Today in history:

On July 31, 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic medal, becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. (He would finish his career with 28 total Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.)

Also on this date:

In 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast; of some 2,500 crew members, more than 1,000 died.

In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic’s National Assembly.

In 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him.

In 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.

In 1964, the U.S. lunar probe Ranger 7 took the first close-up images of the moon’s surface.

In 1971, Apollo 15 crew members David Scott and James Irwin became the first astronauts to use a lunar rover on the surface of the moon.

In 1972, vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the Democratic ticket with George McGovern following disclosures that Eagleton had received electroshock therapy to treat clinical depression.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in Moscow.

In 2020, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case didn’t adequately screen jurors for potential biases. (The Supreme Court later reimposed the sentence.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Jazz composer-musician Kenny Burrell is 93.
• Actor Geraldine Chaplin is 80.
• Former movie studio executive Sherry Lansing is 80.
• Singer Gary Lewis is 78.
• International Tennis Hall of Famer Evonne Goolagong Cawley is 73.
• Actor Michael Biehn is 68.
• Rock singer-musician Daniel Ash (Love and Rockets) is 67.
• Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is 66.
• Rock musician Bill Berry (R.E.M.) is 66.
• Jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is 65.
• Actor Wesley Snipes is 62.
• Musician Fatboy Slim is 61.
• Author J.K. Rowling is 59.
• Actor Dean Cain is 58.
• Actor Jim True-Frost is 58.
• Actor Ben Chaplin is 55.
• Actor Eve Best is 53.
• Football Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden is 50.
• Country singer-musician Zac Brown is 46.
• Actor-producer-writer B.J. Novak is 45.
• Football Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware is 42.
• NHL center Evgeni Malkin is 38.
• NASCAR driver Kyle Larson is 32.
• Hip-hop artist Lil Uzi Vert is 29.
• Actor Rico Rodriguez (TV: “Modern Family”) is 26.

General Daily Insight for July 31, 2024

Everything may not be as it seems. The emotional Moon is at odds with serious Saturn, so disappointment or an abundance of responsibility could wear us out and make it harder to relax. Thankfully, Luna blends well with friendly Venus, encouraging us to reach out for friendship from those around us and offering sparks of creativity. That said, a lack of clarity can set off emotional confusion when the Moon squares perplexing Neptune at 10:46 pm EDT. Decision-making might require extra careful thought.

Navy MWR Entertainment hosted the band which played a handful of their most well-known songs before using the aircraft carrier as the backdrop to film a music video for their new song “Coming Home”.

Jackson Holliday, the No. 2 prospect in baseball, is on his way to Baltimore to potentially rejoin the Orioles, two sources with direct knowledge confirmed to The Baltimore Sun.

The team has yet to announce a roster move, and it’s unclear when he could rejoin the club. The Orioles play Wednesday afternoon at Camden Yards before heading to Cleveland to face the Guardians for a four-game series beginning Thursday. Holliday was not in the lineup for Triple-A Norfolk on Tuesday night.

Holliday, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 draft, is hitting .271 with a .908 OPS in Triple-A this season. If he’s recalled, it will be his second stint in the major leagues after the 20-year-old struggled in his first MLB action, going just 2 for 34 with 18 strikeouts before being demoted.

The Baltimore Banner was first to report Holliday was on his way to Baltimore.

This story will be updated.

In a report released last week, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs identified problems at the medical center related to surgical services and how leadership there addressed quality management concerns.

“We take allegations of oversight and misconduct seriously and have strengthened our policies and procedures to ensure consistent, high-quality care from licensed professionals,” said Terrence Hayes, the VA’s press secretary, in a Tuesday statement. “We plan to fully implement all recommendations by December.”

The Hampton facility recently confirmed it was replacing several top officials, including its director, chief of staff and chief of surgery.

The OIG launched its review following multiple complaints it received about the center in 2022.

“We got some concerns about surgical quality so we engaged with the facility trying to get some response,” said Julie Kroviak, the department’s principal deputy assistant inspector general for health care inspections. “We then sent further questions to the regional office — and after that we just became more concerned about the quality review processes.”

Kroviak said the report can get a “little bit technical” but shouldn’t be dismissed.

“I think it can be written off as ‘Oh just some detailed processes weren’t followed by clinical leaders.’ But those processes are so critical to the foundation of a patient’s safety program,” she said. “If the highest levels of leadership are not aware of them, truly not aware of them, there are so many places for things to go seriously wrong.”

