Man charged after body-slamming woman for unplugging PlayStation
A Nashville man has been charged with domestic assault after someone unplugged his PlayStation, according to police.
Police said Joshua Stone got into an argument with the victim while playing video games, WSMV reports.
He told officers the woman unplugged the PlayStation, so he body-slammed her.
The woman suffered injuries to her head.
Food Stamps Recipients Can Now Order Groceries Online; Amazon, Walmart to Offer Service
Walmart, Amazon and grocery chains like ShopRite hope to tap into a lucrative new market: Food stamp recipients who want to shop for groceries online.
For the first time, the US Department of Agriculture has given the green light for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to use their benefits to buy groceries online and get them delivered to their homes, the agency said Thursday.
The retailers are kicking off a two-year pilot in New York that will enable some of the state’s 2.7 million SNAP recipients to use their benefits for online grocery orders.
ShopRite and Amazon will service the New York City area, while Walmart will cover upstate locations. Additional retailers are slated to join the pilot in coming months, and the test will eventually expand to other parts of New York, as well as Alabama, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington. It’s not yet clear which other grocery chains will be involved.
The USDA says it eventually wants the more than 38 million Americans on food stamps nationwide to be able to make online purchases, which will make it easier for some working moms, as well as the elderly and disabled, to buy food. But the move also opens up the market to online retailers.
“People who receive SNAP benefits should have the opportunity to shop for food the same way more and more Americans shop for food — by ordering and paying for groceries online,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. “As technology advances, it is important for SNAP to advance too.”
Online shopping makes up a tiny fraction of grocery purchases today, but analysts expect the market to grow. Amazon, Walmart and others are trying to edge out each other as buying meat and produce online becomes more popular among both high and low-income shoppers.
Tapping into the $63 billion food stamp market could give retailers a big boost in that arena.
Food stamp recipients currently buy a lot at big box stores and grocery chains.
Nearly $52 billion, or 82% of all food stamp dollars, were spent at these retailers in 2017, according to the most recent USDA data.
“It was only a matter of time before we saw SNAP benefits start to impact the online grocery world,” said Tory Gundelach, analyst at Kantar.
Key customers
SNAP recipients are already an important customer for Walmart and other grocery stores. Some 4% of Walmart’s sales in the United States come from food stamp purchases, estimated UBS analyst Michael Lasser in a report last year. Walmart declined to confirm that number.
Even small changes to food assistance benefits can impact retailers’ sales. During the government shutdown earlier this year, February benefits were handed out early, which lifted sales at Walmart and Dollar General.
“There is a lot of money that is pumped into the food store system via SNAP, so retailers are going to try and maximize that,” said Elizabeth Racine, professor of public health at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, who studies food assistance policies.
Yet Walmart and big box retailers have lost food stamp market share in recent years to convenience stores, pharmacies and dollar stores, which are rapidly opening new locations and expanding their grocery selections. Dollar General, for example, is adding produce sections to hundreds of stores in rural and urban food deserts.
Walmart, Amazon and others hope that offering food stamp recipients the opportunity to buy online will help them stand out against convenience and dollar stores that don’t offer delivery.
Prep work
The new online shopping program has been in the works for a while. The 2014 Farm Bill called for the USDA to pilot online purchasing.
The USDA is using the pilot announced Thursday to further test technical and security issues before it rolls out the program nationwide. Online purchases using food stamps require a higher level of security to prevent and detect misuse. Food stamp participants can use their benefits to buy eligible items online, but not for delivery or services charges.
Walmart and Amazon also have been getting ready for online ordering to become a bigger part of the food stamp program.
Since 2017, Walmart has been testing a separate pilot at that allows customers to use food stamps to order their groceries online and then pick them up at stores. It’s currently available at 40 stores. But delivery was not an option in its pilot.
In the newly announced New York pilot, Amazon is waiving its Prime membership fee for food stamp customers who want to shop for groceries and household staples through AmazonFresh and Prime Pantry.
“What we’re trying to get out of it is furthering our commitment to making food accessible,” said Kristina Herrmann, who oversees Amazon’s participation in the USDA pilot.
