Breaking News Events

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by TruTexan

They are now saying on a Dallas News station this Sunday morning, that the nurse is a woman that is the one that treated Duncan while he was in isolation at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
They also mentioned a report of a healthcare worker that contracted Ebola in another country had a dog and that dogs can be carriers for the Ebola virus but it is NOT known if they can infect humans by transmission, so that dog was euthanized as a precaution.
It is not known the fate of this current healthcare worker's animal or if that animal is a dog or cat.

It was a dog and most experts state that dogs and cats are not carriers but Ebola originally is said to come from fruit bats, which are carriers and it is considered a delicacy in some African regions. Folks in those areas originally contracted the disease by eating/handling diseased bats.

I think that there is much speculation at this point and a great deal of unknown.

* My perspective* from what I read. None of it reassures me.

[cricket26]

Originally Posted by TruTexan

They are now saying on a Dallas News station this Sunday morning, that the nurse is a woman that is the one that treated Duncan while he was in isolation at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
They also mentioned a report of a healthcare worker that contracted Ebola in another country had a dog and that dogs can be carriers for the Ebola virus but it is NOT known if they can infect humans by transmission, so that dog was euthanized as a precaution.
It is not known the fate of this current healthcare worker's animal or if that animal is a dog or cat.

as someone who lives in very close proximity to greenville avenue (where this nurse lives and where the hospital is located) i can say that i am watching this story very closely....reverse 911 calls went out to those who live in the same apartment complex as the nurse lives....and anyone needing information can call 311....lets pray everyone involved in this process remains calm and compassionate...

[mythy]

Our chief government health official was on the news last night saying England would see Ebola over here in the next few months, bloody scary stuff.

[*Anya*]

20 October 2014 Last updated at 12:47 ET

Suspect Jakob Denzinger is still receiving benefits in Croatia, AP reports

The US government has paid dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals millions of dollars in Social Security benefits after forcing them to leave the US.

The payments, funded by taxpayers, were made through a legal loophole, an Associated Press investigation has uncovered. Some are still being paid.

Former guards at Nazi labour camps, where millions died, are among them.

The US justice department says benefits are paid to individuals who renounce US citizenship and leave voluntarily.

But there is anger that public money is being used in this way.

"It's absolutely outrageous that Nazi war criminals are continuing to receive Social Security benefits when they have been outlawed from our country for many, many, many years," said Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.

Getting paid:

Jakob Denzinger began serving in a Death's Head Unit in 1942, later settled in Ohio and became a plastic industry executive

Martin Hartmann volunteered for the SS in 1943, was stripped of his US citizenship and admitted to his Nazi past

Martin Bartesch was a guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, was working as a janitor when US authorities discovered past

Arthur Rudolph is accused of using slave labour at a Nazi rocket factory, brought to US after war due to technical prowess

John Avdzej was a Nazi-installed regional mayor in occupied Belorussia, claimed to have been a farmer when he immigrated to US

Wasyl Lytwyn served in a Nazi SS unit in the Warsaw Ghetto, worked as a shipping clerk in Chicago and later admitted concealing his SS service

Peter Mueller was a Nazi SS guard who came to the US in 1956 and resided in Illinois before voluntarily leaving for Germany

She said she plans to introduce legislation to close the legal loophole.

In a statement, justice department spokesman Peter Carr said that in 1979, the US Congress ordered the removal of Nazi criminals "as expeditiously as possible" to countries where they would face the possibility of criminal prosecution.

"Under existing US law, all retirement benefits - Social Security and Medicare - are terminated if someone is ordered by the court to be removed from the US," he added.

"However, if an individual renounces their US citizenship and voluntarily leaves the US, they might continue to receive Social Security benefits."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29694228

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Let us see how much time he REALLY serves.




Pistorius Sentenced to 5-Year Jail Term for kKlling Girlfriend





Source: Reuters

@Reuters: RT @LukeReuters: #OscarPistorius sentenced to 5 years in prison for shooting dead his girlfriend - @Reuters

Pistorius sentenced to five-year jail term for killing girlfriend

Tue Oct 21, 2014 4:42am EDT

PRETORIA (Reuters) - A South African court on Tuesday sentenced Olympic track star Oscar Pistorius to five years in prison for the killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year.

(Reporting by Joe Brock; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0IA0L720141021

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Police: 2 dead, including gunman at high school near Seattle.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/24/us/was...ing/index.html

[JDeere]

Los Angeles (AFP) - A young American woman with terminal cancer has committed suicide, following promises to do so that had triggered shock and controversy over the right to die.


http://news.yahoo.com/terminally-ill...025658072.html

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by JDeere

Los Angeles (AFP) - A young American woman with terminal cancer has committed suicide, following promises to do so that had triggered shock and controversy over the right to die.


http://news.yahoo.com/terminally-ill...025658072.html

This woman was amazing in her quest for "death with dignity" after being diagnosed with a glioma. I admire her tenacity and clarity and planning to enjoy and live as much of her life as possible, for as long as possible.

Death from a glioma is not pleasant. I'm glad she was the one who made the decision as to what was right for her and when; and that she had the support of her family throughout the process.

