Joseph Rivers was a 22-year-old aspiring music video producer from outside of Detroit who managed to painstakingly save $16,000 for a music venture.

He was on an Amtrak train moving to Los Angeles to pursue his dream when his life's savings were stolen from him.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, "A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied."

His $16,000 was in a bank envelope found by DEA agents. He tried to explain that he had problems withdrawing money from out of state banks in the past and that he was moving to Los Angeles. The feds did not believe him.

At least nine people have been killed and 17 injured in a shootout between rival biker gangs outside the Twin Peaks Restaurant in Waco, Texas. The brawl quickly escalated from fists to gunfire despite police, aware of possible trouble, being at the scene.

Eight bikers have been killed as a result of the violence that broke out between the rival gangs in Waco, while one more died in hospital, local media reported citing police. At least 17 more people suffered gunshot and stab wounds and were brought to a local hospital.

Police said no officers were wounded or killed in the shootout, but it was unclear whether any bystanders were injured.

Amber is one of those free-spirited people who takes even incredible hardships and turns them into adventures, inspiring others in the process. When her young family wound up homeless, through no fault of their own, she and her husband Krishna Mehta made the best of it. Their children didn't even know that they were homeless; they thought that they were having great adventures and making lots of friends.

This latest chapter in their saga, however, is a nightmare, and the rainbow is really hard to find in the storm that Child Protective Services has allegedly brought into their lives. Their children, ages 6, almost 2, and 9 months, have been seized by CPS and placed into 3 different foster homes. The two babies were still being breastfed. Social services has gone so far as to accuse Amber of having a mental disorder because she is "homeless."

Their homelessness was not by choice. Last spring the family was living in a small town in Missouri. Krishna was working, and Amber was a stay-at-home mom and childbirth doula. They were expecting baby Mira to make her appearance soon by mid-summer.

Emergency Trip to Oregon for Dying Mother

Then, they got a call that changed everything. Krishna's mother's cancer had come back with a vengeance. The doctors gave her just weeks to live. Krishna, a dual Irish-American citizen, and Amber scrambled to pull resources together to get to Oregon, hoping to see her before she died, and let her see the children. They drove cross-country, but arrived too late. She was gone.

The plan had been to stay at her house, have an unassisted homebirth, or "freebirth" in Oregon, and go back to the midwest when they got back on their feet. But life didn't work out that way. Mira was born peacefully at the end of July, at home with her family. But shortly after that, they found themselves with no place to live.

Making the Best of a Tough Situation

They sank what money they had left into an RV and made the best of their situation. Amber says:

"We faced homelessness with all the courage and hope we could, believing that we were strong enough to make it."

Winter was coming on fast, and it was expected to be a cold one. An RV in Oregon was no place to live. They headed south, stopping in various places, "helping others where we could," says Amber, "which is more often than one might think, considering all it often takes to HELP someone is to CARE."

A small community near St. Petersburg has revealed a bust of President Vladimir Putin depicted as a Roman emperor - sans laurel crown. The man behind the monument is a controversial Cossack leader, who earlier advocated taking Alaska from the US.

The bust of a patrician-style Putin was erected in a Cossack settlement near the village of Agalatovo, the Nevskye Novosty newspaper reported. It's made of synthetic material mimicking bronze and has the president wearing a toga and a medallion adorned with the Russian crest.

"There was this contest of statue projects, some had him wearing the Monomakh's Cap [the old relic of Russian tsars]. I tried those too and also had Putin 'try on' a suit of medieval armor. Why not?" sculptor Pavel Greshnikov, the author of the bust, told the newspaper.

"I am attracted to antiquity, and he is an important historical figure, so why not a Roman emperor?"

The laurel crown, a key feature in original Roman busts, was removed on the insistence of Andrey Polyakov, the Cossack leader who commissioned the statue.

"He is Russian, and with a crown he would look too Roman," he explained.

The bust is a temporary feature, according to Polyakov, and will eventually be replaced with a permanent version twice the size and cast in real bronze.

Polyakov is no stranger to publicity stunts. Last May, he suggested giving Russian citizenship to all descendants of Cossacks living in Alaska, saying it would help with an eventual return of the US state to Russian jurisdiction, reported Fontanka, one of St. Petersburg's major newspapers.

When the Elder Justice Initiative was recently funded by Congress for $4 million for the fiscal year 2015 - at a mere fraction of the $25 million requested by President Obama—consumer advocates were ecstatic. The funds are earmarked for Adult Protective Services (APS), which has a national mandate to protect the elderly from abuse.