Herrmann did not say how big she expected the market for using food stamps online to become, but Amazon has spent the last two years preparing for the launch of the USDA pilot. It had to build technology to accept food stamp customers’ payments and create new web features for shoppers using the program.
Delivery obstacles
Buying groceries online could appeal to food stamp recipients who live in food deserts in urban and rural areas, said Racine, the University of North Carolina professor. It could also work well for customers who don’t have reliable transportation to get to grocery stores.
However, retailers will have to overcome several obstacles before they enter this market.
Amazon and Walmart will face delivery hurdles shipping fresh produce to low-income areas, according to analysts.
“The online grocery industry already struggles with delivery of perishable goods, so that won’t go away with the acceptance of SNAP,” said Kantar’s Gundelach.
Herrmann, however, said Amazon will be able to use its existing delivery network to reach food stamp recipients in New York City neighborhoods and in rural areas in later stages of the pilot.
There are additional challenges for retailers, including finding secure places to drop off customers’ grocery orders, according to experts. Herrmann said that Amazon will offer food stamp customers several different delivery options.
Lack of internet access in rural and low-income communities could also limit food stamp recipients from ordering groceries online.
“Low income people are less likely to have reliable internet access or computers,” Racine noted. “The online ordering tool has to work well on a cell phone.”
Photo Credit: A sign in a market window advertises the acceptance of food stamps on October 7, 2010 in New York City. (Credit: Spencer Platt/
Florida man impersonating a police officer pulls over undercover detective
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — A Florida man is behind bars after pulling over a real police officer while pretending to be one, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
Matthew Joseph Erris, 26 was arrested for impersonating a law enforcement officer, according to WFLA.
According to deputies, Erris turned on red and blue lights Tuesday night and pulled over an undercover detective. The detective called 911 to report the bizarre traffic stop, and Erris was arrested a short while later.
WFLA reported deputies found a “realistic looking” airsoft pistol inside Erris’ Chevy Trailblazer.
He was arrested and later released on bond.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/04/18/florida-man-impersonating-police-pulls-over-undercover-detective/
NJ mom charged after toddler found wandering alone outside on street twice
ENGLEWOOD, N.J. — A New Jersey mother is facing child endangerment charges after her toddler was found wandering around the streets of Englewood on two different occasions.
Police say the 3-year-old daughter of Maria Ramirez was found just after 11 p.m. on April 3 wandering into traffic in the area of East Palisade Avenue and Engle Street. Motorists stopped and rescued the child, who was in the process of crossing the street.
The child was taken to police headquarters. She was unable to provide her parents’ names or address — only that she was on a mission to get ice cream.
Officers later discovered an open door on Hillside Avenue nearby and through an investigation determined the child lived there with her parents Maria Ramirez and Norberto Garcia. Neither parent was home, apparently not telling any other occupants of the home that they had left.
The child was apparently left in the care of relatives, who reportedly thought she was in the company of Maria Ramirez. The child was returned to her parents unharmed.
Two days later, around 10 p.m., the same child left the house again and was found wandering around the streets alone. This time, police say the mother was home, but unaware her daughter had left the house.
The child was spotted by a Bennie’s Restaurant employee who stepped outside on her break. The employee was able to grab the toddler, who was getting closer and closer to the roadway.
The child, who was unharmed, was returned to her mother.
Child Protection and Permanency was again contacted and Ramirez was charged with child endangerment. She was released on a summons.
Mom claims ‘mean girls’ bullied son into suicide challenge
An Ohio boy was bullied into participating in a suicide challenge, and his mom is demanding that his school punish the “mean girls” who she says goaded him into doing it, according to a report.
The Madisonville Smart Elementary School student was admitted to the hospital Monday after he was discovered with a belt wrapped around his neck, news station WXIX reported.
“A girl saw his friend in the hallway and said you better check on your friend, because he’s trying to kill himself,” his mom told the news station.
The mom — who requested anonymity to protect her son’s privacy — said he was confronted Monday by several “mean girls” in the boy’s bathroom.
The group reportedly bullied her son into a deadly challenge known as “Will you die for your mother?”
