Terminally ill patients now allowed to take their own lives with prescription drugs in Hawaii
(Meredith/AP) – Hawaii has become the sixth state, along with Washington D.C., to allow terminally ill patients to obtain life-ending medication.
Under the Our Care, Our Choice Act, adults with less than six months to live can request an aid-in-dying prescription. The law, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires that two health care providers confirm a patient’s diagnosis, prognosis and ability to make decisions about the prescription.
Still, few doctors and pharmacies are willing to prescribe and dispense the life-ending medications.
Hawaii Pacific Health and The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu said their pharmacies will not fill the prescriptions and hospitalized patients will not be able to take the lethal drugs on their campuses, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday.
“There are a number of health care providers, nurses and others who are really uncomfortable about this, so asking anybody to participate as a patient ends their life is a really tough thing,” said Melinda Ashton, chief quality officer for Hawaii Pacific Health, one of the state’s largest health care providers.
The state Department of Health projects that 40 to 70 patients will seek medical aid in dying this year. Care providers and the state Health Department will offer training sessions to medical personnel on how to handle the requests for life-ending medication.
Police confront 2 men, 1 white, 1 black: Only 1 is shot
MILWAUKEE (AP) — In the course of 15 months and in the space of one city block, Milwaukee police twice encountered two suspects they believed were armed.
One was black; one was white.
One was in fact unarmed; one had a gun.
One was shot; one was not.
That the black man was the one who was shot — though he had no weapon — might come as little surprise at a time when police shootings involving black men seem commonplace nationally.
Milwaukee has been an epicenter. In 2014, Dontre Hamilton , a mentally ill man, was shot 14 times by police. In August 2016, 23-year-old Sylville Smith was killed by an officer . After the first, the city equipped police with bodycams; after the second, there were riots.
The shooting of 19-year-old Jerry Smith Jr. in 2017 did not set off similar convulsions. And the blood-free resolution of the standoff involving 20-year-old Brandon Baker this past November drew little notice. But taken together, they prompt a difficult and unanswerable question:
If their races were reversed — if Smith were white, and Baker were black — would Baker have been the one who was left bleeding and writhing in pain?
———
In the darkness on Nov. 6, Election Day, Baker took to the roof of his apartment building and started firing guns. His neighbors, alarmed, called police.
Until then, his criminal record consisted of minor traffic violations, pot possession, and carrying a concealed weapon in September.
He’d created his Twitter account a few days prior and started writing about running for governor, promising money for underfunded schools, pledging to legalize marijuana. He would pardon all felons so they could regain their right to bear arms.
Just after 5 a.m., two police officers sent to the scene encountered Baker on Michigan Avenue, in front of the entrance to the building.
He refused to drop the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle he was holding. He admitted that he had fired the shots earlier, and said he had posted a video of it on Twitter. He told the officers he was running for governor, that he was going to the polls to “air it out,” that he was going to start a militia. He had a right to bear arms, he said.
As they talked, other officers approached him quietly from behind, and tackled him.
“I’m not moving, don’t shoot me!” Baker screamed in the video he was broadcasting, which WISN-TV obtained before its removal from Twitter.
Not a shot was fired.
In addition to the rifle he was holding, Baker had three loaded handguns — one in his backpack, another in his waistband, and a third in his jacket, prosecutors said. In his apartment, they said officers found 232 grams of THC, the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana; 14 stamps saturated with LSD; and 73 jars of what were believed to be psilocybin mushrooms.
Baker faces numerous charges, including recklessly endangering safety and “maintaining a drug trafficking place.” His public defender, who did not respond to requests to comment, has ordered a second doctor’s evaluation to determine whether he’s competent to stand trial.
———
On Aug. 31, 2017, officers Melvin Finkley and Adam Stahl were on patrol when they received a call about a man with a gun in the predominantly black neighborhood west of downtown Milwaukee. Finkley is black; Stahl is white.
