Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalPetito Tipsters Lead Searchers to Missing Man's Body
A search-and-rescue team in Wyoming has credited the intense coverage of the Gabby Petito case with helping to bring the search for another missing person to an end.
Robert Lowery, a 46-year-old dad of two, was last spotted on Aug. 20 holding a black duffel bag and a tent in Bridger-Teton National Forest—the same location where Petito’s remains were discovered earlier this month. Teton County Search and Rescue confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that a body matching Lowery’s description has been recovered.
An investigation to find out what happened to Lowery has been ongoing since he vanished, but the rescue team said new tips started to come in following the media frenzy surrounding Petito’s disappearance in the same area. The two cases are only connected by their shared location.
“The widespread news coverage of the Gabby Petito search helped bring light to Lowery’s case, and resulted in at least two members of the public calling local authorities this past weekend with new information about his possible last seen point,” said Teton County Search and Rescue.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gabby-petito-tipsters-lead-searchers-to-apparent-discovery-of-robert-lowerys-body-in-same-forest?ref=home
____________________________________________________________________
A case of "all things working together for good". 
How a War Over Weed and Water Led to a Deadly Police Shooting
Mount Shasta Vista was burning and Soobleej Kaub Hawj needed to get his family out. It was June 28 and a massive blaze known as the Lava Fire, sparked by lightning, was tearing through the rural Northern California neighborhood, scorching acre after acre of high desert scrubland, along with the ramshackle homes of farmers and greenhouses full of marijuana plants.
The trip to Mount Shasta Vista, an unincorporated subdivision in Siskiyou County, near the old gold-mining town of Yreka, was supposed to be a summer getaway for the 35-year-old Hawj, his wife, Lee, and their three kids. They’d driven up from their home in Kansas City, Kansas, to visit friends and relatives in the area’s ethnic Hmong community. But now with flames encroaching and smoke billowing in the night sky, Hawj and his family were forced to flee for their lives.
Hawj drove a white GMC pickup with his dog Silk riding shotgun. Lee and the kids—two daughters and a son, ages 7, 14, and 16—trailed in a separate car.
A few minutes after 8:40 p.m., Hawj and his family hit a police checkpoint on the highway at one of the entrances to Mount Shasta Vista, which was under an evacuation order.
It’s still unclear exactly what happened next, but according to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, Hawj tried to make a turn that would have taken him through the evacuation zone. Sheriff’s deputies, cops from a small town nearby, and state game agents blocked his route.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7eww8/how-a-war-over-weed-and-water-led-to-a-deadly-police-shooting
_________________________________________________________________
American horror story
Latino community has highest vaccination rate in Knox Co. compared to any other demographic
Right now in Knox County -- Latino residents are currently leading the way in the fight against COVID-19 with the highest vaccine rate among any population group, according to the Knox County Health Department.
The rate is more than 60% -- higher than the rate of white residents, which as of Tuesday say at 44%.
So how did this community achieve this?
"Let's start this conversation, and not just be like, 'Go to these places,' and not really take care of it. I'm on the call. I'm on the phone, figuring out how are those events going," said Cristina Caceres, Community resources director Centro Hispano.
For Caceres -- starting the conversation means strong outreach through many methods. She said the higher vaccination rate has provided a moment of relief, but they're aware the work must continue.
"It makes me happy, it makes me really happy. Because when we started this process with COVID back in March, what we found was completely the opposite," said Liliana Burbano a public health planner at the Knox County Health Department.
https://www.wbir.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/kchd-latino-community-has-highest-vaccination-rate-in-knox-co-compared-to-any-other-demographic/51-89bcba7f-7b98-444a-849f-2e3c42e59d5c
_________________________________________________________________________
For all the talk about how minorities are unvaccinated, here's a success story.
Missouri hospital to give staff panic buttons to protect them from violent patients
A Missouri hospital will be equipping its staff with panic buttons to protect them from violent patients following a startling rise in assaults, administrators said.
Cox Medical Center Branson, located about 44 miles from Springfield, said it was implementing the added protection after violent assaults by patients tripled in the last year. According to hospital data, total assaults rose from 40 to 123 and total injuries climbed from 17 to 78.
Assaults leading to injury increased from 42.5 percent to 63 percent, according to officials.
“When Public Safety response is critical and it’s not possible to get to a phone, person panic buttons fill a critical void,” said Alan Butler, who oversees public safety efforts at CoxHealth’s six hospitals and more than 80 clinics.