It’s unclear what the conditions are in the dangerous challenge — but the boy feared his mother would be harmed if he didn’t follow through, the news station reported.
“Of course, he didn’t really want to end his life,” his mom told WXIX. “He said, ‘Mom, all I thought was being without you, and I don’t want to be without you.’”
He was found coughing and crying with the belt around his neck after attempting the challenge in the bathroom, his mom said.
The child was taken to the school nurse then brought to the Children’s Hospital, where he is recovering from the incident, the news station reported.
“I get a call stating from the receptionist that my son tried to commit suicide in the bathroom,” the mom said, adding that he’s “never tried to do anything like that.”
The school reportedly notified the girls’ parents, but the victim’s mom is calling for administrators to discipline those involved. In the meantime, she said she will not permit her son to return to class.
“The girls are still there and they’re laughing about it,” the mom said.
David Cash, who heads Charter School Specialists, which sponsors Madisonville Smart, said the bullying allegations “certainly are being addressed.”
“The board reviewed the situation with school administration, reviewed all of the actions that had been taken,” Cash said. “All the appropriate actions have been taken by the board at this point.”
via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/18/mom-claims-mean-girls-bullied-son-into-suicide-challenge/
2 First Student employees pulled from Saint Louis Public School routes after leaving 10-year-old with Down syndrome unsupervised at home
ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) — A local mother said her 10-year-old boy, who depends on assistance to do basic things every day was left helpless after a bus driver dropped him off with no parent to supervise him.
Luckily, Kristian Stokes’ son was ok, but for 30 minutes, she was terrified.
“I didn’t know where my child was,” she said.
Stoke’s son is a fourth grader at Gateway Michael Elementary and lives with Down syndrome.
“My child is not able to verbalize his words, can’t speak for himself and really needs to be supervised at all times,” she said.
On Tuesday, the bus he rides from school did not show-up between 3 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. as usual.
Stoke’s other child needed to be picked up from school, and she wasn’t aware of where her son’s bus was.
“I had to pick my daughter up from her school, which she has to be picked up at 4 o’clock, which is around the corner,” Stokes said.
She learned, after making several calls, the bus did arrive late- while she was picking up her daughter.
The bus driver and monitor who was on the bus found that no one was there, put the boy inside his home with no one inside.
He went downstairs to the laundry room, and when Stokes returned she didn’t know he’d come home.
She called the bus company and her son’s principal.
The principal, Stokes says, told her the fourth-grader was walked inside the home because the door was open.
“She let me know that was unnacceptable and that should not have happened,” Stokes said.
But she couldn’t find her son, even after checking upstairs and calling her family. Because the boy is non-verbal, she didn’t know he was just feet away in the basement.
“I texted my niece and brother who live with me. I asked them if they picked him up, took him with them and did not let me know,” she said. “I got responses from them, that ‘s a no, they were at work.”
Then mom walked downstairs to the laundry room where she found her son.
“I was relieved but upset at the same time, panicked still because of the bleach, detergent and all kinds of stuff down here. I do not know what he’s gotten into.”
He appears to be ok, but Stokes believes what happened to her son underscores a consistent problem with bus company First Student.
“A lack of training, not paying attention to what they were supposed to be doing, it was negligence,” she said.
Stokes wants the bus driver and monitor fired.
News 4 reached out to St. Louis Public Schools and First Student. Both confirm her story of events and agree procedure was not followed.
In separate statements, both tell News 4 the driver and monitor are no longer driving routes for St. Louis Public Schools.
“The driver and monitor did not follow our protocol of hand-to-hand drop-off. Both have been removed from district routes. We have been in touch with the student’s family and thankful [the child] is fine.”
-Jay Brock
First Student spokesperson
60-year-old Florida man paid for sex with girls as young as 14, faces more than 70 charges
(Meredith/CNN) — A 60-year-old Florida man is facing more than 70 counts of child pornography after being accused of exchanging money for sex acts with teenagers.
Neil Steven Greenberg has been charged with unlawful sexual activity, along with possessing and promoting child pornography.
