Society's ChildS


Light Saber

Whistleblowers claim Veteran Affairs retaliated against them for complaints about mentally impaired doctor

Veterans Affairs whistleblower
© Scott Olson / Getty Images / Agence France Presse
Two staffers at a Veteran Affairs hospital have lodged complaints saying that hospital management retaliated against them for reporting a doctor's loss of cognitive functions in his treatment of patients.

Whistleblowers James DeNofrio and Dr. Timothy Skarada of the James E. Van Zandt VA Medical Center (VAMC) in Altoona, Pennsylvania claim that management violated Veteran Affairs (VA) regulations for two years by failing to prevent a mentally impaired doctor from practicing, and by harassing the whistleblowers who pointed out the problem, according to a letter released last week.

Starting in 2013, the letter says, several people complained that Dr. Frederick Struthers, who was the head of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Services (PM&RS) Department, was showing signs of impaired cognitive functions.

Struthers once conducted a testicular examination without gloves in front of two female employees, did not wash his hands afterwards and never documented the encounter, the whistleblowers say. On another occasion, the doctor unnecessarily delayed pain treatment to mitigate the suffering of a dying patient. Other incidents the two men described involved Struthers treating patients in the hallway, problems with chronic tardiness, and difficulty remembering conversations.

Wolf

Wounded Warrior Project execs Nardizzi and Giordano fired amid scandal

veteran group funding scandal
© Molly Rile / ReuterWounded Iraq war veteran Joe Beimfohr sits among injured war veterans during a news conference held by the Wounded Warrior Project.
Wounded Warrior Project aims to empower wounded veterans, but a recent exposé revealed that the charity spent nearly half of its funding empowering its executives instead. The board of directors responded by beginning to clean house, starting at the top.

Wounded Warrior Project has raised more than a billion dollars in donations since 2003, according to CBS News. Donors might expect their money would be used "to honor and empower Wounded Warriors," as the nonprofit's mission states. However, CBS revealed the charity spends between 40 to 50 percent of their money on overhead - while other veterans' charities spend an average of 10 to 15 percent on the same expenses.

Wounded Warrior Project Chief Executive Officer Steven Nardizzi and Chief Operating Officer Al Giordano were both removed from the organization after accusations arose alleging that the charity's donations were being misused. The nonprofit's website says that Nardizzi was a founding member, who spent 10 years as an attorney representing disabled veterans for several veterans service organizations, among other charitable positions.

Heart - Black

Cops brutally beat 72 y.o. Alzheimer's patient for breaking into his own house

Albert Schmeiler
Albert Schmeiler
Colorado Springs Police are in hot water with a possible lawsuit over the brutal beating in July of a 72-year-old man who has Alzheimer's.

Albert Schmeiler's mother-in-law, Margot Alvarez, witnessed the attack and said it was absolutely unnecessary for officers to punch, kick, and slam her son-in-law to the ground.

"The minute [CSPD officers] got out of the car, I told them he has Alzheimer's, he's confused, he's hallucinating, he's 72-years-old," Alvarez explained to KKTV 11 News.

According to the police report obtained by the outlet, officers were initially responding to a call that Schmeiler was breaking into a house. Though his sister-in-law was renting the property at the time, Schmeiler is the owner.

2 + 2 = 4

Elevated lead levels found in 30 New Jersey public schools

water fountains
© uncoolbob/flickr/ccElevated levels of lead were found at 30 public schools in New Jersey's largest district, but school officials tell parents they 'should have no concerns'.
Public schools in Newark, New Jersey, were forced to shut off water fountains on Wednesday after test results showed high levels of lead in the water supply.

"Officials say they do not know how long students at nearly half of the Newark's schools may have been drinking water with elevated levels of lead," reported Dan Ivers at NJ.com.

The water supply at a total of 30 Newark schools tested higher for lead than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s "action level," 15 parts per billion, at which point the agency requires "additional testing, monitoring, and remediation," according to ABC.

But despite the EPA's designation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tells parents that "no safe blood lead level in children has been identified."

Arrow Up

Landmark precedent: Families win lawsuit over fracking contamination of groundwater

fracking
© Les Stone / Reuters A man places an anti-fracking sign outside his house in Dimock, Pennsylvania



Comment: This is a hopeful development, but we can expect a huge push-back from the O&G industry which will continue to bury the overwhelming evidence that fracking poses huge risks to human health and the environment.


A federal jury has ordered Cabot Oil & Gas to pay more than $4.24 million in damages to two families in Dimock, Pennsylvania, who claimed the company's fracking operations contaminated their groundwater with methane.

The jury reached its verdict on Thursday in the lawsuit that accused the company of polluting the families' well water as a result of its natural gas drilling operations, according to Reuters. Cabot Oil & Gas said it will appeal the verdict.

Six jurors in federal court in Scranton awarded $1.3 million each to Scott Ely and Monica Marta-Ely, and $50,000 to each of their three children.

"This has been an exhausting six and a half years," Scott Ely said after the verdict, according to Reuters.

