Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged ambulance

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
redavistinnell

Fake ambulance drug smugglers jailed for between 18 and 28 years | UK news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...g-smugglers-jailed-18-28-years

ambulance news fake the guardian

shared by redavistinnell on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Fake ambulance drug smugglers jailed for between 18 and 28 years
  • Three drug smugglers have been jailed for at least 18 years each for transporting as much as £1.6bn worth of cocaine and heroin into the UK using a fleet of fake ambulances.
  • A third man, Richard Engelsbel, 51, was given an 18-year jail term after admitting that he acted as a driver or driver’s assistant on 25 smuggling trips purporting to be journeys to pick up injured patients.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The National Crime Agency (NCA) established that the gang trafficked drugs, packaged in colour-coded parcels and hidden behind false panels in the ambulances, from the Netherlands to the UK.
  • Sources within the NCA said they believed 20 different gangs around the UK relied on the ambulance racket for supplies of class A drugs.
  • He said: “The prosecution suggest this was a top-level, audacious, and – up to the point of interception and the arrests – a successful and lucrative criminal conspiracy.”
  • Inside the back of the ambulance, concealed behind panels in six “hides”, were neatly stacked, colour-coded packets of class A drugs, including cocaine with a street value of more than £30m and heroin worth £8m. Officers also found 60,000 ecstasy tablets.
  • The court was told that the company’s records showed the fake ambulance journeys had been “going on over weeks and months”. In all, at least 45 trips were made in 14 months.
  • Bijlsma was described in the court as Schoon’s right-hand man. The prosecution told the jury that a rivet gun was found with Bijlsma’s DNA on it. It said this gun was used to fasten the panels inside the ambulance.
Javier E

How to Negotiate Down Your Hospital Bills - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...584998

medical costs financing bankruptcy health-care system

shared by Javier E on 18 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • A friend walked up and grabbed Lockett by the arm. A few people, noticing that something wasn’t right, walked Lockett to another room and called an ambulance. Lockett, who was 57 at the time and uninsured, didn’t know whether she could or should refuse the ambulance ride or decide which hospital it would take her to.Paramedics sped her a few miles to Emory University Hospital Midtown, where she was held overnight. It turned out that she had suffered a transient ischemic attack, or a mini-stroke. The hospital performed tests and sent her home, where she recovered fully.In May, the hospital bill arrived. Lockett had been charged $26,203.62 total for “observation,” which the bill instructed her to pay within 20 day
  • nearly 60 percent of people who have filed for bankruptcy said a medical expense “very much” or “somewhat” contributed to their bankruptcy
  • A 2016 study found that a third of cancer survivors had gone into debt as a result of their medical expenses, and 3 percent had filed for bankruptcy. According to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau study from 2014, medical bills are the most common cause of unpaid bills sent to collection agencies. About a fifth of Americans have a medical claim on their credit report, and the same proportion currently has a medical bill overdue.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • half a dozen consumer advocates told me they are concerned that the problem will get worse, since the uninsured rate is going up, and more people are signing up for cheaper but skimpier health-insurance plans introduced by the Trump administration. More Americans are also now on high-deductible health plans, many of which require patients to pay thousands before insurance kicks in. Networks of doctors have grown narrower, meaning more providers are likely to be out of network.
  • Emergency-room visits and planned surgical procedures are the most common causes of large medical bills that patients simply can’t afford to pay
  • Often, a hospital might be covered by a person’s insurance network, but the individual doctors who work there and the ambulance company that services it aren’t
  • some patients do wind up with medical debt, which discourages them from seeking medical care, because they fear they will incur even more debt if they go to the doctor again
  • The debt can also worsen people’s credit, which can make it hard for them to live healthier lives by, say, moving to better neighborhoods. In the end, they get sicker, and risk plunging even further into debt.
  • “The reality is that medical costs are not objective, real costs,” says Berneta L. Haynes, the director of equity and access at Georgia Watch. One day, an MRI can cost $19,000. The next, it can cost nothing.
aleija

