Three Catholic schools in the Cleveland, Ohio area will begin mandatory drug testing using students' hair in the next school year. The CEO of the company performing the testing is the brother of one of the school's presidents.

Gilmour Academy, St. Edward High School, and St. Ignatius High School announced the new policy to students and their parents on Monday. The schools will use Psychemedics Corporation for the drug tests on hair follicles. Psychemedics president and CEO Raymond Kubacki is the brother of St. Edward president James Kubacki.

K.C. McKenna, vice president of admissions and marketing at St. Edward High School, told the Cleveland Scene that the decision to work with Psychemedics came after several years of research led by an internal committee made up of members of the board of trustees, a faculty member, and members of the administration.

"Certainly, Jim knew a little more about the process because of his brother being involved, but his brother being CEO of that company in no way led to us making the decision to use Psychemedics," he said.

"From Day One, I told them this was my brother's company," the St. Edward's president told the Plain Dealer. But in their announcements, the schools made no mention of a connection between anyone at the schools and Psychemedics.

"The short answer is Gilmour was very much aware of that connection from the beginning and it was never an issue," Gilmour spokesman Devin Schlickmann told the Plain Dealer.

"How we picked the company isn't of interest to high school boys," St. Ignatius spokeswoman Lisa Metro said. "They're more interested in how it's going to play out to them." Metro also revealed why the committee decided to go with Psychemedics: "They were the only lab with full FDA clearance to do the testing we were looking for," she added.

The schools said the drug testing is preventative, and not evidence of substance abuse among students, according to a statement on the St. Edward website. "The schools decided to initiate drug testing out of a deep concern for the health and well-being of students," the statement says. "The primary purpose for this initiative is to give students another reason to say "no" to the pressures of using illegal drugs and to help them remain substance-free. This initiative is simply one more component in our student wellness efforts."

The U.S. Agency for International Development is a government body in charge of taking taxpayer dollars and doling it out to foreign projects that will theoretically bring humanitarian aid to struggling regions. No matter what one might think about the nobility of such a mission, the agency has been much maligned for its decades-long mismanagement and outright theft of those funds (see here, here, and here among many sources), as well as being in a direct or indirect position to enable the use of food as a weapon.

Nevertheless - and perhaps because of such activities - USAID is well aware of the economic trends they need to address and/or manage. So, when their top science advisor speaks, it is essential to hear what he is saying. Disregarding any overarching agenda, let's see what is in store for the global food supply, according to Dr. Fred Davies, advisor for the bureau of food security and a Texas A&M AgriLife Regents Professor of Horticultural Sciences.

Though Republicans hold a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and Democrats hold a majority of seats in the Senate, a majority of Americans say that neither party represents them.

According to a new national survey by Rasmussen, 53 percent of likely US voters think that neither political party truly represents the American people. The poll shows that the two-party system is losing ground with Americans - six months ago, in October, only 46 percent of questioned voters said that neither party represents Americans.

RT's Lindsay France spoke with 2012 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson about Americans' lack of representation in the halls of political power.

RT: Now let's talk about this lack of representation. Seventy-two percent say it would be better if the country didn't elect the incumbents to Congress this year in November. If they don't trust either party, the incumbents or the new guys, what's the alternative?

Gary Johnson: Well, first of all, I agree with the poll. I think this is what we're all witnessing. I think term limits would really be a silver bullet, the notion that people would get in, do the right thing and get out. And then, Lindsay, you know, a couple of issues of late that really left all the politicians behind: the marriage equality, nobody was standing up for that; the marijuana legalization, the state of Washington, the state of Colorado moving ahead of all politicians; and then if you look at Libya and Syria, the president's ready to go in militarily, Congress is ready to dot the i's and cross the t's on how to do that and, lo and behold, 80 percent of Americans don't want to do that. Well that's a good thing. I just wish that Congress would catch up to the fact that this spending is not sustainable and, if they don't fix this, we're going to find ourselves in a monetary crisis. We're going to find ourselves without a country.

RT: Well, let's talk about government trust among young voters, those between the ages of about 18 and 29. A new poll surveying young Americans' political attitudes released by Harvard University's Institute of Politics [on] Tuesday, found that the millennials' 'composite trust index,' it's called, which is the level of trust, on average, in six different public institutions: the presidency, the US military, the Supreme Court, the federal government, and the United Nations, it's dropped dramatically in just two years...from 39 two years ago down to 31 in mid-April...How do politicians come back from this sort of a drop? We're talking about the young generation, the young voters here.

A traveler from Maine said a small-town Louisiana police officer smirked after fatally shooting his "incredibly friendly" dog on Monday.

Brandon Carpenter, 28, told The Huffington Post Tuesday that he and 21-year-old Logan Laliberte, both of Maine, had hopped off a freight train and were walking through the town of Sulphur, Louisiana, with Carpenter's dog -- a 14-month-old Labrador, Newfoundland, golden retriever mix named Arzy Kensington -- when it started raining. The men were on their way to visit friends in Lake Charles.