It was around 1 p.m. when they got to the parking garage at North 29th Street and West Wisconsin Avenue. Jerry Smith was on the roof.
That afternoon, he and a friend had gone to a house in the neighborhood to confront someone with whom Smith had a problem. Police later said Smith and his friend were looking for a fight, and after a brawl ensued with several others, Smith left to get a gun. When an officer approached him to ask about the fight, he ran away and took to the roof.
A handful of officers below were yelling commands, telling him to put his hands up because they had him surrounded.
Two officers stood on the stairs leading up to the garage’s roof. When Finkley and Stahl approached, Finkley asked: “He got the gun in his hand?”
“He doesn’t have a gun in his hand, but he was hiding behind the AC unit,” an officer responded.
The tip that Smith had a gun came from the people he’d been fighting.
Finkley and Stahl climbed to the roof with their guns trained on Smith and joined the chorus of officers yelling commands. Smith briefly extended his arms just above his waist to show his empty hands, palms out, then began crouching slowly to the ground. That’s when the two officers fired three shots, with one bullet grazing Smith’s head and the others striking his abdomen.
“I’m going to die!” Smith wailed in agony, on the ground. “I didn’t do nothing.”
The encounter lasted about 10 seconds. No gun was found.
———
Smith survived, but his right leg is partially paralyzed and he needs a cane to walk. He wasn’t charged with a crime and has a pending federal lawsuit against the police, alleging officers acted “with deliberate indifference.”4 Signs Your Heart Is Quietly Failing YouHow To Avoid A Heart Attack (Do This For 7 Seconds Twice A Day)Ad By PhysioTru See More
“I had my hands up. It’s on them,” Smith said at a recent news conference.
“Everybody scared of the police, every black man that’s from around” the neighborhood where the shooting occurred, he said.
But the Milwaukee district attorney’s office reviewed Smith’s shooting and concluded the officers’ actions were justified because they “reasonably believed” Smith was armed, based on information from dispatch, and they thought he might reach for a gun behind the air conditioning unit.
Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales said people need to consider “the totality of the circumstances” when an officer is involved in a shooting. He said officers are under stress and taking in a lot of information — from what they are told while responding to a call to their own observations — and they have to make sense of it all in seconds.
“I’ve been involved in these things. And I can tell you, in the incidents I’ve been involved in more than once, when it happened, my body just did it. … There are things that are instinctual after you do it over and over again,” Morales said, at a Dec. 6 meeting of the Milwaukee Common Council.
This shooting was recorded in its entirety by Stahl’s body camera. Experts who viewed the video at the request of The Associated Press were not in agreement on what it revealed, though they acknowledged that there was little in it that justified the shooting.
Jeff Noble, an officer for 30 years who’s now a law enforcement consultant, said he saw no “immediate threat” posed by Smith but echoed Morales’ wariness of criticizing the officers’ reactions, if only because the camera did not capture everything the officers saw: “I have the luxury of sitting here in my office watching this and playing it back multiple times.”
Kevin Cokley, a psychology professor and director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, was unequivocal: “This was not a justified shooting.”
Smith didn’t exactly follow the officers’ commands to keep his hands up, Cokley said, but he also didn’t make a move toward his pocket or waistband and police already had a tactical advantage with their guns pointed at him.
Cokley, who has written op-eds about police shootings of unarmed black men, said, “Reactions based on fear within the context of policing are often driven by implicit bias. Black males are viewed as more dangerous, even in instances when they pose no danger.”
———
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett declined to comment on Smith’s shooting because there’s pending litigation, but in a statement he cautioned against comparing the Smith and Baker cases.
“Comparing two separate incidents is inevitably problematic because circumstances police officers face and observations they make are different in every situation,” he said.
Others, though, are troubled by two encounters with very different outcomes.
Alderman Khalif Rainey, who is black, contrasted Smith’s shooting with how police apprehended Baker “without having to harm him at all.”
Rainey said he’s stopped believing he’ll never find himself in a situation like Smith’s.