Opinion | My Daughter and I Are Trapped in Brazil's Tragedy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...brazil-covid-bolsonaro.html

global vaccine Pandemic

shared by aleija on 19 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • For over a year now, my 2½-year-old daughter and I have been monitoring — avidly, anxiously — the movements of the 10 ambulances parked there. That’s the sort of entertainment we have now.
  • Since the beginning of the year, fewer and fewer ambulances stay put. Now, during the day, it’s common to see only one or two vehicles at the lot — and never for long. Just wait awhile and away they go, sirens blaring, to answer someone’s call.
  • Looking at that incessant parade of ambulances, I try not to sound desperate. I try to keep from my voice the knowledge that 543 people have died waiting for a hospital bed since the end of February in São Paulo alone, that across the country over 370,000 people have lost their lives — and that the worst may be yet to come.
yehbru

Los Angeles County ambulance crews told not to transport Covid-19 patients with little ... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Politics US Covid19 California LA Hospitals

shared by yehbru on 05 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In a little more than a month, the county doubled its number of infections, climbing from about 400,000 cases on November 30 to more than 800,000 cases on January 2, health officials said Monday.
  • With no hospital beds available, ambulance crews in the county were given guidance not to transport patients with little chance of survival. And the patients who are transported often have to wait hours before a bed is available.
  • And a person is dying of the virus every 15 minutes, Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "We're likely to experience the worst conditions in January that we've faced the entire pandemic, and that's hard to imagine."
  • But Los Angeles hospitals are now at capacity and many medical facilities don't have the space to take in patients who do not have a chance of survival, the agency said. Patients whose hearts have stopped despite efforts of resuscitation, the county EMS said, should no longer be transported to hospitals.
  • "Given the acute need to conserve oxygen, effective immediately, EMS should only administer supplemental oxygen to patients with oxygen saturation below 90%," EMS said in a memo to ambulance crews Monday.
  • "We are waiting two to four hours minimum to a hospital and now we are having to drive even further... then wait another three hours," EMT Jimmy Webb told CNN affiliate KCAL.
mimiterranova

Walter Wallace Jr.'s Death Raises Questions About Police Response To Mental Health Cris... - 0 views

www.wbur.org/...r-wallace-police-mental-health

mental health death police

shared by mimiterranova on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Walter Wallace Jr., 27, was shot and killed by police officers who responded to an emergency call Monday afternoon. Wallace’s family says he was in the midst of a mental health crisis.
  • “Police officers are trained to defuse and de-escalate situations, or they should be trained to defuse and de-escalate situations. There could have been something else done before you take a person’s life,” Wallace’s cousin Sam White told NBC10 Philadelphia.
  • Police on the scene of Wallace’s psychological episode should have kept their distance and waited for an ambulance to arrive, he says. Given that Wallace’s mother was present, trying to de-escalate the situation and not in immediate danger, the officers could have strategically retreated, he says, “but instead, they have this force neutralization mindset that unfortunately leads actually to the escalation of violence.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Political leadership in Philadelphia has refused to fund non-police based mental health services and crisis response teams,
  • But with many departments across the country still lacking mental health response teams and training, police are often the only resource for people to call in difficult situations. For this to change, city councils and mayors need to get on board and overhaul the notion that police are the be-all and end-all to our problems, he says.
  • mimiterranova on 02 Nov 20
     
    Tthis makes me so angry! 1. police could have shot him in a non-fatal area where they could've dis-armed his knife. 2. People are trying to justify this murder! We need to hold police officers accountable when there are other options than death. 3. I understand that the police officers warned him many times to put the knife down but he was going through a mental health episode. we need a better solution, this has been a problem far too long. Whether it's more training or specialized services, suicide by police cannot be the answer. It's sad to know that people know they will be shot to death by a police officer in a situation like this.
aleija

Opinion | We Dared to Assemble. For That, We Were Killed. - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...nigeria-protests.html

