Family warns of ‘Hot Water Challenge’ danger after teen suffers severe burns
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — An Indianapolis family is raising a red flag about the so-called “Hot Water Challenge” after the dangerous prank resulted in a 15-year-old being severely burned.
The so-called challenge, which made national headlines last year and has been circulating online since at least 2014, consists of someone either drinking boiling water through a straw, or having the water poured on them.
Last week, Kyland Clark said he and a friend were looking up the challenge on YouTube when they decided to prank each other. While Clark was sleeping, he said a friend poured water on him as a joke.
“And then I looked down at my chest. My skin just fell off my chest, and then I looked in the mirror and I had skin falling off here and, on my face,” he told WXIN.
The prank resulted in Clark suffering second-degree burns on his back, chest and face. He had to stay in the hospital for a week while undergoing treatment.
“To see my baby, all burned up like that, it was heart breaking,” his mother said.
Doctors with IU Health said they’re starting to see more victims of these so-called internet challenges land people in the emergency room.
“It’s suggesting to people that they can try it and they won’t be hurt, but they will be, I can guarantee it,” Dr. Ed Bartkus said.
Bartkus said it’s possible that people who do the challenge could end up with permanent disfigurement due to burns on the body or burns to the airway that could result in death.
“If your friends are telling you to do this, they aren’t good friends,” he said.
Last year, an 8-year-old girl died in Florida after she drank boiling water through a straw on a dare.
A week later, an 11-year-old girl in the Bronx suffered second-degree burns to her face, shoulders, neck and chest when another girl poured scalding-hot water on her during a sleepover. She was hospitalized for more than a week.
Now Clark and his mother said they want to make it known how dangerous the challenge is.
“There’s a limit to what you should do in a challenge and what you shouldn’t. Don’t take it overboard,” Clark said.
Clark is expected to heal from his injuries, and doctors said his pigment should return in a few months. He starts school next week but his mother said for now, the plan is for him to stay at home and focus on healing.
3 dead, 7 wounded after gunmen in New Orleans fire on crowd
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Two armed individuals walked up to a crowd gathered Saturday evening outside a strip mall in New Orleans and opened fire, killing three people and wounding seven more, the police chief said.
The shooting happened on a busy thoroughfare about 3 miles (4.83 kilometers) from the French Quarter, police said.
Police chief Michael Harrison, speaking to reporters late Saturday in televised comments, said the two suspects believed to be wearing hoodies had a rifle and a handgun. He said they appeared to have fired indiscriminately into the crowd, striking ten people. Before fleeing they took time to stand over one person.
“We believe that they actually stood over one of the individuals and fired multiple rounds and then after that fled,” he said.
Police responding to the shooting found three victims – two men and one woman – who were pronounced dead at the scene. Seven other victims – five men and two women – were taken to two separate hospitals. Four of them were driven in private vehicles, and three were transported by ambulance.
Harrison said one underwent surgery and was in critical condition; the other six were in various conditions but none were considered life-threatening.
Harrison spoke with family members and friends at the scene of the “volatile and tense situation.” He called on people to come forward and help police find the killers and also asked people not to take matters into their own hands.
“This was an extremely tragic incident. A lot of people were out here tonight. A lot of people, we know, saw what happened, heard what happened. And we need more than anything for people to come forward to help the NOPD right now solve this case,” Harrison said.
He said police do not know whether it was gang-related.
Lawrence Russo was buying a scratch-off ticket at nearby gas station when he heard what he at first thought were firecrackers before he realized they were gunshots. He told NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune that he heard a total of 13 to 16 shots fired.
“They never stop killing each other,” he said, shaking his head as he spoke.
Near the scene of the shooting, beyond the police tape, people could be seen crying and hugging one another in comfort.
The New Orleans Advocate (https://bit.ly/2AlrJXt ) reported that a woman stood behind the crime scene tape shouting, “Pick my brother up,” as two bodies lay uncovered. NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reported two men were trying to console two sobbing women as one of the women shouted: “That’s my baby.”
Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a statement: “There is no place in New Orleans for this kind of violence. I speak for everyone in our City when I say we are disgusted, we are infuriated, & we have had more than enough. Three more lives — gone. It has to end. It’s unacceptable anywhere.”
