Pamphlets about sin sent to gay couple instead of wedding programs
A printing company accused of sending discriminatory pamphlets to a gay couple who ordered wedding programs says it has learned the pamphlets were intended to be printed for another customer.
Vistaprint’s CEO and founder sent a letter to its customers and partners on Wednesday in response to a federal lawsuit filed by the couple. The lawsuit says the pamphlets received by the couple before their September wedding included messages about temptation and sin.
Vistaprint later updated its letter to say that it has learned that the pamphlets were incorrectly sent to the couple by a third-party partner. The company says it will take “strong action” if it finds that any individual “played a deliberate role in this mix up.”
The Dutch company has a regional headquarters in Massachusetts.
Orlando Brown Arrested For Battery
Looks like Orlando Brown is coming out from the shadows, and not in a good way.
Brown was arrested Thursday on an old warrant, after a heated argument led police to his apartment. Brown was handcuffed in Barstow, California and is on $25,000 bond. He is charged with battery of a spouse, resisting arrest and possession of a controlled substance.
Looks like things are going from bad to worse for Orlando Brown. If he somehow manages to avoid time hopefully he gets his life and act together soon.
Teen Stabbed At New York School
It looks like the year is starting off badly for some, name a high school student at a Westchester County High School.
Police were called shortly before 9:00 Thursday after students reported hearing slashing sounds. They found a 16 year old boy with puncture wounds in his torso. He was was soon taken to the hospital with non life threatening injuries. The suspect was seen leaving the campus and no arrests have been made.
A little more than a week ago, on January 10th another student named Valaree Schwab, 16, was killed. Schwab was stabbed with a steak knife amid a wild lunch-hour fight at a local Dunkin Donuts, local police said. Z’inah Brown, 16, is charged with murder.
It’s sad this these actions are taking place so early in the new year. Hopefully the find the person who did it.
Stacey Dash Comes For Oprah, Meryl Streep, Seal And Everyone Else
Stacey Dash Says Oprah & Meryl Streep Knew About Harvey Weinstein, Plus She Claps Back At Seal For Saying She Lives In The Sunken Place
After Seal reposted a meme on his Instagram that suggested that Oprah purposely turned a blind eye to Weinstein’s sexually depraved behavior, Stacey Dash echoed his sentiments. However, Seal did not support Dash and went on to say “Don’t try and use me as a pawn against Oprah, or any of your political games,”.
“Stacey Dash, keep my name out of your mouth. Do not retweet [or] re-quote anything I said in order to reinforce your self-hating agenda. You live in the Sunken Place.”
Dash responded to Seal in an open letter, in which she also took the opportunity to cast shade towards Oprah and other celebrities that might have known of Weinstein’s sexual misconducts. Dash went on to deconstruct the #MeToo movement to nothing more than high school politics.
“I won’t walk back what I believe. Oprah the homecoming queen, prom queen and class president knew. Meryl, the high school drama star knew. Most of those women wearing black knew. The class clown, Seth McFarland knew. He joked about it a few years ago on the Oscars, Hollywood’s equivalent of the prom,” Dash writes.
“You know how I can say this? BECAUSE I KNEW. So how “clueless” am I? I knew enough when meeting Harvey Weinstein, to bring a male chaperone and it paid off as he did make a move on me. My chaperone blocked him and said, ‘Not this one.’ You can read all about it here. My chaperone knew.”
The actress continued, “As so many of my critics like to point out, aside from “Clueless” I am nobody. So how did this “nobody” know about Harvey Weinstein, and the popular, powerful mogul, Oprah Winfrey did not? How did the Oscar-laden “Iron Lady” Meryl Streep not know? Hollywood is one big, dark, John Hughes movie. Some of us sit with the regular kids. Some are the outsiders. However, the cool kids sit at the cool kids lunch table and they talk.”