For example, the report found that after concerns were raised about patient safety, facility leaders issued a summary suspension of the assistant chief of surgery’s clinical privileges in January 2023. But it says the surgeon’s clinical privileges were restored after facility leaders failed to follow required protocol. The surgeon transferred to another VA health facility in June 2023, which “precluded facility leaders from correcting the process, including initiating additional actions,” the report states.

The Hampton center serves southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. From Oct. 1, 2021, through Sept. 30, 2022, the center served more than 66,000 patients.

The report states OIG received a complaint, which included five patient case examples, in December 2022 that the assistant chief of surgery provided poor surgical care and that the chief of staff was aware of the concerns but did not address them.

After OIG requested additional information, the Veterans Integrated Service Network responded and said the facility conducted a focused clinical care review of 15 cases performed by the assistant chief of surgery. It found six cases did not meet the standard of care and four of those had intraoperative complications, including one patient who experienced a laceration of the liver and another who underwent surgery in concerningly close proximity to having received chemoradiation therapy.

The report states OIG opened its hotline inspection in May 2023. During this review, widespread failures and deficiencies were identified related to facility leaders’ responses to care concerns and subsequent privileging actions involving the assistant chief of surgery, professional practice evaluations of surgeons, surgical service quality management and institutional disclosures.

“The findings identified through this inspection highlight not only failures of facility leaders to ensure that the required processes were appropriately implemented, but also a lack of leaders’ basic understanding of the processes that support delivery of safe health care,” the report states.

The report provided a dozen recommendations, including that summary suspensions, clinical care reviews and proposed revocation of privileges are conducted in accordance with the requirements and policies of the Veterans Health Administration. It further advised the center to ensure that ongoing professional practice evaluations include documentation of all conclusionary outcomes.

In his statement, Hayes said the VA fully supported OIG’s findings.

Hayes said a new team is meeting bi-weekly to address OIG’s recommendations with a target year-end completion goal. He said the facility has introduced a new reporting tool to track clinical care metrics, suspensions, privilege changes, state board reports and ongoing evaluations. Additionally, the facility has initiated monthly patient risk meetings in surgery services.

Hayes noted Michael Harper is taking on the role of acting medical center director until Aug. 5. Harper will then be replaced by Walt Dannenberg, who currently serves as the medical center director of the Long Beach VA Medical Center in California. Hayes said the leadership changes were done to “align with the VA’s commitment to high-reliability principles” but were not directly related to the report.

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Veterans’ Affairs also recently completed an investigation into the Hampton VA Medical Center after lawmakers said they received credible complaints about patient safety concerns and medical incompetence. As a result of the investigation, the committee announced last week that the center was making a series of personnel changes.

Katie King, katie.king@virginiamedia.com

Old Dominion linebacker Jason Henderson was among 75 players named to the Bronko Nagurski Trophy watch list on Tuesday.

The award is presented to the top defensive player in the country chosen by the Football Writers Association of America and the Charlotte Touchdown Club.

Henderson, a two-time All-American, led the country in tackles per game the past two seasons. He finished with 14.2 stops per game last season and 170 total tackles.

Virginia Tech defensive tackle Aeneas Peeples, Virginia safety Jonas Sanker, Liberty linebacker CJ Bazile and safety Brylan Green and East Carolina cornerback Shavon Revel also made the list.

Two W&M stars on Payton list

William & Mary left tackle Charles Grant, a former Churchland High star, and running back Bronson Yoder are among 35 players who have been named to the Walter Payton Award preseason watch list.

The award is presented to the FCS national offensive player of the year. Known as the Heisman of the FCS, it is named for legendary running back Walter Payton, who starred at Jackson State as part of his Hall of Fame career.

Richmond wide receiver Nick DeGennaro also made the list.

Grant, who enters his fourth season as a starter, was one of only three offensive linemen to make the list. He ranked as the CAA’s top tackle in pass blocking efficiency last season and allowed just one sack on 334 pass-blocking snaps.

Yoder enters his final season ranked among the Tribe’s career top-10 lists in rushing yards (2,660, eighth), rushing touchdowns (25, eighth) and all-purpose yards (4,322, fifth).

DeGennaro led the Spiders with 71 receptions for 904 yards and tied a program record with 11 touchdown catches last season.

Liberty center makes Outland list

Liberty center Jordan White has been named to the Outland Trophy preseason watch list.

The award is presented to the top interior linemen in college football.

White, a native of Largo, Maryland, and a transfer from West Virginia, was an All-Conference USA first-team selection last season and helped the Flames finish No. 1 in the country in rushing offense (293.3 yards per game).