history crisis global opinion policy politics

shared by aleija on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • LAGOS, Nigeria — The High Court of Justice is on fire. Behind my home, it has been ablaze since noon. But in reality, the justice system the court claims to represent has been burning for nearly 60 years.
  • “We the people,” begins the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 40 guarantees us the right to freedom of assembly. By Section 41, “we the people,” are guaranteed the right to free movement. So, we assembled. And we moved. For that, we have been killed.
  • In Nigeria, the accepted experience with almost all officialdom is aggressive: the civilian officers in full military garb who slap women trying to enter the passport office; the ordinary policeman who pulls his gun on unarmed civilians because they dared to talk back. Violence defines the predictable. It takes an unpredictable, extraordinary level of brutality to cause a storm.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • On Oct. 3, a video surfaced online that appeared to show the point-blank killing of a Nigerian citizen by officers of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, commonly known as SARS. In the days since the video’s emergence, people across the country, young and some old, have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and call for SARS’s disbandment.
  • SARS was founded in 1992 to deal with violent crimes like kidnappings and armed robbery, common at the time. In the years since, SARS has come to resemble the armed thugs it supposedly combats. Often in plain clothes, SARS officers became synonymous with torture, illegal detention and extortion. Violent crime might have fallen, but it was not because criminals knew that they would face the full force of the law, but rather that they would be extrajudicially murdered.
  • When unlawfully arrested protesters need legal aid, they simply ask and networks organized online call volunteer lawyers, who drop what they are doing and proceed to the police station. When protesters need food, water or mobile phone data, they ask and food, water and money from an ever-growing fund of global donations is sent. And when they need ambulances or security guards to protect them from hired thugs, from the state itself, they ask, and private ambulance and security services are sent their way.
  • SARS would be disbanded and investigations opened, but the police were largely a force of hardworking officers not to be tarnished by “the few bad eggs.”
  • For two weeks, protesters dared to speak truth to power, and for two weeks the army had been looking for an excuse to make it clear that in Nigeria, violence — their violence — always reigns. They found it.
  • Most in the Nigerian government want us to see them as figures of authority. But recent events have confirmed they would be nothing without their fists. They have confirmed it is they who are afraid — afraid that their children, regardless of age, ethnicity or gender should, one day, be free in a country where honor and respect are not the result of force. It is they who are afraid that, unleashed from their shallow power, this country might no longer be a testament to unnecessary suffering and violence.
aniyahbarnett

Opinion | We Dared to Assemble. For That, We Were Killed. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nigeria-protests.html

shared by aniyahbarnett on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • “We the people,” begins the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 40 guarantees us the right to freedom of assembly. By Section 41, “we the people,” are guaranteed the right to free movement. So, we assembled. And we moved. For that, we have been killed.
  • Sitting peacefully, a few miles from where I write, the crowd of protesters had resolved to have our government face us, and cease killing us.
  • slap women trying to enter the passport office
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • they simply ask and networks organized online call volunteer lawyers, who drop what they are doing and proceed to the police station. When protesters need food, water or mobile phone data, they ask and food, water and money from an ever-growing fund of global donations is sent. And when they need ambulances or security guards to protect them from hired thugs, from the state itself, they ask, and private ambulance and security services are sent their way.
  • Don’t
  • SARS has come to resemble the armed thugs it supposedly combats
  • Hours before 9, armed soldiers began firing live rounds into the peaceful crowd of protesters, with fatal consequences.
  • These protests, which continue reinvigorated in other parts of the country, have become about challenging the legitimacy of a defunct political leadership
  • Who gave our so-called leaders the authority they think they have over us; if we are a democracy, who is really in charge?
  • imagine the brutality of the arms behind them.
  • legitimate authority finds its weight in motivating and persuading people without the need to lift a bullying finger.
  • “If we come together in love, they cannot destroy us.”
nrashkind

Coronavirus protests spread to Senegal's capital - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...senegals-capital-idUSKBN23B028

shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Protestors in Dakar set tyres on fire and threw stones at security forces on Wednesday night during protests over a nationwide dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed almost three months ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • The unrest in Senegal’s capital followed similar action in the holy city of Touba a night earlier, where crowds of people torched an ambulance, threw rocks and looted office buildings.
  • She said that while she did not approve of youths taking to the streets after curfew, and throwing rocks at the police, the president needed to listen, and to help people.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • A Reuters witness saw the army and police deployed to some neighbourhoods to contain the unrest.
  • There were also protests in the Kaolack region in the south of the country, a local official said.
  • The growing unrest in Dakar and Touba highlights a dilemma for many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, where measures to protect citizens’ health are also damaging the livelihoods of millions who work in the informal sector, stirring up tensions.
  • Unable to shuttle passengers between Touba and Dakar, taxi driver Same Diop has started begging in the street alongside dozens of other drivers struggling to support their families.
  • Touba’s main boulevards were littered with charred tyres and broken branches on Wednesday in the wake of the overnight protest there
  • scores of demonstrators set fire to an ambulance outside a coronavirus treatment centre.
  • This frightened us
Javier E