“They talk a lot and they share their elite information among their members at that table. They know the deal. They know how it works and they know they have an image to uphold. From the popular crowd to the freaks and geeks, they all knew the faculty to avoid. Let’s just say right here, I am not judging nor am I condemning. I am simply doing the math and coming up with what appears to be an obvious answer. Occam’s Razor says the simplest answer is usually the correct one. I am writing this with Occam’s Razor.”
Read Dash’s full accusation here.
Model who unwittingly became the face of HIV can sue for defamation of character
A Brooklyn model who unwittingly became the face of HIV when a state agency used her stock photo in one of its ads can sue for defamation, a Manhattan appeals court says.
Like it or not, HIV is still considered “loathsome” by a “significant segment of society” — so model Avril Nolan, who does not have the virus, has every right to pursue her $1.5 million claim against the Division of Human Rights, the panel said in a unanimous ruling issued Tuesday.
The agency had used Nolan’s face in ads along with the words, “I am positive ()’’ and “I have rights,’’ in 2013 to promote the rights of HIV-positive New Yorkers.
The Court of Claims had previously ruled in 2015 that the virus still had enough stigma to allow Nolan’s suit to proceed. The agency appealed, arguing that “HIV is no longer a shameful condition” but lost again with Tuesday’s ruling.
“The very fact that DHR highlighted the need for people with AIDS to not feel stigmatized is recognition that they do,” Appellate Justice Angela Mazzarelli wrote in the new decision.
“This is not to imply that we in any way regard HIV or any other disease to be ‘loathsome,’ ” Mazzarelli added in her opinion on behalf of the panel.
But “a significant segment of society has been too slow in understanding that those who have the disease are entitled to equal treatment under the law and the full embrace of society.”
Nolan– who learned about the ads from her Pilates instructor– can now sue for emotional distress because the panel determined that people with HIV are “unfortunate targets of outmoded attitudes and discrimination.”
Nolan’s suit says she “became instantly upset” that “relatives, potential romantic partners and clients” would see the quarter-page, color ads featuring her in an image with the words “I am positive ().”
She had posed for a photographer friend who was shooting for an online music publication. The photographer later sold the shot to Getty Images, which settled with Nolan in 2015.
A lower court found that the DHR staffer responsible for the ad ignored the license agreement, which stated that Nolan’s image couldn’t be used in an “unflattering or controversial” campaign.
A spokeswoman with state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is defending the claim on behalf of the agency, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Nolan told The Post, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/16/model-who-unwittingly-became-the-face-of-hiv-can-sue-court/
Man gets 41 years for killing babysitter with submachine gun
A Brooklyn judge laid into a man convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old babysitter with a submachine gun, saying she saw no reason to show him mercy before sentencing him to 41 years behind bars Tuesday.
Convicted killer Taariq Stephens — who was named as the shooter by his victim, Shemel Mercurius, with her dying breath — had just finished whining that he didn’t kill the teen when Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Deborah Dowling cut him off.
“All the evidence indicated that it is you,” Dowling snapped. “When you take a life, what do you give in exchange for life? There is nothing to give in return for a life.”
“I am not showing any mercy,” the judge said, adding that Stephens had shown none when he pushed his way into the East Flatbush apartment where Mercurius was babysitting her 3-year-old cousin Josiah and racked the gun three times before firing a single shot through her arm and into her abdomen.
The 16-year-old’s aunt and Josiah’s mother, LaToya Mercurius-Price, said Stephens, 26, had crippled their entire family with the May 2016 shooting.
“The echoes of ‘Mommy, mommy, Shemel has been shot and Josiah is covered in blood’ pierced me with the anguish, pain, hurt, panic, confusion, grief and left me emotionally paralyzed and hyperventilating,” she told the court. “The loss of our precious gem is beyond words.”
The motive for the heinous crime was never clear.
