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Canadian parents hit with a bill of almost $1 million from a US hospital after their baby was born prematurely on vacation in Hawaii are now facing possible bankruptcy. Their story provoked a social media storm with many people offering to help.
Jennifer Huculak-Kimmel was six months pregnant when she travelled to Hawaii with her husband. She had consulted before the trip with her doctor, who gave her the go-ahead to travel. Things went wrong when her water broke two days into the trip. Jennifer was taken to the hospital by air ambulance and spent six weeks on bed rest before her baby girl was born by emergency caesarean section last December. Her daughter Reece, born nine weeks prematurely, spent two months in intensive care. Huculak-Kimmel was hit with a $950,000 bill, which the insurer refused to cover, citing a "pre-existing condition" allegedly not declared by the mother-to-be before the trip.
"Blue Cross said that because I had a bladder infection at four months and hemorrhaged because of that, that they would not cover the pregnancy," Huculak-Kimmel told CBC.
© APFlorida State University students stand outside Thursday morning at Strozier Library, which was roped off with police tape.
Officers confronted the attacker outside Florida State University's Strozier Library soon after midnight, ordered him to drop his weapon, then shot him when he fired on them, Tallahassee police said.
Three people were wounded, police spokesman David Northway told reporters, without giving further details. Officials at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare hospital said medics were treating two victims for gunshot wounds.
One of them was in critical condition, and the other was stable, a spokeswoman added.
Graduate student Alexandra Lauren told CNN that she was in the library at the time of the shooting.
"We heard the gunshots, and then it was in a matter of seconds the entire first floor just seemed to go into chaos," Lauren said, her voice wavering.
"It was very scary. I'm just more heartbroken than anything else. FSU means a lot to me," she added.
It was the latest in a series of shootings in schools and colleges that have prompted regular debates about gun control in the United States.
© Twitter
Peak demand on Tuesday reached 121,987 megawatts (MW), topping the 114,699 MW reached last November.
Last winter, several power plants in PJM and elsewhere in the U.S. Northeast were not able to operate on the coldest days in part because there was not enough natural gas to fuel both the power units and heat homes and businesses due to pipeline constraints.
PJM, which operates the grid in 13 states from New Jersey to Illinois, said it has been taking steps to prepare for the winter season, including more testing of generating equipment and improving coordination with the gas pipeline industry.
Source: Reuters
(Editing by Chris Reese)
© Masaud AkhtarHundreds of Walmart workers and street vendors protested outside the corporation's headquarters in Gurgaon, India.
Calling out one of the world's richest families for perpetuating global inequality while reaping the benefits, Walmart workers in more than ten different countries are uniting on Wednesday in a global day of action for decent wages and respect at work.
With coordinated demonstrations planned in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, the United Kingdom, India, Zambia, Hong Kong, and the United States, workers and allies are teaming up with international trade union UNI Global Union to expose Walmart's bad labor practices throughout their stores, warehouses, and global supply chain.
"I'm working to build the profits of the richest family on the globe, while putting my safety at risk just to go into work," said one unnamed supply chain worker in a press statement. "The Waltons need to see and hear what they are doing to families around the globe. It's shameful."
Comment: The Waltons could care less about workers wages or benefits. They only care about their bottom line and how much money they can line their filthy pockets with.
The demonstrators are calling on the Walton family - which own over 50 percent share of Walmart and are estimated to be worth a combined total of $152 billion - to publicly commit to paying the company's 2.2 million retail workers and countless more supply chain employees a living wage.
© WFTV
Those arrested Wednesday were identified as Tywuan Johnson, 17, Torreano Batton, 18, Jose Sims, 17, Deoante Stewart, 17, and Tolbert Alexander, 16, all of Sanford; and Marquis Pierre, 16, of Winter Springs.
Police said all six are football players, and have been charged with sexual battery and false imprisonment.
Investigators said a 16-year-old Winter Springs High School student reported that she had been raped by a group of teens in a wooded area across from the school late Thursday afternoon.