BOOM: Google Loses Antitrust Case - BIG by Matt Stoller - 0 views

www.thebignewsletter.com/...om-google-loses-antitrust-case

Big Tech trial antitrust jury case google

shared by Javier E on 12 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • It’s a long and winding road for Epic. The firm lost the Apple case, which is on appeal, but got the Google case to a jury, along with several other plaintiffs. Nearly every other firm challenging Google gradually dropped out of the case, getting special deals from the search giant in return for abandoning their claims. But Sweeney was righteous, and believed that Google helped ruined the internet. He didn’t ask for money or a special deal, instead seeking to have Judge James Donato force Google to make good on its “broken promise,” which he characterized as “an open, competitive Android ecosystem for all users and industry participants.”
  • Specifically, Sweeney asked for the right for firms to have their own app stores, and the ability to use their own billing systems. Basically, he wants to crush Google’s control over the Android phone system. And I suspect he just did. You can read the verdict here.
  • Google is likely to be in trouble now, because it is facing multiple antitrust cases, and these kinds of decisions have a bandwagon effect. The precedent is set, in every case going forward the firm will now be seen as presumed guilty, since a jury found Google has violated antitrust laws. Judges are cautious, and are generally afraid of being the first to make a precedent-setting decision. Now they won’t have to. In fact, judges and juries will now have to find a reason to rule for Google. If, say, Judge Amit Mehta in D.C., facing a very similar fact-pattern, chooses to let Google off the hook, well, he’ll look pretty bad.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • There are a few important take-aways. First, this one didn’t come from the government, it was a private case by a video game maker that sued Google over its terms for getting access to the Google Play app store for Android, decided not by a fancy judge with an Ivy League degree but by a jury of ordinary people in San Francisco. In other words, private litigation, the ‘ambulance-chasing’ lawyers, are vital parts of our justice system.
  • Second, juries matter, even if they are riskier for everyone involved. It’s kind of like a mini poll, and the culture is ahead of the cautious legal profession. This quick decision is a sharp contrast with the 6-month delay to an opinion in the search case that Judge Mehta sought in the D.C. trial.
  • Third, tying claims, which is a specific antitrust violation, are good law. Tying means forcing someone to buy an unrelated product in order to access the actual product they want to buy. The specific legal claim here was about how Google forced firms relying on its Google Play app store to also use its Google Play billing service, which charges an inflated price of 30% of the price of an app. Tying is pervasive throughout the economy, so you can expect more suits along these lines.
  • And finally, big tech is not above the law. This loss isn’t just the first antitrust failure for Google, it’s the first antitrust loss for any big tech firm. I hear a lot from skeptics that the fix is in, that the powerful will always win, that justice in our system is a mirage. But that just isn’t true. A jury of our peers just made that clear.
B Mannke

BBC News - Chris Christie 'humiliated' by bridge-gridlock scandal - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-us-canada-25671970

shared by B Mannke on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 9 January 2014 Last updated at 14:25 ET Share this page Email Print Share this pageShareFacebookTwitter Chris Christie 'humiliated' by bridge-gridlock scandal Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: "I am responsible for what happened" Continue reading the main story Related Stories Twitter drips with Christie snark Chris Christie's bridge-sized headache Christie: Republicans' best hope New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has fired an aide who allegedly orchestrated traffic mayhem to pursue a petty political vendetta. Mr Christie, seen as a potential Republican White House candidate, apologised for the scandal, which he said "embarrassed and humiliated" him.
  • Mr Christie, seen as a potential Republican White House candidate, apologised for the scandal, which he said "embarrassed and humiliated" him. The gridlock was allegedly engineered to punish a Democratic mayor who did not endorse the governor's re-election. Mr Christie denied any involvement, blaming "deceitful" staff.
  • "I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or execution," he said, "and I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Asked about a 91-year-old woman who reportedly died after ambulance services were caught up in the gridlock, Mr Christie said that was "awful", though he added it was unclear whether the delay had contributed to her death.
  • "An apology today might be a bit premature. "I think this is a story that has not yet experienced its final chapter."
Javier E

