What not to do in a bear attack? Push your slower friends down in attempts of saving yourself, says the National Park Service
If you’re being confronted by a bear, there’s a few things you should know before running away.As people across the country visiting parks and taking trips to the mountains find themselves in terrifying encounters with bears, the National Park Service (NPS) has offered a few tips on what to do if you’re face-to-face with the furry beasts.The first tip? “Please don’t run from bears or push your slower friends down in attempts of saving yourself,” the NPS joked in a Facebook post Wednesday.The best thing to do to safely remove yourself from a bear confrontation is move away slowly and sideways so you can keep an eye on the bear without tripping. Bears are not threatened when you move sideways, but like dogs, they will chase fleeing animals.
“Do not climb a tree. Both grizzlies and black bears can climb trees. Do not push down a slower friend (even if you think the friendship has run its course),” the NPS added. “Stay calm and remember that most bears do not want to attack you; they usually just want to be left alone. Don’t we all?”Another tip is to identify yourself by making noise, specifically your voice, so the bear doesn’t confuse you for an animal and knows you’re human. While a curious bear might come closer or stand on its hind legs to examine and smell you, it is not threatening.
While bear attacks are rare, their behaviors can be unpredictable and an attack can lead to serious injuries or death, according to the NPS. To avoid an encounter with a bear, hike and travel in groups, do not allow bears access to your food and leave the area if you see a bear.If you are attacked by a brown or grizzly bear, leave your backpack on and play dead by laying flat on your stomach with your hands behind your neck and legs spread. If the bear continues to attack you, fight back by hitting the bear in the face. If you are being attacked by a black bear, do not play dead but instead try to escape to a secure place or if you can’t, fight back using any available object, according to NPS.
Article via CNN
Megan Thee Stallion Says She’s ‘Looking for a New Girlfriend
Jump out of bed and set pussies to wet, because Megan Thee Stallion says she’s “looking for a new girlfriend.”
The rapper—whose Cardi B collab, “WAP,” dropped on Friday to widespread acclaim, Kylie Jenner cameo notwithstanding—announced that she’s “a free agent on the ladies side” in what appears to be a recent Instagram Live circulating on Twitter.
“I’m a free agent on the ladies side,” Meg told her Live viewers, who numbered over 15,000 according to the clip. “I’m looking for a new girlfriend. If anybody—anybody trying to be a hot girl.”
She goes on to clarify her type:
- “little petite tings”
- “petite tings with tattoos”
- “Spanish girls with big ole asses”
- “petite Black girls”
If that’s you, Megan’s DMs are presumably open!!
Speaking of Cardi and Megan’s “WAP,” I am losing my mind over this Los Angeles congressional candidate’s response to the song.
“Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion are what happens when children are raised without God and without a strong father figure,” tweeted Republican hopeful James P. Bradley on Friday, per Los Angeles magazine. “Their new song, ‘WAP,’ which I heard accidentally, made me want to pour holy water in my ears, and I feel sorry for future girls if this is their role model!”
via: https://jezebel.com/megan-thee-stallion-says-shes-looking-for-a-new-girlfri-1844659701
Photo Credit: jezebel.com
LA man serving life sentence for stealing hedge clippers has cost taxpayers more than $500k
NEW ORLEANS — A man caught with stolen hedge clippers decades ago must continue to serve his life sentence, despite a stinging dissent from the chief justice of Louisiana’s Supreme Court, who said the sentence was the result of laws rooted in racism.
Justice Bernette Johnson, the only Black person on the seven-member court, outlined the case against Fair Wayne Bryant in a dissent after her colleagues, without comment, declined to review the latest appeal in the 1997 burglary case.
Bryant is eligible for parole as a result of a 2018 appellate decision. But Johnson said the sentence itself was “excessive and disproportionate.”
Bryant, who is Black, was sentenced as a habitual offender after three previous convictions. According to court records, there was a 1979 attempted armed robbery conviction — a crime classified as violent under Louisiana — and three subsequent non-violent crimes: possession of stolen things in 1987, attempted forgery of a $150 check in 1989; and simple burglary in 1992.
