collective weiner-loving mind.

The post was seen over 400,000 times, and the orders started rolling in. On the first day $1000, then $30,000 on the second, and $80,000 on the third. It just kept going, and within a few days, Grumpelt sold over $150,000 worth of schlongs. It got to the point that Grumpelt didn't really know what to do. (Editor's note: Buy a fucking house, dude.)

"When you go from a joke that does like six orders in a week or two to $1,000 a day, it's crazy," Grumpelt told VICE. "I said to myself, 'OK, I've got to order myself a bunch of dicks.' When you do $30,000 the next day you basically don't have to look at dicks again, it just get's so big so fast I just knew I had to find somebody else to do this stuff for me."

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The gummy dicks that launched an empire

He set out to find a supplier in the US, where the majority of the sales were taking place. He put thought into his product: "You want it to be a little bit veiny but not to graphic," he told me. He was, in essence, on the look for the Rolls Royce of gummy one-eyed-trouser-snakes, and he found just that. It was with a supplier that sold gummy cocks for bachelorette parties and he immediately started buying. He did the math, and if he put all the beef bayonets he's recently ordered in his household "it would fill up our entire basement, four inches deep, with dicks."

He gave me a bag and the baby-makers are mighty tasty; they taste like those little gummy dinosaurs. But while reaching into his backpack to retrieve the members, Grumpelt missed a call.

"Oh, I've got Texas calling me," he said after looking at the phone.

Apparently the callers from Texas are interested in buying the site. Grumpelt has dicksbymail.com up for auction on Flippa, a website/business-selling site. He had an offer that was above his reserved price of $100,000 but the bidder was a fraud and essentially ruined the auction for Grumpelt, so he now has to deal with buyers over the phone. He wouldn't tell me the exact price the aforementioned Texaan offered, but he did say that they met the reserve price, meaning it was at least $100,000. However, he doesn't know if he'll sell the baloney pony business just yet.

"Essentially, if I filled the orders myself, I could be making in the neighbourhood of $120,000 to $130,000 on what there currently is, and then a little bit more going into the future," he told me. "A lot of people online have been saying this has slowed down. It's slowed down to $5,000 a day, and if anybody wants to tell me how slow $5,000 a day is, then they're welcome to."

During his time talking to Texas about his tallywhacker company for a possible $100,000 he orders us another round with a wave. As I said, he's very nonchalant about this kind of stuff.

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The dicksbymail logo

Grumpelt is big, tall, bald, down-to-earth guy, one who is quick with a joke and a laugh. The 29-year-old openly admits that he's lucky, and he doesn't complain about the stress that comes from being thrust into this weird position. He tells me he's not going to quit his job bartending and is going to use the money to start another company. A company that may be a little more sustainable than a heat-seeking-love-missile–focused one. He describes the idea as the airbnb for bartenders. That said, he does have some other plans for the wedding-tackle capital before putting it to good use.

"Myself and my best friend, who are going to be using this money to start another business, I think we're just going to have a money fight," he explained. "So we're going to have like ten or 15 thousand dollars in like 20, and just throw piles of money at each other because it will be fun. How many times do you get to do that?"

Before the money fight, before anything, he's going to pay back his father who he had to borrow some cash from when the hosepipe business started skyrocketing. Grumpelt said it was a little awkward arranging the deal, as his dad, who's a little conservative minded, won't call the pork-swords by their name—or by any of their many euphemisms.

"He says: 'products,'" Grumpelt said. "He'll ask me, 'How's your business going?' I always say 'Bag of dicks? The bags of dicks are going well, dad.'"

Indeed they are. The bag of dicks game seems to be going just fine for Grumpelt.

Dick count: 11

Dick euphemism count: 15

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

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Photo by Cassie Schakel

Spring may be the season when melting snow reveals surprises, but it's not often those discoveries include beheaded animal carcasses. But that's the situation in London, Ontario area this month, as investigators are trying to solve the puzzle posed by hikers who stumbled on the remains of up to six coyotes killed and laid out in ways designed to attract the attention of passers-by.

The first animals were discovered by a walker near a trail on the University of Western Ontario campus March 15. They were stretched out at the end of a footpath, "nicely in parallel," according to biology professor Greg Thorn, who went to investigate the site after he was shown photographs by a student. Both animals had been shot, Thorn explained, but it's unlikely that happened on campus as fresh footprints in the snow led away from the site. Western police are investigating, and they also feel the shootings took place somewhere else, as gunshots on the university grounds would have been heard and reported, according to Staff Sgt. J.C. Aubin.