[Kobi]

Top 4 Scariest Things That Could Happen if Women Don’t Vote on Tuesday

Ballot initiatives in several key states are giving citizens the opportunity to vote on issues ranging from abortion access to the minimum wage, and it’s critical that women make informed choices. If you live in one of the affected states, make sure your voice is heard on Nov. 4th and that you know what is required to vote in your state.

Some of the initiatives on the ballot are truly the stuff of horror movies:

Women could lose the right to a safe and legal abortion.

In Tennessee, Amendment 1 would change the state’s constitution to allow politicians to pass laws that ban abortion even in cases of rape, incest or to save the health or life of a woman. It would also allow laws that deny life-saving treatments to pregnant women with critical illnesses such as cancer. The proposed amendment would even give politicians the power to restrict or ban access to common forms of birth control, such as the Pill, IUDs and emergency contraception. In short, it’s all kinds of spooky.

Also in North Dakota, Measure 1 would amend the state constitution to provide an “inalienable right to life” at “any stage of development.” If voters don’t stand against this, the measure would not only ban all abortion in the state without exception for rape or incest, but could make many forms of birth control, fertility treatments and stem-cell research illegal. A similar measure being considered in Colorado, Amendment 67, would change the state constitution to include “unborn human beings” in its definition of a person. If passed, this “personhood” amendment would have the same effects as the North Dakota measure as well as opening the possibility of criminal investigations into miscarriages. If that doesn’t want to make you scream this Halloween, we don’t know what will.

Women could lose the opportunity to earn a livable wage.

With minimum-wage legislation being stonewalled at the federal level, some states and localities have taken it upon themselves to treat low-wage workers with fairness and dignity. Seattle and Hawaii have already increased their minimum wage, and this November Alaska and South Dakota have ballot measures that would increase minimum wages to $9.75 and $8.50 an hour, respectively. Since women make up the majority of low-wage workers, and many are the family breadwinners, a pay increase could provide economic security and mitigate the gender pay gap in one fell swoop. The wages some workers are expected to raise children on are meager enough to send chills down your spine.

Women could lose the right to affordable birth control.

Legislators in Illinois posed this question to voters: “Shall any health insurance plan in Illinois that provides prescription drug coverage be required to include prescription birth control as part of that coverage?” Since this an advisory referendum, the outcome will not be binding, but a resounding “yes” vote would send a strong message to legislators that citizens support the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. If it doesn’t pass, it would probably be the part of the scary movie where you want to put your hands over your eyes.

Women could lose constitutional equality.

If you’re an Oregonian, vote “yes” on Measure 89 (the Oregon ERA) to codify gender equality into the state’s constitution. If it passes, Oregon will join 20 other states in having their own ERAs. That means the full weight of the state constitution–like a friendly ghost we all know–would stand behind women in Oregon fighting wage, employment, housing or educational discrimination.

Unlike anything you’ll bump into in a haunted mansion this Halloween, these threats are very real. Don’t be the voter equivalent of the person who blithely wanders into the abandoned house with the ominous music playing. Be vigilant about what’s happening in your state, your city and your community by getting yourself to the polls on Tuesday.



http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/10/3...te-on-tuesday/

[*Anya*]

By Eliott C. McLaughlin and Javier de Diego, CNN
updated 3:22 PM EST, Wed November 12, 2014

1,111 sex-crime calls, no investigation?

NEW: Inspector general says he's not sure how many sex assault victims denied justice
In one case, a 2-year-old was found to have a sexually transmitted disease, report says
Yet, the report alleges, detective said toddler gave no information warranting investigation
In 1,290 sex crime-related calls, only 13.9% showed evidence of investigation after initial report

New Orleans (CNN) -- The report is full of harrowing details alleging that five New Orleans Police Department detectives in the special victims unit may have failed to investigate sex crimes over a three-year period.

But one case stands out.
According to the seven-page document released Wednesday by the city's Office of Inspector General, a 2-year-old was brought to a hospital emergency room after an alleged sexual assault. Tests would show the toddler had a sexually transmitted disease, the report said. The detective in the case wrote in his report that the 2-year-old "did not disclose any information that would warrant a criminal investigation and closed the case," the inspector general's report said.

The detective -- identified only as "Detective A" -- is one of five officers whose reports were examined in the investigation. Only nine detectives worked in the special victims unit during the period that was investigated. The detectives are not being identified because of the ongoing investigation, but their names have been provided to the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau, the inspector general's report says. Though the detectives weren't identified, Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux said they were not rookies. Police Superintendent Michael Harrison said the detectives were "seasoned," and some had been with the NOPD for more than a decade.

"These people should have known... the right way to do things," Quatrevaux said. 'Not a word, even a single word'.

The inspector general's findings indicate "there was no effective supervision of these five detectives over a three-year period. Nor could there have been any effective supervision of the supervisors, or any review of the outcome of the cases assigned to these five detectives." The Public Integrity Bureau identified 1,290 sex crime-related calls assigned to the five detectives and determined that in only 179 instances -- 13.9% -- did the detectives file "supplemental reports documenting any additional investigative efforts beyond the initial report; these 179 supplemental reports were the total written investigative product of the five detectives for sex crime-related calls for service for three years."

