Category: News

In an attempt to fend off would-be intruders, the National Park Service plans to install temporary steel spikes on top of the fencing surrounding the White House.

CBS News reports that in conjunction with the Secret Service, the National Park Service intends to install half-inch “pencil points” to prevent people from climbing over the fence. A temporary measure, the agency labeled the spikes a “removable anti-climb mechanism.”

The spikes will be installed on the tips of the fence at a five-degree angle. The installation proposal was approved on April 16th by another agency, the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts.

“The interim solution enhances security without affecting the visitor’s experience,” the National Park Service said in a statement. “A timeline for installation is not yet available, but we are working expeditiously on this improvement.”

The proposed installations come after a series of high-profile break-ins in the White House. Last September, Omar Gonzalez climbed over the fence, ran past the north lawn and managed to enter the Executive Mansion before being caught by the Secret Service. This March, two men were apprehended by security after attempting to unlawfully enter the White House, according to The Daily Beast.

People aren’t the only intruders the White House has had to content with. In January, a man who lived a few blocks away from the White House unintentionally landed his friend’s 2′ x 2′ personal drone (or “quadcopter”) on the White House lawn, according to the New York Times. The man, who was inebriated at the time, was not charged with a crime.

The spikes will have to be approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, which is set to meet on Thursday. Assuming they are approved, installation will begin shortly.

The White House is also considering permanent security measures, including overhauls in pedestrian areas, parking lots and access points, and of course the fence. The National Park service claims that the permanent installations, if approved, will have to be “climb delay and blast” resistant. Also in need of approval by the US Commission on Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, the installations could begin as soon as the summer of next year.

The temporary and permanent fence installations come at an opportune time, since the U.S. fencing industry is expected to grow 7% annually. By 2018, the industry is expected to earn $9 billion by installing more than 875 million feet of fencing.

Most of the time, homeowners consider work done on the garage to be an asset to the main house (with about 71% of homeowners who recently replaced garage doors believing it improved the value of their property). Not many people see an upgraded garage as a replacement for a home, however.

But that’s exactly the trend in Portland, OR, where a growing number of garages are being upgraded into legal “accessory dwelling units.” Homeowners can rent these out or use them as semi-independent living spaces for senior parents or grown children, but some are choosing to live in their own garages and rent out their main houses, instead.

“Portland residential properties have nice-sized lots,” Holly Huntley told Oregon Live, the online version of The Oregonian, April 28. Huntley owns Environs, a company that specializes in both designing and building small but complete homes. “A new ADU [accessory dwelling unit] uses only a small portion of the lot and a garage conversion doesn’t need any more ground room,” she said, explaining the appeal.

According to Kareen Perkins, the city’s building permitting services manager, applications for such conversions have more than tripled since 2009.

That’s not necessarily because conversions are inexpensive. In fact, the cost per square foot in a garage conversion project can range from $100 to $300, which is more than one would expect to pay if building a detached house.

But Portlanders seem to like the idea regardless. Later this month, there will even be a tour offered of 25 ADUs so interested parties can learn more about the process and get a better idea of how these tiny houses turn out.

The second annual “Build Small, Live Large” tour will take place May 29 through 31, and will also include workshops, presentations, and a party featuring local beer and s’mores. Tickets start at $35, and discounts are being offered until May 23.

Matthew Kohr, a lieutenant with the Raleigh Police Department’s special operations division, had stopped into a Starbucks on Peace Street back in January 2012 to pick up a cup of free coffee. But what he came away with left him unable to return to the department for several months afterward.

Kohr has alleged in a lawsuit that he was served a coffee in a faulty cup that folded in on itself, which led to several third degree burns and blisters on his skin.

The spill also set off Kohr’s Crohn’s disease in a way it hadn’t acted up before. He alleges that the burns caused him to need surgery to remove a portion of his intestine.

Thanks to changes in health care reform, inflammatory diseases like Crohn’s aren’t necessarily considered pre-existing conditions for insurance purposes. As a result, health insurance rates aren’t determined like those for auto policies, which may charge drivers more if they are under 25 or over 70.

But Kohr doesn’t just have medical bills to contend with. He says that the event took two years out of his life as he struggled to get back to work.