The Welfare Queen The Story of Linda Taylor
Have you ever wondered where or heard the term Welfar Queen? Well I did many years and stumbled upon this great tea sippin’ story about Linda Taylor. Read this intriguing story by Josh Levin.
In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan villainized a Chicago woman for bilking the government. Her other sins—including possible kidnappings and murders—were far worse.
By Josh Levin
1 “She Used 80 Names”
Ronald Reagan loved to tell stories. When he ran for president in 1976, many of Reagan’s anecdotes converged on a single point: The welfare state is broken, and I’m the man to fix it. On the trail, the Republican candidate told a tale about a fancy public housing complex with a gym and a swimming pool. There was also someone in California, he’d explain incredulously, who supported herself with food stamps while learning the art of witchcraft. And in stump speech after stump speech, Reagan regaled his supporters with the story of an Illinois woman whose feats of deception were too amazing to be believed.
“In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record,” the former California governor declared at a campaign rally in January 1976. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” As soon as he quoted that dollar amount, the crowd gasped.
Four decades later, Reagan’s soliloquies on welfare fraud are often remembered as shameless demagoguery. Many accounts report that Reagan coined the term “welfare queen,” and that this woman in Chicago was a fictional character. In 2007, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman wrote that “the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen [was] a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews says the whole thing is racist malarkey—a coded reference to black indolence and criminality designed to appeal to working-class whites.
Though Reagan was known to stretch the truth, he did not invent that woman in Chicago. Her name was Linda Taylor, and it was the Chicago Tribune, not the GOP politician, who dubbed her the “welfare queen.” It was the Tribune, too, that lavished attention on Taylor’s jewelry, furs, and Cadillac—all of which were real.
As of 1976, Taylor had yet to be convicted of anything. She was facing charges that she’d bilked the government out of $8,000 using four aliases. When the welfare queen stood trial the next year, reporters packed the courtroom. Rather than try to win sympathy, Taylor seemed to enjoy playing the scofflaw. As witnesses described her brazen pilfering from public coffers, she remained impassive, an unrepentant defendant bedecked in expensive clothes and oversize hats.
Linda Taylor, the haughty thief who drove her Cadillac to the public aid office, was the embodiment of a pernicious stereotype. With her story, Reagan marked millions of America’s poorest people as potential scoundrels and fostered the belief that welfare fraud was a nationwide epidemic that needed to be stamped out. This image of grand and rampant welfare fraud allowed Reagan to sell voters on his cuts to public assistance spending. The “welfare queen” became a convenient villain, a woman everyone could hate. She was a lazy black con artist, unashamed of cadging the money that honest folks worked so hard to earn.
2 “She Can Be Any Age She Wishes”
Jack Sherwin knew he’d seen her before. It was Aug. 8, 1974, and the Chicago burglary detective was working a case on the city’s South Side. Though her name and face didn’t look familiar, Sherwin recognized the victim’s manner, and her story. She’d been robbed, Linda Taylor explained, and she was sorry to report that the burglar had good taste: $14,000 in furs, jewelry, and cash were missing from her apartment. Thank heavens, most of it was insured.
After listening to her tale of woe, Sherwin asked Taylor if she’d mind getting him some water. When she returned, the detective kept the glass as evidence.
The fingerprints collected from Taylor’s kitchen helped jog Sherwin’s memory. Two years earlier, the same woman had been charged with making a bogus robbery claim—that time, the thieves had supposedly made off with $10,000 worth of valuables. Sherwin knew Linda Taylor because, out of pure happenstance, he’d been called on to investigate both of these alleged burglaries. She was living in a different part of town, using a different name, and sporting a different head of hair. But this was the same woman, pulling the same stunt.
Sherwin cited Taylor, again, for making a false report. But the 35-year-old police officer, a former Marine and a 12-year veteran of the force, didn’t stop there. “The more I dug into it, the more I found that just wasn’t right,” he remembers. First, he learned that she was getting welfare checks under multiple names. Then he discovered Taylor’s husbands—“Oh, I guess maybe seven men that I knew of,” Sherwin says. The detective and his partner, Jerry Kush, got to work tracking down this parade of grooms, and they found a few who were willing to talk. Sherwin’s hunch had been right: This woman was up to no good.
In late September 1974, seven weeks after Sherwin met Taylor for the second time, the detective’s findings made the Chicago Tribune. “Linda Taylor received Illinois welfare checks and food stamps, even tho[ugh] she was driving three 1974 autos—a Cadillac, a Lincoln, and a Chevrolet station wagon—claimed to own four South Side buildings, and was about to leave for a vacation in Hawaii,” wrote Pulitzer Prize winner George Bliss. The story detailed a 14-page report that Sherwin had put together illuminating “a lifestyle of false identities that seemed calculated to confuse our computerized, credit-oriented society.” There was evidence that the 47-year-old Taylor had used three Social Security cards, 27 names, 31 addresses, and 25 phone numbers to fuel her mischief, not to mention 30 different wigs.
As the Tribune and other outlets stayed on the story, those figures continued to rise. Reporters noted that Linda Taylor had used as many as 80 names, and that she’d received at least $150,000—in illicit welfare cash, the numbers that Ronald Reagan would cite on the campaign trail in 1976. (Though she used dozens of different identities, I’ve chosen to call her Linda Taylor in this story, as it’s how the public came to know her at the height of her infamy.) Taylor also gained a reputation as a master of disguise. “She is black, but is able to pass herself off as Spanish, Filipino, white, and black,” the executive director of Illinois’ Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid told the Associated Press in November 1974. “And it appears she can be any age she wishes, from the early 20s to the early 50s.”
For Bliss and the Tribune, the scandal wasn’t just that Taylor had her hand in the till and had the seeming ability to shape-shift. The newspaper also directed its ire at the sclerotic bureaucracy that allowed her schemes to flourish. Bliss had been reporting on waste, fraud, and mismanagement in the Illinois Department of Public Aid for a long time prior to Taylor’s emergence. His stories—on doctors who billed Medicaid for fictitious procedures and overworked caseworkers who failed to purge ineligible recipients from the welfare rolls—showed an agency in disarray. That disarray didn’t make for an engaging read, though: “State orders probe of Medicaid” is not a headline that provokes shock and anger. Then the welfare queen came along and dressed the scandal up in a fur coat. This was a crime that people could comprehend, and Linda Taylor was the perfectly unsympathetic figure for outraged citizens to point a finger at.
Now that the Tribune had found the central character in this ongoing welfare drama, a story about large, dysfunctional institutions became a lot more personal. The failure—or worse, unwillingness—to ferret out Taylor’s dirty deeds revealed more about the flaws of state and county government than any balance sheet ever could. In his report to his superiors at the Chicago Police Department, Sherwin described ping-ponging from the Department of Public Aid to the state’s attorney’s office to the U.S. attorney, with none of the agencies expressing much interest in helping him out. The Tribune’s headline: “Cops find deceit—but no one cares.”
Sherwin eventually found a willing partner in the Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid, a body put together by state legislators eager to take a stand against government waste. The detective also learned that Taylor was wanted on felony welfare fraud charges in Michigan. At the end of August 1974, she was arrested in Chicago, then released on bond in advance of an extradition hearing. A month later—and the day after the Tribune told her story for the first time—Linda Taylor didn’t answer when her name was called in Cook County Circuit Court. The most notorious woman in Illinois was on the lam.
3 “The Woman Was Smooth”
On Aug. 12, 1974—four days after Linda Taylor told Jack Sherwin she’d been robbed—Lamar Jones met his future bride. The 21-year-old sailor was working in the dental clinic at Chicago’s Great Lakes Naval Training Center when a beautiful woman walked in to get her teeth cleaned. Something about her was totally fascinating, Jones remembers. “I met her because she was pretty and I was shooting game to her,” he says. “I guess her game must’ve been stronger than mine, because I met her that Monday and [got] married that Saturday.”
Jones thought he was lucky to get hitched to the 35-year-old Linda Sholvia. She was beautiful, with the smoothest skin he’d ever seen. She also gave him $1,000 as a wedding present, and he had his pick of fancy new cars. But Lamar and Linda’s marriage lasted only a little longer than their five-day courtship. A few weeks after they exchanged vows, Linda was arrested. When Jones paid her bond, his new wife fled the state. To make things worse, she stole his color TV.
