Monday, August 31, 2020

The following is the third edition of a monthly series chronicling the 2020 United States presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

This month’s spotlight on the campaign trail includes interviews with the vice presidential nominees of the American Solidarity Party, the Bread and Roses Party, and the Unity Party of America.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

An Oklahoma police officer is on paid administrative leave, following an altercation with ambulance personnel while they were transporting a patient to the hospital. Trooper Daniel Martin, a member of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP), was caught on video by his police vehicle’s dashboard-camera in a physical struggle with paramedic Maurice White, Jr. after Martin pulled the ambulance over. Martin had previously passed the ambulance while en route to another call, but came back and pulled over the ambulance. The incident occurred on May 24, and footage from the police dash-cam was released following a tort claim filed by paramedic White.

It has also been suggested that the previous call had in-fact been to pick up his wife from a police station who was then present in the car during the incident between Martin and the ambulance.

Footage by the OHP released Friday shows the ambulance personnel repeatedly informing Trooper Martin that they have a patient in the back of the ambulance that they are in the midst of transporting to the hospital. Martin yells at the ambulance driver for making what he claims was an obscene gesture – the ambulance driver asserts he raised both hands signalling confusion at the police officer’s actions. Trooper Martin can be heard telling the ambulance driver “I’m going to give you a ticket for failure to yield, and when I go by you saying ‘What’s going on?’ you don’t need to give me no hand gestures now, I ain’t going to put up with that [expletive], do you understand me?”

The video from the police dash-cam is eight minutes long, and paramedic White can be seen twice being pushed up against his ambulance by Trooper Martin. In one instance, Martin shoves White up against the ambulance while gripping his neck tightly with his other hand. In a written statement, paramedic White described the hold placed on him by the Trooper, stating “he engaged my trachea in a claw-like grip digging his nail into my neck while partially shutting off my air supply.”

The sister of the patient in the ambulance, Clara Harper, was following the ambulance and witnessed the incident. Harper later viewed the footage from the police dash-cam, and she stated to Tulsa World paramedic White “never once became aggressive to that trooper.” She asserted that “He did nothing wrong.” After the ambulance was allowed to continue transporting the patient to the hospital, Harper got into the ambulance to be with her sister. “She was scared, and I was trying to calm her down and telling her everything was going to be all right,” said Harper.

Paramedic White was interviewed by KOKI-TV, and recounted his thoughts as the incident was taking place. He stated his main concern was for his ambulance patient: “It was surrealistic because I’ve never had such an experience. My biggest concern was for the patient. If there’s any nightmare from this, it’s because of what that mother, that patient, had to go through.” White’s attorney told KOKI-TV that if White deemed the arrest to be unlawful, he had the right to resist it. White is a paramedic for Creek Nation Emergency Medical Services in Oklahoma. He told FOX News he was surprised at the actions of the police trooper. “He’s taken an oath, just as I have, to protect and serve. I could not believe that this was happening,” said White.

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety decided to release the police dash-cam video publicly after amateur video of the incident was posted to the video-sharing website YouTube. Captain Chris West, spokesman for the OHP, explained why the video was not released earlier. “We’ve been well aware of the fact that this incident has drawn enormous attention, but made the decision to protect the integrity of the investigation, any and all relevant evidence, as well as the rights of the department employees,” said West. Prior to the release of the dash-cam video, a relative of the patient had posted video of the incident to YouTube. The son of the ambulance patient can be seen in a video stating to the camera “Highway patrolman pulled over my mom’s ambulance because he’s mad we didn’t pull over, and he tried to arrest … the EMT from taking my mother to the hospital.”

Richard O’Carroll, the lawyer for paramedic White, said that Trooper Martin abused his authority as a police officer. “Everything on this needs to relate back to why are we here? One man is there protecting a patient and one man is there abusing his authority and throwing his weight around,” said O’Carroll. White’s attorney filed a tort claim on behalf of his client in order to get the video of the police vehicle’s dash-cam released. Trooper Martin’s lawyer says he did not realize a patient was in the ambulance at the time of the incident.

O’Carroll explained the decision of paramedic White not to use sirens while transporting his patient to the hospital: “There was a reason he wasn’t running sirens. There was a suggestion of chest pains and a heart condition and sirens aggravate these conditions by increasing the blood pressure.” However the attorney for Trooper Martin, Gary James, said that the ambulance was not exempt from regulations because it did not have its sirens on. “If they’re not running their sirens or lights, they don’t get afforded any emergency vehicle exemptions,” said James. The OHP chief is handling an internal review into the incident. As of June 1, Trooper Martin has been on paid administrative leave.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

According to a new study, US girls are reaching puberty earlier than ever, a trend that raises some health concerns. The study, which was conducted in New York’s East Harlem, the Cincinnati metropolitan area, and the San Francisco Bay area, showed that by age eight, 27% of girls had begun puberty and showed breast development. By age seven, 15% of girls were developing breasts.