The Fraying of a Nation's Decency - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24iht-currents24.html

decency dehumanization US society epistemic

shared by Javier E on 25 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • The newspaper interviewed 20 people who worked in an Amazon warehouse in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. They described, and the newspaper verified, temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37 degrees Celsius, in the warehouse, causing several employees to faint and fall ill and the company to maintain ambulances outside. Employees were hounded to “make rate,” meaning to pick or pack 120, 125, 150 pieces an hour, the rates rising with tenure. Tenure, though, wasn’t long, because the work force was largely temps from an agency. Permanent jobs were a mirage that seldom came. And so workers toiled even when injured to avoid being fired. A woman who left to have breast cancer surgery returned a week later to find that her job had been “terminated.”
  • Far beyond official Washington, we would seem to be witnessing a fraying of the bonds of empathy, decency, common purpose. It is becoming a country in which people more than disagree. They fail to see each other. They think in types about others, and assume the worst of types not their own.
  • The more I travel, the more I observe that Americans are becoming foreigners to each other. People in Texas speak of people in New York the way certain Sunnis speak of Shiites, and vice versa in New York. Many liberals I know take for granted that anyone conservative is either racist or under-informed. People who run companies like Amazon operate as though it never occurred to them that it could have been them crawling through the aisles. And the people who run labor unions possess little empathy for how difficult and risky and remarkable it is to build something like Amazon.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • What is creeping into the culture is simple dehumanization, a failure to imagine the lives others lead.
Maria Delzi

Children 'beheaded and mutilated' in Central African Republic, says Unicef | Global dev... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...rican-republic-violence-unicef

shared by Maria Delzi on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The UN agency for children says attacks against children have reached new levels of viciousness in the Central African Republic (CAR), where fighting between Muslim Seleka rebels and Christian militias left more than 1,000 people dead and displaced an estimated 400,000 in Bangui, the capital, this month.
  • According to Unicef, at least at least two children have been beheaded, and one of them mutilated, in the violence that has gripped Bangui since early December
  • Unicef and its partners say they have verified the killings of at least 16 children, and injuries among 60, since the outbreak of communal violence in Bangui on 5 December. In November, the UN warned that the number of child soldiers in the former French colony had more than doubled to up to 6,000 as anti-balaka militias have sprung up to counterattacks by the Seleka.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Diabate said armed groups were accountable for taking specific measures to provide protection to children. These include: clear directives by those in positions of authority within armed forces and groups to halt violations against children, meaning that children must not be recruited into the fighting, nor targeted. Unicef also called for the immediate release of children associated with armed forces and groups, and their protection from reprisals. Transit centres set up for the release and reintegration of children must also be protected from attacks.
  • Some 370,000 people – almost half the population of Bangui – have been displaced to dozens of sites across the capital over the past three weeks. About 785,000 people have been internally displaced throughout the country since the outbreak of violence more than a year ago.
  • Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the medical charity, said on Monday that fighting, lynchings and violent attacks remained a daily occurrence in Bangui, and the situation in the city appeared to be out of control, despite the presence of international armed forces in the capital.
  • MSF said health facilities had been affected by the violence, hindering the provision of medical aid. On Sunday, a ministry of health ambulance was stopped and the staff were threatened with violence, preventing them from collecting the wounded. On the same day, armed men entered the Hôpital Communautaire with the intention of lynching patients, while health staff were threatened.
  • The UN launched an appeal for $152m last week to rapidly scale-up humanitarian operations over the next 100 days. The country has been plunged into chaos as its Christian majority seeks revenge against the Muslim rebels who seized power in a coup in March. Many Christian and Muslim civilians are armed, and the foreign troops brought in to try to rein in the violence have been sucked into the conflict and accused of taking sides.
  • The Chadians, part of the African Union force, are Muslim and are seen by the population as backing the Seleka rebels who toppled the president. But 1,600 French troops who were deployed in the first week of December are accused of backing the Christian majority, and their patrols have come under fire in Muslim neighbourhoods. Many say the bloodshed has little to do with religion as Muslims and Christians had long lived in peace. Instead, they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa's most weakly governed states.
jlessner

U.S. to Give Ukraine's Military an Additional $75 Million in Nonlethal Aid - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...an-separatists-in-ukraine.html

ukraine military aid russia US politics history policy

shared by jlessner on 12 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Wednesday that it would provide another $75 million in nonlethal aid to Ukraine’s military. It also imposed sanctions against a handful of pro-Russian separatists and others blamed for fomenting the civil war that has torn apart Ukraine’s eastern regions.
  • The new aid does not include the weapons that Ukraine has sought and that many administration officials and members of both parties in Congress have urged President Obama to provide. Instead, the United States will send more radios, first-aid kits, surveillance drones, countermortar radar systems and military ambulances.
  • The White House cited reports that Russia and its proxy fighters in Ukraine were not fully abiding by a cease-fire negotiated last month in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. It said Russian military personnel were still fighting alongside the separatists, additional weapons had been sent across the border, and monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had been blocked.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “We do continue to have concern about the commitment of the Russians and the Russian-backed separatists to live up to the commitments they made in Minsk,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. “That failure on their part only puts Russia at greater risk of facing additional costs.”
Grace Gannon

