Hey gang. 
Here the links to the two deals that we jumped into today.
A Slighty Less Tacky Than Usual Bernie Sanders Headline
Ocasio Cortez Is Causting Great Stress To These Hetero Men
The fully produced episode of our Monday evening Wine Cellar for 1/21/19 is currently patreon only.
You can sign up for that here.
http://PATREON.COM/WINECELLARMEDIAFUND
The Modern Slavery Bill, which finally became law yesterday, will require businesses with turnovers of more than $100 million to report what they are doing to prevent slavery in supply chains.
The legislation is also part of a wider push to stop Australians from taking part in “voluntourism” schemes which do more harm than good.
According to the BBC, 80 per cent of children living in the world’s orphanages have at least one living parent and have been lured to the orphanages to attract volunteers.
White Mother Says She Didn’t Raise Adopted African Daughters To Be Black
Shooting death of 7-year-old ruled ‘justifiable homicide’
Metro Detroit woman beaten in parking lot, she says because she’s black
The furloughing of hundreds of Food and Drug Administration inspectors has sharply reduced inspections of the nation’s food supply — one of the many repercussions of the partial government shutdown that are making Americans potentially less safe.
The agency, which oversees 80 percent of the food supply, has suspended all routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview. He is working on a plan to bring inspectors back as early as next week to inspect facilities considered high-risk because they handle sensitive items such as seafood, soft cheese and vegetables, or have a history of problems.
CHICAGO (Fox 32 News) – A 17-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting a transgender woman last year in a secluded area on the South Side was ordered held without bail Sunday.
Tremon T. Hill was charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 13 slaying of Dejanay Stanton, a 24-year-old trans woman he was in a sexual relationship with, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Britt Steinberg said at a bail hearing in the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
Stanton received a text from Hill the morning of her killing asking her to meet him in a lot in the 4000 block of South Calumet Avenue in Bronzeville, Steinberg said.
(CNN)A traveler carrying a firearm boarded a Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and flew to Tokyo Narita International Airport on January 3, according to a statement from the Transportation Security Administration.
“TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed and a passenger did in fact pass through a standard screening TSA checkpoint with a firearm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on the morning of January 3,” the release states.
The passenger had forgotten the firearm was in their carry-on luggage, the TSA said. The incident was not part of a test.
Developer Jim Skaggs ‘couldn’t believe’ when he heard that a neighbor allegedly assaulted U.S. Senator Rand Paul outside his home in Bowling Green. Matt Stone/Louisville Courier Journal
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of the fiercest political critics of socialized medicine, will travel to Canada later this month to get hernia surgery.
Paul, an ophthalmologist, said the operation is related to an injury in 2017 when his neighbor, Rene Boucher, attacked him while Paul was mowing his lawn. The incident left Kentucky’s junior senator with six broken ribs and a bruised lung.
He is scheduled to have the outpatient operation at the privately adminstered Shouldice Hernia Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario during the week of Jan. 21, according to documents from Paul’s civil lawsuit against Boucher filed in Warren Circuit Court.
Fortnite is one of the biggest games of this decade, and it rose to prominence in a very seemingly organic way. Tim Sweeney, the game’s creator has been at work for decades in fact, developing different, intricate and interactive realms in the digital world for players.
However, now he’s making headlines for something even more interesting. In the 1990’s, he founded his video and 3-D software company Epic Games. He’s been at work longer than you might expect, with Epic Games producing such titles as Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, and one of the most popular games of this decade especially among the younger people, Fortnite.
He became a billionaire, and his transition to becoming a philanthropist does not seem fake for a billionaire, for once. He’s trying to use his resources to protect the beautiful western Carolina mountains.
Wichita Falls police received a rather unique call Friday morning involving a woman drinking wine in a Walmart parking lot.
Employees requested officers to ban a woman from the local Walmart store after she reportedly had been drinking wine from a Pringles can for several hours while riding on an electric cart.
The incident began shortly after 9 a.m. Friday when officers responded to a call to check on a suspicious person in the parking lot of Walmart, 2700 Central East Fwy.
Two women in North Carolina have been arrested and charged with second-degree kidnapping and sexual battery of a transgender woman in a women’s bathroom.
Investigators said that Amber Harrell, 38, and Jessica Fowler, 31, followed an unnamed 29-year-old woman into the bathroom at Milk Bar last month, and locked the door. They proceeded to allegedly verbally and sexually assault her, according to the police report.
The woman called 911 the day after the incident, telling the dispatcher that Harrell and Fowler exposed themselves to her and began touching her.
Software specialist Synamedia is touting a new technology that it says can track down users who share accounts and passwords for streaming services such as Netflix.