Comment:


People

'Made in the USA': Companies are making a killing by using prison labor

Prison labor
© Buycott
The prison-industrial complex: some may have heard of it, but this term is still widely unknown amongst the masses despite it's huge effect on the American economy. This complex is described as "the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems." The interests of the government are their efforts to increase their policing of people rather than solving the root of the problems, which leads to over-incarceration. The interests of industries are their financial holds over privately-owned prisons and their exploitation of prison workers who are underpaid and overworked.

How does this affect America? First of all, outsourcing, which is frowned upon by those who know about it because of its economic effect on American citizens, is replaced with "insourcing," which is when corporations employ prisoners for as little as $0.23 per hour. Outsourcing affects the American economy by choosing to employ workers in foreign countries rather than displaced workers in America itself, thus causing a rise in unemployment and poverty.

Comment: See also:


Nuke

Nightmare without end: Japanese authorities want to pretend that 'nothing happened' at Fukushima

fukushima
© Carlos Barria / Reuters



Comment: There has been a massive cover-up of the scale of the devastation caused by Fukushima and the ongoing human and ecological disasters. Japan is restarting nuclear reactors, in spite of ongoing safety issues and public protests, and at the same time is trying to convince people that it is safe to return to the areas near Fukushima by 'normalizing' radiation standards when clearly, there is no medical or scientific evidence to support this.


Five years ago a killer tsunami knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, spewing radiation and forcing 160,000 people to flee their homes. Authorities in Japan want locals to think "nothing happened," documentary director Jeffrey Jousan told RT.

"The government prints the number of people who died as a result of the 2011 disaster in the newspapers every day. [In some other prefectures], the [death toll] amounts to 300-400 people in each prefecture, but in Fukushima it is over 8,000 people," Jousan, a US director and producer who has been living and working in Japan since 1990, said.

It is very telling about the situation in Fukushima. It is hard for everyone who is affected by the tsunami, who lost their homes and lost their families. But [in Fukushima], people are not able to go back home, they are unable to work because people won't buy food from Fukushima, farmers cannot farm anymore. It is affecting people, and more people are dying because of that.

It is shocking... to see [how] many people have died in Fukushima," the co-director of the documentary film 'Alone in the Zone' told RT.

Comment:


Cell Phone

What's next? Apple warns that FBI demand they turn on iPhone cameras and microphones next

cell phone
© Mariah Dietzler/flickr/ccWhen they can get us to create a new system to do new things, where will it stop?
If the FBI successfully manages to force Apple to unlock the suspected San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, the government could use the precedent to require the tech company to remotely turn on users' iPhone microphones and cameras, Apple's senior vice president warned this week.

Eddy Cue, speaking to Univision in a Spanish-language interview, reiterated Apple's argument that its case against the FBI is not just about one phone or one suspect, but rather an issue of user privacy.

"When they can get us to create a new system to do new things, where will it stop?" Cue said, according to a translation provided to Business Insider. "For example, one day [the FBI] may want us to open your phone's camera or microphone. Those are things we can't do now. But if they can force us to do that, I think that's very bad."

Heart - Black

Aboriginal town declares state of emerency and asks for aid over high rate of suicide

Cross Lake First Nation office
Cross Lake First Nation is declaring a state of emergency after six suicide in the past two months.
An indigenous community in Canada has asked the federal government for health support amid a rising suicide rate among its people over the past months.

The Cross Lake Community appealed for federal aid on Thursday, a day after it declared a state of emergency over the increasing number of suicides among its 8,300 members.

The community, also known as the Pimicikamak Cree Nation, is located some 500 kilometers north of Winnipeg, Manibota Province, and is the third largest aboriginal community in the area.

The appeal for aid comes as six people in the community have committed suicide in two months, while 140 others attempted to kill themselves in the last two weeks.

Comment: It's not just their mental health needs that should be addressed, but also their desperate living situation. These people are not attempting suicide because they are mentally ill. They are seeking to escape the plight of 80% unemployment and no assistance from anyone outside of the community. If the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada really wants to address the problem, then some serious efforts need to be taken to help strengthen the community economically.


Magnify

'Blunt force injuries of the head,' not heart attack, killed Russian media tycoon Mikhail Lesin

Mikhail Lesin
© Iliya Pitalev / SputnikMikhail Lesin
Four months after the death of former Russian press minister and prominent media figure Mikhail Lesin in a DC hotel, Washington's chief medical examiner has revealed forensic data indicating that Lesin died of injuries to the head.

While initial reports following Lesin's death in DC's Dupont Hotel on November 5, 2015 indicated that a heart attack had been to blame, no conclusive official forensic data has been released until now.

A joint statement by the District of Colombia's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and Metropolitan Police Department said that the former minister's death had been a violent one, as cited by RIA Novosti on Thursday.

"The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has released the cause and manner of death for Mikhail Lesin...Cause of Death: blunt force injuries of the head," the statement said.

It added that "blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities" contributed to the 57-year-old's death.

Nevertheless, the manner of death was still classified as "undetermined" in the official release.