“I had a lot of anxiety, a lot of unsteadiness and nervousness,” Kohr said. He told the jury that he wasn’t comfortable with being in the police car, which affected his role as a supervisor.

“You know, as a supervisor, in my experience as a police supervisor, you have to lead people and be confident,” he said. “And I didn’t feel those same feelings I had in the past.”

Kohr and his wife Melanie are seeking $750,000 in compensation from the coffee chain, but he says that the loss of time at work is worth much more than that.

Because his lawsuit is a civil one, he is only allowed to seek damages of up to $750,000. But he told the jury that the months of recovery and trauma are worth far more to him than that.

“We said, ‘Well, what’s our life worth? What’s a year and a half or two years of your life worth?'” Kohr said during his testimony on May 6. “I thought it was worth $10 million.”

Attorneys for Starbucks, meanwhile, claim that the onus is on Kohr, especially considering that getting free coffee while on the job was routine for the officer.

“How does someone who knows their coffee is hot, who has had 50 cups of free coffee in the last two months, how does that person spill their coffee?” defense attorney Tricia Derr asked the court on May 5.

At any given moment, as many as 85% of all vehicles will need some kind of repair or maintenance.

But good luck getting the car repairs you need if you’re openly gay and live in Grandville, MI.

According to CNN, Brian Klawiter, owner of Dieseltec, recently made a statement on his company’s Facebook page encouraging gun owners to bring their cars to his shop — even offering a discount for those who do.

He also declared that openly gay customers are not welcome at his business, and that he has no problem turning them away at the door, citing his religious freedom.

“I am a Christian. My company will be run in a way that reflects that. Dishonesty, thievery, immoral behavior, etc. will not be welcomed,” he wrote. “I would not hesitate to refuse service to an openly gay person or persons. Homosexuality is wrong, period.”

His post emphasized that conservative American voices are being drowned out, hence his reasoning behind making the post — explaining that “free speech isn’t just for liberals.”

Since taking to Facebook to write a mini-manifesto of his views, Klawiter told a CNN affiliate he has had to contact local police to remove protesters from his property. He’s also received hundreds of calls from across the country, as well as multiple death threats.

While acknowledging that his words could be interpreted as offensive, Klawiter explained he doesn’t regret making the post.

Currently, discrimination based on sexual orientation is not prohibited in the state of Michigan — and while some municipalities have passed laws banning discrimination of LGBT people, Grandville isn’t one of them.

According to WOOD TV, Grandville Mayor Steve Maas has said he’d be open to pursuing nondiscrimination laws that would protect LGBT people, but that the citizens of his town would need to ask for such legislation first. Yvonne Siferd, director of victim services for LGBT advocacy group Equality Michigan, made a statement urging Maas to pursue legislation protecting the LGBT community.

Shortly after Klawiter’s post, GoFundMe page was created to raise money in support of Dieseltec; it was removed from the crowd-funding site shortly after.

In one of the medical industry’s biggest breakthroughs this century, three baby boys have been saved from a life-threatening breathing disorder by an unlikely combination of dedicated doctors, medical researchers, and a 3-D printer.

According to reports from LiveScience and IndustryWeek, researchers developed implants made of porous biomaterial, which can change shape and grow as the patients grow, making it possible for surgeons to use these implants on children with life-threatening medical conditions.

Not only do these implants change over a period of years, but they are custom-designed for each patient within a matter of days and are subsequently printed out on a 3-D printer, making them incredibly affordable.

The three boys, who all suffer from a severe case of a breathing disease called tracheobronchomalacia, were the first three patients to receive pediatric biomaterial implants for a severe respiratory illness. All three boys underwent surgery — successfully — at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

Tracheobronchomalacia is condition that affects about one in every 2,000 children globally and — before the creation of the implant — was considered incurable. It is a respiratory condition which causes the windpipe to collapse; even with the help of ventilators and heavy sedatives to keep them from moving, children with this disease typically have life expectancies of a few days to a few weeks after birth.

In the rare cases where children were kept alive beyond this point with ventilators and sedatives, their lungs began strengthening by age two or three; another major benefit of the 3-D printed implants, according to LiveScience, is that they will dissolve over time as the children’s breathing passages get stronger.