The Parasite Keeping Millions in Poverty - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Kenya health poverty education work

shared by Grace Gannon on 24 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Grace Gannon on 24 Oct 14
     
    According to Kenya's Ministry of Health, 1.4 million people are infested with jiggers, a debilitating foot parasite. Young children are most commonly affected by the parasite, making it difficult for them to attend school and rise above the poverty line. In response, a village ambulance has been created, basically a detachable bed that hooks to a motorbike.
sarahbalick

An Inmate Dies, and No One Is Punished - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...facility-inmate-brutality.html

inmate new york investigation

shared by sarahbalick on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • And they do. Inmates describe being ambushed by guards and beaten, taunted with racial slurs, and kept out of sight, in solitary confinement, until the injuries inflicted on them have healed enough to avoid arousing suspicion.
  • Leonard Strickland was a prisoner with schizophrenia who got into an argument with guards, and ended up dead.
  • In the inmates’ telling, the guards got away with murder, ganging up on Mr. Strickland and beating him so viciously that he could barely move. The guards deny this, saying they acted only in self-defense and did what was necessary to subdue an out-of-control prisoner.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Mr. Strickland is seen in handcuffs, barely conscious and being dragged along the floor by officers,
  • while a prison nurse standing close by does nothing. Even as he lies face down on the floor, near death, guards can be heard shouting, “Stop resisting.”
  • By the time an ambulance arrived, medical records described Mr. Strickland’s body as cold to the touch and covered in cuts and bruises, with blood flowing from his ears.
  • Mr. Strickland’s death was only briefly noted in local newspapers, and probably would have been forgotten by all but the officers and inmates. But the escape of two murderers from Clinton in June attracted extraordinary attention to the maximum-security prison, and details about its inner workings, long held secret, have started to reach outsiders.
  • The internal affairs unit of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has long been mired in dysfunction. Its former director of operations is awaiting trial on charges of sexually harassing several subordinates.
  • The dozen or so officers and medical personnel identified in the investigations either still work at Clinton or other state prisons, or were promoted or retired with full benefits. In the years since the Strickland case, several of them have again been accused of brutality by inmates.
  • The Times was able to piece together the story behind Mr. Strickland’s death by reviewing internal corrections department reports, log book entries and statements by the officers involved, along with the autopsy report and records by paramedics and emergency room doctor
  • Separately, six inmate witnesses were tracked down and interviewed at four prisons around the state.
runlai_jiang

Hawaii told to fix its alert system after false missile alarm - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-42682533

shared by runlai_jiang on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • The US state of Hawaii has been told it did not have "reasonable" safeguards in place to prevent the false missile alert that caused panic on Saturday.
  • Residents and visitors to Hawaii were shocked to receive the false alert of an incoming ballistic missile, sent to their mobile phones early on Saturday morning. Apologising afterwards, Hawaii's Governor David Ige said a member of staff had pressed the wrong button, releasing the alert which was also broadcast on TV and radio stations.
  • "False alerts undermine public confidence in the alerting system and thus reduce their effectiveness during real emergencies," he said.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • State officials said a "cancellation template" would be created to address the problem, the New York Times reported.
  • So Hawaii has reintroduced Cold War-era warning sirens. During a test last month, it was reported that 93% of them worked properly, although some could hardly be heard and 12 mistakenly played the ambulance siren. Media playback is unsupported on your device
anonymous

Roxana Hernandez: Anger over transgender migrant's death in US - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-44311420

US culture policy

shared by anonymous on 31 May 18 - No Cached
  • According to ICE, Ms Hernandez was "processed as an expedited removal" when she applied for admission at the San Ysidro port of entry in California on 9 May.
  • Immigrants' rights groups have condemned the US government after a transgender immigrant died in US custody while seeking asylum.
  • She died early in the morning of 25 May having been transferred to Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque by air ambulance.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The immigrants' rights groups are calling for dignified and humane treatment for all asylum seekers, medical care sensitive to the needs of transgender people and those with HIV, and the closure of all immigration detention centres.
  • Earlier this month, a 20-year-old indigenous Guatemalan woman, Gomez Gonzalez, was shot dead in Texas by a US border patrol officer who said a group of migrants rushed towards him.
anonymous