“It’s real serious. At one point in time I thought, ‘Not me,'” he said. “But now it’s like, something goes wrong, you make the wrong move, you make the wrong gesture … and now I’m shot. Now I’m paralyzed. Now I’m dead.”
Man held 14-year-old in ‘sexual servitude,’ arrest warrant says
RALEIGH, North Carolina (Meredith) — A North Carolina man is facing child prostitution and human trafficking charges after he allegedly held a 14-year-old in “sexual servitude,” according to an arrest warrant.
Kevin Harold Rudolph, 23, was arrested Friday at an apartment complex in Raleigh, according to records obtained by First Coast News.
Records show Rudolph was charged with felony human trafficking of a child victim, felony sexual servitude of a child victim and felony promotion of prostitution for profits.
First Coast News reports the warrant also said Rudolph had made “profits from prostitution by any means where the prostitute is a minor at the time of the offense. The minor was 14-years-old at the time of the offense.”
Booking and bond information for Rudolph was not immediately available.
Blind woman sues Beyonce’s entertainment company for discrimination
A blind woman has filed a class action lawsuit against Beyonce Knowles’ Parkwood Entertainment LLC, claiming the singer’s website discriminates against those who are visually impaired.
Mary Conner, who is legally blind, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York — where both Beyonce’s entertainment company is located and Conner lives — on Thursday.
The website does not allow blind fans to buy tickets, get tour updates, buy merchandise or learn more about the pop superstar, according to the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff brings this civil rights action against Parkwood for their failure to design, construct, maintain, and operate their website to be fully accessible to and independently usable by Plaintiff and other blind or visually-impaired persons,” according to the lawsuit.
“Defendant are denying blind and visually-impaired persons throughout the United States with equal access to the goods and services Parkwood provides to their non-disabled customers through http//:www.Beyonce.com.” (
The suit cites the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed by George H.W. Bush in 1990, and New York state law, which “requires places of public accommodation to ensure access to goods, services, and facilities by making reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities.”
Conner, on behalf of the class, is asking for an injunction against the website for violating the ADA and in order to take the necessary steps to make the singer’s site accessible to the blind.
The suit also asks for a payout of “compensatory damages in an amount to be determined by proof, including all applicable statutory damages and fines.” (MORE: Beyonce posts new photos of twins, Rumi and Sir Carter, on the beach)
Conner is represented by Dan Shaked of the Shaked Law Group in Brooklyn.
ABC News reached out to Beyonce’s representatives for comment on Friday, but have not heard back.
ABC News’ Andrea Dresdale contributed to this report.
Article via ABCNews
Florida man finds out his dad helped deliver him at birth, throws pizza at him, police say
A Florida man wasn’t willing to give his father a “pizza” his heart.
Robert Houston was arrested Thursday after he allegedly attacked his father with a pizza upon finding out his old man helped deliver him at birth, WFLA reported. Police arrived at the home in Holiday, Fla., and discovered a slice of the pie on a chair along with cheese and tomato sauce splattered inside the residence.
Houston’s father told deputies he was returning home from a walk when his son picked up the pizza from the delivery man and proceeded to shove the pie in his face, hold him down and yell at him.
“The victim began to flail around trying to get the defendant off him at which point the defendant went outside and awaited law enforcement,” the arrest report stated.
Houston later told police he “threw pizza at his dad’s face striking him with it due to him being mad his dad helped give birth to him,” WTSP reported.
It’s unclear why the information caused him to attack his father.
Houston was arrested and held on a $150 bond.
Article via FOXNews
Woman claims husband wants to name baby girl after his ex-lover, sparking outrage on Reddit
One pregnant woman recently took to Reddit to voice her alleged baby-naming woes, as her husband reportedly – and shockingly – wants to name their new daughter after his ex-girlfriend. The exchange, which has since gone viral, has reportedly left the woman feeling broken, while outraged Redditors urge her to seek a divorce.