When officers file an initial report, it's intentionally short and vague so as not to identify the victim, Quatrevaux told CNN. The report mentions the assault and the location and notes that a supplemental report will follow, he said. "But in 60 percent of the cases, there was no supplemental report," he said. "There were a total of 1290 cases; 840, there's not a word, even a single word. Nothing. Nothing. There's nothing to note." Because of the void of information in those 840 cases, the inspector general's report said, investigators "could not analyze 65% of the sex crime-related calls for service assigned to the five detectives."

Of the remaining 450 calls that were designated as rape, simple rape or indecent behavior with a juvenile, documentation suggests the five detectives followed through in less than 40%, or 179, of the cases, the report said.

How many victims denied justice?
The findings leave Quatrevaux wondering "how many potential sexual assault victims are out there without justice." He further called on the Public Integrity Bureau to launch investigations into police misconduct. I'm committed to making sure that these crimes are investigated. ... We want to make this right.

Police Superintendent Michael Harrison
He couldn't speak to the motivation, he said, but his office's findings point to an "organization whose culture has evolved to where this level of work is not that unacceptable." Harrison, who took the department's reins from Ronal Serpas in August, months after the incidents in question, said he was disappointed by the report, which makes him realize there's more work to do within the department than he originally thought.

Serpas was superintendent for the entire period under investigation. He was named chief in 2010, about two years before the Justice Department announced an overhaul of the NOPD because of its history of corruption, excessive use of force, illegal searches and widespread racial discrimination. Last year, a court approved a settlement resolving the Justice Department investigation. "I'm committed to making sure that these crimes are investigated and that any allegations brought against our officers are investigated," Harrison said. "We want to make this right."

The department has transferred the five detectives to "patrol-related duties" and has instituted policies to ensure cases are being thoroughly investigated, he said. "Yes, they are getting paid," the superintendent said of the detectives, "and now there's an internal investigation to find out if there are departmental infractions or criminal laws that were violated."

In another alleged sex assault cited in the report, a juvenile went to an emergency room and spoke to a specialist who reported that the child gave "specific information" about sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by "a named individual who was living in the same house with the juvenile." That person was a registered sex offender, according to the report.

Detective D told at least three different individuals that Detective D did not believe that simple rape should be a crime.

Inspector General report
Detective A wrote that the child disclosed no information about a sexual assault and closed the case "due to a lack of evidence," the report said.

Ignoring medical reports?
Quatrevaux said these sorts of allegations are concerning because "if we're not going to pay attention to what's in the medical reports, then I don't know how we could even get to these sorts of crimes."
In another similar case more than two years ago, Detective E was assigned two cases in which the victims underwent sexual assault exams yielding documentation of physical injuries and other potential physical evidence.

The Louisiana State Police DNA Laboratory contacted the NOPD to say one of the specimens matched DNA from another crime scene, but the NOPD still has yet to submit "a reference sample to confirm the match," the report said. In the other case, the DNA lab told NOPD it had submitted an incorrect kit, but "the NOPD has not responded," according to the report.

A review of the DNA Laboratory's records shows that as of October 13, 2014, the NOPD has failed to respond to 53 state lab requests for "reference samples" to confirm that DNA obtained in an investigation matches DNA in an FBI database, the report said. The requests date back to July 2010.

Another portion of the report homes in on Detective D, who, according to the investigation, was given 11 simple rape cases over the three-year period. Simple rape is defined as an assault in which the perpetrator rapes a victim that the perpetrator knows is incapable of resisting or understanding what's happening because the victim is in a stupor, intoxicated or "through unsoundness of mind" is temporarily or permanently incapable of understanding the nature of the act.

Of those 11, five had no supplemental reports, one had no file at all and one was taken to prosecutors, the inspector general's report said. Graham suspect faces charges in rape case
"Detective D told at least three different individuals that Detective D did not believe that simple rape should be a crime," it said.

Phone records, rape kits & back-dated reports

Among the other allegations in the report:
-- A victim told Detective B she was sexually assaulted and robbed of her iPhone, but there is no documentation indicating police tracked the phone;
-- A victim told a nurse before a sexual assault exam that she was receiving threatening text messages from her assailant, but there is no documentation showing Detective D tried to obtain phone records. Detective D also never submitted the rape kit to the Louisiana State Police DNA Laboratory because, the detective wrote, "the sex was consensual";

-- Detective A was assigned two cases in which infants were taken to the emergency room with skull fractures. In one case, a nurse suspected "non-accidental trauma," but Detective A did not investigate. In the other case, a doctor found a previous skull fracture, and the infant's mother gave conflicting accounts of what happened, but Detective A determined there was "no cause for criminal action."

-- Detective A was given 13 total cases, including the aforementioned, in which potential juvenile victims of sexual or physical abuse were still in the home where the abuse occurred. Eleven of those cases had no documents showing "any investigative effort beyond the initial report."

