Struggling with the pollution of the Spokane River, a town in the state of Washington is taking agrochemical giant Monsanto to court for selling chemicals that endanger human health and the environment, despite it allegedly having known of the hazard for decades.

The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in Spokane, Washington, holds Monsanto accountable for pollutants flowing into the 111 miles (179 km) long Spokane River that stretches from northern Idaho to eastern Washington.

"Spokane filed a lawsuit to hold Monsanto Company responsible for PCB contamination that finds its way into the City's stormwater that flows into the Spokane River," Environmental Law Firms Baron & Budd and Gomez Trial Attorneys, representing Spokane said in a press release.

The city seeks "compensatory damages," lawyer's fees, interest and any other relief the court deems appropriate. The suit doesn't specify the actual sum of damages being sought from the Iowa-based company.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) chemical compounds were developed and made by Monsanto from the 1930s until 1979, when Congress banned them over danger they pose to humans and the environment.

Kansas plans to keep a controversial $25 limit on ATM withdrawals by welfare recipients, despite the possibility that the restriction might violate federal law.

Legislation was passed earlier this year to raise the limit, or do away with it entirely, but a newly revised version of Kansas' welfare plan does not permit withdrawals of more than $25 per transaction per day. Out-of-state purchases also will be blocked.

A fee of $1 will be collected for every transaction, not including additional bank ATM fees.

A Sheriff's deputy in Kentucky is being sued after handcuffing two third graders for nothing other than them displaying the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD).

According to a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Children's Law Center, and Dinsmore & Shohl, an 8-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, were so young and small that the officer actually chose to handcuff them around their biceps instead of their wrists, as you can see in the disturbing video below...


Kenton County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Sumner of Covington, Kentucky (just across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio), locked the handcuffs around the children's biceps. He contorted and forced their hands behind their backs in painful positions, while they screamed out in pain.

The boy in the video is being identified as S.R., and the girl as L.G. Both children were attacked by this deputy for behavior related to ADHD disabilities.

Neither child ended up being charged with any crime, because - put simply - they didn't commit any. The officer assaulted and abused them nevertheless, and now a case is pending to that effect.

"Shackling children is not okay. It is traumatizing, and in this case it is also illegal," Susan Mizner, disability counsel for the ACLU explained. "Using law enforcement to discipline students with disabilities only serves to traumatize children. It makes behavioral issues worse and interferes with the school's role in developing appropriate educational and behavioral plans for them."

The suit claims that the Kenton County Sheriff's Office violated the Americans with Disabilities Act through its treatment of these children.

"Kentucky's school personnel are prohibited from using restraints, especially mechanical restraints, to punish children or as a way to force behavior compliance," Kim Tandy, executive director of the Children's Law Center explained. "These regulations include school resource officers. These are not situations where law enforcement action was necessary."

S.R.'s mother, T.R. said that "it is heartbreaking to watch my little boy suffer because of this experience. It's hard for him to sleep, he has anxiety, and he is scared of seeing the officer in the school."

"School should be a safe place for children," she continued. "It should be a place they look forward to going to. Instead, this has turned into a continuing nightmare for my son."

Kenyon Meyer, an attorney with Dinsmore & Shohl, broke it down even further.

"There was no public safety threat in any of these instances that warranted throwing the regulations out the window and handcuffing these children. The school resource officer's involvement was harmful and unnecessary, and it escalated rather than helped the situations. We should expect that if school resource officers are in our school systems, their roles should be focused on safety and security, not discipline or punishment of special needs children."

A lawsuit recently filed against a teacher at Forest Park Elementary School in Indiana alleged that a 7-year-old student was "banished" from sitting with other students at lunch after he revealed that he did not believe in God.

According to the lawsuit obtained by The Washington Post, second grade teacher Michelle Myer interrogated the student, who was identified with the initials A.B., about his religious beliefs after he told his classmates on the playground that he did not go to church because he did not believe in God.

As a result, the child was ordered to sit by himself during lunch for a three-day period.

"The defendant's actions caused great distress to A.B. and resulted in the child being ostracized by his peers past the three-day 'banishment.'"

"Ms. Meyer asked A.B. if he had told the girl that he did not believe in God and A.B. said he had and asked what he had done wrong," the lawsuit explained. "Ms. Meyer asked A.B. if he went to church, whether his family went to church, and whether his mother knew how he felt about God... She also asked A.B. if he believed that maybe God exists."