America's dirty little secret (well, one of them, anyway) is the reality of elder abuse. As reported by ElderJusticeAction.com, 14% of older adults have experienced abuse since turning 60. As far as the financial cost of elder abuse, EJA reports that those who have been financially abused have lost an estimated 2.9 billion dollars per year and that the medical costs associated with elder abuse are greater than $5 billion. Furthermore, those who had confirmed cases of elder abuse, according to EJA, had twice the chance of ending up dead than those who had not been abused.

French people consider the English accent to be the most attractive - while the rest of the world considers the French language to be the most seductive, a new study has found.

The poll of 14,000 people worldwide who use the language learning app Babbel puts French at the top with 34% of the vote, followed by Italian and Spanish. French was also the most attractive accent when speaking another language.

However, for the French people who were surveyed, the language of love was Italian and the most attractive accent to hear someone speaking French was the English one, taking 39% of the vote.

Nearly 95% of respondents worldwide said they would be ready to learn a new language for a relationship.

Amazing, really.

Police throughout the nation say they fear a growing anti-cop sentiment driven by a handful of racially-charged incidents is making their jobs more dangerous on the streets, where the number of officers killed in the line of duty is rising sharply.

High-profile cases involving police and black suspects from Missouri to Baltimore have prompted intense criticism of law enforcement, from not only activists but the media and even the White House, leaving law enforcement officers alienated and angry, say cop advocates. And the protests, rioting and federal investigations come even as the job of keeping Americans safe has become more dangerous.

So let me see if I get this right.

Cops have, for decades, embraced this "thin blue line" where they actively abuse certain suspects, harass, detain and arrest people without any sort of probable cause, fabricate evidence (such as having "drop guns" to plant on someone who doesn't have one or "convenient" narcotics when they can't find any that the suspect actually has), lie about how they collected evidence (which got a drug case thrown out down here in Florida not long ago), beat non-resisting suspects for grins and giggles, shoot people without legal justification and worst of all, cover up the acts of others in the department that they know damn well are unlawful.

Thousands of people rallied in Okinawa in southern Japan on Sunday in protest against a controversial US airbase on the island, as a two-decade-old bitter row over the relocation of the site drags on.

Okinawa is home to more than half of the 47,000 US service personnel stationed in Japan as part of a defence alliance, a proportion many islanders say is too high.

Futenma airbase has become emblematic of that ill-will since Washington announced plans to move it in 1996, hoping to ease tensions with the host community after the gang-rape of a schoolgirl by servicemen.

But locals have blocked the move to relocate the base, insisting the facility should go off-island instead, queering relations between Tokyo and Okinawa -- a once independent kingdom that was annexed by Japan in the 19th century.

"The government says we are to blame that the issue has stalled for 19 years and they tell us to find an alternative place (for the base relocation). That's outrageous," shouted the anti-US base mayor of Nago, Susumu Inamine.

"The government is thrusting their responsibility on us," Inamine told a packed 15,000-seat baseball stadium.

Glen Oak Elementary School teacher told the Olentangy school board she'd fight to keep her job after a split board voted Thursday, May 14, to terminate her contract over bullying accusations.

Board members Roger Bartz, Dave King and Kevin O'Brien voted to suspend fifth-grade teacher Nicole LeMire without pay pending the final termination of her contract. Board member Julie Wagner Feasel voted against the measure, and board member Adam White was absent.

The board's action led to tears from parents and students who supported LeMire, along with shouts demanding answers about the decision.

According to the resolution the board passed, LeMire on April 14 asked students in her class to take turns saying how another student had misbehaved "and/or why (the student) was annoying or had no friends."

The resolution also states that LeMire disclosed confidential information about the student to a latchkey program employee. According to the document, LeMire received previous unpaid suspensions in June and December 2014 for "missed deadlines" and "poor communication."

LeMire, who has hired an attorney, said the district's accusations were "100 percent false."

Parents knows it can be difficult to get kids to eat their greens, but after an incident at a Texas high school some students may never eat vegetables again.

"There's no way they could've missed (them), picking up a handful of broccoli like they do with their gloves on and not seen these ginormous bugs," Melissa Evans, mother of Caney Creek High School junior Falyn Evans, told Click2Houston.

Falyn Evans and her friend were served the bug-infested broccoli for lunch Monday and the two almost ate the insects before they realized they were there.

"It was kind of strange and gross that we had actually seen it and that it happened to us," she said.

KFOR reports school officials acknowledged the problem in an email to parents that provided very few details.

Officials were "notified this morning of complaints regarding food in the cafeteria," according to the statement Monday.

"Any concerns are taken very seriously and Conroe (Independent School District's) Child Nutrition Department is addressing the situation."

Food inspectors went through the cafeteria food Tuesday and discovered more bugs - the district contends they're aphids - in a batch of frozen broccoli, and believe the infestation was limited to the one batch, KFOR reports.