-- Detective B was given three cases in which the state laboratory identified DNA evidence, but there are no documents indicating a follow-up investigation.

-- In 2013, the inspector general requested supplemental reports missing from case files belonging to Detective C -- three from 2011 and one from 2010 -- but after the reports were submitted, investigators learned all four reports "were created on the same day in 2013, shortly after NOPD received the OIG request for the missing reports." Investigators determined the same thing happened with a 2010 and 2011 reporting missing from Detective E's files;

That last example was "perhaps the most egregious," Quatrevaux said.
"The auditors point out that they didn't have certain case files and asked the NOPD to send it to them," he said. "We got the cases a few days later, but when we checked with the (NOPD information technology) department we found that those records were post-dated two and three years. ... They were created when we made the request."
It began with a few dozen reports

The probe began when the Office of Inspector General's investigations division reviewed 90 sex crime-related reports acquired by the audit division. There's so many cases where the documentation suggests nothing was done. Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux said.

A May audit report cited a litany of violations of NOPD practices and policies, including mis-classifying crimes, failure to investigate, incomplete incident reports, failure to remit items to Central Evidence and Property, failure to maintain documents and backdating supplemental reports. Investigators then identified detectives who either failed to provide documents showing they investigated the cases or "provided questionable documentation," the report said.

Of those 90 cases, six reports had been created later than the date stated on the report, seven had no supplemental reports detailing investigative efforts and four contained information that didn't match medical documents, according to the inspector general's report. The curious documentation led the investigations division to review every case assigned to those five detectives from January 2011 to December 2013. They listened to audio tapes, interviewed nurses, visited the property room, examined the record on rape kits and talked to state police to put together the "full picture," Quatrevaux said.

The inspector general told CNN he'd never seen anything like this, "not in terms of the volume, the wholesale nature of it." "There's so many cases where the documentation suggests nothing was done," Quatrevaux said. "We don't know that for a fact, but we're missing the documentation. That's what we need to have because the documentation is the evidence of investigative effort, and if it's not there, then obviously we're going to think it doesn't exist."

The NOPD's special victims section is composed of the sex crimes, child abuse and domestic violence units and "has the responsibility to handle the investigation of all rapes and attempted rapes, sexual batteries, and carnal knowledge cases (except in child abuse cases)," the department's website says.

CNN's Eliott C. McLaughlin wrote and reported from Atlanta, with Javier de Diego reporting from New Orleans. CNN's Alina Machado also contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/12/us/new...html?hpt=hp_t2

[Kobi]

The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents.

After The Washington Post reported in April that the Treasury Department had confiscated $75 million in tax refunds due to about 400,000 Americans whose ancestors owed money to Social Security, the agency’s acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said efforts to collect on those old debts would cease immediately.

But although some people whose refunds were seized were reimbursed in recent months, some of those same taxpayers have since received new demands from Social Security, asserting that the debts remain and seeking repayment.

In March, the U.S. government intercepted Mary Grice’s tax refunds from both the IRS and the state of Maryland. It turned out that after Grice’s father died in 1960, when she was 4, her mother got survivor benefits to help feed and clothe her five children. Social Security says it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. With Grice’s mother long since dead, the government came after Mary to pay the debt.

The Takoma Park woman, now 58, filed suit against Social Security, challenging the government’s right to take her money without notice to satisfy her mother’s debt. After The Post wrote about her case, the government returned Grice’s tax refunds to her. But in August, she received a new bill from Social Security, seeking the same $2,997 that the agency had refunded to her four months earlier.

“DID YOU FORGET?” the letter said, demanding that Grice “send us the full payment right away.”

The four other plaintiffs who have joined Grice in her federal lawsuit have also received letters explaining that although the government returned their confiscated tax refunds after Colvin said such collections would cease, “this refund does not eliminate your overpayment.”

Asked to explain the about-face, Social Security officials said they would respond only to written questions. Late Friday, four days after The Post provided questions, the agency issued this statement from spokesman Mark Hinkle: “We are finalizing our review of the Treasury offset program, but cannot discuss specifics due to the pending litigation.” The offset program is Treasury’s effort to collect on debts to Social Security and other agencies by confiscating Americans’ tax refunds.

The lawsuit, now pending in federal court in Greenbelt, argues that since 2011, the government has been illegally confiscating tax refunds from tens of thousands of people “to satisfy dubious claims of debts based on alleged overpayments made decades ago.” The suit says the children involved never received any payment from the government; in addition, Social Security collected the debts without having notified taxpayers that they owed anything.

In court papers, the agency says the government has a right to collect from children if their parents received benefits meant for the well-being of those children.

The government’s brief argues that “the issue is whether [the law] bars Social Security from recovering overpayments from individuals who received benefits through another individual on their behalf when they were children. The answer to that question is ‘no.’ ”

“Deep down, they believe it’s the right thing to go after children,” said Robert Vogel, the attorney for the taxpayers whose refunds were seized.