A state appellate court held that the sentence was in accordance with the habitual offender law and after an initial appeal failed, no longer subject to review. Johnson said the sentence was so out of proportion to the crime as to be clearly unconstitutional.
“Such petty theft is frequently driven by the ravages of poverty or addiction, and often both,” Johnson wrote. “It is cruel and unusual to impose a sentence of life in prison at hard labor for the criminal behavior which is most often caused by poverty or addiction.”
She went on in her two-page dissent to give a brief history of laws passed after the Civil War to make it easier to convict former slaves and their descendants for minor crimes and sentence them harshly, an attempt, she said, to “re-enslave African Americans.”
Johnson called severe habitual offender sentences a “modern manifestation” of such laws.
In addition to being unfair, Johnson wrote, they are costly to the state. “Since his conviction in 1997, Mr. Bryant’s incarceration has cost Louisiana taxpayers approximately $518,667,” she wrote. “Arrested at 38, Mr. Bryant has already spent nearly 23 years in prison and is now over 60 years old. If he lives another 20 years, Louisiana taxpayers will have paid almost one million dollars to punish Mr. Bryant for his failed effort to steal a set of hedge clippers.”
While an appeals court declined to review the sentence, it did hold in 2018 that Bryant had been illegally denied parole eligibility. It was unclear Friday whether he has applied for parole. An attorney who handled Bryant’s appeal for the Louisiana Appellate Project did not immediately respond to an emailed query.
The district attorney’s office in Caddo Parish in northwest Louisiana, where the case originated, declined comment Friday.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, reacting to Johnson’s dissent, issued a news release Thursday in which it reiterated its call for the repeal of laws holding life sentences for what the organization called minor offenses. The ACLU also called on district attorneys to stop seeking such penalties.
Photo Credit: www.wwltv.com
Some teachers wrote their own obituaries as part of their back to school prep
Sarah Backstrom knew this school year was going to be different, even without the Covid-19 pandemic. The veteran teacher moved to Des Moines, Iowa, with her young daughters to teach in a new school district — but this is the first time she’s been scared about returning to the classroom.
So, in addition to all her back-to-school preparations this summer, Backstrom wrote her own obituary and sent it to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office.
“It wasn’t something at all that I took lightly. It was something that I really hoped that my governor would read and hear that if something were to happen to me, that this is who is no longer here,” she told CNN. “I’m hoping that she will start to realize that these are real people, and these are real lives.”
In her obituary, which she provided to CNN, she wrote, “Sarah loved her friends and family with her whole heart. She had a laugh that was infectious and could always be counted on for an off-hand remark or a joke. She was known for finding sunshine even in the darkest of times.”
Backstrom, 43, said that she was known for her “rainbow hair and eccentric fashion sense,” and urged her friends and loved ones to wear leopard prints or a funny T-shirts and rainbow wigs to celebrate her life.
She will be teaching gifted students at three elementary schools, and recently found out that her work will be 100% virtual to minimize the risk of her tracking the coronavirus from building to building.
Backstrom said she loves being in the classroom and is sad that she won’t be able to greet her students with hugs and enjoy the back-to-school rituals that are so important to children.
“There’s really nothing that can take the place of face-to-face talking with a student,” she said. “There’s something really magical that happens in a classroom when you’re all in this space and kind of sharing energy.”
She and her ex-husband also have two daughters going into preschool and fifth grade, so she knows firsthand how tough home schooling is on parents.
“More than anything, I want to be in the classroom, and I want to be in my schools, but I also don’t want to get sick and I don’t want my mom to get sick,” she said.
Gov. Reynolds released guidance July 30 that said at least half of schools’ instruction must be conducted in person and that schools couldn’t request online-only education unless their county’s positivity rate is 15% or higher.
