Eideard

A retired GP who has been told she will not be charged over allegations she advised a seriously ill woman on how to die has said she has “no regrets” but has admitted she feared the police investigation would put her in “deep, deep trouble”.

Dr Libby Wilson, 84, was the first person to be arrested in connection with an assisted suicide after new guidelines on euthanasia were published by Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions. She allegedly spoke to Cari Loder, 48, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, twice on the telephone in the days before she took her own life last year.

Speaking yesterday after the case against her was dropped, Dr Wilson, the founder of Friends At The End (Fate) lobby group, pledged to carry on helping people end their lives. “I have no regrets over what I did and I would do the same thing again.

“I don’t wish to become a martyr to the cause and realise people may try to get me into more trouble. I will have to live with that. I have a conscience and it is perfectly clear.

“My sons and daughters were far more worried than I was. I just could not see how they could put an 84-year-old great grandmother in jail for 14 years for twice speaking to someone on the telephone.

“If I was some little flower it could have finished me off but, thankfully, I’m not and I didn’t lose too much sleep. My main worry was if the police had started going in to Fate. I did think about getting rid of my computer hard drive as it was full of documentation about other cases…

“My main concern is that pro-life campaigners call pretending to be people looking for advice on how to kill themselves. These people may try to trap me and start a new case. That’s a risk I will just have to take.

“I have campaigned for more than 30 years for assisted suicide to be legalised and I will continue to do so.”

Bravo! A brave doctor, a doctor with a conscience and more courage than any ten politicians or priests.

Dozens of Valley moms converged Saturday on a McDonald’s in Phoenix to breastfeed their infants in protest of a woman who was asked to leave the establishment for doing the same.

An assistant manager of the McDonald’s at 51st Avenue and Cactus Road asked Clarissa Bradford and her children to leave when Bradford began nursing her 6-month-old child on Aug. 11.

Although the restaurant this week issued an apology saying it would never happen again, demonstrators were upset at public reaction to the story and wanted to respond to critics who say mothers shouldn’t breastfeed in public…

A restaurant employee stood outside the entrance, shooing members of the media away. Starchman and another woman, Alisa Ilardo, came out to speak with reporters. They estimated there were about 100 people in the restaurant at the time, mostly mothers with infant children.

There was no sign of resistance from restaurant employees, Starchman said, characterizing the atmosphere as relaxed with most of the women using the time to have casual conversation. Once inside, a few of them even bought food, she said.

Alisa Ilardo said the group was not upset with McDonald’s, but they wanted to make a statement.

“It was just someone’s bad judgment, but we need to keep people from treating moms like this,” she said.

Right on!

Elderly people who are very worried about falling are more likely to have a fall – even if they are in reasonable health and their physical risk of falling seems low, new research has found. In contrast, those with a higher physical risk, but who were unconcerned about falling, were actually less likely to fall…

Doctors have spent a lot of time looking at the physical factors that affect risk of falling – for example, people’s eyesight, balance, muscle strength, and the type of medication they take. But it’s been recognised for some time that fear of falling is closely associated with likelihood of having a fall.

What doctors didn’t know was whether fear of falling was simply a rational response to the person’s actual, physical risk. Also, if people were encouraged to be less fearful of falling, would that actually increase their risk of a fall, by allowing them to take more risks..?

About one third of the people in the study had either an overly optimistic or overly pessimistic view of their chances of having a fall, compared with their assessed physical risk.

The people who had a low physical risk, but were very fearful of falling, were much more likely to have a fall than the people with the same level of physical risk, but a low fear of falling.

Perhaps surprisingly, the people who had a high risk on the physical assessment, but who weren’t worried about falling, were much less likely to fall, compared with people with both a high risk and a high fear of falling.

The factors that seemed to increase people’s fear of falls were symptoms of depression, self-perceived poor health, a poorer quality of life, and symptoms of anxiety. People with a lower fear of falling were more likely to have an active lifestyle, less likely to take medicine that could affect their balance, had a higher quality of life, and rated their overall health as good…

However, we can’t be sure that it was simply fear that made the difference to people’s likelihood of falling. It could be that fear was related to something not measured in the study, which affected falls risk. The study doesn’t explain why fear of falling is linked to a higher risk of falling.

This article actually makes me smile. I had a strong fear of falling when I was a kid; but, ended up doing a fair bit of high altitude hill-walking and rough climbing. Reason and acquired skills overcame the fear. Mostly.