The agency’s announcement last spring that it would stop such collection efforts “was a smoke screen,” he said. “Their intention was to get the press off their backs and then go back to collecting their money. It’s just shocking that they believe that when someone turns 18, they automatically assume a crushing debt that was incurred by someone else.”

In Social Security’s briefs in the federal case, the agency argues that Congress gave the agency “broad rulemaking authority” to collect debts “as it sees fit,” without regard to how old a child was when benefits were given to a parent. The agency argues that collecting on such debts “is a significant component of ensuring the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.”

The notion that there is a difference between someone receiving benefits directly and receiving the benefit of government support through a parent is a “baseless distinction,” Social Security says in court papers.

“They are going after kids, and their briefs prove it,” Vogel said. “They’re asking the court to be the first court in the United States to force a child to pay a debt incurred by the parents. It’s really quite disgusting.”

Even after Daniel Asmus of Fillmore, Calif., sent letters reminding Social Security of Colvin’s announced freeze, the agency pushed ahead with its effort to collect a $2,094 debt that it says stems from overpayments of survivor’s benefits to Asmus’s long-deceased mother in the 1970s. Asmus’s father died when Asmus was 9.

In June, more than two months after the announced halt to collection efforts, Social Security ordered the state of California, which employs Asmus as a highway construction worker, to garnish $615 a month from his wages — about a quarter of his pay.

“If there were an overpayment when I was a child, I assure you my mother had no knowledge of it or would have gone without shoes herself in order to make sure it was given back,” Asmus wrote to Social Security. “Since the overpayment was not my fault, especially if it was made when I was a child and had no control over how the money was spent, and it was around 40 or more years ago, it would be unfair to collect from me now.”

The only response he got was a form letter demanding repayment and making no reference to the change in policy.

“We cannot make our house payment with them taking 25 percent of his income,” said Mary Asmus, Daniel’s wife. “That statement about not going back beyond 10 years was just a hoax to get the public off their back. I guess Social Security can do whatever they want to and no one can stop them.”

Despite the announced freeze, Social Security has continued to press Jessica Vela of San Diego for $16,888 that the government claims she owes for overpayments made to her mother in child support benefits when Vela was 1. Vela’s mother is still alive, and Social Security first tried to collect from her, but the mother fought the government in court and won. That’s when Social Security turned to the daughter.

Now 24 and a Navy veteran whose husband remains on active duty, Vela was a month away from delivering her second child in April when her income tax refund of $5,996.87 was seized by the Treasury Department this spring.

“They took our entire refund without prior notification by mail, carrier pigeon, smoke signal, anything,” she said. “We were hoping to buy a crib and everything else we needed for the baby with that money.”

Vela has repeatedly contacted Social Security to appeal the seizure, and she said that some Social Security employees at the offices she has visited told her that she was in the right, but in October she received a letter telling her that the agency would not review her case again.

Social Security officials told Vela to hire an attorney, but she said she has been unable to find one willing to invest the time necessary to press a case involving a relatively small amount.

“The government says they have no records they can show me about the debt, and obviously, I have no paperwork because I was in diapers when this occurred,” she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...s=rss_homepage

[MsTinkerbelly]

The Taliban has slaughtered 145 people, and wounded over 100 others (mostly children) in a school shooting.

I am so sick and sad for those poor babies.

[Kobi]

****TRIGGER WARNING****

BUTTE, Montana (AP) — At least 786 children died of abuse or neglect in the U.S. in a six-year span in plain view of child protection authorities — many of them beaten, starved or left alone to drown while agencies had good reason to know they were in danger, The Associated Press has found.

To determine that number, the AP canvassed the 50 states, the District of Columbia and all branches of the military — circumventing a system that does a terrible job of accounting for child deaths. Many states struggled to provide numbers. Secrecy often prevailed.

Most of the 786 children whose cases were compiled by the AP were under the age of 4. They lost their lives even as authorities were investigating their families or providing some form of protective services because of previous instances of neglect, violence or other troubles in the home.

Take Mattisyn Blaz, a 2-month-old from Montana who died when her father spiked her "like a football," in the words of a prosecutor.

Matthew Blaz was well-known to child services personnel and police. Just two weeks after Mattisyn was born on June 25, 2013, he came home drunk, grabbed his wife by her hair and threw her to the kitchen floor while she clung to the newborn. He snatched the baby from her arms, giving her back only when Jennifer Blaz called police.

Jennifer Blaz said a child protective services worker visited the day after her husband's attack, spoke with her briefly and left. Her husband pleaded guilty to assault and was ordered by a judge to take anger management classes and stay away from his wife.

She said the next official contact between the family and Montana child services came more than six weeks later — the day of Mattisyn's funeral.

The system also failed Ethan Henderson, who was only 10 weeks old but already had been treated for a broken arm when his father hurled him into a recliner so hard that it caused a fatal brain injury.

Maine hotline workers had received at least 13 calls warning that Ethan or his siblings were suffering abuse — including assertions that an older sister had been found covered in bruises, was possibly being sexually abused and had been burned by a stove because she was left unsupervised.

Ethan himself had arrived at daycare with deep red bruises dappling his arm.