Several days later, Meyer sent A.B. to talk to another adult at the school, who "reinforced his feeling that he had done something very wrong," the lawsuit said.

A Russian MP from the center-left Fair Russia party has proposed to send banned contraband food seized at the border to the war-torn regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, which are suffering from a humanitarian crisis caused by the pro-Kiev military.

"The Russian Emergencies Ministry and non-government funds are currently providing aid to the South-Eastern regions of Ukraine, but this aid is not sufficient, especially considering the fact that the Kiev authorities have practically imposed a full blockade on the two republics," MP Andrey Krutov has written in an open letter to Agriculture Minister Aleksandr Tkachev.

The lawmaker then asks the government to study the possibility of sending the banned foodstuffs seized at the Russian border to Lugansk and Donetsk instead of simply destroying them, as ordered by the presidential decree signed last week.

Krutov noted that since the beginning of the Ukrainian political crisis and the subsequent war in the southeast of the country, Russia has sent 34 truck convoys to Donbass to deliver over 41 tons of humanitarian aid.

Are you ready for what is coming in August? All over America, economic, political and social tensions are building, and the next 30 days could turn out to be pivotal. In July, we saw things start to turn. As you will read about below, a major six year trendline for the S&P 500 was finally broken this month, Chinese stocks crashed, commodities crashed, and debt problems started erupting all over the planet. I fully expect that this next month (August) will be a month of transition as we enter an extremely chaotic time in the fall and winter. Things are unfolding in textbook fashion for another major global financial crisis in the months ahead, and yet most people refuse to see what is happening. In their blind optimism, they want to believe that things will somehow be different this time. Well, the coming months will definitely reveal who was right and who was wrong. The following are 11 red flag events that just happened as we enter the pivotal month of August 2015...

"This was the kitchen," the young man who led my friend Tovah and me to the house told me yesterday as I entered. "The bedroom is in the back."

The smell of burnt debris penetrated before I had the chance to process what I was seeing. A simple white stucco doorway, charred at the top, led into an interior so thoroughly scorched it was impossible to determine what I was looking at.

I was in the Nablus-area Palestinian village of Duma, where, earlier yesterday morning, Israeli settlers had poured flammable liquid into the window of the home in which I now stood, and then tossed molotov cocktails inside.

The mother (Reham) and the father (Sa'ad) and their 4-year old son (Ahmed) sustained severe burns and are currently fighting for their lives.

Their 18-month old son and brother, Ali Dawabsheh, was burned to death.

Jubilant crowds celebrated Saturday as Bangladesh and India swapped tiny pockets of land, ending one of the world's most intractable border disputes that has kept thousands in limbo for nearly seven decades.

As the clock struck one minute past midnight (1801 GMT Friday), thousands of people who have been living without schools, clinics or power for a generation erupted in cheers of celebration for their new citizenship.

"We have been in the dark for 68 years," said Russel Khandaker, 20, as he danced with friends in the Dashiar Chhara enclave, which belonged to India but has now became part of Bangladesh.

"We've finally seen the light," he told AFP.

The shooting looked bad. But that is when the professor is at his best. A black motorist, pulled to the side of the road for a turn-signal violation, had stuffed his hand into his pocket. The white officer yelled for him to take it out. When the driver started to comply, the officer shot him dead.

The driver was unarmed.

Taking the stand at a public inquest, William J. Lewinski, the psychology professor, explained that the officer had no choice but to act.

"In simple terms," the district attorney in Portland, Ore., asked, "if I see the gun, I'm dead?"

"In simple terms, that's it," Dr. Lewinski replied.

When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.

A Citilink plane skidded off a runway in western Indonesia on Sunday, injuring three people and forcing the airport to shut down, according to a transportation ministry official and local media.

The Airbus A320 plane was carrying 174 passengers en route from Jakarta to Padang when it bounced off the runway upon landing, transportation ministry spokesman Julius Barata told Reuters.

"The plane is blocking the runway, so the airport is still closed," Barata added.

Citilink is the budget arm of flag carrier PT Garuda Indonesia Tbk.

Indonesia has a patchy aviation safety record and has seen two major plane crashes in the past year, including an AirAsia flight that went down in the Java Sea, killing all on board.