Society's ChildS


Pills

Massachusetts shuts 11 pharmacies following inspections

Steve LeBlanc
ABC News
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:23 UTC
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State officials have ordered 11 pharmacies to completely or partially shut down their operations after a series of unannounced inspections prompted by a deadly nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis.

The Department of Public Health inspections were conducted across the state over the past several months at 40 sterile compounding pharmacies, which custom-mix solutions, creams and other medications in doses or forms that generally aren't commercially available.

The outbreak of meningitis, an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord, was discovered in Tennessee in September and has killed 45 people and sickened more than 600 nationwide. It was caused by a contaminated steroid, used mainly to treat back pain, that was linked to the Framingham-based New England Compounding Center, which has since closed. The inspections began last fall.

Besides the 11 cease-and-desist orders, public health inspectors said, another 21 pharmacies were cited for minor deficiencies that have since been corrected or are being addressed.
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Health

17-year-old girl left brain damaged, blind and paralysed after smoking synthetic marijuana and suffering a series of strokes

John Hall
The Independent
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:20 UTC
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A 17-year-old girl has been left brain damaged, blind and paralysed after smoking synthetic marijuana and suffering a series of strokes.

Emily Bauer, from Cypress in Texas, was left severely disabled after smoking a product that she purchased from a local petrol station.

Ms Bauer purchased the substance last December with friends, but around 15 minutes after smoking it, told her boyfriend she had a migraine and needed to lie down.

She subsequently suffered a series of strokes that left her in a psychotic state; urinating on herself, running into walls and suffering violent hallucinations.
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Wine

Florida man arrested for driving drunk INSIDE a Walmart

David Edwards
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:46 UTC
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© Photo: Brooksville Police Department
Police in Brooksville, Florida say that they arrested Timothy Carr over the weekend for driving drunk inside a local Walmart.

An arrest report obtained by The Smoking Gun on Monday indicated that Carr, 48, had helped himself to an alcoholic beverage while operating one of the store's motorized shopping carts at around 9 p.m. on Sunday.
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Eye 2

Cop testifies: Banana mogul let woman die during sexual encounter

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:35 UTC
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© Shutterstock
A New York City Police detective testified on Monday that the owner of a banana-importing company allowed a woman to die following a three-way sexual liaison involving cocaine in 2009.

According to The New York Post, Detective Edward Boyle testified that Long Island Banana Corp. head Thomas Hoey Jr. refused to call for an ambulance to help Kimberly Calo after she overdosed while spending the night with Hoey and his then-mistress Nicole Zobkiw at a Park Avenue hotel on January 10, 2009.
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Eye 2

California tech company forced to repay Mexican workers after getting caught paying them in pesos

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:30 UTC
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© Shutterstock
A California tech firm that boasts Gen. Colin Powell as a board member was ordered to pay more than $60,000 in back wages and penalties after the U.S. Department of Labor found it had paid a group of tech workers from Mexico less than $3 an hour in pesos for two years.

KNTV-TV reported on Monday that Bloom Energy contracted the 14 Mexican nationals and paid them equivalent of $2.66 an hour to work on the company's generators between November 2010 and November 2012. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

A U.S. District Court judge ordered the company to pay the group $31,922 in both back wages and damages. Bloom Energy was also fined another $6,160 in damages by the U.S. Labor Department.
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Dollars

Fed up with online trolls, author pledges $5 to women's, LGBT groups for every insult

David Barnett
Guardian
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:19 UTC
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© Photo: Author John Scalzi (Flickr user quinnums)
The internet might have given unprecedented freedom to writers, but with it comes inevitable exposure to trolls. Now one US author has decided to tackle online baiting head-on, in a move that could see payouts of tens of thousands of dollars to four civil rights, women's issues and LGBT charities.

John Scalzi is the author of several books, including the Old Man's War series and Redshirts, published in the States by Tor and the UK by Gollancz. He's also the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Fed up of being constantly targeted on his website by one particular individual and his followers, Scalzi decided to take action, pledging US$5 every time "the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit in question posts an entry on his site in which he uses my name (or one of his adorable nicknames for me)".

Scalzi put a ceiling on his "troll tip jar" of US$1,000, figuring that gave his bête noir 200 opportunities to abuse him over the coming year, and said he'd give the cash to four charities: RAINN, America's largest anti-sexual violence organization; Emily's List, dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office; the Human Rights Campaign, which works for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equal Rights; and NAACP: America's oldest and largest civil rights organization.
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Smiley

It's a really bad idea to give a judge the finger

David Woods
Monolith
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:04 UTC

Put yourself in Penelope Soto's shoes. You're 18 years old and the cops nabbed you for drug possession. You're in a Florida courtroom (it's always Florida in these stories... except when it's Ohio) to face the charges.

How do you act?

Do you attempt to bully the judge, laughing at his words and defiantly running your fingers through your hair? Do you try to avoid answering any questions, even though you're under oath?

If you're Penelope Soto, that's exactly what you do.
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Eye 2

Texas man guns down couple over dog poop on his porch

David Edwards
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:40 UTC
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© via KTVT
Police say a 75-year-old man in Dallas is being charged with Capital Murder after he allegedly shot and killed two neighbors because they had dumped dog feces on his porch.

According to The Dallas Morning News, Chung Kim had repeatedly complained to management at Sable Ridge Apartments that Michelle Jackson and Jamie Stafford, who lived above him, had dumped dog feces on his porch and allowed their dog, Selena, to urinate on the upstairs balcony which dripped down to his patio.

Tension finally boiled over on Monday when Kim was on his patio and shot 31-year-old Jackson multiple times as she stood on the patio above him, police said. He then reportedly went upstairs and shot Stafford, who was also 31, as he was trying to escape. After Stafford fell from the second floor, Kim is accused of going back downstairs and shooting him again.
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Pistol

3-year-old South Carolina boy killed after mistaking pink handgun for toy

David Edwards
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:25 UTC
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A 3-year-old boy in Greenville, South Carolina was shot in the head and killed on Friday after he started playing with a pink handgun because he thought it was a toy.

Police responding to the shooting at Haywood Plantation Apartments said that Tmorej Smith was found with a gunshot wound to the head, according to The Associated Press.

Investigators determined that Tmorej and his 7-year-old sister had been playing with a pink handgun when the incident occurred.

Deputy Coroner Jeff Fowler ruled the shooting an accidental homicide.
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USA

U.S. prison population seeing "unprecedented increase"

Carey L. Biron
Inter Press Service
Mon, 04 Feb 2013 14:20 UTC
Prisoners
© prisonpath.com
The research wing of the U.S. Congress is warning that three decades of "historically unprecedented" build-up in the number of prisoners incarcerated in the United States have led to a level of overcrowding that is now "taking a toll on the infrastructure" of the federal prison system.

Over the past 30 years, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the federal prison population has jumped from 25,000 to 219,000 inmates, an increase of nearly 790 percent. Swollen by such figures, for years the United States has incarcerated far more people than any other country, today imprisoning some 716 people out of every 100,000. (Although CRS reports are not made public, a copy can be found here.)

"This is one of the major human rights problems within the United States, as many of the people caught up in the criminal justice system are low income, racial and ethnic minorities, often forgotten by society," Maria McFarland, deputy director for the U.S. programme at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

In recent years, as a consequence of the imposition of very harsh sentencing policies, McFarland's office has seen new patterns emerging of juveniles and very elderly people being put in prison.

"Last year, some 95,000 juveniles under 18 years of age were put in prison, and that doesn't count those in juvenile facilities," she noted.
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