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News

Rape Suspect Jailed for 3 Months Begged for DNA Test

Patrick Edward Misner was charged with rape and molestation after his neighbor, Tommy Braden, was proven innocent of the crime through a DNA test in Oklahoma. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections)

An Oklahoma man who was arrested and jailed for allegedly raping a 4-year-old girl intends to sue authorities for holding for three months while he pleaded with them to perform a DNA test, which eventually cleared him.

Tommy Braden, 26, of Sapulpa, Okla., was arrested in April 2012 after he called 911 in the morning to report that he had woken up to find his girlfriend’s daughter, age 4, bleeding on her bed. He also reported a broken window in their mobile home and blood on the front porch, Smolen told ABC News. Braden shared the home with his girlfriend, their biological child, and the 4-year-old.

According to Braden’s attorney Don Smolen, Creek County Sheriff’s officers arrested and charged Braden with the girl’s rape. Officials took a swab of his DNA at the time, but refused to test the sample for a DNA match with the semen and pubic hair found at the scene of the crime.

“He was openly cooperating, doing everything he can to prove that it wasn’t him,” Smolen said. “They found pubic hair and semen at the scene that’s never tested… It takes three months for them to get it done and only after the court orders them to do it… It’s just crazy to me.”

“Rarely do you have someone suspected of such horrific crime begging to give DNA. If you’ve got the opportunity where someone’s voluntarily giving you sample, why not get it tested and confirm or deny whether it was him?” the lawyer asked.

The Creek County Sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment from ABC.

h/t – ABCNEWS

Categories
Healthcare

Woman Left Unable to Walk, Talk after Surgeons Operate on Wrong Side of Brain

FENTON, Mo. (KSDK) – It was a botched brain surgery with massive consequences. A St. Ann woman went in for surgery on the left side of her brain, but the procedure was mistakenly performed on the right, and now the hospital is facing a lawsuit.

Pictures show proof. Fifty-three-year-old Regina Turner is seen in a photo with an indelible marking on the left side of her head. It was taken just before her April 4 surgery to put an end to a series of mini-strokes she’d been suffering from for several years.

Another photo shows Turner bandaged up on the right side after what’s called a craniotomy bypass.

“I think everybody in the operating room screwed up. I think somehow her head was marked for the correct side,” said Turner’s Clayton-based attorney Alvin Wolff. “The incorrect side was prepped for surgery. A whole surgery was performed, and nobody noticed that the side was wrong.”

Friday he filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against SSM Health Care St. Louis and neurosurgeon Dr. Armond Levy. He said negligence and carelessness led to the wrong-side surgery performed at St. Clare Health Center in Fenton.

According to the Journal of Neurosurgery, Wolff pointed out, there have been 35 documented cases of wrong-side craniotomies ever in the U.S.

“Sometimes the x-rays can be flipped,” he explained. “Sometimes the doctor doesn’t look at the medical records. Sometimes the surgery comes off late and everybody’s in a rush. Sometimes, if a doctor has a whole lot of surgeries, let’s say he’s got eight knees to do that day, and he’s got four right knees and four left knees, and the first knee cancels and they start moving everybody up, the wrong knee goes in the wrong room.”

Turner, who was mobile before, is now wheelchair bound. Her speech is unintelligible.

h/t – Grio

Categories
Sports

Kobe Bryant Takes Mom to Court

Goldin Auctions is auctioning more than 100 items from the early basketball life of Kobe Bryant consigned by his mother Pamela Bryant. (goldinauctions.com)

Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard, is embroiled in a legal spat with his mother and an auction house in New Jersey that is selling over 100 items from his early basketball career.

Goldin Auctions LLC, which is holding an auction on an unspecified date in June of items from Bryant’s childhood in Italy, his high school years in Pennsylvania and his early years in the NBA, filed a lawsuit against him on Thursday.

“The Bryant Collection,” which was consigned by the sports star’s mother, Pamela Bryant, includes trophies, championship rings, medals, plaques, game worn uniforms and other items.

Pamela Bryant, 59, made a deal in January with the auction house, receiving $450,000, which she used for a new home in Nevada. Five years ago, she had asked her son what he wanted to do with the items, but he had no interest in them, the Associated Press reported.

“Pamela Bryant also indicated that her son gave these items to her stating ‘here mom, these are for you’,” the complaint states.

So she had placed the items in a storage unit in New Jersey for $1,500 a month, the AP reported.

The centerpiece of the collection is Bryant’s Lower Merion High School basketball uniform with the number 24, which he wore as a freshman before he switched to number 33 for the remainder of his high school career, according to a press release.

“It is believed to be the only authentic game worn #24 Kobe Bryant LMHS jersey in existence. The next time he wore a #24 jersey was when he switched his NBA number to it after the 2005-06 NBA season,” the Goldin Auctions press release states. “When he finally removes #24 from his back, it will hang in the rafters alongside, Wilt, Kareem, Magic and Shaq.”

Ken Goldin, founder of Goldin Auctions, which sold a rare Honus Wagner baseball card last month for a record $2.1 million, declined to comment.

h/t – ABCNEWS

Categories
Music

Mountain Dew to Release Lil Wayne Over Emmett Till lyric

Lil Wayne performs onstage during the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards at Staples Center on September 6, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

A source tells theGrio PepsiCo is ending its association with rapper Lil’ Wayne, an endorser of the soft drink Mountain Dew.

Dissolving the partnership is a direct response to Wayne’s song lyric which referenced Emmett Till, the 14-year-old who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman.

Wayne apologized for the lyric after members of Till’s family objected, but his semi-apology was not accepted.

Now, the song has cost him his endorsement deal.

A Mountain Dew spokesperson told theGrio “We do not plan any additional work with Lil Wayne moving forward.  His offensive reference to a revered civil rights icon does not reflect the values of our brand.”

Mountain Dew was already under fire for a web video produced by rapper and leader of the Odd Future collective Tyler the Creator, which featured a goat participating in a criminal lineup as a physically abused white woman is terrified by subliminal threats not to identify him.

h/t – Grio

Categories
China News

Rat meat sold as lamb in latest China food scandal

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese police have broken up a criminal ring accused of taking meat from rats and foxes and selling it as lamb in the country’s latest food safety scandal.

The Ministry of Public Security released results of a three-month crackdown on food safety violators, saying in a statement that authorities investigated more than 380 cases and arrested 904 suspects.

Among those arrested were 63 people who allegedly ran an operation in Shanghai and the coastal city of Wuxi that bought fox, mink, rat and other meat that had not been tested for quality and safety, processed it with additives like gelatin and passed it off as lamb.

The meat was sold to farmers’ markets in Jiangsu province and Shanghai, it said.

Despite years of food scandals — from milk contaminated with an industrial chemical to the use of industrial dyes in eggs — China has been unable to clean up its food supply chain.

The announcement came as China’s top court on Friday issued guidelines calling for harsher punishment for making and selling unsafe food products in the latest response to tainted food scandals that have angered the public.

h/t – Yahoo

Categories
News

33 High School Students Suspended Over ‘Awesome Twerk Video’

Over thirty students at Scripps Ranch High School in San Diego have been suspended after allegedly using school equipment to film a twerking video.

Urban Dictionary defines “twerking” as “the act of moving/ shaking ones ass/buns/bottom/buttocks/bum-bum in a circular, up-and-down, and side-to-side motion. basically a slutty dance. derived from strip clubs.”

All told, some 33 media class students involved in the production of the video have been sent home for at least five days for violating the school’s zero-tolerance sexual harassment policywhich prohibits “verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature made by someone from or in the educational setting.”

Suspended seniors may also be banned from attending prom and graduation.

Many Scripps Ranch students took to social media following the suspension to express their displeasure.

“Suspended, banned from prom, and prevented from walking at graduation all because of an awesome twerk video,” tweeted one student, according to NBC 7. “I don’t understand.”

Another suspended student tweeted: “Suspended for twerking. What do I do? Twerk. At the beach. I twerk at the beach.”

Supporters of the twerkers have also been voicing their disbelief along with the hashtag “#freethetwerkteam.”

Meanwhile, parents are saying that the school should not have suspended the students, but rather used the incident “as a teaching moment to remind students that when a person is videotaped, he/she never knows where it’s going to go.”

At least one school board member, Scott Barnett, plans to bring up the twerking video at Tuesday’s board meeting to ensure that the punishment fit the crime.

h/t – gawkers

Categories
child News NFL

Former NFL Star Michael Boley ‘Secretly’ Arrested for Abuse of his 5-year-old Son

Former New York Giants linebacker Michael Boley was arrested for child abuse in February just three days after he was cut from the team, it was revealed today.

Boley, 30, had been under investigation in Alabama stemming from a 2011 incident involving his then-5-year-old son.

The details of the case involving the ex-NFL star have been under wraps, but sources told the gossip site TMZ that the alleged abuse was physical and not sexual in nature.

The starting linebacker in Super Bowl XLVI was set to go before a grand jury in February, but he reached a plea agreement with the prosecution.

The 30-year-old father of six admitted to child abuse, and in exchange was ordered to enter a pre-trial diversion program. Upon completing the course, the charge would be dropped against Boley, who indicated that he intends to comply with these conditions.

As part of the plea deal, the football player was also required to turn himself in February 8 in Etowah County, Alabama. He was released without posting a bond later that day.

Boley, who was first drafted in 2005 by the Atlanta Falcons, ended his career with the Giants on February 5, just three days before his arrest. He is currently a free agent.

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Categories
News Rape

Rape Accusations Against Morehouse Athletes

Channel 2 Action News has learned that at least three Morehouse College athletes are charged in connection with a rape.

The three men play on the college’s basketball team. A player on the college’s football team has also been charged in a separate rape case.

Attorney Jackie Patterson told Channel 2’s Tom Jones his client, Chukwudi Ndudikwa, never touched the victim and will be vindicated.

Jones talked to students from the Morehouse campus about the allegations and they told him they are appalled that something like this could happen on campus.

“It’s sad and it really hurts me as a student and those are my Morehouse brothers,” student Dominique Merriwether said.

Two Spelman College students, in two separate incidents, accused the four of rape. The allegations stunned Spelman students.

“To know that it was somebody, a Spelman sister, somebody so close, is very frightening,” Spelman student Lorraine Levels told Jones.

In the first incident, police said Morehouse basketball players Malcolm Frank and Shukwudi Ndudikwa raped an 18-year-old female student on campus in the East Suites in March.

Tevin Mgbo faces kidnapping, reckless conduct and sodomy in the attack.

“My client never touched the alleged victim,” Patterson told Jones Wednesday. She said the alleged victim was drunk and high the night of the alleged attack.

“This was a case where a young lady used very bad judgment by being high on Molly, which is a form of powdered Ecstasy,” Patterson said.

Police believe someone placed the drug in the student’s drink.

In the second incident, also in March, the female student complained Lucien Kidd, a Morehouse football player, raped her off campus, and then is accused of saying, “Did I lose a friend?”

Levels told Jones she is proud the students didn’t let the athlete’s popularity silence them.

h/t – WFSB

Categories
News

Saudi Ambassador Denies Warning U.S about Tsarnaev

The Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. today denied its government warned the U.S. about accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

According to a highly placed source who spoke to MailOnline, the Saudis sent a written warning about Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012. That was long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and injured hundreds.

The official told MailOnline about a written warning from the Saudi government to the Department of Homeland Security, and said he had direct knowledge of that document.

But the Middle Eastern nation’s embassy in Washington denied that account on Wednesday.

It issued a statement which read: ‘The Saudi government had no prior information about the Boston bombers. Therefore, it is not true that any information, written or otherwise, was passed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or any other US agency in this regard,’ an embassy statement statement claimed.

‘The Saudi government also does not have any record of any application by Tamerlan Tsarnaev for any visa to Saudi Arabia.’

The Saudis’ warning, the official told MailOnline, was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen.

The Saudis’ warning to the U.S. government was also shared with the British government. ‘It was very specific’ and warned that ‘something was going to happen in a major U.S. city,’ the Saudi official said during an extensive interview.

It ‘did name Tamerlan specifically,’ he added. The ‘government-to-government’ letter, which he said was sent to the Department of Homeland Security at the highest level, did not name Boston or suggest a date for his planned attack.

If true, the account will produce added pressure on the Homeland Security department and the White House to explain their collective inaction after similar warnings were offered about Tsarnaev by the Russian government.

A DHS official denied, however, that the agency received any such warning from Saudi intelligence about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

‘DHS has no knowledge of any communication from the Saudi government regarding information on the suspects in the Boston Marathon Bombing prior to the attack,’ MailOnline learned from one Homeland Security official who declined to be named in this report.

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News racist

‘Racist’ Mountain Dew Commercial Pulled By PepsiCo After Criticism

NEW YORK — PepsiCo is once again learning the risks of celebrity partnerships after an ad for Mountain Dew was criticized for portraying racial stereotypes and making light of violence toward women.

The soda and snack food company said it immediately pulled the 60-second spot after learning that people found it offensive. The ad was part of a series developed by African-American rapper Tyler, The Creator, and depicted a battered white woman on crutches being urged to identify a suspect out of a lineup of black men.

A goat character known as Felicia is included in the lineup and makes threatening comments to the woman, such as “Ya better not snitch on a playa” and “Keep ya mouth shut.”

The woman eventually screams “I can’t do this, no no no!” and runs away. The word “do” is in apparent reference to the soft drink’s “Dew It” slogan.

Mountain Dew, known for its neon color and high caffeine content, is generally marketed to younger men and sometimes attempts to have edgier ads. But the controversy over its latest spot illustrates the fine line that companies must walk when trying to be hip.

In fact, Mountain Dew also was criticized recently because of its endorsement deal with Lil Wayne, whose rap lyrics compared a rough sex act to the tortuous death of Emmett Till, a black teen who was murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Last month, Reebok also ended its relationship with Rick Ross after he rapped about giving a woman a drug to have his way with her.

Laura Ries, president of Ries & Ries, a marketing firm based in Atlanta, said companies that want the “street cred” of a celebrity may end up losing control of the message they want to convey.

If PepsiCo had created an ad for Mountain Dew, for example, she said it might not have been considered edgy or cool. But by handing over control to a celebrity, she said the company ran the risk of having an ad that wasn’t appropriate.

PepsiCo Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y., said it understood how the ad could be offensive.

“We apologize for this video and take full responsibility,” the company said in an updated statement late Wednesday afternoon. “We have removed it from all Mountain Dew channels and Tyler is removing it from his channels as well.”

 h/t/ – huffingtonpost
Categories
Entertainment Music

Chris Kelly From Kriss Kross Found Dead

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Rapper Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly died Wednesday afternoon after being found unresponsive in his home.

Kelly, 34, was part of the duo “Kris Kross,” known for their backwards clothes and 1992 hit “Jump.”

Kelly was found unresponsive and transported to Atlanta Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, a spokeswoman for the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Officer told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The cause of death was not immediately known. An autopsy is planned for Thursday morning.

An Atlanta native, Kelly and the other half of the duo, Chris Smith, were discovered at a mall in 1990 by now-famous entertainer and producer Jermaine Dupri. “Kris Kross” was one of the first acts Dupri signed to his So So Def Records label, and in February, the duo was among many to perform at an anniversary show at the Fox.

h/t – AJC

Categories
Health

Morning-after Pill for Girls 15 and Older – FDA Approved

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it approved the availability of the Plan B One-Step emergency contraception pill without a prescription for women 15 and older.

This move comes just weeks after a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, ordered the FDA to make the morning-after birth control pill available to women of any age, without a prescription.

Tuesday’s FDA announcement, which pertains to an application from Teva Women’s Health, Inc., is not related to that, the FDA said.

“The FDA’s approval of Teva’s current application for Plan B One-Step is independent of that litigation and this decision is not intended to address the judge’s ruling,” the FDA said in a statement.

In early April, the U.S. Justice Department indicated an appeal of the Brooklyn judge’s order was under consideration. “The Department of Justice is reviewing the appellate options and expects to act promptly,” department spokeswoman Allison Price said.

According to the new FDA decision, Plan B One-Step will now be labeled to reflect that proof of age is required to purchase it, and it cannot be sold where age cannot be verified. The packaging will include a product code that prompts the cashier to ask and verify the age of the customer.

The product will be available in retail outlets with pharmacies, but the pill can be sold during non-pharmacy hours,

h/t – CNN

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