Veterans Target Of Mold Lady

Not sure what to make out of this. Scams happen all the time. I did a quick search but didn't find much on this woman. I never heard of her, read anything about her, but that doesn't mean that much. I focus on PTSD, but take a great interest in Agent Orange. My husband was exposed, is in the registry and we get the updates, which has hung over our heads ever since the VA doctor said "No health effects yet!" and that was a long time ago. I also take interest for another personal reason. My friend Capt. Agnes Irish Bresnahan who suffered because of PTSD and Agent Orange until the day she died, March 11, 2009.

This link was sent to me by another friend of Irish and a champion for Agent Orange awareness.

Agent Orange Quilt of Tears
This is one of the reasons I feel it should be posted. People taking advantage of veterans are just as bad as the ones that claim to be veterans when they are not. What do they hope to gain? I will never understand this.

The other part of this article is that it says the only way to know is a blood test and that is true. The VA also finds where the veteran was and if there was spraying in the area at the time the veteran was there.

Veterans Target Of Mold Lady
by Paul C. Clark
Staff Writer
August 27, 2009
The woman who thrust herself into the center of the Oak Ridge Elementary School environmental mystery, terrifying parents, is at it again.

Linda May, a self-proclaimed "mold expert" who drove the news coverage of the longstanding health problems at Oak Ridge for weeks, trying to get herself hired as an expert witness and to sell $345 medical tests of questionable validity to worried Oak Ridge parents, has moved on to another target audience: elderly, ailing veterans.

On August 11, May appeared on Veterans for Veteran Connection, an internet radio program, selling the same test kits for Agent Orange exposure. Agent Orange is a pesticide chemically unrelated to mold and was used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War.

On the show, May claimed that the test kits are approved by the US State Department, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). "We are approved to do the testing for Agent Orange T-2 toxin for all government agencies in the US," she said of her company, Warbler of Illinois. T-2 is a toxin found in mold and is chemically unrelated to Agent Orange.

All that sounds impressive, but May, as usual, didn't provide anything to back up either her personal qualifications or the claims she made for the test she is selling. She said the Warbler of Illinois lab is in Pontiac, Illinois, in a secret location. On the show, as in Guilford County, she repeatedly turned down requests to verify her credentials and those of her purported laboratory by saying they were deep government secrets. When she was operating here, she refused to provide her resume, the number of the patent she claims to hold on the urine test, any US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for the test, or proof of Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) registration for the claimed laboratory – a registration that is required for labs offering medical tests in the United States.
read more here
Veterans Target Of Mold Lady

Toyota Accused of Hiding Evidence of Rollovers

Toyota Accused of Hiding Evidence
Former Lawyer at Automaker Charges Evidence in Rollover Cases Was Concealed, Destroyed

(CBS) By CBS News Investigative Unit Contributor Myron Levin

A former attorney for Toyota has accused the automaker of illegally withholding evidence in hundreds of rollover death and injury cases, in a "ruthless conspiracy" to keep evidence "of its vehicles' structural shortcomings from becoming known."

The explosive allegations are contained in a federal racketeering suit filed in Los Angeles by Dimitrios P. Biller, former managing counsel for Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc., who claims his complaints about the company's legal misconduct cost him his job.

Toyota, which is second to General Motors in car and truck sales in the U.S., called Biller's charges "inaccurate and misleading," in a statement issued late Friday to CBS News. "Toyota takes its legal obligations seriously and works to uphold the highest professional and ethical standards," the company said.

Company lawyers have not filed an answer to Biller's lawsuit, but have brought a motion to seal the complaint, claiming it is "rife with privileged and confidential information" that Biller, as a former Toyota lawyer, has no right to divulge.

A hearing on the motion has been set for September 14.

Biller, who did not return phone calls, worked for Toyota Motor Sales, based in Torrance, Calif., from 2003 to 2007. He was involved in defending rollover lawsuits that blamed injuries and deaths on instability and weak roofs of the company's SUVs and pickups.
read more hereToyota Accused of Hiding Evidence

Seven slain, two injured, at Ga. trailer park

Seven slain, two injured, at Ga. trailer park
Police: ‘We've never had such an incident with so many victims'

updated 36 minutes ago
BRUNSWICK, Ga. - Seven people were found slain and two critically injured Saturday at a mobile home located on a historic plantation in southeastern Georgia, police said.

Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering called it the worst mass slaying in his 25 years of police work in this coastal Georgia county. He wouldn't say how the victims died and released few other details.

"This is a record for us. We've never had such an incident with so many victims," Doering told reporters. "It's not a scene that I would want anybody to see."
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32608487/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Fort Bliss, Iraq Vet, charged with murder found incompetent

Bliss E-4 charged with murder found incompetent

The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Aug 29, 2009 16:21:27 EDT

FORT BLISS, Texas — A Fort Bliss soldier charged with murder in the shooting death of a local high school student has been found incompetent to stand trial, the Army announced Saturday.

Spc. Gerald Polanco, 37, will be transferred within the next week from the Otero County Detention Facility in New Mexico to the Bureau of Prisons and hospitalized for up to four months, the Army said in a news release. Justice Department officials plan to place Polanco in a medical center in Missouri or one in North Carolina, Polanco’s attorney John Convery told the El Paso Times.

Polanco’s family has requested the North Carolina center because they consider it more modern, he said.

Convery told The Associated Press that he had already talked to the newspaper and that was all he was prepared to say.

He said previously that Polanco and his family tried unsuccessfully to get the soldier help through his unit before the shooting. Polanco’s family also has tried to get treatment for him at the Otero County jail, Convery said.
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Bliss E4 charged with murder found incompetent

Fallen soldier worried about lack of equipment

I will never understand how the men and women we send into combat are not given everything they need while they risk their lives, any more than I can understand how this same nation can abandon them when they come home.

I said a long time ago that this blog is not about politics but holding them accountable for what they do and do not do. If this is true and these soldiers did not get everything possible to protect them as well as everything they needed to fight with, then President Obama and Secretary Gates have a lot to explain.

Fallen soldier worried about lack of equipment
By Keith Eldridge Watch the story FEDERAL WAY, Wash. - The grieving family of a local soldier who was killed in Afghanistan says he often expressed concern about a lack of ammo and other resources to fight the war.

Pfc. Dennis M. Williams, 24, of Federal Way, was one of four soldiers killed Tuesday in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan. It was Williams' first tour there.

Although he was only a private first class, his family says Dennis was wise beyond his years when it came to the military.

"What he was told and what he heard is that ammo was low, conserve your stuff, and he just didn't feel that they were equipped like they should have been - like it was a low-budget war," says Dennis' brother, David Williams.

Dennis and the 4,000 members of the 5th Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis have only been in Afghanistan a month and have already lost six soldiers.

The other three soldiers killed in Tuesday's roadside bombing were identified as Capt. John L. Hallett III, 30, of California; Capt. Cory J. Jenkins, 30, of Arizona; and Sgt. 1st Class Ronald W. Sawyer, 38, of Trenton, Mo.

Two other Stryker Brigade soldiers were killed last week

read more here

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/55930807.html

Marine officer receives Bronze Star

Marine officer receives Bronze Star for leading attacks in Afghanistan
August 29, 2009 8:28 am

A Marine officer at Camp Pendleton has received the Bronze Star for bravery for leading multiple assaults on Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

Maj. James W. Eagan III was a platoon commander with the 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion in southern Afghanistan in 2007. While other Marines were assigned to help tutor Afghan security forces, the Special Operations forces were assigned to seek out and confront the Taliban.

read more here

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/my-entry-6.html

Bay Pines VA Doctor wins lawsuit against Times

Times Publishing hit with $10 million judgment in libel suit
By Jamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, August 29, 2009



ST. PETERSBURG — The former chief of medicine at Bay Pines VA Medical Center prevailed Friday in a libel lawsuit against Times Publishing Co.

The jury found against the parent company of the St. Petersburg Times and awarded Dr. Harold L. Kennedy more than $10 million in damages.