Iowa has reported 46,656 cases across the state and a 9.4% positivity rate as of Tuesday, according to the Iowa Department of Health.
On Tuesday, Gov. Reynolds said that school districts that hold online-only instruction without authorization would be defying state law and that those days would not be counted as instructional days.
“Children need to be in a classroom,” she said in the news conference.Click to find out more about a new promotionDon’t miss this content from our sponsor
Gov. Reynolds told reporters that she appreciates educators’ concerns, and that the state is doing everything it can to keep everyone safe.
“I have grandchildren that are going back to school. I would never do anything that would put them in harm’s way intentionally. I don’t think any of us would,” she said, adding that her daughter, who’s expecting, is a teacher in the state.
President Trump has also called for schools to reopen in the fall, but many of the country’s largest districts are planning for remote learning.
Backstrom said she was inspired to write after reading an article about Sioux City teacher Jeremy Dumkrieger, who published his own obituary in the Iowa Starting Line website.
In it, he joked about his wife’s cold feet and wrote that “his only regret in life was not meeting her sooner, frozen feet and all.” He also expressed his love for their children and their dachshund Steve.
More seriously, he wrote that because of Covid-19 “he died alone, isolated from the family who meant the world to him.”
Dumkrieger, 43, said he decided to write the obituary because he’s concerned about being in a classroom full of kids — especially since the state does not require people to wear masks. Iowa did launch an initiative last month to encourage people to wear masks.
He said putting his feelings for his wife and kids on paper was more emotional than he expected, and he got a little choked up talking about it.
“It took me a couple days to write it,” he said. “It was tough, and I know a lot of teachers that told me that they started writing, but then stopped because they just couldn’t get through it.”
Dumkrieger said he has heard from some people who were offended by his mock obituary, but said they’ll be even more upset when they start seeing real ones for teachers who actually die.
He feels that a mask mandate would reduce the spread of Covid-19 in the community and make it easier for schools to protect their students, teachers and staff.
Dumkrieger said he considered looking for a different job, but said teaching is what he loves and it’s how he serves his country.
“I’m going to go back and teach. I’m going to wear a mask and make sure I’m keeping everybody safe,” he said.
CNN’s Kay Jones and Nakia McNabb contributed to this story.
Photo Credit: Sarah Backstrom
After a White man repeatedly erased girl’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ chalk drawing in front of her home, neighbors stepped in to show support
(CNN) — Every day for nearly a week, Manette Sharick and her 3-year-old daughter, Zhuri, drew “Black Lives Matter” in chalk across the sidewalk outside their home in Concord, California.
But every time they wrote the message, they woke up the next morning to find that the word Black, and only that word, had been erased.
“I just wanted to teach my daughter that Black lives matter, Black culture matters, Black communities matter, and that we are the movement for Black lives,” Sharick, who is Black, told CNN. “I was shocked that someone could be purposefully doing this. It hurt a lot, it made me extremely upset.”
Following three days of what she called “overwhelming frustration,” Sharick wrote the message in direct view of her security camera.
That’s when she saw a man she says she never met and only knows as Jim, pouring water over the message. In a video Sharick recorded on her phone after running out to confront him, the man tells her that he will continue to remove the word “as long as she keeps on doing this.”
“I was only pouring across the word Black because I believe that all lives matter,” Jim told CNN affiliate KGO. “I don’t care what nationality, sexual orientation or any of that, we are all human beings.”
He added that he erased the “Black” from Black Lives Matter because he felt in the beginning of the movement “it had good intentions” but now the phrase has been “hijacked.”
CNN could not reach Jim for comment because he has not released his last name.
A ‘blatant display of racism’
Sharick moved into the neighborhood 27 years ago. She said this was the first time she ever faced with “such a blatant display of racism.”
“He had that much time and energy to take time out of his day, every day, to bring water and come to my home and erase ‘Black’ from ‘Black Lives Matter,'” she added. “It hurt. It hurt a lot. As a Black community we are heartbroken by everything done against us every day. We just want change.”