They climbed into the back of a parked box truck in the near-empty parking lot of the Southwest Daily News to take shelter, Carpenter said. Before long, a police car pulled up and an officer, gun drawn, ordered them out of the truck.

The officer, Brian Thierbach of the Sulphur Police Department, spotted Arzy and told the men to "get your dog," according to Carpenter. He said the officer watched him tie Arzy to a nearby fence with a 3 1/2-foot leash before Thierbach handcuffed both men, ordered them to the ground facing away from Arzy, and asked, "Is this dog going to bite me or attack me?"

"No," Carpenter said he responded. "He is an incredibly friendly dog."

Twenty seconds later, Carpenter told HuffPost, he heard a single shot.

Eric Midkiff, Southwest Daily News circulation manager, said his boss phoned him around 7 a.m., asking if he knew anything about the men in the parking lot. Midkiff "took off" and headed to the office, and by the time he arrived, "the officer already had Brandon and the other guy on the ground."

Midkiff, 33, told HuffPost he stayed about 20 feet from the men, and heard Thierbach asking if the dog was going to attack. Midkiff said Thierbach was standing on the bumper of the box truck petting Arzy.

"The dog was rubbing up against the cop," Midkiff said. "He would rub the dog's back and then push him away. All of a sudden, he just jumped down and shot the dog in the head."

Midkiff said he could see both Thierbach and the dog clearly. "That dog did not bite that officer," he said. "The dog was wagging his tail, his tongue was hanging out."

Just before 2pm EDT, the New York City Police Department called via Twitter for photos of citizens with its officers. Almost immediately the campaign #myNYPD seemed to backfire, as users flooded the hashtag with photos decrying alleged police brutality.

Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it
#myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook. pic.twitter.com/mE2c3oSmm6
- NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 22, 2014

This is apparently what happens when a 22-year-old with down syndrome attempts to walk half a block home at 9:30 at night by himself in Miami-Dade, Florida:


Gilberto Powell says the police were following him in their cruiser as he was walking home. The police report says the officers decided to stop Gilberto after they noticed a "bulge" in Gilberto's pants. After an officer tried to conduct a patdown, the report claims Gilberto attempted to flee.

Gilberto denies trying to run away and says he did everything the officer asked him to do. What happened next resulted in the photograph above.

Alexia Pearce adores her 'gorgeous' three-year-old son, yet she is aware that his life - a life blighted by cerebral palsy and chronic lung disease - is unlikely to last long into his teens. In this moving account, she asks: are we always right to save premature babies?

Alexia Pearce looks at her three-year-old son Nathan every day and feels the same rush of guilt. Guilt that she chose to let him live when he was born too early, just 23 weeks into her pregnancy. "If I'd known then what I know now about what extremely premature babies have to go though, I would not have chosen that for my little boy.

"I would have wanted them to give him to me and for him to pass away in my arms. I find the whole issue of what he has been put through, what he continues to be put through, very difficult. I feel very guilty that I took that decision, postponing the inevitable."

Google has been caught afoul of the law by displaying web ads linked to a person's health history, according to Canada's interim privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier.

An investigation by her office backed up a man's complaints that he was seeing so-called behavioural advertisements based on his web browsing history. After searching for information about devices to treat sleep apnea, he began to see ads for those devices as he browsed the web.

While behavioural advertising is not illegal, Canada's privacy law does not allow consumers to be targeted based on "sensitive personal information," including their health.

Google's privacy policy outlaws displaying advertisements based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based company acknowledged that some advertisers using its ad-serving platform were not following the policy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says "something is going to happen" to get Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy to stop letting his cattle graze on federal land.

"It's obvious that you can't just walk away from this. And we can speculate all we want to speculate to what's going to happen next," Reid told KSNV-TV. "But I don't think it's going to be tomorrow that something is going to happen, but something will happen. We are a nation of laws, not of men and women."

Reid called militias staying at Bundy's Bunkerville ranch "domestic violent terrorist-wannabes."

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., disagreed with Reid, telling KSNV that these militia members are "patriots" and took issue with how the U.S. Bureau of Land Management handled the situation.

19-year-old Samantha Ramsey died last weekend after Deputy Tyler Brockman shot her multiple times as she was trying to leave a house party in Boone County, Kentucky.

Brockman is claiming self defense, stating that she almost ran him over with her vehicle.

The video shows Brockman approaching the vehicle as Ramsey tries to drive away. He shot her off camera, but witnesses seen gasping in the video state it was an execution.

It's hard to fathom self defense on the part of the officer - he approached the vehicle, somehow gets in the way, then feels he's in danger so he has to shoot and kill this unarmed girl at point-blank range, which obviously would render the vehicle out of control.

Seems to be a case of 'do what I say or else', which is an attitude running rampant through law enforcement across this country. We are hiring goons now, not police officers.