“Personal Panic Buttons (PPBs) are one more tool in the battle to keep our staff safe and further demonstrate this organization’s commitment to maintaining a safe work and care environment.”
The hospital first began using panic buttons last year in certain areas at Cox South due to incidents of workplace violence. The hospital will now expand the program to hundreds of employees at Cox Medical Center Branson.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missouri-hospital-give-staff-panic-buttons-protect-them-violent-patients-n1280245
______________________________________________________________________
About damn time, I'd say. In my career I was hit, kicked, scratched, shoved, and spit on....and I didn't work in the ER or psych, where a majority of assaults take place. The best you could do was write up an incident report and go back to work. The hospital would always side with the patient.
Justin Chon's 'Blue Bayou' faces backlash after accusations of exploiting an adoptee's story
A new film about an adoptee facing deportation is getting pushback from some Asian American adoptee groups and advocates who say it exploits one community member’s trauma, and it has also raised questions over ethical filmmaking.
Many in the adoptee community have spoken out against “Blue Bayou,” a film by director Justin Chon, after Adam Crapser, a Korean adoptee who was deported in 2016, claimed in a statement last week that the movie appropriates his story without his consent. Crapser, perhaps the most high-profile case of adoptee deportation, also told NBC Asian America that he was never involved with the filmmaking process, even though many elements of his own story closely resembled plot points in the film.
Hundreds of advocates have since signed a petition, including members of Adoptees for Justice, a transnational advocacy nonprofit group that Crapser is involved in, calling for a boycott of the film. "Blue Bayou" highlights how many adoptees could face deportation because they have never undergone naturalization. Legislation passed in 2001 ensured that all adopted children and any new adoptees would automatically obtain citizenship. But those older than 18 when the law was enacted weren’t covered.
“People who have experienced difficult things deserve the dignity to tell their story when and if they’re ready," Crapser said in a statement. "When that is taken away — when personal traumas are forcefully misappropriated for other people’s purposes— it is hurtful. I ask Justin and his team to stop using other people’s trauma to support his Hollywood ambitions, and for my friends to speak the truth about this film."
Crapser said that there’s still a way to move forward, adding that he'd like Chon to issue an apology and work with Adoptees for Justice.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/justin-chon-s-blue-bayou-faces-backlash-after-accusations-exploiting-n1280255
_______________________________________________________________________________
There was some other recent thing like this, which I can't remember details about now. I get tired of people thinking something is about them and them alone, when there are probably many others with the same stories.
African Researchers Say They Face Bias In The World Of Science. Here's One Solution
Ambi Ahmad Adamu received five noes in a row.
Ambi, as he's known, is a 46-year-old biochemist who lives in Bauchi, Nigeria. He earned his Ph.D. at Ahmadu Bello University and now works there as a researcher, hoping to use his research to improve the lives of Nigerians.
One topic he's addressed is how to detoxify water that's polluted by chromium 6, a carcinogenic chemical commonly found in industrial waste. Detoxification methods in use are expensive or take their own toll on the environment.
To avoid these side effects, Ambi used a plant called Hibiscus sabdariffa, a species of Hibiscus native to parts of Africa and India and used to make a local drink in Nigeria called "sobo." When the plant is processed, waste matter is usually thrown out. Ambi and his team tried to extract antioxidants to use in water detoxification.
Despite the obstacles – he had to make a 5-hour drive from his home to Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria to conduct his research – he says he found success. In 15 minutes, the antioxidants from the Hibiscus waste reduced the concentration of chromium 6 in water by 72%. "Turning waste to wealth" is how Ambi describes the process.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/28/1016628282/african-researchers-say-they-face-bias-in-the-world-of-science-heres-one-solutio
___________________________________________________________________________
I've checked out the journal. It's open source and appears to be free online
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/scientific-african
Months-old mail piles up in Atlanta Veterans Affairs hospital basement
Veterans have complained for years that mail sent to the Atlanta VA Health Care System hospital often disappears, delaying or preventing medical treatment.
Two Veterans Affairs workers at the Decatur hospital discovered at least one reason that may have been happening: ten pallets of months-old mail sitting unopened in the warehouse basement.
Photos from one VA employee taken earlier this month and shared with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show postmarks dating back at least ten months. The pallets were stacked three-to-10 feet high with envelopes and parcels.