After sharing the video on Instagram and Facebook on July 30, word began to spread. The next day, Sharick said dozens of people from in and out of the neighborhood showed up in front of Sharick’s home with chalk to draw supporting messages all over the sidewalk on her side of the street and even in front of their own homes.
One of these neighbors is Ilana Israel Samuels, who told CNN she refused to stay silent after finding out someone in her neighborhood was facing discrimination.
“People need to stand with their Black neighbors in support. All lives can’t matter until Black lives matter. Right now, Black lives are being harmed, murdered by police, and they are constantly living in fear,” Samuels said.
After neighbors left the sidewalk covered in positive messages encouraging love, hope, and kindness, as well as support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Sharick and her daughter continued to rewrite the message every day.
Since the outpour of support, the man has not tried to erase the message again.
“I am deeply thankful and blessed for the special, unique, amazing people in my life who supported me, uplifted me and comforted me,” Sharick said, “My family and I are grateful for the help and support we have received from the community.”
While words can be washed away and chalk may fade, this community’s message will stand forever.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Manette Sharick
2 children and 3 adults killed after someone set a Denver home on fire and fled
A house fire that killed three adults and two children in Denver was deliberately set by someone who fled the area, authorities said.
The blaze in the two-story home started about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. Authorities determined early on that it was intentionally set and started a homicide investigation, said Joe Montoya, division chief for investigations at the Denver Police Department.
Investigators are reviewing several cameras in the area for evidence.
The victims were members of one Senegalese family. Djibril and Adja Diol and their 3-year-old daughter, Kadidia, died along with Hassan Diol and her infant daughter, Hawa Beye. Djibril Diol was an engineer and the brother of Hassan Diol.
“They were very quiet. They never really came out of their house. The only time they came out they were just really quiet. They never had any problems. They were just very honest, true neighbors,” Jordan Sims told CNN affiliate KDVR.
All five were in the lower part of the home while three people on the second story jumped to safety, CNN affiliate KMGH reported. The flames damaged two neighboring homes.
A police officer attempted to rescue people from the home but was pushed back by the heat from the flames, said Capt. Greg Pixley of the Denver Fire Department.
Investigators said they’re looking at all options.
“We have to go into it very open-minded and look at every possible angle. And if at some point we determine it was hate-motivated or bias-motivated, then we will definitely share that with the community,” Montoya said.
Asked what made the police think the fire was deliberate, Montoya said, “I cannot get into the details right now. We are relying on the expertise of the Denver Fire arson investigators, the ATF and some of the evidence collected at the scene.”
The Colorado chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations has urged investigators to consider the possibility of bias motive.
“Because the family members who perished in this tragedy are members of minority and immigrant communities, it would only be prudent to investigate the possibility of a bias motive,” said Krista Cole, acting board chair for CAIR-Colorado.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock expressed his condolences to the victims’ families as did Macky Sall, the president of the West African nation of Senegal, who said he’s closely following the investigation.
Hancock urged people to donate to the family’s GoFundMe account to help send their remains to Senegal.
“I want to assure their neighbors and loved ones that we will move swiftly to determine what caused this tragedy,” he said.
Metro Denver Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of $14,000 for information on the fire.
CNN’s Raja Razek contributed to this report
Photo Credit: Denver Police / GoFund Me
Heart attack victims may be dying because of coronavirus fears, study finds
CNN) — Doctors may have been right to be concerned that people with heart problems were avoiding the ER due to Covid-19, according to a new study published Friday.
It provides evidence that people have stayed away from the emergency room even with acute heart attack symptoms. And some may have died as a result.
Researchers from the Providence Heart Institute system based in the US northwest looked at the records of more than 15,000 heart attack patients from between December 30 and May 16 of this year.
They found “important changes” in heart attack hospitalization rates. Patients also fared worse during the early and later parts of the pandemic, they reported Friday in the medical journal JAMA Cardiology.
And patients with the most serious type of heart attack appeared to be more than twice as likely to die at one point.