The young Navy man realized that something was amiss with his new bride even before the television went missing. When she showed him a degree from a university in Haiti, he noticed that it said Linda Taylor, not Linda Sholvia. Jones says Linda had five mailboxes at her residence at 8221 S. Clyde Ave., and she’d get letters in all five, addressed to different names. He got a bit uneasy when Linda told him, after they were married, that he was her eighth husband. She also had a “sister” named Constance who seemed more like her adult daughter.
Her skin was so pale and smooth, he says, that she could look Asian, or like a light-skinned black woman, or even white. One night, though, he woke up before dawn and saw that his bride’s smooth skin wasn’t so perfect—she had “1,000 wrinkles on her face.” After he caught this illicit glimpse, Linda locked herself in the bathroom for an hour. When she came out, she looked like a whole new person.
MOCKUP OF TRIBUNE HEADLINE: Welfare Queen Jailed In Tuscon
Photo illustration by Holly Allen
Once Linda fled the state, that ended all hope of salvaging their three-week marriage. Jones says at that point he cooperated with authorities, who wiretapped his phone and traced one of the fugitive’s calls. On Oct. 9, “Constance Green” was apprehended in Tucson, Ariz., on behalf of Chicago police. Three days later, the Tribune’s George Bliss wrote that “the 47-year-old ‘welfare queen’ was being held in a [Tucson] jail.” It’s the first instance I’ve found of someone being branded a “welfare queen” in print.
A month after his wife was brought back from Arizona, Lamar Jones testified against her in front of a Cook County grand jury. Jones says that around the time of that proceeding, he was shuffled into a car with another witness and told they had something in common: They were both married to Linda (or maybe it was Connie) at the same time. That was a surprise to Jones. His wife had told him that husband No. 7 was dead.
The aliases used in Linda Taylor’s Illinois welfare fraud trial.
The aliases used in Linda Taylor’s Illinois welfare fraud trial.
Circuit Court of Cook County
On Nov. 13, Taylor was indicted on charges of theft, perjury, and bigamy. (The bigamy charges were later dropped.) In court records listing the counts of the indictment, the defendant’s name is recorded as Connie Walker, aka Linda Bennett, aka Linda Taylor, aka Linda Jones, aka Connie Jarvis. She was either 35, 39, 40, or 47 years old, depending on whose story you believed……..
READ MORE——–> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html
Inequality Media presents What if everyone voted?
I think SOME black and brown people take voting for granted. When you don’t vote your rights and the laws you want past will not be passed or changed because of your non-vote. I say if you didn’t vote you have no right to complain you have no right to even give a voice because you did not vote. But I’m just being an asshole with an opinion.
A Colombian gang has put a $70,000 bounty on Sombra the drug-sniffing dog
(CNN)Her talent for sniffing out drugs has led to the capture of at least 245 people and the seizure of 9 tons of cocaine from the powerful Urabeños gang in Colombia.
Article via: A Colombian gang has put a $70,000 bounty on Sombra the drug-sniffing dog
Florida Cop Claims Police Chief Had Him Frame Two Innocent Black Men
A former Florida cop has admitted to framing two innocent black men under the direction of his boss, the chief of police.
Guillermo Ravelo, Former Biscayne Park police officer, made this admission on Thursday in federal court as part of a plea deal, according to The Miami Herald. Ravelo said he arrested one man for two home burglaries and another for five car break-ins. Charges against both men were eventually dropped.
Ravelo pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the men’s rights.
He also confessed to punching a handcuffed man in the face during a traffic stop, entering a guilty plea for excessive force.
The prosecution intends to recommend a lenient sentence of at least 24 months for Ravelo as part of a plea deal, reports Law & Crime. Each charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison. The judge could choose to ignore the prosecution’s recommendation and order Ravelo to serve the terms consecutively.
Ravelo was fired from the force in March following the assault allegations from the traffic stop.
Ravelo’s admission has widened an ongoing corruption investigation of the Biscayne Park police department.
Read more via: Florida Cop Claims Police Chief Had Him Frame Two Innocent Black Men
Morris Day remembers the last time he spoke to Prince
Article Originally posted August 6th 2016. I’ll have more from Morris Day and The Time on my TBT next week! I am so glad Morris talked and squashed the beef between him and his long time friend Prince.
