Caffeine overdose ruled cause of prom king's death

A caffeine overdose has been ruled the cause of an Ohio prom king’s sudden death before graduation in May.

The Lorain County Coroner reports Logan Stiner of LaGrange, Ohio, had toxic levels of caffeine in his body, and died from an irregular heartbeat and seizures after ingesting caffeine powder.

Stiner was found by his brother near the white powder on May 27, having taken enough to cause the overdose while at home from school for lunch.

“I never thought it would hurt an 18-year-old child,” resident Lora Balka told WKYC. She says she hopes his death will encourage other youths to consume caffeine in a mindful manner.

While it’s not sold in stores, caffeine powder is available on the Internet and is stronger than traditional forms of the supplement. One teaspoon of the powder contains up to 1,600 milligrams of caffeine — about 70 cans of Red Bull. Comparably, energy drinks contain about 280 milligrams, and a 12-ounce Starbucks coffee contains 260 milligrams.

A warning label on the caffeine powder suggests using a micro-scale to measure a safe amount, and companies claim that it improves focus, increases endurance and elevates mood.

Caffeine overdose ruled cause of prom king's death

As House committee staffs shrink, press offices expand

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress are putting your money where their mouths are.

Since Republicans took control of the U.S. House in January 2011, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has led a cost-cutting effort that has trimmed staff for House committees by nearly 20%, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. But the number of committee staff responsible for press and communications work has increased by nearly 15% over the same period, according to House spending records.

In the first three months of 2010, with Democrats still in control of the chamber, the primary committees of the House reported employing 1,570 staff members, 74 of whom had “press” or “communications” or related terms in their job titles. Over the same period this year, the same committees reported 1,277 total employees, a 19% cut, 85 of whom had communications-related job titles.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the numbers are “completely unsurprising. We promised responsible oversight of the Obama administration, and effective oversight requires communicating with the American people.”

But the numbers raise concerns that Congress is replacing investigative and legislative work with political messaging.

Drew Hammill, spokesman for Minority Leader (and former speaker) Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, “while the urgent needs of the American people are ignored by House Republicans, it isn’t surprising that their Republican Committee chairmen are hiring more communications staff to spin their record of obstruction, dysfunction and distraction.”

Rep Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it is Republicans on his committee who have driven the change. “Our committee — and all committees — should use taxpayer dollars to help better the everyday lives of our constituents, not inflate their press operations to basically run political campaigns out of government buildings.”

The Oversight Committee has gone from a total staff of 118 with eight communications people in 2010 to 108 staff and 10 communications people. The trend is more dramatic over a longer period of time. In 1997, when the oversight committee headed by Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind., was aggressively investigating President Clinton, the committee listed a staff of 121 with only two employees with communications in their job title.

As the majority party in the House, Republicans get a bigger staff on each committee, and GOP staff grew after the House switched from Democratic to Republican control. For instance, the House Financial Services Committee had four press people in 2010, two Republican and two Democratic. For the first quarter of 2014 there were six, and GOP spokesman David Popp said four of those are Republicans. But the House records do not detail which party the staff members work for.

Becca Watkins, spokeswoman for Oversight Committee Republicans, said the change is driven by changing technology, and it affects both parties. “Just as the Internet changed the landscape for newspapers, it changed it for Congress as well. On a bipartisan basis, fewer staff hours are used on mail and managing paper-based archives. More goes toward digital efforts — good communication will always be integral to good oversight.”

Brad Fitch, president and CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation that helps lawmakers manage their offices, said “Internet and e-mail have increased the number of conversations that citizens are having with members of Congress . . . (which) generally leads to more positive communications because (lawmakers are) providing more information.”

But Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, which trains congressional staff on how to investigate government programs, said “communicating with the public — that’s incredibly important, but technology has made that easier to do. You don’t need to increase your staff significantly and disproportionately.”

Brian said her concern is that Congress is replacing subject-matter expertise with communications expertise, which makes it harder to generate significant and meaningful legislation. “It’s more important to know what you are doing than it is to talk about it,” she said.

Watkins said this is not happening. “There are still plenty of lawyers and investigators,” she said. “Technology advances that have allowed for overall staff reductions haven’t meant a drop-off in reforms, investigations and hearings.”