Ukraine blames Russia for shooting of journalist Arkady Babchenko - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-44299741

attack journalism Ukraine Russia crisis

shared by anonymous on 30 May 18 - No Cached
  • Babchenko, 41, was found bleeding at the entrance to his block of flats by his wife and died in an ambulance. He was reportedly shot several times in the back.Ukrainian lawmaker Anton Herashchenko said the journalist had gone out to buy some bread, and that the killer was waiting for him.
  • Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement: "We demand that the Ukrainian authorities make every effort to promptly investigate."
  • Kiev has in recent years seen a number of deadly attacks on high-profile figures, including journalists and politicians. Most of them were vocal critics of the Kremlin.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Another car bomb killed Ukrainian military intelligence officer Col Maxim Shapoval in June 2017 in what the Ukrainian authorities called a terrorist act. In March of the same year, former Russian MP Denis Voronenkov was shot dead outside a hotel in Kiev.
Javier E

A Beloved Bar Owner Was Skeptical About the Virus. Then He Took a Cruise. - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...virus-jjbubbles-joe-joyce.html

pandemic case trump skeptic

shared by Javier E on 19 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • On March 1, Joe Joyce and his wife, Jane, set sail for Spain on a cruise, flying first to Florida. His adult children — Kevin, Eddie and Kristen Mider — suggested that the impending doom of the coronavirus made this a bad idea. Joe Joyce was 74, a nonsmoker, healthy; four years after he opened his bar he stopped drinking completely. He didn’t see the problem.“He watched Fox, and believed it was under control,’’ Kristen told me.
  • on March 27, when Kristen got off the phone with her father, she called an ambulance. He was wheezing. His oxygen level turned out to be a dangerously low 70 percent. On April 9, he died of Covid-19. The following day, Artie Nelson, one of his longtime bartenders at JJ Bubbles, and also in his 70s, died of the virus as well.
  • the combination of being on a cruise ship — a proven petri dish for infections — and visiting a country with a full-blown outbreak is hard to ignore. But there was a way he might have avoided the trip, his daughter speculated. “If Trump had gone on TV with a mask on and said, ‘Hey this is serious,’ I don’t think he would have gone.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • When her father began to feel sick, he resisted getting tested. “He didn’t think that he could have it,” Kristen said, “because he wasn’t 100 percent confident that it was a thing.”
Javier E

The Coronavirus Is Teaching Us What It Means to Have Character - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...611209

character pandemic effects crisis culture

shared by Javier E on 07 May 20 - No Cached
  • Today the biggest, probably the most important, and almost by definition the least answerable question is what the coronavirus will do to our character.
  • for the most part, what is striking is the decency and fortitude of average citizens, their willingness to comply with onerous and suffocating restrictions, their willingness to help one another.
  • Now, however, we have a more thoughtful understanding of heroism. We know that it is also embodied in the nurse and the doctor, the police officer and the firefighter, the taxi driver and the grocery clerk, the neighbor who goes shopping for an elderly shut-in. In short, we see the heroism that is often latent in everyday life, and—the precious thing—we appreciate and celebrate it.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The United States has the misfortune of being led by a man utterly devoid of character,
  • But that only calls into higher relief the virtues of all the others—the mayors and the governors, the public-health officials and the ambulance drivers, the home manufacturers of masks and ventilators and, yes, the billionaire philanthropists.
  • Clever social scientists come up with ways to “nudge” people into behavior that they are certain is good for them. Predictive analytics, large data sets, and clever algorithms promise to be able to anticipate human desires and behaviors, and even control them.
  • One great seduction of modern times is the notion that human beings can control their environment and their destinies.
  • This belief has manifested itself in many ways.
  • Economists in the 1960s figured that they had discovered the secret of perpetual full production at limited unemployment rates; our legal system implicitly says that when an accident happens, it is somebody’s fault rather than, well, an accident.
  • It is by now a cliché that the post-COVID-19 world will be different.
  • At that point, the world changes. Human beings recognize that they are small, the universe is vast, and they are not in charge
  • the ancient Hebrews and Greeks in particular, understood very well the limits of human control of individual and collective destiny, and accepted them. Which is why so much of their writing and thought returned to the question of character—not because it protected them from life’s vicissitudes, but because it allowed them to survive them with head held high, with personality and integrity intact, no matter how great the suffering.
1 - 20 of 41 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page