According to investigators, the girl told them that she knew two of the attackers. Investigators said that over the weekend, they tracked down the accused juveniles in an effort to piece together what happened.
Drugs mule: The 11-year-old was rushed to a hospital in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, after a cocaine capsule burst in her stomach, where doctors found 104 capsules during surgery
The girl was rushed to hospital in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, where doctors removed nearly 1.2lbs of cocaine during surgery.
Police are now hunting for the schoolgirl's father, who is accused of forcing her to swallow 104 cocaine capsules so he could use her as a drug mule for a flight to Spain.
The schoolgirl underwent a life-saving operation after her father and another relative had rushed her to a hospital in Santiago de Cali early on Monday morning.
The father and the relative then disappeared after leaving the 11-year-old with medics.
© Pocketfullofliberty.com
The research shows that citizens of countries including France, Uruguay, and Costa Rica now feel that they enjoy more personal freedom than Americans.
As the Washington Examiner reported this morning, representatives of the Legatum Institute are in the U.S. this week to promote the sixth edition of their Prosperity Index. The index aims to measure aspects of prosperity that typical gross domestic product measurements don't include, such as entrepreneurship and opportunity, education, and social capital.
The freedom scores are based on polling data from 2013 indicating citizens' satisfaction with their nation's handling of civil liberties, freedom of choice, tolerance of ethnic minorities, and tolerance of immigrants. Polling data were provided by Gallup World Poll Service. The index is notable for the way it measures how free people feel, unlike other freedom indices that measure freedom by comparing government policies.
"This is not a good report for Obama," Legatum Institute spokeswoman Cristina Odone told the Washington Examiner.
In the 2010 report (which relied on data gathered in 2009), the U.S. was ranked ninth in personal freedom, but that ranking has since fallen to 21st, with several countries, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom passing the U.S.
Comment: Freedom in the U.S. is an illusion.
© flickr
In India, where 550 million people practice open defecation, 45 percent of children are stunted. The culprit in most cases is poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water. Studies show that lack of toilets and the resulting spread of disease is literally making Indian children shorter.
Comment: And why is there such a lack of basic sanitation for billions of people around the world? Look to your psychopathic leaders, corrupt World Bank and IMF who seem to like nothing more than to keep people subjugated and drowning in poverty.
This photo provided by Chelsea Andorka, the Niagara University women’s basketball team spokeswoman, shows the team holding a sign while their bus was snowbound near Lackawanna, N.Y., Nov. 18, 2014.
A lake-effect snow warning has been issued for the rest of the week in Erie County, and the New York National Guard was deployed to help the Buffalo area dig out.
The storm is blamed for the deaths of at least six people. Three of the people who died in the storm suffered heart attacks, and two of those were shoveling snow at the time, officials said.
Another person in Erie County was pinned by a car while trying to push it out of the snow, while another was found buried in his car, authorities said at a news conference today. In Genesee County, an employee died while operating a snowblower, authorities said.
Dozens of vehicles, including a bus carrying the Niagara University women's basketball team, were stranded, and even snow plows got stuck in the deep snow.
"It started to get bad fast at about 2 a.m. [Tuesday morning] and we came to a dead stop and haven't moved since," Niagara coach Kendra Faustin told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday night. "It was a rough weekend for us on the court and it just won't end."
Southeast Bullitt County Fire Chief Julius Hatfield speaks to WDRB
In a Bullitt County Sheriff's deputy's body camera recording obtained by WDRB, Southeast Bullitt County Fire Chief Julius Hatfield can be heard discussing a car accident on I-65 in September.
Hatfield first goes out of his way to provide assistance to Loren Dicken, who is white.
"You got a jack, ain't you?" Hatfield asks the driver. "If you show me where them things is at, I'll get my guys to start changing the tire for you."
At first, Dicken turns down the offer, but Hatfield insists, saying, "It will save you a bill."
Firefighters working for Hatfield even picked Dicken up from the hospital and took him back to the firehouse, where his car was ready and waiting.
Comment: It's becoming increasingly common to see rape incidents like these not only at the high school level, but also involving athletes: