I am completely outraged at this. The only person who can help this poor girl with cerebral palsy is her mother who ignores her to the point of maggot infested bedsores and starvation. While the other sibling tried to call an ambulance on multiple occasions, the mother stops them. On top of it all, it could have all been stopped if someone from the state would have just gave a shit and visited her twice a week like they were SUPPOSE to. Instead they filled out the paperwork and forgot about her. I hope this woman rots to death in prison in the same horrific way she did to her own daughter, except she deserves it and i hope the people responsible in the state are tried and convicted.I am completely outraged at this. The only person who can help this poor girl with... more
On July 20th, Julianna's (delayed) Delta flight landed in Atlanta at 7:30pm, with a connecting flight scheduled for 8:05pm. Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, missed the connecting flight because nobody came with a wheelchair until 8:05—the same time the connecting flight took off. To make matters worse, the plane crew told Julianna she might make the flight anyway if she stopped waiting for help and got off the plane right now, so she crawled down the stairs on her own. When the wheelchair came she was "wheeled into a back room and advised" that her plane had taken off. But that was just the first half of her ordeal, and the next eight hours only got worse.
Letter Julianna has sent to Richard Anderson, Delta's CEO:
The employees in this room were debating who would get me to the ticket gate to be re-ticketed because it was no one's job and the appropriate personnel were not responding to their calls. After that was resolved I was given a new boarding pass for a flight expected to leave at 12:55 AM. Then this person advised me she cannot get me from a D Gate to Gate A9. She again called for the appropriate personnel who never showed. We waited by an elevator for someone she convinced to bring me over to Gate A even though it was not his job. I had to beg him to stop at a bathroom entrance and to wait for me and then he finally delivered me to Gate A9.
I was given a meal voucher for my INCONVENIENCE but could not purchase any food because again there was no one to bring me to an eating establishment, never mind wait on the long line for me to make a food purchase.
At 11:15 I advised the gate attendant I was dehydrated and cramping because I could not purchase any water. This is the only nice employee that treated me with dignity. The flight I was transferred to was supposed to leave at 10:22 PM but was delayed until 1:30 AM. This gate attendant went and brought me water off of the plane.
This gate attendant also made sure she finally found some one at 11:15 PM to push me to obtain food and another bathroom break. I arrived in West Palm Beach at 3:15 AM with no ride and had to again crawl into the shuttle service to get home.
I understand plane delays and waiting at airports, but is this how you treat your handicapped passengers???
The text above is from a letter Julianna has sent to Richard Anderson, Delta's CEO, who we hope will do more than send her another food voucher—like take real steps to make sure handicapped passengers are treated with a minimum of respect when they're traveling.On July 20th, Julianna's (delayed) Delta flight landed in Atlanta at 7:30pm, with... more
The Army says it's critical to saving the lives of wounded soldiers. Animal-rights activists call the training cruel and outdated.
Despite opposition by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Army proceeded to shoot live pigs and treat their gunshot wounds in a medical trauma exercise Friday at Schofield Barracks for soldiers headed to Iraq.
Maj. Derrick Cheng, spokesman for the 25th Infantry Division, said the training was conducted as scheduled under a U.S. Department of Agriculture license and the careful supervision of veterinarians and a military Animal Care and Use Committee.
"It's to teach Army personnel how to manage critically injured patients within the first few hours of their injury," Cheng said.
The soldiers are learning emergency lifesaving skills needed on the battlefield when there are no medics, doctors or facility nearby, he said.
PETA, however, said there are more advanced and humane options available, including high-tech human simulators. In a letter, PETA urged the Army to end all use of animals, "as the overwhelming majority of North American medical schools have already done."
"Shooting and maiming pigs is outdated as Civil War rifles," said Kathy Guillermo, director of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department.
The Norfolk, Va.-based group demanded the exercise be halted after it was notified by a "distraught" soldier from the unit, who disclosed a plan to shoot the animals with M4 carbines and M16 rifles.
"There's absolutely no reason why they have to shoot live pigs," PETA spokeswoman Holly Beal said.
The bloody exercise, she said, is difficult for soldiers because they sometimes associate the animals with their own pets.
Cheng said the exercise is conducted in a controlled environment with the pigs anesthetized the entire time. He had "no doubt whatsoever" in the effectiveness of the instruction, which he called the best option available at the base.
"Those alternative methods just can't replicate what the troops are going to face when we use live-tissue training," he said. "What we're doing is unique to what the soldiers are going to actually experience."
Cheng didn't have details about the number of pigs, how they were acquired or the weapons involved in the training.
The soldiers being trained are with the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, which is deploying to Iraq this year.
"We understand (PETA's) concerns and point of view. At the same, the Army is committed to providing the soldiers with the best training possible," Cheng said.
PETA has instructed its 2 million members to inundate the Army with calls and e-mails.
"We are not going to let it drop," Guillermo said Friday. "We'll continue to press both Schofield and the Department of Defense for a ban on these trauma training exercises." The Army says it's critical to saving the lives of wounded soldiers.... more
This is disgusting. A teacher had a class vote on whether or not a 5-year-old, who is in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, would be allowed to stay in class. After allowing all of the boy's classmates to stand up and say what they didn't like about him, the class voted 14-2 to keep him out.
So far, the state is not prosecuting, saying that the incident doesn't meet the criteria for emotional child abuse.
I'm not sure what universe these people are living in, but this certainly is emotional abuse--this poor kid is going to remember this for the rest of his life, and all of the other kids have learned how to treat someone who is different--with cruelty and shame. What kind of country are we living in that this story hasn't inspired nationwide outrage? This is disgusting. A teacher had a class vote on whether or not a 5-year-old, who is... more
This year's poor rains have nearly killed Bizunesh.
Bizunesh is 3 and weighs less than 10 pounds. "There is nothing ... I beg for milk," her mother says.
The rangy 3-year-old weighs less than 10 pounds, or 4 kilograms. Her long limbs, weak and folded like a praying mantis, cannot carry even her slight weight. She cannot speak. She doesn't want to eat. Health officials say she is permanently stunted.
Bizunesh -- whose name, sadly, means "plentiful" -- is one of untold numbers of children hit by this year's double blow of a countrywide drought and skyrocketing global food prices that has brought famine, once again, to Ethiopia.
"She should be bigger than this," said her mother Zewdunesh Feltam, rocking the listless child. "Before there was maize, different kinds of food. But now there is nothing ... I beg for milk from my neighbors."
The U.N. children's agency said in a statement Tuesday an estimated 126,000 Ethiopian children urgently need food and medical care because of severe malnutrition -- and called the crisis "the worst since the major humanitarian crisis of 2003."
The U.N. World Food Program estimates that 2.7 million Ethiopians will need emergency food aid because of late rains -- nearly double the number who needed help last year. An additional 5 million of Ethiopia's 80 million people receive aid each year because they never have enough food, whether harvests are good or not.This year's poor rains have nearly killed Bizunesh.
Bizunesh is 3 and weighs... more