Authorities say the 60-year-old from Sunrise paid girls as young as 14 years old to engage in sexual acts with him.
According to the arrest affidavit, investigators searched Greenberg’s home and discovered 36 videos showing him with girls as young as 14 years old.
They were on an SD memory card hidden on under a false bottom in a locked safe located in a bedroom closet.
Greenberg is currently being held in the Broward main jail on more than $1 million bond.
Photo Credit: Broward County Sheriff’s Office
Woman ‘infatuated’ with Columbine massacre has been found dead
An armed teenager whose threats forced the closure of almost 20 school districts in Colorado has been found dead, a law enforcement official told CNN.
Sol Pais, an 18-year-old high school senior from Florida, was found dead Wednesday morning, the law enforcement official said.
Authorities said Pais was “infatuated” with Columbine and made threats as she traveled to Colorado this week — the same week as the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, which left 13 people dead.
“There is no longer a threat to the community,” the FBI’s Denver office tweeted Wednesday, using the hashtag “#FindSol.”
“Additional details are not immediately available,” the FBI office said.
Pais made “credible” — but not specific — threats after traveling from Miami to Denver on Monday night, said Dean Phillips, the special agent in charge of the Denver FBI office.
After Pais arrived in Colorado, she immediately went to a store and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition, the FBI said.
Pais was considered a threat to the community and schools, but there was no information on any specific threat to a particular place, Phillips said.
At least 19 school districts closed
Jefferson County Public Schools, which includes Columbine High School in Littleton, were among almost 20 school districts closed Wednesday as authorities searched for Pais.
Other school districts that shut down for the day include the Douglas County School District, Aurora Public Schools and Cherry Creek Schools.
In a letter to parents, Boulder Valley School District Superintendent Rob Anderson said the decision to cancel classes was unanimous among area school leaders.
“We couldn’t take the risk of having one student or staff member injured — so superintendents unanimously decided late last night to close school,” Anderson wrote to parents Wednesday morning.
The wanted teen was last seen wearing camo
Pais was a student at Miami Beach Senior High School, said Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, spokeswoman for Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
Gonzalez-Diego declined to give more details about Pais.
After the 18-year-old arrived in Colorado on Monday, she purchased a pump-action shotgun and ammunition and went to the foothills, Phillips said.
“Her comments, her actions that we have heard about from others tend to cause us great concern that she may pose a threat to a school,” he added.
Prior to news of Pais’ death, a man who said he was Pais’ father told the Miami Herald he lost contact with his daughter Sunday.
“I think maybe she’s got a mental problem,” he told the Herald.
‘This opens a wound’
On April 20, 1999, two students killed 12 of their schoolmates and a teacher in a mass shooting at the high school in the town of Littleton — about 10 miles from Denver.
Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader said this week’s potential threat of violence adds more pain to a community still grieving.
“I know that this opens a wound, especially on an anniversary week, for those families who were most deeply impacted by this,” he said.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/04/17/woman-infatuated-with-columbine-massacre-has-been-found-dead/
It’s now legal for your meat to have trace amounts of fecal matter.
This product “may contain feces.”
That’s the label that one consumer rights advocacy group wants for the government to require meat distributors put on the food they send out to grocery stores.
The recommendation is tongue-in-cheek, Deborah Press, an attorney for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, tells CNN. The group represents 12,000 physicians whose mission includes promoting plant-based diets and ethical scientific research.
But it gets at real concerns the PCRM has about the US Department of Agriculture’s food safety inspection system.
The US Department of Agriculture has a “zero tolerance policy for fecal material on meat and poultry,” a spokeswoman told CNN.
USDA said it sends inspectors out to facilities who look at a “statistically valid sample of carcasses randomly selected throughout the production shift.”
If inspectors find fecal material on an animal carcass, they ensure that contaminated meat can’t enter the food supply, USDA said. And if inspectors observe repeat infractions, the FSIS uses “progressive enforcement actions” against the meat company.
But Press says USDA’s current inspection policy isn’t good enough because it only applies to fecal matter that’s “visible” on the production line.
And the USDA has relaxed its rules on the speed at which poultry companies can process birds. The requirement used to be 140 birds per minute, but has since been raised to 175 birds per minute.
