Jana Duggar, the sister of former reality television star Josh Duggar who was recently convicted in a separate criminal case, has been charged with a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, Arkansas court records showed Friday.

Jana Duggar, 31, pleaded not guilty through an attorney on Sept. 23, the court docket shows. The alleged violation happened Sept. 9, it states. A trial by judge is scheduled for Jan. 10.

The attorney listed on the docket as Jana Duggar's counsel did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did an associate. Representatives for the Duggar family did not immediately respond, either.

Details of the case were sealed.

In a 2016 opinion that predates the allegation, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said details of a "child maltreatment investigation" can be withheld from the public in the interest of protecting the minor involved.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jana-duggar-josh-duggars-sister-charged-endangering-minor-rcna8434

Calif. medical director says anti-vaccine activists confronted her in parking garage, flew drone over home

The president of California’s medical board, which issues medical licenses and disciplines doctors, says a group of anti-vaccine activists stalked her at home and followed her to her office — where four men confronted her in a dark parking garage in what she described as a terrifying experience.

Kristina Lawson, a former mayor of Walnut Creek who was appointed to the board by former Gov. Jerry Brown, said in social media on Wednesday she grew concerned Monday after she noticed the people in a white SUV parked near her home and saw someone flying a drone over her house.

“They watched my daughter drive herself to school and watched me walk out of my house, get in my car, and take my two kids to school,” she wrote in a Tweet.

The white SUV then followed her to work and parked “head-to-head” with her car in a parking garage, she said. Lawson said that when she left the office building and entered the parking garage later that evening, four men jumped out of the SUV with cameras and recording equipment and confronted her.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-medical-director-says-anti-vaccine-activists-confronted-par-rcna8396
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Stalking is criminal behavior.

The Navy has reported a second case of petroleum contamination in a drinking water source at its Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam site in Hawaii, raising concerns from health officials.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Hawaii Department of Health said the Navy had identified diesel fuel levels more than double the department's limits for drinking water at the Aiea Halawa Shaft.

The shaft is one of three ground water sources providing drinking water to the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam water system, which includes water distributed to military families.

“The level of this contaminant poses a public health threat, and is considered unsafe to drink,” Kathleen Ho, deputy director for environmental health, said in a statement.

Ho said the development was "concerning — especially as the cause of the petroleum release into the Navy’s water system remains unknown.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/navy-reports-petroleum-contamination-second-drinking-water-source-hawa-rcna8168

It had been decades since Sarah Smalls and her husband raised their only son. So Smalls, a grandmother in Virginia, was a bit rusty when she took in her three grandchildren, a 2-year-old girl and, later, the girl’s 4- and 6-year-old brothers.

Smalls’ son was incarcerated, and the children’s mother was unable to care for them, so Smalls knew she needed to step up. She gave up her dream of retiring to the Caribbean and borrowed from her 401(k) account to raise the children with her husband, who retired to help.

“It was extremely difficult,” said Smalls, 73. “We had not planned to have grandchildren living with us. Getting up in the morning, fixing bottles, going off to work — normally I’d get into bed by 1 a.m. and would be up at 6 a.m. to do it all over. It was hard to imagine getting two more children.” The children are now 17, 18 and 21.

“I was looking for any kind of resources for grandparents raising children, and there weren’t many back then,” she said. “The quality and level of support a family can receive depends on ... a caregiver’s legal relationship with the child. So if you’re an informal caregiver who didn’t go through child protective services, there are even less resources for you.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-children-are-raised-relatives-resources-are-hard-find-rcna8119
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Until very recently, kinship families were extremely common among all races. One of my great-grandmothers was raised by family after both her parents died in a typhoid epidemic.

Two juveniles have been arrested in a drive-by shooting at a Kentucky school bus stop that killed a 16-year-old boy, officials announced Thursday.

Tyree Smith was fatally shot while waiting at a school bus stop in the Russell neighborhood of Louisville around 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 22 when a vehicle drove by and gunshots were fired.

Smith was taken to a hospital where he died. Two other students also waiting for the bus were injured in the shooting, police said.

The suspects, whose names were not released, were arrested Wednesday on multiple charges including complicity to murder and complicity to first-degree assault, the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department announced in a press conference.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-juveniles-arrested-kentucky-school-bus-stop-shooting-killed-16-yea-rcna8216
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IMNSHO, juveniles who commit murder should have their names publicized as soon as they appear in court.

You are walking up a staircase that winds up to the top of a tall square tower. It ascends one side, then the next, then the next – and then suddenly you are right back where you started. This is the kind of problem people who are trapped in the geometrically impossible, yet still strangely plausible, worlds of MC Escher have to deal with all the time. In his mind-boggling creations, dimensions collide and normality dissolves. Looking into his pictures is like standing on the very edge of a cliff – and being right down at the bottom at the same time.

The Dutchman’s illusions have been famous and beloved since the 1950s, when spaced-out fans first started claiming to see hemp plants hidden in his art. And now we have Kaleidocycles, a Taschen book about the artist featuring paper puzzle kits that allow you to actually build his paradoxical structures at home, unlikely as that may seem. The tome has just been reissued in time for Christmas and the 50th anniversary of his death next year. His work does seem perfect for the festive season, given it’s all fun and games. Or at least that’s how it seems, initially.