"We are very disappointed by the verdict," said Times Executive Editor and Vice President Neil Brown. "We believe our reporting and editing of these stories met the highest journalistic and ethical standards.

"The Times will appeal the jury's decision.''

The lawsuit was filed over three articles that appeared in the Times in December 2003 about Kennedy's reassignment from chief of medicine to his subspecialty of cardiology. Kennedy filed suit in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court in 2005.
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Times Publishing hit with 10 million judgment in libel suit

Public suicide in Pasco agonizes family, haunts stranger

Public suicide in Pasco agonizes family, haunts stranger
By Camille C. Spencer, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, August 30, 2009


NEW PORT RICHEY — David Miller was getting ready for bed on Aug. 14 when one of his mutts started barking.

Miller, in boxer shorts and flip flops, peered outside a front window at his house on Widgeon Way. He spotted a German shepherd yelping and opened his garage door.

The German shepherd ran from Miller's garage back to a pavilion across the street in River Ridge.

Miller, 41, went inside his house, put on a pair of pants and grabbed his glasses and cell phone. He drove toward the pavilion and shined his headlights toward it.

A man's body was hanging by the dog's black nylon leash, tied to a set of white rafters in the pavilion. His blue and white tennis shoes dangled to the ground. A beer can and a cell phone, still ringing, sat on a forest green picnic table nearby.
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Public suicide in Pasco agonizes family

Police seek suspects in Virginia Tech students' deaths

Police seek suspects in Virginia Tech students' deaths
The bodies of two sophomores with bullet wounds were found in a campground area of the Jefferson National Forest.
By Shawna Morrison


The bodies of two young Virginia Tech students from central Virginia were found Thursday in a remote area of Montgomery County, and authorities are considering their deaths to be a double homicide.

The victims are David Lee Metzler, 19, of Lynchburg and Heidi Lynn Childs, 18, of Forest, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.

In the Virginia Tech student directory, Metzler's major is listed as industrial and systems engineering. Childs is listed as a biochemistry major. Both were sophomores.

Sheriff Tommy Whitt said both victims appeared to have been shot where they had parked in a day-use area of Caldwell Fields. The area is a large group campground in the Jefferson National Forest more than eight miles down Craig Creek Road, where a shooting range and Camp Tuk-A-Way are located, off U.S. 460.
read more here
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/216886
linked from AOL news

Suicides climb in New Orleans

Suicides climb in New Orleans 3:24
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at the effects on mental health caused by Hurricane Katrina.


4 years after Katrina, NOLA mental health system still in crisis
Story Highlights
New Orleans continues to face crisis of mental health needs, resources

Study: Before storm, area had 487 inpatient psychiatric beds; now,190

Police officer's slaying by mentally ill man renewed spotlight on city's needs

By Stephanie Smith
CNN Medical Producer

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- As the storm raged outside her hospital room four years ago, an equally consuming force hijacked Alesia Crockett's mind: deep depression.

For days, Crockett lay in darkness and a tangle of sweaty hospital bed sheets, one among hundreds of desperate patients trapped inside Charity Hospital in 2005, while outside, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath battered the city.

Crockett had been admitted to Charity's inpatient mental health unit after having a psychotic episode. She had struggled for years with bipolar disorder, an illness that causes her to volley between euphoria and profound depression.

She said she barely remembers Katrina.

"Most of the time, I was in a fog, but I do remember some things," Crockett said. "Where my room was, I could see thousands of people wandering, and I could see the waters rise."

Crockett, and many other New Orleanians suffering from chronic mental illness -- and those with what is called "soft depression," or nonchronic mental illness -- say Katrina may have relented days after it hit New Orleans proper, but their mental health issues have not.

In January 2008, a New Orleans police officer was killed by a man suffering from psychosis due to schizophrenia, New Orleans police said. The officer, Nicola Cotton, approached 44-year-old Bernel Johnson for questioning about a rape. A struggle ensued, and Johnson overpowered and killed Cotton with her own gun, police said.

read more here

NOLA mental health system still in crisis