That would mean those working on the line are scanning about three birds per second. They’re whizzing by at a rate that’s hard for the naked eye to comprehend.
Doctors are looking for answers
For at least six years, the PCRM has been asking questions about fecal matter contained in the birds we eat on a daily basis.
Yesterday, the group filed a lawsuit in a federal district court based in Washington, DC.
The question matters, first of all, for the obvious gross factor. “Nobody wants to eat feces,” Press says. But it gets more dire quickly: harmful microbes like E. coli are found in fecal matter.
Despite their questions and follow-ups, they say they’re not getting straight answers from the government about its food inspection procedures.
In 2013, PCRM sent a petition to USDA asking for it to change its rules regarding fecal contamination, and to remove the word “wholesome” from the way it labels and categorizes food that’s past inspection.
Press said the term misleads the public.
The PCRM tested chicken products, and found 48% tested positive fecal contamination. And the petition cited a Consumer Reports study that corroborated their evidence, finding “more than half of the packages of raw ground meat and patties tested positive for fecal bacteria.”
The USDA didn’t respond to the petition.
In 2017, the PCRM filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for “records regarding the number of USDA poultry inspectors, detection rates for visible fecal contamination in poultry, average poultry line speed, USDA poultry inspection rates, and inspection training.”
Their lawsuit this week says the USDA violated the Freedom of Information Act by failing to respond to that FOIA request about fecal contamination rates. Federal law requires that agencies respond to FOIA requests within 20 days of the agency receiving them, according to the Digital Media Law Project.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture told CNN that USDA can’t comment on pending litigation.
The requirement around “visible” fecal contamination belies what’s going on in the bowels of those chickens, the PCRM says.
In its legal complaint, the group cites an unnamed federal inspector who spoke to them:
“We often see birds going down the line with intestines still attached, which are full of fecal contamination,” that inspector told them. “If there is no fecal contamination on the bird’s skin, however, we can do nothing to stop that bird from going down that line.”
From there, the bird would get into a large vat of water called the chill tank, where fecal matter in the bowels can easily wash out and settle on other bird carcasses in the tank. The inspector cited in PCRM’s legal complaint said this is sometimes called “fecal soup.”
Hope for reform
Press said the complaint faces an uphill battle in court. But she was optimistic that reform is possible.
“‘The Jungle’ came out in 1904,” she said. “At that time, there was no federal oversight” of food manufacturing. But Theodore Roosevelt, the President at the time, read the muckracking novel that detailed the horrors of the meatpacking indstury. He demanded action.
In 1906, Congress put the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act on Roosevelt’s desk for his signature.
Press is hoping that, by detailing the industry’s flaws today, PCRM can push for improvements in food safety.
Man arrested entering St. Patrick’s Cathedral with cans of gas, lighters
MANHATTAN — A man was taken into custody after he tried to enter St. Patrick’s Cathedral with several gallons of gasoline on Wednesday night, police said.
Authorities said the man could be seen on area security cameras parking a minivan on 5th Avenue and walking around the area.
The man returned to his vehicle around 8 p.m. and then tried to bring two 2-gallon cans of gasoline, two bottles of lighter fluid and two extended, butane lighters controlled by a trigger, into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, police said.
A security officer confronted the man after he entered and told him he could not bring the items inside. Some gasoline spilled on the floor as the security officer turned the man around, police said.
The man later told police he was just cutting through the cathedral to get to Madison Avenue and that his car had run out of gas, officials said. Police checked his vehicle; it was not out of gas.
Five police vehicles were seen out front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Counterterrorism NYPD officers were at the scene.
People were told to expect a heavy police presence in the area.
Aa spokesperson for the Archdiocese of New York said an “individual was stopped as he tried to come into the cathedral.” The man was turned over to the police and nothing happened inside the cathedral, according to the spokesperson.
This comes just days after a devastating fire at Notre Dame in Paris. The spire at the cathedral collapsed as Parisian firefighters battled that massive blaze.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/04/17/nypd-investigating-incident-at-st-patricks-cathedral/