The more gruesome discovery—two decapitated coyote corpses—was made the next day by a hiker near Parkhill, around 40 km northwest of London. Out for an early spring hike, Cassie Schakel of nearby Strathroy found the pair under some trees on land near a conservation area. Taking photos of the animals from a few steps away, Schakel didn't realize they were headless. It was only when looking at the photos later that she realized the bodies were incomplete. There was no blood at the scene, and since the animals seemed to be laid out side-by-side, she feels they were placed there after being killed somewhere else. There were no signs to show how the coyotes died, Schakel told VICE.

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Photo by Greg Thorn

The situation became extra weird for Schakel's family shortly after their own discovery, when they saw news reports of the Western coyotes. Her husband was looking at dead coyote photos online and she thought someone had snatched her own pictures somehow, as the arrangement of the animals found on the campus was so similar to the ones she found.

While there's no evidence to link the deaths, the situation is "odd," said Jolanta Kowalski, of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. Ministry investigators are looking into the mysterious killings, but it's legal to hunt coyotes in the province year-round, subject to local restrictions on shooting, she said. (Hunters need a small-game hunting licence.)

Investigators have a tip about the Parkhill deaths, but "enforcement are keeping some information close to their chests," Kowalski said on Wednesday. "We don't know if someone has really done anything wrong; it may just be a case of poor judgement," she added.

It's unlikely the heads of the Parkhill pair were removed to claim a prize, as municipal bounties have been outlawed in Ontario since the 1970s, according to Kowalski. The cause of their deaths is not known so far, she said.

There have been unconfirmed media reports of another dead coyote pair being laid out near the village of Ailsa Craig, near Parkhill, according to Kowalski, though no one has reported this to the Ministry, she added.

The Western animals may have been shot by a homeowner in London who couldn't figure out how to dispose of the bodies after the coyotes intruded on the person's property, speculated professor Thorn. There have been "a number" of instances where domestic dogs have been approached or attacked by the creatures that are just plain hungry during the winter, he said.

The shooter may have wanted to avoid the difficulty of explaining to officials how the animals died, since firing guns in London is illegal, Sgt. Aubin theorized. It seems these not-so-wily coyotes were shot with a high-powered rifle, as the animals' bones were broken, he added. Of course, none of this would explain the decapitations.

The mystery has a lot of people talking at Western, and has kept the phone lines buzzing at the police office, but no solid tips have come in so far, according to Aubin.

It may be a while before we learn if the Ministry investigators have found fault with anyone. They don't usually let media know when they charge a person with violating provincial laws, said Kowalski, often waiting until court proceedings are over before publicizing a conviction. VICE will continue to follow the story.

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This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

This week a Freedom of Information Report obtained by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) revealed children as young as 12 are being held in adult prison cells in Western Australia. The report showed that in the past three years, 197 children in Kimberley had spent up to two nights in regional prisons cells.

The children were detained in Broome and Kununurra while awaiting transfer to the Banksia Hill Detention Center in Perth. Banksia Hill is the only juvenile center statewide for offenders aged ten to 17, but immediate transfers can be difficult to arrange. This and the lack of housing facilities for offenders means the only option police have is to detain the children temporarily in holding cells.

WA Police defended their decisions in a statement that noted children are left in prison for "short periods" because of WA's lack of juvenile detention centers in the area: "As there are no juvenile detention facilities in regional WA, detainees are held in police station lockups, until transport can be arranged at the earliest possible opportunity."

The WA's Department of Corrective Services told VICE that—according to the Young Offenders Act 1994—children were only to be held in custody as a "last resort." However, in the same clause, the act states children in custody must be in a facility "suitable for young people," and unexposed to "any adult." This is concerning considering these lockout cells fall outside of the jurisdiction of WA's Inspector of Custodial Services Neil Morgan. The inspector can only inspect them at request of the police station—which after doing so in 2013, he described some as degrading.

West Australian Minister Helen Morton said that it was for the children's own safety and protection that they were held in adult cells. "It is a pragmatic solution to a very difficult problem," she commented to the ABC, "You've got very small numbers of children for very short periods of time, who are at high risk to themselves and others."

Whether they're held in adult prisons or not, concerns have been raised over children being detained for minor charges. In WA, any minor arrested can only be bailed out by a person deemed to be a responsible guardian. If one cannot be found, the child must be transferred to Banksia Hill in Perth to await trial.