Earlier this week, Redditor @Throwaway01928351 took to the social platform to air her supposed troubles in a post that has since sparked over 15,000 upvotes.C
“Divorce on table because husband and I can’t agree on baby’s name,” she begins. Detailing that she is 23 years old and that her husband is 24, the woman reveals that they’ve been a couple for several years and that she is now seven months pregnant with a little girl.
Logically, she claims the two have begun discussing names for the baby, prompting the drama to unfold.
“Ever since we found out its gonna be a girl my husband wants to name it like his exes name,” the author writes. “Its not any ex but the one he dated for long period of time and loved the most.
“In the beginning of our relationship we had [many] problems because of her but she moved away so the problems went away. He really loved her and he never hid that from me but I thought it was over once she moved away,” she continues. “Now he made it clear that he wants the baby to have that name and I can name the second child. When I asked him why does he want that name so badly he said just because he and his ex didn’t work out doesn’t mean he doesn’t want something to keep reminding him of her.
“He doesn’t understand how much its affecting me and keeps saying its just the hormones. Is he still in love with the ex or its normal that he wants to name OUR child like that [?] Thank you!” the woman concludes. The question evidently struck a nerve with many stunned Redditors, sparking more than 3,000 comments on the post.
“I’m more concerned about his lack of respect for you as his partner, his number one, his wife. You might try relationship counseling but I suspect his disrespect extends beyond the baby naming issue,” one commenter exclaimed.
“I hope you get out of this disrespectful marriage before you start believing this is all you’re worth,” another agreed.
“Put your foot down hard and be prepared to go it on your own if you have to. He is not respecting you or his child, he wants to name your daughter after a woman he used to have sex with! She’s going to mortified about that one day,” another agreed.F
Likewise, many women chimed in to similarly lament being (purportedly) named after their own father’s former lovers or girlfriends.
“I’m a girl who was named after my dad’s lover (mom had no idea) and I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE my name,” one user confessed. “He just casually told me on one occasion. In general, the name is beautiful but when I think about the reason why was I named like that it makes me puke. So for the love of God don’t ever name your child by your ex-partner, it will bring a bitter taste to your child’s mouth (pondering of renaming myself in the future, yes it’s that dreadful for me).”
“My dad named me after his ex before my mother. My name makes me sick to my stomach still at 33….” another said.
For better or worse, as the original poster reportedly has two months until her due date, hopefully she and her partner will be able to settle on a less contentious moniker.
A family’s Whirlpool refrigerator exploded inside their home
West Palm Beach, FL (WFTS/CNN) — A Florida family is grateful to be alive after they say their refrigerator exploded inside their home Saturday morning.
The force was so powerful it caused significant damage in several rooms. Luckily, neighbor Joshua Perez heard the explosion and ran inside to help the family get out safely.
“I was in my room, I was asleep and I just heard the bang,” Mark Ligondie said.
Ligondie quickly ran from his bedroom to the kitchen where moments before his parents’ refrigerator in the West Palm Beach, Florida home exploded.
“There were fumes coming everywhere,” Ligondie said.
He says the odor was so strong and that it made his eyes sting.
“The fridge exploded and if you look at this angle right here it expanded and expanded so much it bent the metal of the stove,” Ligondie said.
The family’s 4-month-old Whirlpool refrigerator was in pieces, scattered throughout the kitchen and surrounding rooms.
Their next door neighbor, Perez, rushed over to help after hearing the loud bang and smoke alarm.
“Immediately I just see the smoke,” Perez said.
Luckily, no one was hurt. The fire department showed up and cleared the home.
“And for them to say we’ve never seen this, this is something we have never seen in our life is kind of alarming,” Perez said.
Perez believes this incident is a wake-up call for all homeowners.
“I’ve actually scheduled an appointment already because of how nervous this has made me just for general maintenance and I think that’s something everyone should do,“ Perez said.
WPTV reached out to Whirlpool for comment. We are still waiting to hear back.