Yes, I carry a cane – though I use it only a small percentage of the time. I find it useful to get me standing more erect when setting out for one of my dog walks along the fence line. I grabbed this article because I thought it may have moved forward to greater understanding of the phenomenon. At best, it’s confirmation. A start.

Life inside an ideological cave

The young lovers didn’t stand a chance.

In a desolate field on the edge of their village in northern Afghanistan, hundreds of men, stones in hand, closed in to carry out the mullah’s death sentence, handed down after the pair eloped against the wishes of their families.

“It was an act of great cruelty,” said Mutasem Khan, an uncle of Abdul Qayuum, the 28-year-old man who was stoned to death this month in Kunduz province along with the village woman he had wooed, identified only as 19-year-old Siddiqa…

Even as hard-line village mullahs loosely aligned with the Taliban seek a return to the harshest forms of physical punishment permitted under Sharia, or Islamic law, the Taliban leadership has been trying to rally public support by painting itself as a defender of civilian lives.

In a highly unusual move, the Taliban this month even offered to create and participate in a joint commission with the Western military, the United Nations and the Afghan government to investigate the deaths and injuries of noncombatants. That offer came soon after the insurgents issued a “code of conduct” that discouraged the killings of civilians…

For countries contributing troops to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force, such a settlement could set the stage for an exit from what has become an increasingly unpopular war. But the West says, echoed by the government of President Hamid Karzai, that negotiations can take place only with insurgents who promise to renounce violence and respect Afghanistan’s Constitution and legal system, which call at least in theory for due process under the law.

At the village level, however, matters of crime and punishment almost always encompass family honor and deeply held tribal traditions.

Summary justice, governing everything from land disputes to adultery, was a feature of daily life long before the Taliban rose to power in the 1990s and will probably remain part of the landscape regardless of how long the Western military presence lasts.

Someone remind me: Which group of Stone Age ideologues is on “our” side?

Why are we there? And who invited us to stay forever?

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Gay marriage is not going away as a highly emotional, contested issue. Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that bans same-sex marriage, has seen to that, as it winds its way through the federal courts.

But perhaps the public has reached a turning point.

A CNN poll this month found that a narrow majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage — the first poll to find majority support. Other poll results did not go that far, but still, on average, showed that support for gay marriage had risen to 45 percent or more (with the rest either opposed or undecided).

That’s a big change from 1996, when Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. At that time, only 25 percent of Americans said that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry, according to an average of national polls.

The more important turning points in public opinion, however, may be occurring at the state level, especially if states continue to control who can get married.

According to our research, as recently as 2004, same-sex marriage did not have majority support in any state. By 2008, three states had crossed the 50 percent line. *

Today, 17 states are over that line (more if you consider the CNN estimate correct that just over 50 percent of the country supports gay marriage).

These are numbers comparable to what happened in previous civil rights struggles in our nation’s history. Suffrage for women, equal opportunity before the law for Black Americans, advanced at similar rates.

Gandhi’s dicho about getting back ahead of the people “for I am supposed to be their leader” is as true as ever in the heart of the “progressive” Obama administration.

Why are Americans getting fatter and fatter? The simple explanation is that we eat too much junk food and spend too much time in front of screens — be they television, phone or computer — to burn off all those empty calories.

One handy prescription for healthier lives is behavior modification. If people only ate more fresh produce. (Thank you, Michael Pollan.) If only children exercised more. (Ditto, Michelle Obama.)

Unfortunately, behavior changes won’t work on their own without seismic societal shifts, health experts say, because eating too much and exercising too little are merely symptoms of a much larger malady. The real problem is a landscape littered with inexpensive fast-food meals; saturation advertising for fatty, sugary products; inner cities that lack supermarkets; and unhealthy, high-stress workplaces.

In other words: it’s the environment, stupid.

“Everyone knows that you shouldn’t eat junk food and you should exercise,” says Kelly D. Brownell, the director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. “But the environment makes it so difficult that fewer people can do these things, and then you have a public health catastrophe.”

Dr. Brownell, who has a doctorate in psychology, is among a number of leading researchers who are proposing large-scale changes to food pricing, advertising and availability, all in the hope of creating an environment conducive to healthier diet and exercise choices…

So what kind of disruptive changes might help nudge Americans into healthier routines? Equalizing food pricing, for one.

Fast-food restaurants can charge lower prices for value meals of hamburgers and French fries than for salad because the government subsidizes the corn and soybeans used for animal feed and vegetable oil, says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill…

RTFA. More depth and detail in the article.