• Cardinal Gibbons High (North Carolina) offensive tackle Jack Sheehan (6-6, 310) announced Tuesday on social media that he has committed to Old Dominion.

Now he will serve the maximum allowable sentence.

Justin Lee Palmer, 44, of Jonesboro, was sentenced July 25 to 30 years in federal prison without the possibility of parole and a lifetime of supervised release on a production of child pornography charge, according to a July 26 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Palmer pleaded guilty to the charge Aug. 4, 2023, court records show.

“A vile, disgusting, reprobate has finally received his due,” U.S. Attorney Jonathan D. Ross said in the release.

McClatchy News reached out to Palmer’s attorney for comment July 30 but did not immediately hear back.

Authorities first learned of Palmer during a 2020 investigation into the sexual abuse of a 9-year-old girl which was filmed and distributed to users on KIK, a messaging app, officials said.

The FBI identified Palmer, username “skipdinnergetmethin,” as someone who received the video of the abuse, according to court records.

Further investigation into Palmer revealed that he “used the screen name ’skipdinnergetmethin’ to pose as a 15-year-old girl and coach teen and preteen girls how to be anorexic,” officials said.

“Palmer instructed girls to perform a variety of humiliating and harmful acts while they were naked so that they would feel disgusted with themselves and be motivated to lose weight,” according to officials.

FBI Little Rock Special Agent in Charge Alicia D. Corder called Palmer’s actions “revolting and deplorable.”

___

Predations ’far beyond the typical scope’

Investigators found saved conversations on Palmer’s phone between him and his victims in which he asked their weight “stats,” called them pigs and directed them to take photos and videos of themselves naked, court records show.

Palmer’s phone contained 38 images and 49 videos of one 13-year-old girl, 71 of which showed sexual acts, according to court records.

“Palmer’s predations went far beyond the typical scope of production cases,” Ross said in a sentencing memo, calling the abuse “calculated and cruel.”

He encouraged the girls to “drink toilet water, cut into their skin, urinate into a bottle and drink it, masturbate with household objects, and cover their skin in shameful phrases about their weight,” according to court records.

“The humiliation, self-hatred, and physical pain these victims — known and unknown — suffered as a result of Palmer’s lies and manipulation was, and likely continues to be, undoubtedly profound,” Ross said.

_____

©2024 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

PLANTATION, Fla. (AP) — A Florida school employee who let her transgender daughter play on her high school’s girls volleyball team is being suspended for 10 days after the district’s board found on Tuesday that she violated state law but said firing her would be too severe.

The Broward County school board voted 5-4 to suspend without pay Jessica Norton ‘s employment at Monarch High School, where her 16-year-old daughter played on the varsity volleyball team the last two seasons. She can also no longer work as a computer information specialist but must be given a job with equal pay and responsibility.

The board found that Norton’s actions violated the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which bars transgender females from playing girls high school sports. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature adopted it in 2021, over the Broward board’s opposition.

“Our employee made a choice not to follow the law,” said board member Debbi Hixon, who proposed the censure. But, she said, “It was a first offense. We would not terminate someone on their first offense.”

Norton, who was removed from the school after the violation was discovered in November and then placed on paid leave, called the vote an “incorrect decision” but said it was better than being fired. She said she wasn’t sure if she would accept the punishment and return to work. She wanted to talk it over with her daughter, who left the school even though she had been her class president and a homecoming princess. Maybe they could return together, she said.

“I did nothing wrong. Nothing,” Norton said.

Treatment of transgender children has been a hot-button issue across the country over the last few years. Florida is among at least 25 states that adopted bans on gender-affirming care for minors and one of at least 24 states that’s adopted a law banning transgender women and girls from certain women’s and girls sports. The Nortons are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit trying to block Florida’s law as a violation of their daughter’s civil rights. It remains pending.

During Tuesday’s hour-long debate, Hixon proposed Norton’s punishment after casting the deciding vote against an earlier motion, which called for a five-day suspension with no change in jobs. She said that was not severe enough. It failed by a 5-4 vote.

But, Hixon argued, firing Norton was too harsh for a seven-year employee with sterling evaluations and a caring reputation among students.

“This isn’t somebody who abused or harmed children,” Hixon said. “This is really about not following the law.”