While there is a support system in the Youth Bail Options Program to provide minors without guardianship a secure home, the program only operates outside Kimberley in Armadale, Kalgoorie, Geralton and Port Hedland. This means children arrested in other towns, without responsible guardians, must be detained temporarily in prison cells.

It's a difficult predicament for the police in other areas, who have to choose between sending a minor into a possibly unsafe environment at home, and holding them in an unsuitable one at an adult prison. According to Amnesty's Indigenous People's Rights Manager Tammy Solonec, this has compounded the incarceration of indigenous youths in detention. "The result is young offenders being transferred miles away from their community. There they wait in limbo alongside real criminals," she said.

According to the Youth Detention Population in Australia 2014 report, an average 47 to 65 indigenous offenders were awaiting trial on a typical night. The number is so high because many indigenous youths in WA are in juvenile detention for negligible crimes.

In a phone call with VICE, the CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, Dennis Eggington, insisted change is needed in Western Australia to prevent their youth from ending up in juvenile detention. "I'm not pretending there aren't young people committing serious crimes," he said. "But often we have children, mostly Indigenous, going to jail for stealing an ice-cream or for accepting a Freddo-Frog."

Eggington said that because of the triviality of most crimes, it was common for Indigenous youths at Banksia Hill to be charged with only a fine. "What that means is that the time our children spend in detention was for nothing," he added.

However critics of the system are not calling for more juvenile detentions centers. Both Tammy Solonec and Dennis Eggington claim that would cost billions. Rather they want to see money put into early intervention and diversionary programs.

Eggington goes on to suggests that Western Australia needs more alternatives for children awaiting bail. "We need facilities such as bail hostels, run by local Indigenous communities," he said. "Most of these Indigenous children should just be returned to their elders, where they can be punished in their own way."

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Ka, the self-described doomgaze band from Seattle, makes really good goth rock, blending their penchant for dark sounds with an obvious appreciation for indie rock. They have an album coming out later this summer with an assortment of tracks that demonstrate their range—some are ritualistic and dark ambient-sounding, others are more straightforward and poppy. This track, "Pruitt Igoe," sounds like Arcade Fire after the apocalypse. Give it a listen.

Listen to more from the band at their Bandcamp.

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Sometimes, in my dreams, there are a blanket of meteors or there's a wall of explosive fire or a mile-high tsunami. But mostly, it's mushroom clouds. These dreams have occurred on a semi-regular basis for more than half my life. And I owe these apocalyptic visions, which I can't seem to escape, to a film called On the Beach.

An immature awe for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 steered me toward this 1959 flick that helped pioneer depictions of the nuclear holocaust in cinema. I was 11, led to believe all black-and-white movies were primitive at best, incapable of deep thought, let alone modest entertainment. I had rented On the Beach from the library with the aim to mock it in imitation of my heroes, Joel Robinson and his robot pals. Instead of finding myself laughing at some campy B-movie bullshit, I was stricken with malaise and scarred for life.

Based on the 1957 novel by Nevil Shute, On the Beach opens in the guts of an United States submarine, which has just survived nuclear holocaust and escapes to Melbourne, Australia. No one's sure what set off the Mutually Aided Destruction, but there's little time before a plume of radioactive gas gusts through town, killing everyone and everything in its wake.

Director Stanley Kramer used his camera the way some use a pulpit, producing films with conscience-driven sermons, juggling topics such as racism, creationism vs. evolution, fascism, and, here, atomic annihilation. In 1959, planetary extinction via the Cold War was still a new reality, one which On the Beach was early to address.

Everyone's worst fear was finally realized, so now what? With a few months left before their dying gasp, the survivors face their own untied futures, each in a unique, resigned way. Perhaps Andrew Bartlett, author of the analysis "Nuclear Warfare in the Movies" put it best: "All these victims accept with some dignity—but with what we might also feel is troubling resignation, if not baffling passivity—their status as an extended-life remnant awaiting only a slightly delayed membership among the extinct."

Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire), a scientist who worked on building the nukes, enters in the Australian Grand Prix, even though winning means nothing anymore. Knowing that his wife and kids perished in the war, Commander Dwight Lionel Towers (Gregory Peck) apparently suffers from PTSD (in a time when terms like "shell shock" or "gross stress reaction" were preferred). Towers is pawed at by Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner), who wishes to fall in love before she croaks. Finally, there are the young parents Mary (Donna Anderson) and Lt. Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins), who must decide between feeding their baby cyanide or letting her succumb to radiation sickness.