Former congressman Tom Davis, who chaired the Oversight Committee 10 years ago, said “Obviously the legislative output hasn’t gone up. … A lot of it is just messaging at this point. Getting the message out.” But, he adds, lawmakers also have to keep up with their constituents’ engagement in new media platforms. “If they weren’t out there responding to people, people would fault them. So you’re damned if you add more staff, damned if you don’t.”

Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington who specializes in political communication, said the numbers are not a surprise. The White House always gets more media attention for its views than Congress does, he said, which is a particular problem for Republicans who control only the House and not the Senate. “It is surprising to me that Congress hasn’t been more aggressive earlier in trying to reduce the disparity between the attention that the White House and Congress gets,” Farnsworth said.

“Since the legislative branch is mired in single-digit approval ratings, the members figure they need to invest more in getting their message out.”

As House committee staffs shrink, press offices expand

Five people hospitalized after Northside crash

Five people sustained injuries after a car ran a stop sign and caused a crash in Northside Sunday morning.

Sgt. Charles White said a Nissan Maxima was heading west on Chase Avenue and ran the stop sign at Virginia Avenue at about 10:25 a.m.

A blue truck hit the Nissan, forcing it up onto a sidewalk, where it struck three pedestrians.

“They were walking on the sidewalk when the car came up and hit them,” White said.

The woman who drove the Nissan will be given blood alcohol content test, White said.

The three pedestrians and two drivers were transported to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. White said their injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.

Five people hospitalized after Northside crash

Heroin: Cheap, pure, plentiful

Cincinnati is the key distribution site for the supply of heroin that has Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky in a choke-hold, narcotics agents say.

The drug, mainly in the form as Mexican brown powder heroin, gets here via the usual drug routes of Interstate 75 and 71, dumping into source cities and then, in the hundreds of pounds, into Cincinnati.

“It’s all from the Mexican cartels,” said Lt. Brad Winall, commander of the Regional Narcotics Unit (RENU) based in Hamilton County. “The cartels will have people who work for them in the U.S. The organizations transport to particular ‘source’ cities. The source cities distribute larger amounts to urban areas, like Cincinnati. Here, it’s cut, so the dealers can make a better profit.”

Heroin is a cheap drug – cheaper and a lot more accessible than the prescription painkillers, which are synthetic opiates called opioids, so many current heroin users were hooked on before they first snorted or injected heroin. Local police in Northern Kentucky estimate a cost of $10 to $20 for an addict to get a fix. A gram of heroin is about $150, said Bill Mark, director of the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force.

About five years ago it’d have been unusual to find a heroin dealer in Northern Kentucky, Mark said, but not anymore.

“You see much larger scale heroin trafficking,” he said.

“It bottlenecks here,” said Craig Donnachie, senior supervisory resident agent of the FBI Covington office. “It’s so concentrated.”

About 18 months ago Northern Kentucky hit hard, harder than the rest of the state and had overdose death statistics greater than Hamilton County.

Now, the addiction woes have spread.

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No way out: Heroin addicts trapped in deadly maze

The nation’s heroin epidemic is penetrating idyllic communities in Northern Kentucky as fiercely as New England states such as Vermont and Delaware.

In Delaware and around the country, heroin is in vogue again.

It’s a deadly fad. In the last eight months, fatal overdoses from all drugs, including alcohol, have jumped from 12 to 15 a month from 12 a month. Heroin’s resurgence is to blame for the rising death count, state officials say.

The problem is everywhere, and in all sections of New Castle County, from the Hunter’s Run Trailer Park in Bear to the upscale Country Creek community near Newark. Some users died in bedrooms, others on bathroom floors. One was found in a shed behind a home in Chelsea Estates. Another was lying on a driveway in Bear.

The victims in the 15 suspected heroin deaths that New Castle County Police responded to so far this year range in age from 22 to 51 years old. Nearly a third of them were female. All but one of them was white. Some already had been through drug rehab before heroin killed them. Four had been released from jail within days of their deaths.

Eight of the deaths statewide have been due to heroin laced with fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller added to the heroin to make it stronger and more attractive to the addict.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder calls says heroin in America is an “urgent public health crisis” in America. Delaware Health and Human Services Secretary Rita Landgraf says it’s an epidemic.