Meanwhile, there’s now cracks in the family’s ceiling and nearby walls, damage to the master bedroom door and a bedroom window is missing.
“It’s surreal,” Ligondie said.
Woman, 28, violently attacks parents for not taking her to Outback Steakhouse
LAKE WORTH, Florida (Meredith) — A Florida woman has been arrested for attacking her parents because they refused to take her to an Outback Steakhouse for dinner Wednesday, police said.
According to WPBF, 28-year-old Deana Seltzer is charged with one count of simple battery domestic, one count of battery of a person 65 or older and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Police responded to the home Wednesday night for reports of an armed domestic disturbance.
Police told WPBF that inside the house, officers found a 12-inch decorative knife on the kitchen counter and a glass dining room table turned over with broken glass shattered throughout the area.
Seltzer’s mother told police that her daughter asked to go to Outback Steakhouse and she told her no. Seltzer then allegedly became angry and began punching her mother. Seltzer’s father intervened and Seltzer allegedly also attacked him, leaving him with multiple scratches on his face and upper body.
Seltzer then allegedly flipped over the glass table and tore up other furniture. Police said Seltzer then grabbed the large knife and charged toward her parents, yelling “I’m going to kill you.”
The father was able to wrestle the knife away from Seltzer.
According to CW34, Seltzer is out of jail on bond. A judge ordered her to undergo a mental health evaluation upon her release from jail. She was also ordered to stay away from drugs, alcohol and weapons. It is unknown if mental health, drugs or alcohol played a part in Seltzer’s attack on her parents.
Photo credit: Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office
Woman attacked by dog, then bitten by owner
CASTRO VALLEY, Calif. – Police in Northern California are looking for a woman they say bit a jogger after the victim pepper-sprayed the suspect’s dog to fend off an attack at a park in Castro Valley on Thursday, officials said.
The unusual assault took place about 10:30 a.m. at Anthony Chabot Regional Park, the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department said in a written statement.
A woman was jogging through the park when she was attacked by a dog, police said. The jogger used pepper spray to defend herself against the animal.
The owner of the dog approached the jogger a short time later.
“The assailant tackled and punched the victim multiple times,” according to a statement obtained by KTLA. “As the victim attempted to push her assailant off of her, she was bitten on her forearm by the female, causing significant wounds.”
Police have released a photo of the suspect, taken from behind, and her dog in hopes of generating leads.
She was described as a mixed race white and Asian woman between 18 and 25 years old, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, of thin build, with blonde or auburn-colored hair.
The suspect had two dogs with her. One appeared to be a Rottweiler mix, while the other was a medium to large yellow or tan-colored dog.
Anyone with information can reach the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department at 510-881-1833.
via: https://pix11.com/2019/01/05/woman-attacked-by-dog-then-bitten-by-owner/
(Credit: East Bay Regional Park District Police Department)
Netflix warns against ‘Bird Box’ challenge after memes go wrong
A word to the wise: Do not, for heaven’s sake, walk around blindfolded.
This warning comes directly from Netflix, after their hit film “Bird Box,” in which a woman and her children must stay blindfolded to save themselves from death, has unfortunately inspired viewers to try it out for themselves.
Dubbed “The Bird Box Challenge,” hyper-enthusiastic fans have been taping themselves while walking around blindfolded, a clear recipe for disaster.
The streaming service tweeted: “Can’t believe I have to say this, but: PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE. We don’t know how this started, and we appreciate the love, but Boy and Girl have just one wish for 2019 and it is that you not end up in the hospital due to memes.”
Since the film’s Dec. 21 release, memes of star Sandra Bullock have flooded the internet, many of which have contributed to its popularity. Netflix says the flick was viewed by 45 million different accounts in the first week of its release (a stat that’s sparked criticism in the film world).
via: https://nypost.com/2019/01/03/netflix-warns-against-bird-box-challenge-after-memes-go-wrong/
Photo Credit: Netflix/Everett Collection