Escher’s visionary flair did not just confine itself to art: he also intruded into the world of science. His profound yet impossible perspectives seem to prophesy the greatest tricks of virtual reality. Yet Maurits Cornelis Escher – born in Leeuwarden, a city north of Amsterdam, in 1898 – showed absolutely no aptitude for any academic subject at school. His father was a hydraulic engineer – an important job in a country with so much land reclaimed from the sea. Although he despaired of his son, he supported young Maurits in his studies at art college in Haarlem, and in his travels around southern Europe, where he spent years developing his style.

In the 1920s, Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement were taking Dutch art into pure abstraction. Escher, meanwhile, was in Italy – using traditional printmaking skills to depict timeless cities on picturesque hilltops. These designs would become the building blocks of his deceiving universe. A thickly inked engraving of St Peter’s that he made in 1935 takes a spectacular, god’s-eye view of the Vatican basilica’s vast interior from up inside the dome. We see tiny people on the floor far below, as columns plummet down towards them in rushing, scary perspective.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/dec/09/mick-jagger-explaining-cosmos-secret-life-mc-escher-impossible-worlds-stones

Last year, with little warning, a new Amazon delivery station brought the rumble of semi-trailer trucks and delivery vans to Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood.

The warehouse, located within 1,500 feet of five schools, is in a residential area where more than half the people within a mile have low incomes and nearly 90% are Hispanic.

The neighborhood is one of hundreds across the US where Amazon’s dramatic expansion has set in motion huge commercial operations. Residents near the new warehouses say they face increased air pollution from trucks and vans, more dangerous streets for kids walking or biking and other quality-of-life issues such as clogged traffic and near-constant noise.

Like Gage Park, the majority of these neighborhoods are home to a greater number of residents of color and people with low-incomes than the typical neighborhood in the same urban area, according to a Consumer Reports (CR) investigation.

José Mendez, who has lived in Gage Park for 18 years, says his 5am commute now involves battling semis for space on a nearby residential street. His wife has called Amazon to complain, but the trucks still come past.

Uriel Estrada, a college student who lives with his family a few blocks from the warehouse, says having Amazon in the neighborhood isn’t all bad – packages arrive much faster than before. Still, he says, the noise and traffic are distracting. “In my house, you can feel it shake because there’s a bunch of trucks passing by,” he says.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/09/when-amazon-expands-these-communities-pay-the-price

The latest mutation of the coronavirus, omicron, is making headlines across the nation. But the previous severe mutation, delta, is responsible for the soaring number of infections and hospitalizations across the nation.

It's too soon to say what the future holds for omicron. But delta is the present, it is everywhere and it is a big problem.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, says omicron, first discovered in South Africa last month, "almost certainly is not more severe" than delta.

"There is some suggestion that it might even be less severe," Fauci told Agence France-Presse this week. "When you look at some of the cohorts that are being followed in South Africa, the ratio between the number of infections and the number of hospitalizations seems to be less than with delta."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/09/covid-cases-vaccinations-hospitalizations-deaths/6441515001/

A student shot in the neck during the Oxford High School shooting and her family have filed a lawsuit against the school district, claiming school officials did not do enough to protect its students.

The federal suit on behalf of Riley Franz, 17, and her family is seeking $100 million. Attorney Geoffrey Fieger said in a news release that he intends to file two suits on Thursday morning.

Oxford Community Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday morning.

Riley and her younger sister Bella, also named in the suit, are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the claim. Bella "narrowly escaped the bullets" and watched her sister get shot.

The suit follows one of the deadliest school shootings in the United States since 2018. Fifteen-year-old Ethan Crumbley is charged with tearing through Oxford High School with a handgun on Nov. 30, killing four students and wounding seven others in the school, including a teacher. Crumbley is in the Oakland County Jail.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/12/09/oxford-high-shooting-lawsuit-riley-franz-family-school-district/6445588001/
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They need to sue the asses off the parents, too. Quite telling who the parents have retained as an attorney (holding nose).

Seventh District Attorney General Dave Clark said three juveniles are now charged with terrorism after making social media threats toward Oak Ridge High School in two separate hoaxes this week.

The Oak Ridge Police Department said two of the students were connected to a social media shooting threat made Monday that caused Oak Ridge High School to go on lockdown. A third student was responsible for a separate threat to the high school made Tuesday night, according to ORPD.

"We are concerned to see that two such incidents have occurred in the same week," Clark said.

Authorities are not identifying the three because they are juveniles, but Clark said all three were taken to the Knox County Juvenile Detention Center Wednesday afternoon and are being charged in Juvenile Court with terrorism, threat of mass violence on school property and false reporting. Two of the juveniles are also being charged with conspiracy.

"The message should be loud and clear to adults and juveniles alike that making threats over social media or in any way that are directed at our schools, children or staff will not be tolerated," Clark said. "This is a very serious matter and the law enforcement community and the judicial system in Anderson County will respond accordingly."

https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/oak-ridge-anderson/oak-ridge-high-school-on-level-3-lockdown-due-to-shooting-threat-on-social-media-in-oak-ridge-tennessee/51-7813f9d1-f158-42f7-bc89-12979ed37496
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That's it. Get tough of the little bastards.