New Castle County Police Chief Elmer Setting, who once forced his teen daughter to watch an OD victim in a body bag get rolled into a medical examiner’s van, said the drug is his department’s top priority.

To fight the trade that’s bringing more death and addiction to a region that doesn’t have enough treatment to care for its addicts, the FBI and DEA in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky deputize regional narcotics officers and local police for specific investigations. When the federal agents work with the local police, convicted dealers can end up with harsher penalties.

Law enforcement agencies are watching heroin numbers of all kinds climb year to year.

RENU, which interdicts drugs transported by interstate, saw more than a 740 percent increase in its seized heroin from 2011 to 2013, Winall said.

The Kentucky Crime Laboratory is analyzing more heroin each year: Total heroin cases jumped from 451 in 2010, or 2.3 percent of all drug cases, to 3,570 in 2013, which amounted to 17.9 percent of all drug cases, according to Kentucky State Patrol records.

Heroin surged in Northern Kentucky before most of the rest of the commonwealth, garnering 60 percent of prosecutions in the state all in 2011 with only 8.4 percent of the population.

Cases involving heroin trafficking and possession in Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties have gone from 409 cases filed in 2009 to 2,204 cases filed in 2013, according to the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts. In comparison to the number of cases filed statewide, the percentage in the three specified counties have gone from 61 percent of heroin cases filed in the state in 2009 to 37 percent of heroin cases filed in the state in CY2013.

“Nevertheless, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cases involving charges for heroin trafficking and possession,” the KAOC reported to the Enquirer.

“It’s a disturbing trend,” Mark said, looking over the records. “The number of arrests in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties has doubled from year to year. The problem is growing.”

In order to keep track of its inmate housing issues, Campbell County Jail on Jan. 17 added a new designation a growing number of its inmates: “heroin alert.”

The alerts are the people brought in who either were charged with trafficking or possession of heroin or who, when prompted by jail staff, admit to being a heroin addict. Jailer Jim Daley says it’s easier to keep track of who might be withdrawing, as well as inform the Campbell County commonwealth’s attorney’s office.

The heroin alerts are climbing, Daley said. The average population in the Campbell County jail per month is 490 inmates, and an average of 235 of them are using or have heroin related charges, according to jail data. That’s 48 percent of the average population.

A commonly heard statement among cops in Ohio and Kentucky is, “we can’t arrest our way out of this epidemic.”

NKY FBI’s Donnachie agrees.

“We’re trying to cut the supply. That’s what I try to attack,” Donnachie said. “You also need public awareness and additional treatment.”

A grass-roots movement in Northern Kentucky that nearly two years ago morphed into a multi-tiered effort among public and private health care advocates, families, drug prevention groups and even the chamber of commerce is pushing for treatment funding and space.

Lt. Dough Ventre, commander of the multiagency Clermont County Narcotics Unit, said heroin is sold there, but not in large quantities.

“We’re seeing trafficking where people go into the city, buy a little bit,” Ventre said. “They sell some, they’re using some and they go back and re-up.”

“We’ve pinched a bunch of Mexican dealers, doing home delivery to people,” Ventre said. They’re sent into the region with a car and a cell phone, without a driver’s license, he said.

“Their job is every day to go around, drive and drop off heroin.”

Unlike Mark and Finall in Northern Kentucky and Hamilton County, Ventre said his unit sees mostly Mexican black tar heroin.

The difference in the heroin epidemic now and a heroin explosion in the 1970s is in its landing spots in affluent communities, such as Northern Kentucky’s Fort Mitchell.

“We had three people in one lot in Fort Mitchell with heroin paraphernalia,” Donnachie said. While police were questioning the trio, they spotted four more in another car in the same grocery store lot no farther than 30 yards away.

The overdosed addicts show up anywhere, slumped over steering wheels in shopping plaza lots, overdosed in fast-food restaurant restrooms, in homes and in parks throughout the region, police and paramedics say.

In the small river city of Bellevue, it’s not out of the ordinary for a cop who arrives to a heroin overdose call to recognize the victim.