Still, the caseworker who inspected the family's cramped trailer six days before Ethan died on May 8, 2012, wrote that the baby appeared "well cared for and safe in the care of his parents."

LACK OF GOVERNMENT DATA

Because no single, complete set of data exists for the deaths of children who already were being overseen by child protective services workers, the information compiled over the course of AP's eight-month investigation represents the most comprehensive statistics publicly available.

The AP reviewed thousands of pages of official reports, child fatality records and police documents for the period in question, which ran from fiscal year 2008 through 2013.

And, even then, the number of abuse and neglect fatalities where a prior open case existed at the time of death is undoubtedly much higher than the tally of 760.

Seven states reported a total of 230 open-case child deaths over the six-year period, but those were not included in the AP count because the states could not make a distinction between investigations started due to the incident that ultimately led to a child's death and cases that already were open when the child received the fatal injury.

Some states did not provide data for all six years, not all branches of the military provided complete information, and no count of open-case deaths of any type was obtained from the Bureau of Indian Affairs or FBI, which investigate allegations of abuse on reservations.

The lack of comprehensive data makes it difficult to measure how well those responsible for keeping children safe are protecting their most vulnerable charges.

The data collection system on child deaths is so flawed that no one can even say with accuracy how many children overall die from abuse or neglect every year. The federal government estimates an average of about 1,650 deaths annually in recent years; many believe the actual number is twice as high.

Even more lacking is comprehensive, publicly available data about the number of children dying while the subject of an open case or while receiving assistance from the agencies that exist to keep them safe — the focus of AP's reporting.

When asked to explain why so many children with open cases have died at the hands of their caretakers, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the nation's major child abuse prevention programs, said the agency had no immediate response.

States submit information on child abuse deaths to the federal government on a voluntary basis — some of it comprehensive, some of it inaccurate.

For instance, a significant number of deaths were not reported to the South Carolina team reviewing child deaths in the state, said Perry Simpson, director of the South Carolina Legislative Audit Council. That meant the data the review team provided the federal government was wrong.

And a judge in Kentucky issued a scathing order last year against the state's Cabinet for Health and Family Services for willfully circumventing open records laws and failing to release full records on child abuse deaths, fining the agency $765,000.

In some cases, states withhold information about child deaths in violation of the terms of federal grants they receive.

HHS says all states receiving grants under a prevention and treatment program must "allow the public to access information when child abuse or neglect results in a child fatality," unless those details would put children, their families or those who report child abuse at risk, or jeopardize an investigation.

In addition, grants issued under a section of the Social Security Act are tied to a requirement that states describe how they calculate data on child maltreatment deaths submitted to the federal government.

Still, no state has ever been found to be in violation of disclosure requirements and federal grants have never been withheld, according to Catherine Nolan, who directs the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, a sub-agency of HHS.

"Obviously, the overarching goal is always keeping the children safe from harm. It's a matter of how the states have decided they want to do it," Nolan said.

The information that states provide to the federal government through the voluntary system also is severely lacking. A 2013 report showed that 17 states did not provide the federal government with a key measure of performance: how many children had died of child abuse after being removed from their homes and then reunited with their families within a five- year period.

Withholding information about such fatalities allows child protective agencies to shroud their activities — and their failures. It also leaves a major void for researchers and policy makers looking for ways to identify and protect the children in risky situations.

"We all agree that we cannot solve a problem this complex until we agree it exists," said David Sanders, chairman of the federal Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, whose members have been traveling the country studying child deaths under a congressional mandate.

The child welfare system is fragmented, with hundreds of different agencies — from state governments to county offices, tribes and the military — operating by their own set of standards.

Some states, like New York and Ohio, have county-administered systems, with data collection and retention scattered. In others, a state agency provides child welfare services. And still others, such as Florida, have privatized some child welfare operations.

And because there is no single definition of what constitutes abuse or neglect, what is counted as maltreatment in one locality may not be in another.

the rest of the story

[Kätzchen]

Thanks for posting that article Kobi.

Over the past week, our local newspaper published a 4-part series on how state and federal level agencies have failed people needing help in the mental health and child/adult abuse sectors...agencies collecting fees on the backs of the very people who desperately need protection services and not getting the priority deserved to help them escape such harrowing situations or even get the desired treatment to help them overcome situations that are life threatening.

Sometimes I wonder what it will take to bring agencies into compliance with state and federal laws, laws which are supposed to hold agencies accountable -- as well as making sure that remedies are accessible to those who need relief, to those who should be relieved from hurting themselves and others.

It appears that agencies are failing those who are in dire need of help.

[*Anya*]

President Signs Federal Spending Bill Protecting State Sanctioned Medical Marijuana Programs

by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
December 16, 2014

President Barack Obama signed spending legislation into law on Tuesday that includes provisions limiting the Justice Department’s ability to take criminal action against state-licensed individuals or operations that are acting are in full compliance with the medical marijuana laws of their states.