There was a substantial decrease in hospitalizations early in the pandemic, with the case rates starting to fall on February 23.
Patients hospitalized for a heart attack during the pandemic tended to be younger by about 1 to 3 years than patients before the pandemic. The authors think older patients may have had a “greater reluctance” to get medical help if they had symptoms. Typically, older people have gotten sicker from Covid-19.
Patients who were hospitalized for a heart attack during the pandemic spent less time at the hospital than before the pandemic. This may be because hospitals wanted to keep beds open in case they were needed for Covid-19 patients, the researchers said. The patients were all seen at hospitals within the Providence St. Joseph Health System in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon, Texas and Washington.
Patients were also more likely to be sent home from the hospital rather than sent to a rehabilitation center. That may have been out of a concern about the risk of being exposed to the novel coronavirus at those facilities.
Around March 29, the number of people hospitalized for a heart attack did increase, but it was at a slower rate than before the pandemic. It took five full weeks to go back to the levels hospitals were seeing pre-pandemic. The researchers think the shift may have been after doctors started encouraging patients with symptoms to follow through and get care.
The researchers couldn’t find evidence that doctors were treating patients any differently than they would when there wasn’t a pandemic. Yet there was a real difference in how well some patients did.
There was a substantial increase in deaths among patients who suffered a more serious type of heart attack called STEMI. That’s when one of the arteries is blocked and blood and oxygen can’t get to the heart.
The rate of people who died from these serious heart attacks was even greater during the later part of the pandemic, the study found.
“Compared with the before COVID-19 period, however, patients with STEMI had a statistically greater risk of mortality during the later COVID-19 period,” they wrote. One way of analyzing the deaths, called an observed to expected ratio, indicated patients were more than twice as likely to die from STEMI heart attacks during the study period.
Time matters with a serious heart attack. A delay in care due to a patient’s reluctance to seek help or because emergency medical services were behind or the emergency department was full could hurt the chances of survival.
This study is in line with what others have found. Early research published before it was peer reviewed saw a 25% drop in the number of acute coronary syndrome cases in March of this year compared to March of 2018 and 2019.
A letter published in May in the New England Journal of Medicine found the number of patients in the US undergoing imaging for a stroke decreased by 39% since before the pandemic.
The researchers say more study is needed to determine exactly what contributed to the increased number of deaths.
In April, concerned about this trend, the American Heart Association put out an urgent statement asking people to call 911 if they felt heart attack symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, or nausea. For women it’s more common to have symptoms like unexplained tiredness and nausea or vomiting.
The AHA’s Don’t Die of Doubt campaign was necessary, the association’s president Dr. Mitchell S.V. Elkind said, because people having a heart attack have a much better chance of surviving if they get help immediately.
“If people feel that they might be having symptoms of a heart attack or stroke, then they should call 911, even during the pandemic,” Elkind said.
Elkind, who was not a part of the Providence study, said he would like to know more about why this has been happening.
“Common sense would tell us that many people were afraid to come into the hospital during the pandemic, but there are some other reasons as well,” Elkind said.
In addition to fear, he heard patients say that they didn’t want to be a bother to doctors who are so busy. Elkind is a neurologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital and professor of neurology and epidemiology at Columbia University.
Elkind said there may also have been fewer people having heart attacks.
“This is a little bit more controversial theory,” Elkind said. But with everyone on lockdown, there were fewer cars on the road and less pollution. “We know that air pollution is an important risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. So that could account for some of the same effect. There may have been an actual decrease in incidence of these events.”
Photo Credit: kmov.com
Kelly Osbourne pulls an Adele, is unrecognizable after stunning weight loss
The scion of Sharon and Ozzy has shed more than 50 pounds and is showcasing her new look on Instagram with fans calling her “unrecognizable” as she traded in her goth look for a purple pinup doll.