“They are our friends and neighbors and they deserved better,” said Bellevue Police Chief Wayne Turner.

As the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force and FBI hit larger targets, Bellevue Police officers work on their own goal: “Shut down their curbside businesses,” Turner said.

“Every one of these victims has a name and a story,” Turner said. “I think what hits police departments like mine the hardest is the fact these are real people and someone’s family, not just a case number or a cataloged statistic.”

Turner’s force of 11 is out checking for suspected heroin dealing every day. If the chief gets a complaint about a suspicion of dealing at a house, he orders his officers to work on surveillance, but if that fails, be sure to make their presence known.

“We try to saturate that area with officers: Marked cruisers, unmarked cars, on bicycles,” directed patrol officer Craig Stephens said.

“I tell them to go there. Do your roll calls there. Be there every chance they can,” Turner said.

Bellevue Police carry gloves and sharps containers in their cruisers to collect discarded heroin syringes along streets and near the highways.

In Bellevue, police are taking the heroin crisis personally, Stephens said.

“It’s the girl next door,” he said, conveying the story of a teenage girl who, police had heard, was a heroin addict. They were anxiously awaiting a tragic call to her family’ s home, but officer Roy Catron intervened.

He’d met a heroin addiction counselor through his work as a street cop, and he introduced the counselor to the teenager. She was sent to Florida for treatment. “She’s now healthy. She’s in college,” Stephens said. “He did this all on his own.”

In Covington, police have been known to drop off heroin addicts at the NKY Med Clinic, the region’s only methadone clinic.

Everyone, it seems, has a story, and no one sees an end to the heroin epidemic.

“The short answer is no,” RENU’s Winall said, asked whether he sees relief coming.

“We target the heroin trafficker and make arrests and seize large quantities of heroin much like other drug task forces,” he said. The unit’s interdiction program finds the heroin comes from California, Texas and Arizona, frequently, and it often goes through Chicago before getting to Cincinnati.

“However, as long as there is the continued appetite and demand for heroin, the cartels will find ways to transport the heroin into the Greater Cincinnati area – and of course there will be a continuous supply of local traffickers willing to sell the smaller quantities to individuals addicted to this drug. ?

Kentucky Crime Laboratories heroin cases:

2010: 451

2011: 749

2012: 1,803

2013: 3,570

Campbell County Jail: total inmates housed on ‘heroin alert’ — in for possession, trafficking of heroin or admitted heroin addiction to jail staff:

 

	2013	2014
JANUARY	458	489
February	423	506
March	457	481
April	473	510
May	453	494
Source:Campbell County Jail

Heroin: Cheap, pure, plentiful

Obama: Clinton's 'broke' comments won't mean much

President Obama is defending Hillary Clinton over her “broke” comments, saying they won’t mean much in the long run.

“As soon as you jump back into the spotlight in a more explicitly political way, you’re going to be fly-spec like this,” Obama said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

“She’s accustomed to it,” Obama said. “Anybody who gets involved in public life is accustomed to it. Over time I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference.”

Clinton, a former U.S. senator who served as Obama’s first secretary of state, may seek the presidency in 2016.

Republicans and others are criticizing Clinton for saying that she and ex-President Bill Clinton left the White House “not only dead broke, but in debt,” despite the prospects of lucrative speaking fees and book contracts.

Obama said Hillary Clinton will be just fine.

“I think that Hillary has been to this rodeo a bunch of times,” he told ABC. “She is in public service because she cares about the same folks that I talked to here today. Her track record on that speaks for itself.”

Obama: Clinton's 'broke' comments won't mean much

Iraq forces look to claw back Tikrit from insurgents

Iraqi helicopter gunships struck suspected insurgent positions in Tikrit on Sunday as part of an offensive using tanks and commandos to weed out Sunni militants who had taken over the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

The insurgents appeared to have repelled the military’s initial push, and remained in control of the city on Sunday, but clashes were taking place in the northern neighborhood of Qadissiyah, two residents reached by telephone said.

Muhanad Saif al-Din, who lives in the city center, said he could see smoke rising from Qadissiyah, which borders the University of Tikrit, where troops brought by helicopter established a bridgehead two days ago. He said many of the militants in Tikrit had deployed to the city’s outskirts, apparently to blunt the military attack.