Still, Hixon said, Norton put the district in a legally difficult spot by falsely attesting her child was born female on her state athletic eligibility form. The Florida athletic association fined Monarch $16,500 for violating the act, put the school on probation, and the district could be sued under the act if another student believes she was kept off the volleyball team and lost scholarship opportunities because of Norton’s daughter.

Hixon said she wanted Norton moved from her job as a computer information specialist because in that position she could learn of another transgender student who was playing girls sports and might not report that to administrators.

“That puts us as a school district in a bad place,” Hixon said.

The four other “yes” votes believed a five-day suspension or no punishment was appropriate but agreed to the 10-day ban as a compromise they could live with. They pointed to previous three-, five- and 10-day suspensions that were given to employees who had physically or verbally abused students as evidence Norton was being punished too harshly.

“I believe this case is unique,” member Allen Zeman said. “You can correctly surmise there have been problems with how we (the board) have dealt with it. You can also correctly surmise that rules and laws have been broken. But I think it is important that we come up with a solution that is consistent with the others.”

At least three board members supported Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s recommendation that Norton be fired because she had knowingly violated the law. Hepburn had overridden a committee’s recommendation that Norton be suspended 10 days.

Member Torey Alston said he believes the past suspensions cited by Norton’s supporters were too lax and shouldn’t preclude them from firing her. He said the board was sending the message that it would “go soft” on employees who violate statutes simply because they disagree with them.

“I have zero tolerance for breaking the law,” Alston said.

Norton and her husband stormed out of the meeting when member Brenda Fam repeatedly called her child a boy. Fam argued that Norton should face criminal charges though the Fairness act only carries civil penalties aimed at violating schools. She compared Norton to a parent who falsifies an address to get their child into a better school, an act that is a crime under Florida law.

Fam said she supports the Fairness act because it protects biological girls from having to compete against transgender girls who may be bigger and stronger. Norton and her supporters have argued her daughter has been on puberty blockers and estrogen for several years and has no physical advantages over her teammates or opposing teams.

“This was not a question about her son or her family, it was an issue about what she did as an employee and how she harmed others,” Fam said. She later denied misgendering Norton’s child, saying she was quoting from a newspaper article.

Norton, after the meeting, said Fam intentionally misgendered her child to anger her.

“It worked. I don’t think that a school board member should be misgendering children,” Norton said. “It’s a horrible thing.”

Police responded to the 100 block of Dover Circle, near East Severn Road in the East Belvedere neighborhood, following a 911 call at 5:23 p.m. Officers found a man with life-threatening injuries.

The victim has been taken to a hospital for treatment. No further information has been made available as of Tuesday evening.

The investigation is ongoing.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com

When his body arrived at the funeral home, after undergoing a state autopsy, the undertaker told the family that the 43-year-old’s internal organs were missing. The family said they had not given permission for his organs to be retained or destroyed.

Moore said her daughter and other son drove four hours to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where the autopsy had been performed, and picked up a sealed red bag containing what they were told was their brother’s organs. They buried the bag along with him.

“We should not be here. This is something out of science fiction. Any human would not believe that something so barbaric is happening,” Kelvin’s brother Simone Moore, said Tuesday.

Six families, who had loved ones die in the state prison system, have filed lawsuits against the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections and others, saying their family members’ bodies were returned to them missing internal organs after undergoing state-ordered autopsies. The families crowded into a Montgomery courtroom Tuesday for a brief status conference in the consolidated litigation.

“We will be seeking more answers about what happened to these organs and where they ended up,” Lauren Faraino, an attorney representing the families said after court. Faraino said there are additional families who are affected.

In one of the lawsuits, another family said a funeral home in 2021 similarly told them that “none of the organs had been returned” with their father’s body after his death while incarcerated.

The lawsuits also state that a group of UAB medical students in 2018 became concerned that a disproportionate number of the specimens they encountered during their medical training originated from people who had died in prison. They questioned if families of incarcerated people had the same ability as other patients’ families to request that organs be returned with the body.

UAB, in an earlier statement about the dispute, said that the Alabama Department of Corrections was “responsible for obtaining proper authorizations from the appropriate legal representative of the deceased.” “UAB does not harvest organs from bodies of inmates for research as has been reported in media reports,” the statement read.

UAB spokesperson Hannah Echols said in an emailed statement Tuesday that sometimes that organs are kept for additional testing if a pathologist believes it is needed to help determine the cause of death.

The University of Alabama System, which includes UAB, is a defendant in the lawsuits. Lawyers for the university system indicated they will file a motion to dismiss the lawsuits. UAB no longer does autopsies for the state prison system.

The Alabama Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.