Osbourne posted a pic this week of her wearing a Gucci zip up onesie, a full face of flawless make up and with new purple hair pulled up into a braided bun with her bangs in a Betty Page-style swoop with a caption that read “Today I’m feeling #Gucci.”
“Oh my gosh you lost a lot of weight!” user @themamamai said.
While another commenter, @justjerimac, said, “you look like a different person with your weight loss much more confident… beautiful!”
Osbourne first lost weight after appearing in “Dancing With the Stars’’ in 2009 — but she soon packed the pounds back on. It wasn’t until she went vegan in 2012 and committed to hiking that the weight started falling off.
Photo Credit: pagesix.com
Florida man spits on boy in restaurant, says ‘you now have coronavirus’
An intoxicated Florida man allegedly spat on a child’s face and told the boy “You now have coronavirus,” according to a report.
The disturbing encounter took place last Sunday night at Ricky T’s restaurant in Treasure Island, Fox 13 news reported.
Jason Copenhaver, 47, first told the boy to take his mask off at the eatery and asked if he could shake his hand, police said.
Copenhaver then grabbed the boy’s arm and put his face next to the child’s, telling the boy he now had the coronavirus, according to police reports.
“Victim stated that (Copenhaver) was in such close proximity that spit particles from (Copenhaver’s) mouth landed in his face,” an officer wrote in the police report.
The man later tried to hit an employee twice, but the worker grabbed Copenhaver and escorted him outside until cops arrived, the report said.
Copenhaver was charged with simple battery and disorderly conduct.
Police said Copenhaver told them he didn’t know if he had coronavirus and has never been tested.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/florida-man-spits-on-boy-and-says-you-now-have-coronavirus/
Photo Credit: Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office
Black cheerleader quits after squad poses with Confederate flag shirt
Six white Alabama high school cheerleaders posed with a Confederate flag T-shirt, extolling their love for “redneck boys,” prompting a black teammate to quit, according to a report.
Reagan Coleman, who had been one of two black cheerleaders at Daphne High School, quit the team on the first day of practice after school administrators and coaches failed to address the July 4 photo, the teen and her mother told WKRG.
“No matter how much I love something, no matter how passionate I am about something, I love myself more and I respect myself more and I could not be on that team,” Coleman told the station.
The photo — which shows six white cheerleaders standing in front of a T-shirt that depicts the Confederate battle flag inside a heart and reads “I love Redneck Boys” — led to “no consequences” for the girls, according to an online petition created by Coleman calling for them to be reprimanded.
“They have faced remotely no consequences and are still on Daphne’s Cheer Team,” reads the petition, which had been signed by more than 2,200 people as of Friday. “I have since quit the team due to their carelessness and inactivity. I am not trying to ignite hate on these girls, I just simply want everyone to see what Daphne High School allows.”
Coleman’s mother, Latitiah, said she got an unclear response from school administrators when she contacted them to address the photo.
“I went from the coach to the principal, from the principal to the superintendent,” she told WKRG. “And I kept getting vague answers. It was almost like everybody was reading a script.”
Some two weeks after the photo was posted, Coleman quit the team when she showed up for the first day of practice. She said the school needs to take action as support for her petition calling for her teammates to be disciplined over the photo grows.
“I feel like we’re at a time where black voices are being heard,” she told WKRG. “We’re being felt, we’re being seen. So I knew this couldn’t go unheard about. I knew I needed to share this story not for me or how I felt about the picture, but because of the other black children that may be silenced by white administrators like these.”
Baldwin County Public Schools, meanwhile, said in a statement that the matter was “handled at the local school level,” without elaborating on any possible penalties for the cheerleaders, citing privacy laws.
“As with any student issue, federal law prohibits us from discussing disciplinary actions, if any, involving our students,” the statement read. “Our system has implemented sensitivity programs and Superintendent [Eddie] Tyler has stressed that we have zero tolerance for racism and bullying in our system.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/black-cheerleader-quits-after-squad-poses-with-confederate-flag-shirt/
Photo Credit: blacksportsonline.com