There were differences among races. By age 7, 10.4% of white girls had reached puberty, up from 5% in a 1997 study. In contrast, 23.4% of African-Americans and 14.9% of Hispanics had reached puberty. Also, at age 8, 18.3% of whites, 42.9% of blacks and 30.9% of Hispanics had reached puberty.

Girls who reach puberty earlier have a higher chance of engaging in early sexual activity. The study examined 1,239 girls aged between six and eight.

Though the study did not address why US girls were reaching breast development earlier, it found that heavier girls reached puberty earlier. Marcia Herman-Giddens of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has said that the earlier puberty could be related to the rising obesity rate among US citizens. Currently, a third of US children are overweight or obese. Scientists and researchers are also worried about chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA) and atrazine that could disrupt growth hormones. The chemical industry says that these chemicals are safe and are harmless to humans.

Herman-Giddens also said that it can be confusing to hit puberty at a young age. Girls reaching puberty at a younger age are more likely to attempt suicide. Also, earlier puberty can cause low self-esteem and depression and at adulthood, girls who reached puberty earlier are more likely to have breast cancer and endometrial cancer.

A compilation of brief news reports for Tuesday, April 17, 2007.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Children from single-parent homes are much more likely to be sexually abused – a study carried out at University of Pennsylvania‘s School of Medicine suggests.

Previous studies have found that children being raised in single-parent homes are at greater health and other kinds of risks. The new study shows that these risks include higher risk of childhood sexual abuse. This especially concerns low-income one-parent households.

Dr. William C. Holmes, MD, MSCE, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania says that the problem involves psychological and emotional aspects.

?hildren from one-parent homes do need more communication with their moms or dads. However, the parents are often absent from the home, being busy working to provide their children with basic necessities. The children have to find someone who would be a parent-substitute with whom to communicate and to share experiences. Molesters take advantage of this situation and become friends to these emotionally-needy children.

Holmes says that low-income single-parent households are at greater risk due to the type of childcare facilities available to children from such families. Unfortunately, these are not facilities with thorough oversight of who is a caregiver of a child.

According to Holmes, studies like this one suggest that there should be some interventions to help single parents and their children, for instance through funding of better childcare facilities.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Officials say the death toll in the recent earthquake in China has reached almost 15,000. The news comes as 2,000 of the nation’s troops were dispatched to the Zipingku Dam to repair “extremely dangerous” cracks in the structure, which is upriver from Dujiangyan City, already severely hit by the disaster.

It is feared the toll will rise much further as 60,000 people are missing after the 7.9 magnitude quake in Sichuan left entire towns “razed to the ground” with no buildings standing, according to officials in the area. At one destroyed school 178 children were found dead after the building collapsed while they slept inside it. A second school at Wudu, twenty miles from the epicentre behind the White Cloud Mountain, has 130 dead children and 150 more still buried and feared dead.

Zipingku Dam has had some water drained to ease the pressure on it. According to the Ministry of Water Resources’ website “If Zipingpu develops a serious safety problem, it could bring disaster to Dujiangyan city downstream.” Numerous other dams are also affected, including several others near Dujiangyan. In addition, experts from France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety say it cannot yet be ruled out that a number of nuclear power facilities in the area have been affected.

50,000 troops have been brought to the area to provide assistance. However, emergency response is being made difficult by continuing poor weather and landslides that have cut off Wenchuan county. In Mianyang alone, one of the worst-hit cities, some 19,000 people are thought to be buried under rubble and the first rescuers to reach the epicenter state tens of thousands may be dead there as well. The Wenchuan town of Yingxiu has only 2,300 confirmed survivors from a 12,000-strong population. Some aid in the form of food, water and medicine has arrived by helicopter, but rotorcraft operations are very dangerous due to ongoing poor weather. Trucks loaded with noodles and biscuits were raided by crowds before the aid could be properly handed out. The People’s Liberation Army intends to send in paratroopers.

“They had better set up a distribution system, or we will be stealing what we can,” one survivor promised.

Meanwhile, accusations of blame over the scale of the effects have been leveled at construction companies and local authorities. The allegations say that the firms used substandard techniques and materials when building many projects, and corrupt local authorities deliberately ignored the problem. Some people have nicknamed the resulting structures “tofu buildings”, an allusion to the fact that they are alleged to be ‘as soft as tofu‘. “It’s nothing but corruption – they must have used sub-standard cement and steel,” said rescuer Dr Tian, who withheld his second name from journalists. It is also alleged that both local residents and international scientific organisations were ignored when they warned of a large impending earthquake.

As a mark of respect, the Olympic torch relay will be scaled back in response to the earthquake.