As some of us have learned to walk away from other leftovers from our primitive past, we have the capacity to reason and decide upon what we eat no matter the source.

An Orange County man has been arrested, accused of ejaculating into his female co-worker’s water bottle on two separate occasions.

Michael Kevin Lallana, 31, of Fullerton, is charged with two misdemeanor counts each of releasing an offensive material in a public place and assault, with sentencing allegations for committing a crime for sexual gratification…

The incident happened on January 14, 2010, at the Northwestern Mutual Mortgage Company in Newport Beach, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

Investigators say Lallana entered the victim’s office and deposited his semen into a water bottle that was on his co-worker’s desk. The defendant is accused of leaving the semen-filled water bottle on the victim’s desk which she drank when she returned to her office.

The unidentified victim, who was unaware of the bottle’s contents, drank the contaminated water. She threw it away after feeling sick, investigators say.

Three months later, the victim and six other employees, including the defendant, were transferred to the Northwestern Mutual Mortgage Company’s Orange branch. That’s where a second incident occurred, according to officials.

On April 9, 2010, Lallana is accused of assaulting the same victim by depositing his ejaculation into another water bottle that the victim left on her desk. The victim took a sip from the bottle, then felt sick. She decided to send the specimen to a private lab to be tested.

The lab contacted her and told her the water bottle contained semen, police said. And – she then notified the Orange Police Department.

DNA tests confirmed the semen belonged to Lallana.

Har! Wonder if he can spell D-N-A?

A German bank robber led his pursuers straight to him after taunting police in an email over their efforts to catch him. Authorities in the southern city of Wuerzburg said on Wednesday the 19-year-old sent emails to police and two newspapers to point out factual errors in the report of his bank raid in the town of Roettingen a week ago.

According to daily Bild, he mocked the police for getting his age, height and accent wrong then pointed out he escaped in a car, not on foot.

“His game of cat and mouse went all wrong,” a Wuerzburg police spokesman said.

Police traced his email and arrested him in a gambling hall in Hamburg just a few hours later.

“He was completely shocked,” the spokesman said.

Har!

A 10-year-old boy, who has been investigated numerous times by Seattle police since he was 8, has been charged in connection with a botched robbery aboard a Metro bus and an unrelated theft of a bicycle in June.

The boy and his two half-brothers, ages 12 and 14, were charged in King County Superior Court with first-degree attempted robbery in connection with Tuesday’s incident aboard the bus, in which the younger boy accidentally shot himself in the arm during a scuffle. The 10-year-old also was charged with second-degree robbery and intimidating a witness in connection with the theft of a bicycle June 24 in downtown Seattle.

The felony charges were filed one day after the three boys appeared in juvenile court and were ordered to remain in custody at least until hearings scheduled for next week…

Over the past two years, the 10-year-old has been investigated 13 times for crimes that include theft, robbery with assault and robberies with a weapon, according to police. During that period, six cases have been referred to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for potential criminal charges, but Friday marked the first time charges were filed against the boy.

Police say the three boys belong to the Down With The Crew gang in Seattle’s Rainier Valley…

Details of the 10-year-old’s remaining five cases referred to prosecutors have not been released by authorities. Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said one theft case was sent back to Seattle police for further investigation and the four additional cases were found to have “insufficient evidence” and were not filed in court.

Though the boy has been charged for the incident on the bus, there will be a special hearing to determine whether he will stand trial in that case as well as for the June robbery. According to state law, children between the ages of 9 and 11 “are presumed to be incapable of committing crime” unless a judge determines the youth has the “sufficient capacity to understand the act or neglect, and to know that it was wrong.”

Phew! Anyone for a remake of the Bad Seed?

Bush’s bubba Bremer with his Blackwater bodyguards
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The private security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide, long plagued by accusations of impropriety, has reached an agreement with the State Department for the company to pay $42 million in fines for hundreds of violations of United States export control regulations.

The violations included illegal weapons exports to Afghanistan, making unauthorized proposals to train troops in south Sudan and providing sniper training for Taiwanese police officers, according to company and government officials familiar with the deal.

The settlement, which has not yet been publicly announced, follows lengthy talks between Blackwater, now called Xe Services, and the State Department that dealt with the violations as an administrative matter, allowing the firm to avoid criminal charges.

Don’t slap their wrist too hard. The Obama administration continues to employ these gangsters.

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