The U.K. based firm is showing off the software at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The technology, it says, “combats the rapid rise in account sharing between friends and families, turning it instead into a new revenue-generating opportunity for operators.”
The Credentials Sharing Insight software could have a major impact. Synamedia cites statistics from media research firm Magid, which say that 26 percent of millennials share passwords for video streaming services.
Six families of victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School won a legal victory Friday in their fight against controversial radio and internet personality Alex Jones.
A judge in Connecticut has granted the families’ discovery requests, allowing them access to, among other things, Infowars’ internal marketing and financial documents.
The judge has scheduled a hearing next week to decide whether to allow the plaintiffs’ attorneys to depose Jones.
The plaintiffs include the parents of five children who went to the school as well as family members of first-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto and Principal Dawn Hochsprung, according to a statement from the plaintiff’s attorneys.
The former head of sales for an Arizona drug company pleaded guilty Wednesday for his role in a conspiracy to defraud insurance companies by bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive fentanyl-based pain drug when it wasn’t needed, according to court documents.
The man, Alec Burlakoff, 44, of West Palm Beach, Florida, is former vice president of sales for Insys Therapeutics Inc. of Chandler, Arizona. Court documents show that Burlakoff agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their case against Insys at a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston.
Prosecutors said Burlakoff is the highest-level executive to admit wrongdoing in their investigation of the company’s billionaire founder, John Kapoor, and five other co-defendants, all of whom have pleaded not guilty.
Insys agreed to pay $150 million to settle related claims in August.
Burlakoff pleaded guilty to a single count of racketeering conspiracy in exchange for a likely reduction in the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced next May. He will remain free until then, according to court documents.
An updated indictment filed in September accuses Kapoor and the others of having conspired to bribe doctors to prescribe the drug Subsys to boost sales and defraud insurers from 2012 to 2015.
Subsys, an under-the-tongue spray that manages pain in cancer patients, contains fentanyl, an opioid that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says is 25 to 50 times more powerful than heroin. It is the drug that killed Prince.
ccording to the superseding indictment, Burlakoff and the others ran a sophisticated scheme that used pharmacy data to identify doctors who prescribed a lot of opioids. They then bribed the doctors with offers of cushy speaking engagements to increase their Subsys prescriptions even further and to write a minimum number of prescriptions at a minimum dose to generate as many insured refill orders as possible “without regard to the medical needs of … Subsys patients,” according tot he indictment.
In June 2017, Patty Nixon, an Insys sales representative-turned-whistleblower, told NBC News how the company lured doctors into prescribing the drug for patients who didn’t need it.
“My job responsibilities were to contact insurance companies on behalf of the patients and the doctors to get the medication approved and paid for by their insurance company,” said Nixon, who said she was fired after she stopped showing up for work because she felt guilty about lying on the job.
A 30-day supply of Subsys can cost as much as $30,000, generating sales of $240 million in 2016.
A police officer in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania is facing even more charges after a third woman came forth accusing him of sexual assault.
Two other women have made similar accusations against Mark Eric Icker.
Icker’s newest charges of official oppression and indecent assault were filed Friday.
The woman spoke with investigators on Dec. 26, and said she was pulled over by Icker in June on suspicion of DUI. Icker then transported the woman to Wilkes-Barre General Hospital for a blood alcohol content test, according to the report.
Icker then offered to take the woman to her home after having her car towed. While at the woman’s residence, Icker asked to use the woman’s restroom, which she allowed, the Times Leader reports.
Icker then reportedly asked the woman if she had any tattoos or body piercings, to which the woman replied she had her nipples pierced, according to the report. Icker then pulled the woman’s shirt down and exposed her bare chest, according to the report.
“Oh, they’re nice, they look like that would hurt,” Icker said to the woman, the Times Leader reports citing a criminal complaint. “And I wonder how they taste.”
Icker then put his number in the woman’s cell phone, and he repeatedly texted her saying “they could work something out,” according to the report. The woman’s BAC test came back in July, and Icker told the woman she was over twice the legal limit, and told her to reach out “if you wanna met up and try to work something out,” according to the report.
The charges came the same day that Icker fought to have his $1 million bail reduced.
Icker initially appeared before Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Vough via video on Friday as his attorney, Bernard J. Brown, argued the bail imposed last month by District Judge Joseph Spagnuolo Jr. was excessive, Times Leader reports.
Icker’s bail was then reduced to $100,000 straight cash – once he was arraigned on his new charges before District Judge Donald Whittaker later in the day, Whittaker denied bail for Icker, sending him back to the Luzerne County Correctional Facility.
Icker had been working at three different police departments – Ashley and Sugar Notch in Luzerne County, and Jessup in Lackawanna County.