Back in January, Morris Day got a surprise call from Paisley Park: Prince wanted his childhood friend, musical compadre and on-screen rival to come to Minneapolis with his band, the Time, and play a private show.
“It was the first time in a while that we’d had a chance to sit down and chat,” Day tells The Post. “It had been a few years since I’d seen him. I questioned why he was calling me up at the time. In hindsight, it’s almost like he felt something or knew something was up.”
Barely three months later, Prince was dead. For Day — performing Aug. 12 with the Time at the Ford Ampitheater at Coney Island Boardwalk, on a bill that includes Kool & the Gang — that Paisley Park encounter was the final chapter in a lifelong relationship that helped spawn some of the most beloved and deliriously funky moments in pop-music history.
Day, now 58, had played with Prince since their time in the Minneapolis band Grand Central in the ’70s. When Prince made it as a solo star, he took his buddy with him. Day co-wrote “Partyup” for the 1980 album “Dirty Mind,” and Prince set up the Time, with Day as lead singer, as a way to pursue funk music on the side.
Their partnership peaked with the 1984 movie “Purple Rain.” While Prince burned up the screen with his live performances, his portrayal of the brooding lead character, The Kid, in the non-music scenes seemed wooden. Day stepped in, pretty much playing himself — flamboyant, sexy, packing a wardrobe that would make Huggy Bear envious, his vanity assisted by his mirror-carrying sidekick, Jerome Benton.
In short, the movie’s enduring appeal is due almost as much to Day as it is to Prince himself.
“I’ve heard that a few times,” Day says carefully, trying to avoid overshadowing his old friend. “He comes across as this serious, dark guy [in the movie]. But the Prince I knew was quite the comedian. We talked s–t and laughed all the time.”
The Time went on to have some minor hits with “Jungle Love” and “The Bird” (both featured in “Purple Rain”) before cracking the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 1990 with “Jerk Out,” a song co-written by Prince.
But there were tensions, too. The Time’s drummer Jellybean Johnson recalls Prince and Day brawling on the “Purple Rain” set. Years later, Prince prohibited Day from using the name the Time on recorded work.
The Paisley Park show included Day and Prince enjoying one last dance. “I heard he was having a good time when we were playing,” Day says now. “There will always be a void. But life goes on. If it were me, I would want people to get on with it. I’m pretty sure he would want the same.”
Source: https://nypost.com/2016/08/05/morris-day-remembers-the-last-time-he-spoke-to-prince/
Woman poisoned baby in twisted plot to get husband back
A South Carolina woman — who admitted to murdering her baby by feeding the toddler a deadly amount of salt in a twisted plot to win her husband back — was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison.
Kimberly Martines, of Fingerville, must serve 85 percent of her sentence before she is eligible for parole, FOX Carolina reported. The 25-year-old pleaded guilty to homicide by child abuse following her daughter’s death in July 2016.
Martines’ 17-month-old daughter, Peyton, arrived at the hospital with an inflated amount of sodium in her blood. The child, suffering from acute salt poisoning, died three days later after doctors took her off of life support.
Martines initially told investigators Peyton ingested large amounts of salt when the toddler and her twin sister got into a bag that was left on a bookcase. But Martines’ 4-year-old son later told officials he watched his mother feed his sister a spoonful of salt.
Police found a bag of salt under a sofa cushion.
Martines later confessed to giving her daughter the poison dose of salt to “get her husband back into her life” after the couple separated. She chose Peyton as her victim because she was near her at the time, FOX Carolina reported.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/07/26/woman-poisoned-baby-in-twisted-plot-to-get-husband-back-cops/
The S.OS Band Just be good to me LIVE performance soul train
I remember watching this.
Elfen’s TBT R&B 1882 and 1983 The S.O.S Band
What can I say about The S.O.S Band? They’re the finest? They’re musically good to me? They make sure to tell you that nobodies gonna love you like they do. They try to tell you that one of the girls is a weekend kinda girl. I had problems trying to pick an album from them. The S.O.S Band is one of those bands that’s really underrated. I do know one thing once you saw their album covers you knew who they were. See ya’ll next TBT week! I’m gonna come through with the group The Time.