For an 11-year-old, this was one of the first, most profound encounters I had with existentialism. Asking "what if nothing really matters?" was not a question I was used to, but this was perhaps the first time I realized how arbitrary my own existence was and is. If you're within range, nuclear oblivion happens fast—there's a flash on the horizon, then you're gone. Considering how many times World War III has come close to happening, twice in 1983 alone and recently in Crimea, my anxiety that any second, without warning, my life might be snuffed out doesn't seem like such a bogeyman.

That haunted feeling carries over. Even outside of the shadow of the bomb, life can seem casual and meaningless, and, of course, I'm likely to die spontaneously even if it's not from fallout. Growing older, this realization directed a lot of what I focus on creatively and socially.

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I'm not alone in being painfully impacted by this film. When released, US President Eisenhower's cabinet were concerned the film would encourage "ban the bomb" propaganda, but more ironically, they were miffed that it "inaccurately presented the threat of extinction from nuclear war because there were not then enough weapons to cause extinction." This explains why the US Department of Defence declined to assist in the production of On the Beach, including offering access to a nuclear-powered submarine. Instead, the crew had to borrow a non-nuclear, diesel-electric Royal Navy submarine, HMS Andrew.

There's little doubt On the Beach had some impact on similar films like Fail Safe or Dr. Strangelove, which both came out five years later. In fact, Kubrick's classic could be seen as an absurdist answer to Kramer's more melodramatic despondency. In both black and white films, there is no happy ending, no survival, no hope, but the difference is whether you giggle or sigh deeply.

The futility can be seen echoed in Melancholia (2011) and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)—even Mad Max (1979) took a cue on the whole "nuclear war in Australia" thing by adding its own leather dressings. But, for better or worse, On the Beach is very much a product of its own time.

Its overt sexism should offend most feminist sensibilities, with women being treated as irrational, or worse, emotionally demanding. Mary, who struggles to face her reality, is depicted as hysterical. Moira's cloy come-ons were no doubt tantalizing in her day, but with a modern lens she appears weakened and desperate. Yet, somehow you sympathize with these women anyway—only the male reactions seem outmoded, cruel even.

A contemporary audience might also note the film's Western-centric worldview. In the novel, other nations such as South Africa, the southernmost regions of South America, and New Zealand also survive the blast, even as they likewise slowly succumb. In the movie, it's only Australia and a couple devastated American cities that are concerned.

Yet, in spite of its warts, On the Beach is still a rewarding narrative, containing a solid mix of foreshadowing, use of metaphor and irony, all sprinkled with jeering sarcasm. "I love Americans," Moira quips to Towers. "They're so naïve."

Quotes like this hint it's the audience who are the real intended recipient of these put-downs. "Who would ever have believed that human beings would be stupid enough to blow themselves off the face of the Earth?" Julian sneers, somewhat breaking the fourth wall. Here, there is no blame for starting the war—every single member of the human race is equally responsible for nuclear winter by not demanding that nuclear proliferation end.

By positing that we mustn't blame our leaders, we must blame ourselves, the film's iconic flapping banner that reads "There is still time... Brother" is meant in more than a religious context. Kramer is cutting deeper, aiming at suburbanite ideals of nationalistic infallibility, urging us to question authority, to take action.

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Questioning authority is an odd theme given how much of the plot bows to it with militaristic uniformity. Despite its imminent demise, society in Melbourne plods on. Milk is no longer delivered and gasoline is scarce, but otherwise it's business as usual. Folks go to work, throw cocktail parties, the Royal Australian Navy is still kicking around, and there's an overwhelming dedication to duty. The bureaucracy echoes Kafka's The Trial, but here the entire cast is sentenced to death while living out their denial.

Interestingly, all of this is accomplished without visual representation. On the Beach may be the only nuclear warfare movie to feature zero mushroom clouds. When the nuclear sub arrives in San Francisco's bay, we see no violence, no demolished buildings, no littered corpses. We don't even see the couple drink their cyanide tea. If you watched this movie on mute, you'd probably assume it was an Australian update of Gone with the Wind, only with submarines.

Your average apocalyptic film, such as 2012 or The Book of Eli or any franchise Michael Bay that is imploding this week, bends over backwards to splatter the lens. In reality, if any of these explosive events were to play out, I hope we'd go out with more dignity.