Times Leader reports Icker has been suspended from his job in Ashley, and fired from his part-time job in Sugar Notch.
DEARBORN COUNTY, Ind. – A 21-year-old man in southeastern Indiana is accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl.
Jail records show Travis McAdams of Greendale has been charged with rape and child molesting.
Dearborn County Prosecuting Attorney Lynn Dedden told FOX19 that McAdams met the underage girl on Tinder, where she portrayed herself as a 16-year-old, before chatting on SnapChat.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Fox19, McAdams met the victim at the Greendale Cinema in December 2017 or early January 2018, where the girl claims he put his arm around her neck, covered her mouth and took her to the back of a building, where he raped her.
Greendale police told FOX19 that McAdams continued to see the girl after the alleged rape, knowing that she was only 11 years old.
“She advised me that she was scared of McAdams and that’s why she continued to see him a couple of other occasions after this because she was afraid of what he might do to her,” Det. Sgt. Kendle Davis said.
The affidavit says the victim’s mother was the one to report the rape to police after learning of it in March.
McAdams was taken into custody on Dec. 14. Police say the arrest was delayed because it took a while to obtain search warrants. Since then, more woman have come forward with similar accusations, according to police.
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin baby sitter who allegedly killed a 2-month-old boy then pretended he was alive when she gave the boy back to his mother has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide.
A criminal complaint filed Friday says 28-year-old Marissa Tietsort of Wausau caused the infant’s death in October, then put him in a snowsuit and car seat and returned him to his mother — without telling her the child was dead.
Authorities found the mother trying to revive the boy, but he had died hours earlier of blunt force head injuries from multiple impacts to the head.
During a court appearance Friday, Judge Jill Falstad issued a $500,000 cash bond for Tietsort and ordered that she have no contact with children or with the victim’s family, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Tietsort, who is pregnant with her sixth child, also faces child abuse charges involving an 11-month-old girl in her care. That charge stems from an August incident. Tietsort was arrested in that case after the 2-month-old died in October.
According to the criminal complaint, the mother of the 2-month-old boy dropped him and his older brother off at Tietsort’s home on Oct. 18.
About two hours later, the baby’s mom got a text from Tietsort letting her know that there was a story about herself on a local news outlet’s website saying she had been charged with child abuse. Tietsort told the mother she was not allowed to be in contact with children and not to tell anyone she was watching her two sons. The mother came and picked up her sons about three hours later, according to the complaint.
When the victim’s mother came to pick up her infant and older son, the infant was seated in his car seat, wearing a snow suit with a hat pulled down over his eyes. The mother told police she believed her son was sleeping, as it was past 9 p.m., according to the complaint.
The boy’s mother later realized her son was not breathing, cold and stiff. Officers arrived to find the boy had “ashen skin tone, his jaw was clenched and his lips were blue.”
Tietsort told police she didn’t kill the baby, but knew he was dead, the complaint said. When her boyfriend got home that evening, they went to McDonald’s and she brought the dead baby with them, according to the complaint.
After she gave the boy back to his mother, Tietsort, her boyfriend and their son went swimming at a local hotel, the complaint said.
Phoenix police have opened an investigation into allegations that a woman in a vegetative state for more than a decade was sexually assaulted at a private nursing care facility — and recently gave birth to a baby boy.
Police spokesperson Sgt. Tommy Thompson confirmed on Friday that detectives were looking into the Hacienda Skilled Nursing Facility but declined to provide further specific information, citing the ongoing investigation.
Local news outlets reported that the woman patient — who has not been identified — has been in a vegetative state for 14 years after a near-drowning incident. She reportedly gave birth to a baby boy on Dec. 29.
The story was first reported Thursday by AZ Family, a Phoenix CBS affiliate, after it was approached by a woman “familiar with the situation” who wished to remain anonymous.
The whistleblower, whose face was hidden and voice disguised for the televised segment, told reporter Briana Whitney she felt “anger and sadness” when she learned what had happened to the patient.
She said that the patient requires round-the-clock care, with many of the facility’s employees having access to her room, and that the woman had no way to defend herself or communicate what had happened to her.
“None of the staff were aware that she was pregnant until she was pretty much giving birth,” she said. She told Whitney that staff were alerted that something was wrong with the patient when she began to vocalize in pain. “From what I’ve been told she was moaning. And they didn’t know what was wrong with her.”
She said that a nurse on duty was able to deliver the baby boy, who is apparently alive and healthy.
The Hacienda Skilled Nursing Facility is part of the larger Phoenix-based Hacienda HealthCare system. The organization’s website said this particular facility provides “comprehensive, individual, home-away-from-home care to children and young adults ages 45 or younger” with “profound disabilities and complex medical needs.”