Specifically, an amendment sponsored by California Reps. Dana Rohrbacher and Sam Farr to the $1.1 trillion spending bill states, “None of the funds made available in this act to the Department of Justice may be used … to prevent … states … from implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

Said Farr following Congress’ passage of the legislation: “The federal government will finally respect the decisions made by the majority of states that passed medical marijuana laws. This is great day for common sense because now our federal dollars will be spent more wisely on prosecuting criminals and not sick patients.”

Similar language prohibiting the Justice Department from undermining state-sanctioned hemp cultivation programs was also included in the bill.

Also contained in the appropriations measure is a rider sponsored by Maryland Republican Andy Harris that seeks to limit DC officials’ ability to fully implement a November 2014 municipal initiative depenalizing the personal adult possession and cultivation of cannabis. At this time however, it remains unclear whether the enacted language is written in a manner that can actually do so. On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson “plans to ignore the provision” and that he will “send a bill implementing Initiative 71 to Congress in January for a 30-day review, during which federal lawmakers can veto it or let it stand.” Such a review is necessary before any DC initiative can become law.

Washington DC’s Initiative 71, which was approved by 70 percent of District voters, removes criminal and civil penalties regarding the adult possession of up to two ounces of cannabis and/or the cultivation of up to six plants.

- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2014/12/16/pre...rograms/#.dpuf

[Kobi]

VATICAN CITY (AP) — To the Catholic Church's "seven deadly sins," Pope Francis has added the "15 ailments of the Curia."

Francis issued a blistering indictment of the Vatican bureaucracy Monday, accusing the cardinals, bishops and priests who serve him of using their Vatican careers to grab power and wealth, of living "hypocritical" double lives and forgetting that they're supposed to be joyful men of God.

Francis turned the traditional, genteel exchange of Christmas greetings into a public dressing down of the Curia, the central administration of the Holy See which governs the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church. He made clear that his plans for a radical reform of the structures of church power must be accompanied by an even more radical spiritual reform of the men involved.

Ticking off 15 "ailments of the Curia" one by one, Francis urged the prelates sitting stone-faced before him in the marbled Sala Clementina to use the Christmas season to repent and atone and make the church a healthier, holier place in 2015.

Vatican watchers said they had never heard such a powerful, violent speech from a pope and suggested that it was informed by the results of a secret investigation ordered up by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in the aftermath of the 2012 leaks of his papers.

Benedict tasked three trusted cardinals to probe deep into the Vatican's back-stabbing culture to root out what would have prompted a papal butler to steal incriminating documents and leak them to a journalist. Their report is known only to the two popes.

Francis had some zingers: How the "terrorism of gossip" can "kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood." How cliques can "enslave their members and become a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body" and eventually kill it off by "friendly fire." How some suffer from "spiritual Alzheimer's," forgetting what drew them to the priesthood in the first place.

"The Curia is called on to always improve itself and grow in communion, holiness and knowledge to fulfill its mission," Francis said. "But even it, as any human body, can suffer from ailments, dysfunctions, illnesses."

Francis, who is the first Latin American pope and never worked in the Italian-dominated Curia before he was elected, has not shied from complaining about the gossiping, careerism and bureaucratic power intrigues that afflict the Holy See. His 2013 Christmas address cast a spotlight on such sins.

But a year into his reform agenda, Francis seemed even more emboldened to make clear to the prelates themselves that superficial displays of change aren't what he is looking for.

"This is a speech without historic precedent," church historian Alberto Melloni, a contributor to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, said in a telephone interview. "If the pope uses this tone, it's because he knows it's necessary."

Melloni noted that until Francis was elected, the Vatican bureaucracy largely answered to no one, saying "an entire generation of the Curia ran it as if they were pope." St. John Paul II was too busy travelling the world, and later too sick, to pay attention to awindministrative details, and Benedict left the minutiae of running a government to his deputy, later determined to have been part of the problem.

The Rev. Robert Wister, a church historian at Seton Hall University, said Francis was essentially asking the Curia to undergo an examination of conscience, asking them to reflect on how they had sinned before God before going to confession.

"Perhaps he believes that only a severe rebuke can help turn things around," he said.

The cardinals were not amused. Few smiled as Francis spoke, and at the end they offered only tepid applause to a speech that was so carefully prepared it had footnotes and Bibilical references. Francis greeted each one, but there was little Christmas cheer in the room.

It is, to be fair, a difficult time for the Curia. Francis and his nine key cardinal advisers are drawing up plans to revamp the whole bureaucratic structure, merging offices to make them more efficient and responsive.

Francis has said though that while this structural reform is moving ahead, what is taking much longer is the "spiritual reform" of the people involved.

The Vatican's finances are also in the midst of an overhaul, with Francis' finance czar, Cardinal George Pell, imposing new accounting and budget measures on traditionally independent congregations not used to having their books inspected.

Francis started off his list with the "ailment of feeling immortal, immune or even indispensable."

Then one by one he went on: Being rivals and boasting. Wanting to accumulate things. Having a "hardened heart." Wooing superiors for personal gain. Having a "funereal face" and being too "rigid, tough and arrogant," especially toward underlings — a possible reference to the recently relieved Swiss Guard commander said to have been too tough on his recruits for Francis' tastes.