Arguably, the lack of gore makes it easier to accept death. Maybe too easy. Before their end, everyone in this film pretty much goes on vacation. The long lines for suicide pills are dark, but their effect are described by one character as "lethargy, then some euphoria, coma. Then nothing. In fairly rapid order."

How quaint and perfect is that? Everyone has to die eventually anyway—they get to go out saying all their lovely goodbyes, holding hands. Maybe nuclear winter isn't such a bad thing.

Because I pay too much attention to world news, I'm still very anxious about some sort of Armageddon, and I still dream about it regularly. All this dwelling on it just leads to more dwelling on it. As I write this, I am filled with an overwhelming dread about the inevitable death of everything around me and how little control I have over my own ultimate destiny, which could be wiped out as arbitrarily as someone swatting a fly. And even if I somehow avoid nuclear war, global warming, large rocks from space, or any other breed of apocalyptic surge, death still awaits me in some form or another. Even the sun will die.

The characters in On the Beach are forced to answer the question, what do you do with what time you've got left? I was forced to ask my preteen self the same thing. My answer was to make the most of everything. To travel as much as possible, to spend as much time with friends and family, to stress out about nothing because nothing fucking matters anyway. I never ask myself if there's a point to it all, because there isn't, and that's actually quite OK.

On my off days, I despair. But in general, all this morbid thinking actually thrills me, making me more grateful for every second I'm allowed. And I owe On the Beach for teaching me to stop worrying and to love the bomb.

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Photo via Google Streeview

Before the name ISIS became analogous to the militant group best known for beheading people on film, Isis was an Egyptian goddess, worshipped as the ideal mother and wife. According to Egyptian mythology, Isis was the daughter of Geb, god of the earth, who married her brother and resurrected him after her other brother, Set, scattered his body parts around the globe. It's also a pretty popular girl's name, ranking well within the top 1,000 baby names for the past decade.

The name's popularity extends to businesses, too. But somehow, it seems people can't separate the name "Isis" from the abbreviation for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—and when people find out that other people and places that have no affiliation with ISIS are also named Isis, they get angry.

We decided to talk to a few of these businesses to find out how it feels to share a name with an extremist militant group.

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Photo via Flickr user Pedro Rosario Rodriguez

Isis clothing store, Chicago

The owner of the Chicago clothing store formerly known as Isis recently changed the boutique's name to My Sister's Circus, after too many customers came in and questioned their affiliation with ISIS. We spoke with employee Victoria Fuchs to see what that was like.

VICE: Why did you change your name from Isis?
Victoria Fuchs: We changed it before Christmas. We've been in business for 48 years. We've used the name Isis for about 45. We named the store Isis after the Egyptian goddess. We changed it in December because we were being harassed.

Who was harassing you?
Tourists. People who didn't know us. People would take pictures of our sign and then come in and say nasty things to us. We have a clientele that we've had for years and years and they didn't even make the connection. So it was just people who weren't familiar with the Egyptian goddess and people would come in and they would ask for a business card or ask for a bag, they thought it was funny. Or some people didn't think it was very funny. But we just didn't feel safe.

Were you getting threats?
People would come in and say, "Isis is a really bad name. How could you have a name like this?" You just never know with people. It just takes one crazy person to do something stupid.

Did you notice it affecting the business side of things at all?
We weren't getting new customers walking in the store who thought that we were affiliated with the terror group. It's just really sad because we've had that name for so long and the terrorists don't even call themselves Isis. It's just the media and it's an acronym. People can be ignorant.

So did you ever think about not changing the name?
We didn't want to. We waited a long time.

Photo via Google Streetview

Isis Hair Salon, Los Angeles

Carrie Banks has owned the Los Angeles hair salon Isis since 1995. While some of her customers began to comment on the similarity, she had a different spin on the news coverage.

VICE: Has your business been affected by having the name Isis?
Carrie Banks: We've gotten so many different responses from people and, yeah, some negative responses. So I think that we have been affected by it.

Would you ever consider changing your name?
No, because if you understand abbreviation, it's not a word—it's IS-IS. People call it ISIS even though it's an abbreviation, so I only hear that from ignorant people.

Have you noticed any change in business?
If anything our business has benefited. The name is hot so people who had forgotten about me, when they hear it on the news, they might want to get their hair done. [ Laughs] A lot of my clients have been coming back. You know if you keep hearing something all the time it's gonna be on your mind, right?