They have since released a statement saying- “As an organization, Hacienda HealthCare stands fully committed to getting to the truth of what, for us, represents an unprecedented matter. We are already conducting a comprehensive internal review of our processes, protocols, and people to ensure that every single Hacienda resident is as safe and well cared for as possible. Anything less than that is unacceptable to our team, our company’s leaders and the communities we serve,”.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan man charged with killing six strangers between picking up rides for Uber pleaded guilty to murder on Monday, just before attorneys were set to interview jurors for his trial.
Jason Dalton’s surprise move came about three years after the shootings, which occurred over the course of a few hours in and around Kalamazoo. Dalton pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder over his attorney’s objections, triggering a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance for parole on Feb. 5.
“Yes, I’ve wanted this for quite a while,” Dalton replied when a judge asked if the pleas were voluntary.
The 48-year-old Dalton answered “yes” to a series of questions, admitting that he shot eight people at three locations. After his arrest, police quoted Dalton as saying a “devil figure” on Uber’s app was controlling him on the day of the shootings.
Four women were killed in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant: Barbara Hawthorne, Dorothy “Judy” Brown, Mary Lou Nye and her sister-in-law, Mary Jo Nye. Rich Smith and his 17-year-old son, Tyler Smith, were fatally shot while looking at a pickup truck in a dealer’s lot.
Abigail Kopf, who was 14 at the time, was shot in the head during the restaurant shooting and survived. Tiana Carruthers was injured in a residential area.
Dalton had been deemed competent to stand trial and last week dropped an insanity defense. In court, he didn’t explain why he randomly shot eight people.
Dalton, the father of two children, had worked as an insurance adjuster and had no previous criminal record before the February 2016 shootings.
Prosecutor Jeff Getting said the motive behind the shootings is a question that “haunts us.”
“Everybody wants to know,” he said during a news conference after the court hearing.
Defense attorney Eusebio Solis said he advised Dalton not to plead guilty.
“But in speaking to Mr. Dalton, there are reasons” for the plea, Solis told Judge Alexander Lipsey. “There are personal reasons for him. He does not want to put his family through that, or the victims’ families, through the trial. It’s his decision.”
A gun shop owner said Dalton bought a jacket with an inside pocket designed to hold a gun just hours before the rampage. Shop owner Jon Southwick recalled Dalton “laughing and joking,” and giving a “one-armed hug” to the manager before making the purchase.
Following the guilty pleas, Getting praised investigators and others who helped during the case, especially Alexis Cornish. She was dating Tyler Smith and was in a vehicle when he and his father were shot while looking at pickup trucks.
Cornish was “extraordinarily brave” to immediately get a phone from her boyfriend’s pocket and call 911, the prosecutor said.
Dalton’s relatives and former wife released a statement, expressing condolences to Kopf, Carruthers and the victims’ families for “this senseless tragedy.”
“Nothing that we can say is adequate, but please know that our hearts are broken by the suffering which has resulted from the actions of our son and former husband,” the statement said.
TUCSON – Abortion has long been a controversial topic and a new law that went into effect in Arizona Jan. 1 is now adding even more conflict.
Women seeking an abortion now have to face a series of questions about their decision.
Many oppose this new law, saying it is too intrusive.
Senate Bill 1394 requires doctors to ask each patient a series of questions. Among them, there will be questions about the reason for wanting an abortion.
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona Executive Director, Jodi Liggett, says these questions can bring up trauma.
“This mostly is an attempt to intimidate patients from seeking abortion care and to make providing abortion care burdensome administratively,” said Liggett.
The stated objective of the bill is to gather information.
“Look that’s apple pie. Nobody is against having more or better information, but as we do in Democracies, we have to draw a line somewhere around people’s privacy,” Liggett said.
Liggett says there is a provision that allows women to refuse to answer why they are seeking an abortion and they plan to let their patients know that up front.
Though Planned Parenthood opposes this law, others support it.
Elisa Medina, Executive Director for the Tucson non-profit Hands of Hope, says this law will help women.
“Let’s say a pregnancy is the result of sexual violence or sexual assault,” said Medina. “Regardless of what that woman chooses for the pregnancy, we want to know that information and abortion providers should want to know that information so that they can provide additional support for her.”
The bill requires doctors to ask patients if they were raped or are victims of domestic abuse. If they say yes, doctors are required by law to provide resources to seek help.
“As a sexual assault survivor personally, I think it would have been wonderful to have my medical provider talk to me about the resources that could have been available to me, so I’m surprised that anyone would be opposed to gathering more information,” Medina said. “And women don’t have to answer these questions.”