From the addresses on the mail, the worker could tell it was medical records waiting to be scanned into the system or documents that would allow payments to private doctors who provide services to veterans.
“Apparently everybody is working from home, and it’s just piling up and piling up,” said the worker, who did not have permission to talk to the media and asked not to be identified.
https://www.ajc.com/news/months-old-mail-piles-up-in-atlanta-veterans-affairs-hospital-basement/FMKJRDHTRFDYRDBKZ5CPW4BSVY/
__________________________________________________________________
It ain't just DeJoy!
Ex-U.S. Army Ranger faces extradition to Holland after military-style assassination
An ex-U.S. Army Ranger from Connecticut faces extradition to the Netherlands where authorities say he was part of a plot by former and active-duty American soldiers who hired themselves out as a professional hit squad and murdered a German businessman.
Jacob Mazeika grew up in Bristol and was living in New Haven when federal marshals picked him up in the spring at the request of the government of the Netherlands, which claims that Mazeika, with comrades from Iraq and Afghanistan, worked for a Swiss businessman trying to collect a commercial debt worth millions of dollars.
Much of the Dutch investigation, revealed by U.S. prosecutors in federal court filings, reads like a page out of a spy fiction novel: Ex-military specialists summoned from across the world. Plans made to track and neutralize the target. Escape by night train to Zurich. Payoff in euro. Dutch detectives crack the case using the European cellphone network to track killers crisscrossing European borders.
The Dutch say the Swiss businessman behind the murder plot is Lukas Fecker, a self-described mergers and acquisition specialist who buys failing businesses and claims to turn them around. The victim is Thomas Schwarz, a German who, since 2018, lived in Bergen in southwest Holland, a mile or so from the German border near Düsseldorf.
https://www.ajc.com/news/ex-us-army-ranger-faces-extradition-to-holland-in-military-style-assassination/PIQEUTVHEVDZJBL7JTOSQ5PIDE/
__________________________________________
It only gets weirder. Keep reading.
Your drawer full of old tech could have a new life -- or start a fire. Here's how to handle it.
If your home is anything like mine, there’s a forlorn drawer somewhere that’s full of old batteries, zip-ties, cables and gadgets you haven’t touched in years.
That stuff might look like junk, but don’t be fooled: Some of it is potential e-waste, and the last thing you should do is toss it in the trash.
Many of your old phones and tablets are packed with components containing rare metals that are difficult to find and pull out of the ground. Once those components wind up in the landfill, there’s no easy way to recover them, so the limited supply we already have shrinks even further. Other kinds of e-waste, such as rechargeable batteries, often contain chemicals that could pose problems for the environment or human health, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And gadgets that contain nonremovable batteries could start a fire if they, say, get crushed in a compactor.
The world generated 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste — comprising laptops, smartphones, electric toothbrushes, air conditioners and much more — in 2019, according to the Global E-Waste Statistics Partnership, an organization founded by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations University and others to track the growth of the problem. Less than a quarter of those castoff products were verifiably recycled. The rest, the report says, likely wound up being tossed into the trash or “exported as secondhand products or e-waste” to countries so they can decide on how to deal with it.
https://wapo.st/3ihr78R
When will Christians learn from the unending engagement cycle of evangelicalism and race?
As the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, one of my joys is leading people through our museum. Filled with historical artifacts and pictures, it’s a testimony to God’s faithfulness. One of my favorite pictures is of Billy Graham standing next to Martin Luther King Jr. I start by telling people how Graham took down segregation ropes for his meetings in the South.
But the story doesn’t stop there. Historian Grant Wacker notes that as the civil rights movement intensified, Graham distanced himself from King by attempting to chart a moderate path. Decades later, Graham himself would speak of his lack of engagement in the civil rights movement as one of his great regrets.
This same story of engagement, retreat and regret has come to define an evangelical culture that is bigger than Billy Graham. For more than a century, the broader evangelical movement has been in a cycle of engagement when opportunities arise, retreat when pressures and obstacles intensify, and regret at the failure to achieve any lasting change. Worse, the burden of this regret too frequently falls on evangelicals of color, as they are left abandoned only to be greeted with new promises next cycle.
In this context, the evangelical movement embarked on its newest episode recently when evangelist and writer Josh McDowell stepped away from his ministry after making comments about race on Sept. 18 at a meeting of the American Association of Christian Counselors.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/09/28/bible-evangelicals-duty-fight-racism/5847173001/
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
Number of posts: 9,966