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Photo via Facebook

Isis Bridal and Formal, Temecula, California

We spoke to the manager at Isis Bridal and Formal in Temecula, California, who seemed pretty fed up with all the attention the store's been getting for their name.

"We've been here ten years. We are a bridal shop. So we get this kind of [attention] I guess because of the name of it," she said. "People come in and ask about that but we just tell them the truth, especially since I'm Asian. We have nothing to do with it. The struggle isn't even the name for us, it's keeping a small business open. So changing the name and everything costs a lot of money."

Photo via Google Streetview

Isis Spa and Salon, Lynchburg, Virginia

Samantha Harvey is the owner of a spa in Lynchburg, Virginia. She's in the process of changing the name from Isis Spa and Salon to Osirus Spa, for "obvious reasons."

VICE: So you're changing your name from Isis—why is that?
Samantha Harvey: I'm still spending lots and lots and lots of money trying to change my name over to my med spa name. So we're kind of moving that direction anyway. That's really why I did it because we're going more medical. My intention was to switch over anyway. I've had that in the works. I don't suffer from peer pressure at all so I wouldn't have done it if someone said that to me. It was a good time to switch over.

Did you experience any harassment?
We have a really good reputation. We've had [that reputation] for the last 13 years I've been in Virginia. And our clients know us. Really, I blame the media more than anything else for misunderstanding their actual name. I really don't think ISIS is their actual name. I really don't think it has anything to do with pharaonic Egyptian names, which is where we got ours from. And really, Cleopatra and all those guys were using henna, and made the first creams, and hair products, and milk baths, and salt polishes, and stuff like that. So that's really where we got it from.

How have your clients responded?
I'm originally from Napa Valley, California and my brothers and sisters are all from LA. I came over here and this particular area of Virginia is actually a Bible Belt, as they call it. A lot of Christianity here—a lot of Christian schools, a lot of churches, because that's the target of the terrorists, people were more quick to take offense to the word Isis.

Did they say anything to you?
No, people were scared of me I think. I don't think they would say it to my face, but I think they did behind my back.

Do you think they actually thought you were affiliated with ISIS?
I sure hope not. I doubt it. I don't know. You never know what people are thinking. I think people questioned it maybe in the very beginning when things started, but I've never had anyone say anything to me. We're an icon in this little town. We've always done a good job. People know us. I don't think people even know the name half the time. They just know we're here. We're classy women here. We don't look like terrorists or act like terrorists.

Photo via Facebook

Isis Fuller Figure Fashions, Ramona, California

Out of everyone we spoke to, Sally Hilton seems to have had the worst time owning a store named Isis. Two years ago, she moved to the US from England with her mother. Twelve months ago, they opened Isis Fuller Figure Fashions, which carries clothing for plus-sized women. She says she and her mom named the store Isis for female empowerment: "We thought that, because we're a mother and daughter combo, it would be great because she was all about women empowerment and mother and daughter bonds and friendship and all of these lovely things," said Hilton. Shortly after opening the shop, things started to take a turn.

VICE: What has your experience been like owning a business with the name Isis?
Sally Hilton: We had quite an unpleasant time. It probably kicked off the worst around July and August. We were having emails and Facebook posts and anonymous phone calls that were quite threatening. My mother and I are in business together. They were threats against me and my mom personally, but also that they were going to picket the business or boycott the business because of the terrorists. It got a bit hair-raising for a good couple of months.

Has the harassment stopped?
I'd say that we're through the other side—it's just that it's not as aggressive as it once was. We did write a letter to one of the local news crews in San Diego and they covered us on the evening news and said, "This is what the shop looks like on the inside and this is what these little English ladies look like selling dresses. And I assure you that they're not scary and they're not trying to blow you up."

What made you name the shop Isis in the first place?
We called the shop Isis because of the goddess, obviously, not because of the terrorist group. And in hindsight, if we had known about the awful atrocities that happened in that name a couple of months into us opening, there's no way we would have opened a business called Isis. We would have called it beautiful or gorgeous or beau or whatever.

Would you change the name now?
If I could rebrand, I'm not sure whether we would want to. There's [a] little part of me that thinks that if we did change the name, then that means that the terrorists won a little bit. And why should I change my name because you're doing something awful on the other side of the world?

Follow Catherine Pears on Twitter.