Some critiques could have been seen as worthy of praise: working too hard and planning too much ahead. But even those traits came in for criticism as Francis noted that people who don't take time off to be with family are overly stressed, and those who plan everything to a "T'' don't allow themselves to be surprised by the "freshness, fantasy and novelty" of the Holy Spirit.

At the end of the speech, Francis asked the prelates to pray that the "wounds of the sins that each one of us carries are healed" and that the Church and Curia itself are made healthy.

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-issues-bl...hU7hkAO3dXNyoA
--------------------

[LeftWriteFemme]

Supreme Court Will Consider Taking Up Gay Marriage in January


http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/ar...age-in-january

[*Anya*]

CDC lab technician possibly exposed to Ebola, agency says

Published December 24, 2014FoxNews.com

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab technician may have been exposed to the Ebola virus earlier this week following a mishap at an Atlanta facility, the agency said Wednesday afternoon.

>>>>> The accident, which occurred on Tuesday, happened when two sets of vials in the laboratory -- one containing an active sample of the deadly virus, one containing an inactive sample -- got mixed up, officials said. The experiment material was on a sealed plate, but it wasn't supposed to be moved into the lab the technician was working in.

The technician who processed "a small amount of material" from the experiment has been assessed and will be monitored for 21 days, although he was not showing any symptoms of the illness as of Wednesday.

The CDC said there was "no possible exposure" outside the laboratory and "no exposure or risk" to the public.

The possible exposure is under internal investigation and has been reported to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, a CDC spokeswoman said. Additional employees have been notified, but none has required monitoring.

"I am troubled by this incident in our Ebola research laboratory in Atlanta," CDC Director Tom Frieden said. "We are monitoring the health of one technician who could possibly have been exposed and I have directed that there be a full review of every aspect of the incident and that CDC take all necessary measures."

Earlier Wednesday afternoon, The Washington Post reported that as many as a dozen scientists at the Atlanta facility may have been exposed, though FoxNews.com was unable to immediately corroborate the report. A spokeswoman for the agency told FoxNews.com that she had no information immediately available.

In June, at least 52 workers at the CDC took antibiotics as a precaution because a lab safety problem was thought to have exposed them to anthrax.

Fox News' John Roberts, FoxNews.com's Karl de Vries and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/1...a-agency-says/

[MsTinkerbelly]

There is an AIR Asia flight 8501 with 155 passangers missing over indonesia.

They are talking about it on CNN. Saying a prayer for those lost souls.

[*Anya*]

Rush Limbaugh and his 'black Bond' outrage

By Anthony Zurcher, Editor, Echo Chambers
29 December 2014

Could Idris Elba be the next James Bond, despite Rush Limbaugh's misgivings?

The prospect of Idris Elba eventually replacing Daniel Craig as the next James Bond went from hypothetical internet speculation to something more substantial last week, when the Daily Beast uncovered an interesting nugget in the piles of hacked Sony emails.

"Idris should be the next Bond," Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal wrote, reportedly to a fellow studio executive.

That was enough to set conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh into a tizzy. Bond, he said on his radio programme last week, has a distinct ethnic profile that Mr Elba, who is black, doesn't fit.

"But the franchise needs to get with it, right?" he continued. "The franchise needs to get hip. The franchise needs to get with the 21st Century. That's right. We had 50 years of white Bonds because Bond is white. Bond was never black."
Limbaugh said that casting Mr Elba as Bond would be equivalent to having George Clooney play Barack Obama or Kelsey Grammar in the role of Nelson Mandela (although he acknowledged the difference between actual people and fictional characters).

Elba responded with humour - "Isn't 007 supposed to [be] handsome?" he tweeted, including a photograph of him looking rather goofy in a knit cap - but some commentators reacted with flashes of anger that would make 007 proud.
"Is there no end to the injustices faced by professional reverse-racism victim Rush Limbaugh?" asks Gawker's Hudson Hongo.

The Daily Beast's Dean Obeidallah saysLimbaugh's comments were "definitely" racist. "How else do you describe the notion that certain roles should be labelled as 'whites only'?" he asks.

He writes that fictitious characters should be able to change with the times - including having black Bonds, black Santa Clauses, black orphan Annies, black Captain Americas and similar re-imagining of beloved icons.
"However, to the right, if the character they love was originally white, then they should stay white forever," he says. "They view any updating of a character's skin colour to reflect our nation's changing demographics - and to open up primo roles to non-white actors, who've spent plenty enough decades playing servants and sharecroppers and so on - as a sacrilege."

Others wondered just how important Bond's back story really is to the iconic character.

The Daily Mail's Hanna Flint notes that author Ian Fleming didn't create Bond's Scottish heritage until after the first film, Dr No, was released with Scottish actor Sean Connery in the lead role.

"When writing You Only Live Twice, the spy's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, to fit with Connery's interpretation of the role," she says.

Rush Limbaugh says Idris Elba as James Bond is as absurd as George Clooney playing Barack Obama.

In fact, the Guardian's Ben Child points out, Connery has been the only Scot to play the role in the franchise's 50-year history.
http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-30594460