“This defendant will now spend many years behind bars for the callous killing of an innocent teenage girl who was taken from her loved ones far too early, and for undoubtedly traumatizing the toddler she was babysitting,” Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “Nothing can bring Shemel back to her devastated family.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/16/man-gets-25-years-for-killing-babysitter-with-submachine-gun/
Plastic surgeon accused of showing up drunk to operate
A Kentucky plastic surgeon was arrested Monday after allegedly showing up drunk to perform a surgery.
Dr. Theodore Gerstle, of Lexington Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, was scheduled to operate around noon on Monday at the Baptist Heath Lexington, but staff at the hospital were alerted that the physician was intoxicated, hospital spokesperson Ruth Ann Childers told the Lexington Herald Leader.
Gerstle left the hospital, voluntarily and on foot, after the chief medical officer confronted him, WKYT reported. Hospital staff then reportedly called the police. He was arrested a short time later when he was located not far from the hospital.
The surgeon was scheduled for one procedure Monday and had not started operating when he was confronted about his alleged drunken state, Childers told the news station.
“Patient safety is always our number one concern, every day,” Childers said of the incident. “We take these things very seriously and it will be thoroughly investigated.
Gerstle was charged with public intoxication and is being held at the Fayette County Jail, the Herald Leader reported, citing jail records. His staff privileges at the hospital — where he was not technically an employee — have been suspended pending the investigation.
According to the surgical practice’s website, Gerstle, from New York, is “the only Harvard-trained, board-certified plastic surgeon in Lexington,” and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the United States Military Academy in West Point.
While it’s unclear what type of surgery Gerstle was scheduled to perform, the practice’s website states he specializes in migraine headaches and a variety of plastic surgery treatments.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/16/plastic-surgeon-accused-of-showing-up-drunk-to-operate/
Dad allegedly beats 4-year-old Bronx girl with bat. She suffered a hematoma to the abdomen, internal bleeding in the liver
SOUNDVIEW, the Bronx — A Bronx dad allegedly beat his daughter with an aluminum bat after he’d argued with the girl’s mother, court documents show.
After the 4-year-old girl’s mother left to work on Saturday, Noel Morales, 32, allegedly swung at his daughter repeatedly as she played.
“I don’t know what happened to me,” Morales said, according to the criminal complaint. “The baby started to play and I punished her.”
He was apparently frustrated with the girl’s mother who “is always putting me down.”
The girl was hit three times, but wasn’t taken to a hospital until Sunday. She suffered a hematoma to the abdomen, internal bleeding in the liver and acute bruising to the abdomen and back.
“She never fell when I hit her,” Morales said, according to the criminal complaint. “She was not crying.”
Morales was arrested Monday and charged with assault, criminal possession of a weapon, endangering the welfare of a child and harassment.
via: http://pix11.com/2018/01/16/i-punished-her-dad-allegedly-beats-4-year-old-bronx-girl-with-bat/
Colorado Woman Charged With Murder After Father’s Body Found Encased in Concrete Inside Crawl Space
The daughter of a man whose body was found inside a Colorado home has been charged with first-degree murder, the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
Dayna Jennings, 44, was arrested Wednesday in the death of her father, 69-year-old William Mussack, whose remains were found inside a home in the 10000 block of Eliot Circle in Federal Heights, according to KTLA sister station KDVR in Denver.
His body was found in the crawl space encased in concrete and Jennings admitted to pouring that concrete, according to court documents.
Although those documents do not list a cause of death, it does say family members believe Mussack was drugged because of a prior incident where he was found unconscious for 15 hours last December after taking a bite of a hamburger Jennings gave to him.
Jennings has been charged with first-degree murder after deliberation and tampering with a deceased human body.
A preliminary hearing was set for Feb. 15 in Adams County District Court.
Family and friends had been searching for Mussack for two weeks and notified authorities in late December.
Police executed a search warrant on the home on Wednesday where Mussack’s body was found.
The Federal Heights Police Department said Jennings and Mussack shared a house. Neighbors said Jennings’ boyfriend also lived at the home.
Authorities have not said when they suspect Mussack was killed.