Military spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi told reporters Sunday that the military was in full control of the university and had raised the Iraqi flag over the campus.

“The battle has several stages. The security forces have cleared most of the areas of the first stage and we have achieved results,” al-Moussawi said. “It is a matter of time before we declare the total clearing (of Tikrit).”

Jawad al-Bolani, a security official in the provincial operation command, said the U.S. was sharing intelligence with Iraq and has played an “essential” role in the Tikrit offensive.

“The Americans are with us and they are an important part in the success we are achieving in and around Tikrit,” al-Bolani told The Associated Press.

Washington has sent 180 of 300 American troops President Obama has promised to help Iraqi forces. The U.S. is also flying manned and unmanned aircraft on reconnaissance missions over Iraq.

The U.S. military said it is flying 30 to 35 missions a day over Iraq, primarily on surveillance missions. “Some of those aircraft are armed,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Saturday. The flights included both drones and manned aircraft.

The offensive in Tikrit, about 95 miles north of Baghdad, came as heavy clashes between Iraqi security forces and insurgents killed at least 21 troops about 30 miles south of Baghdad. Officials says dozens of militants were killed or captured. Separately, Iraq’s air force carried out several airstrikes against the city of Mosul, which fell to militants earlier this month.

Tikrit is one of two major cities to fall to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

Muhanad Saif al-Din said the city has emptied out in recent days as locals flee ahead of anticipated clashes.

“Tikrit has become a ghost town because a lot of people left over the past 72 hours, fearing random aerial bombardment and possible clashes as the army advances toward the city,” Saif al-Din said. “The few people who remain are afraid of possible revenge acts by Shiite militiamen who are accompanying the army. We are peaceful civilians and we do not want to be victims of this struggle.”

ISIL and its allies have overrun much of Iraq’s Sunni heartland, a vast territory stretching west and north from Baghdad to the Jordanian and Syrian borders. After a dramatic initial push, the onslaught appears to have slowed as the militants bump up against predominantly Shiite areas stretching south from Baghdad.

Iraq’s U.S.-trained and equipped military melted away in the face of the offensive, sapping morale and public confidence in its ability to stem the militant surge — let alone claw back lost ground. If successful, the Tikrit operation could help restore a degree of faith in the security forces.

It also would provide a boost to embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is fighting for his job as many former allies drop their support and Iraqis increasingly express doubts about his ability to unify the country.

Al-Maliki, however, has shown little inclination publicly to step aside and instead appears set on a third consecutive term as prime minister after his bloc won the most seats in April elections.

The United States and other world powers have pressed al-Maliki to reach out to the country’s Sunni and Kurdish minorities and have called for a more inclusive government that can address longstanding grievances.

Al-Maliki has widely been accused of monopolizing power and alienating Sunnis, who have long complained of being unfairly targeted by security forces.

Iraq forces look to claw back Tikrit from insurgents

Big, mean 'Transformers' truck goes green, lean

The lead “actor” in the new movie Transformers: Age of Extinction is a rip-snortin’ big tractor-truck that points to the future of highway freight hauling.

That’s because this big Western Star truck is more aerodynamic than the big haulers of the past in order to save more fuel.

The truck plays Optimus Prime in the new Michael Bay movie, which opened this weekend, leader of the group of hot vehicles that transform themselves into oversize robots, called “autobots.” The truck, badged as a 5700 model, looks a lot like the new aerodynamic model that will be sold to truckers around the country, according to Andy Johnson, brand manager for Western Star, a unit of Daimler Trucks North America.

He says it will be Western Star’s first true aerodynamic truck.

In slimming down the truck, Optimus Prime is “keeping up with the times,” Johnson says. The big machine is an example of the “the future of trucking,” where gas savings and emissions reductions play a big role.

Johnson won’t say how fuel efficient — that information will be available this fall when the new trucks, well, roll out.

But the bigger question might also be, how did Western Star get to play Optimus Prime in a mega-franchise when the star has usually been played by Peterbilt Trucks?

On that question, Johnson is not commenting.

Big, mean 'Transformers' truck goes green, lean