Attorneys for an Oregon couple accused of allowing their daughter to die of untreated diabetes complications don't want jurors to hear about their faith-healing beliefs at trial.

Defense attorneys argue that evidence regarding the religious beliefs and practices of Travis and Wenona Rossiter would be prejudicial, reported the Albany Democrat-Herald.

The Rossiters, who are from Albany, are members of the fundamentalist Church of the First Born, which teaches that medical treatment is sinful and instructs followers to trust in God to heal them through faith.

Since 1976, at least 82 children linked to the church have died from lack of medical treatment, according to Children's Health Care Is A Legal Duty.

Deadly protests broke out in a slum near Brazil's Copacabana beach after police and protesters clashed over the death of a professional dancer on Tuesday night.

One person was reported dead in the shootout in the Pavao-Pavaozinho favela and a 12-year-old boy was injured in the protest, according to local media.

The slum was placed under lockdown as protesters set barricades of tyres and cars alight. Several streets were blocked as police struggled to contain the protest.

The unrest began after the body of professional dancer Douglas Rafael da Silva Pareira was found dead on Tuesday morning.

Today's world is a strange place. We are inundated with signals from early on in life, encouraging each of us to walk a particular path, establishing blinders on us along the way to discourage us from looking for alternatives to what the herd is doing or thinking. Life is so complex that over time, if we are paying attention, we realize that there are an infinite number of possibilities to what the human experience could be, and we come see that the world is on fire because individuals all too infrequently question why things are the way they are, failing to notice that their mindset or behavior needs adjustment in favor of more intelligent, common sensical, or sustainable patterns of existence.

Not meant to be overtly critical of anyone's lifestyle choices or personal situation, the following 16 signs that you're a slave to the matrix are meant purely as an observational approach to helping you identify the areas of your life where you may be missing an opportunity to liberate yourself from someone else's self-destructive design for your life.

The largest security training exercise in Boston's history is slated to kick off at 8 a.m. Saturday with a simulated active school shooter drill in Brookline. It will continue with other drills during 24 hours and involve about 2,000 state and local personnel.

"The Urban Shield Program, as we've learned over the last year, is essential to our city's safety at any time of crisis," Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston.

"Since the 2013 Boston Marathon, we learned a lot about resiliency as a community and about professionalism of our first responders. This initiative has a lot to do with that," Walsh said. Residents should not be alarmed, authorities said, if they see an increased police presence Saturday.

Rene Fielding, director of the city's office of emergency management, declined to give details about each drill to avoid tipping off participants.

In addition to the school shooter drill, participants will respond to drills involving an injured officer in Cambridge, a hospital evacuation in Boston, a hostage rescue of elected officials at Boston City Hall, an explosive device on a transit system in Boston, a structural collapse on Moon Island, and a simulation of a terrorist takeover at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

A so-called "historian" who Glenn Beck hired to teach at his online university insisted this week that women had originally been denied the right to vote "to keep the family together," and for the good of "the entire culture and society."

On the Thursday broadcast of Wallbuilders Live, David Barton explained that biblical principles - and not sexism - were behind not allowing women to vote prior to 1920.

"So family government precedes civil government and you watch that as colonists came to America, they voted by families," he said. "And you have to remember back then, husband and wife, I mean the two were considered one. That is the biblical precept... That is a family, that is voting. And so the head of the family is traditionally considered to be the husband and even biblically still continues to be so."

• Tania Clarence described as devoted mother who 'doted on her children'
• 42-year-old was arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in custody
• Police found bodies of Ben and Max, both 3, and Olivia, 4, in SW London
• All three children suffered from spinal muscular atrophy, friends reveal
• Gary Clarence, 43, had travelled to South Africa with their eldest daughter

A mother of three severely disabled young children is suspected of smothering them to death.

Tania Clarence, 42, was last night described as a devoted mother who 'doted on her children'.

She was arrested after police discovered the lifeless bodies of three-year-olds Ben and Max and four-year-old Olivia at the family's £2million home in south-west London.

Friends said all three children suffered the degenerative condition spinal muscular atrophy - sometimes described as 'floppy baby syndrome' - and received specialist care around the clock.

Congressman Stockman will introduce legislation cutting off funds to medical institutions that conduct greater than minimal risk research on wards of the state, deny First Amendment rights to parents and wards of the state, and take children away from their parents over disagreements on subjective diagnoses.

Such medical institutions include the National Institute of Health, state agencies, medical facilities, and hospitals. This bill would direct the Inspector General of Health and Human Services to withhold funds from these institutions for the aforementioned reasons.

The story of Justina Pelletier, who has mitochondrial disease and was declared a ward of the state over a custody battle regarding a subjective psychotropic drug diagnosis, motivated Congressman Stockman to introduce the legislation.

Lou and Linda Pelletier brought their daughter, Justina, to Boston Children's Hospital for flu-like symptoms in February 2013. Justina had been diagnosed with and receiving treatment for Mitochondrial Disease, a genetic medical condition, since 2011. Less than 24 hours after being admitted to Boston Children's Hospital, mental health workers disagreed with the Mitochondrial Disease diagnosis and insisted she had a psychiatric disorder called Somatoform (though there are no fool-proof medical or genetic tests to validate this as a legitimate medical condition).

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.