3-D printing has been used in the medical industry for a variety of other medical needs, such as hearing aids and dental implants, and these creations have been very successful.

Dental implants, for example, already have a 98% success rate according to the data collected from multiple studies, but many patients are hesitant to seek out implants because they tend to be very expensive. By using a 3-D printer to create the implants, cosmetic dentists can lower the cost and the wait time for each patient exponentially. Dentists can create custom implants within a few days, and they can also print out duplicates of the same implants with very little manual labor.

The same notion applies to the three respiratory implants which have just been created, although with the added benefit of biomaterial, doctors were able to implant the devices without worrying about straining the children’s air passages.

The latest reports state that all three boys are at home with their families — something which doctors never predicted would happen — and are breathing normally without any sedatives, paralytics, or ventilators.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there are some 13.7 million parents who have custody of 21.8 million children under the age of 21 while the other parent lives elsewhere. According to the latest available data, only about one out of every six custodial parents were fathers. The majority of these are either divorced or separated (56.2%), while 24.5% are currently married or widowed, and 20.3% have never been married.

Lyle Jeffs, however, is an even rarer case. Not only is he a custodial father, he also falls into two of the three possible statistical demographics. He is simultaneously divorced, and married — not re-married. Lyle Jeffs is a polygamist.

Jeffs’s brother Warren is the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and has been in prison since 2006 for sexually molesting two members of the congregation. His former followers say Lyle runs the church in his stead.

The FLDS, under the leadership of the Jeffs brothers, have taught that non-believers and people who break off from the church are unrighteous persona non grata. Parents who leave the church often have to go through laborious court battles against spouses just to even be able to visit their children.

All this considered, many were shocked when Jeffs recently agreed to allow his estranged wife to have some custody over their 17-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. Judge Michael Leavitt approved the agreement on April 29, which gives parents joint custody of the children, but specifies that they live with their mother. Every other weekend, and for a stretch of the summer, they’ll visit Jeffs. Additionally, Jeffs must provide $1,000 a month in child support, be responsible for the children’s health care and education, provide his son with a vehicle that will be used to drive him and his sister between their parents’ homes, and pay his wife two-thirds of her housing costs, not to exceed $2,000 a month.

When he signed his agreement, he wrote below his signature “RESPONDENT SIGNS UNDER PROTEST OF MOTHER BEING CUSTODIAL PARENT.”

Ron Rohbock, one of the Jeffses’ former followers, has six juvenile daughters, whom he hasn’t seen in years. He worries for them, and hopes that the new agreement could be the first of many, potential reunions, telling the Salt Lake Tribune, “This is a great beginning, but it’s just a beginning.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has censured and penalized StateTrust Investments, Inc. for a whopping $90,000. The actions come as the result of a settlement over charges that the firm broke the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s rules when it sold Puerto Rico bonds for a sum less than the issuer’s specified minimum denomination.

Surprisingly, this is just one of a score of actions taken by the SEC in recent years, which has culminated in an unprecedented amount of cases.

Last March, StateTrust Investments, Inc. executed a transaction that was less than $100,000 with a customer. Though the firm canceled it, the SEC said that the StateTrust Investments, Inc.’s conduct was still in violation of the MSRB’s rule on fair dealing, and its rule on confirmation, clearance, and settlement practices, which prohibits sales under the officially stated minimum denomination (except in some, certain, limited circumstances).

In addition to the $90,000 penalty, the SEC also ordered StateTrust to cease and desist from violations in the futures, and to undergo a review of the firm’s policies and procedures meant to prevent future violations.

“The limited exceptions provided under MSRB Rule G-15(f) for customer transactions in municipal securities below the minimum denomination of an issue did not apply to this transaction,” stated the SEC. “StateTrust also failed to disclose to this customer, before or at the time of the trade, that the bonds were issued with a $100,000 minimum denomination, and to explain how this could affect the liquidity of the customer’s position.”

This case is but one of a number of recent SEC enforcement actions, which have nearly doubled in less than 10 years. In 2005, there were only 94 broker-deal enforcement actions, similar to StateTrust Investment Inc.’s case. Total, the SEC brought 630 cases. In 2014, there were a whopping 166 broker-dealer enforcement actions. That same year, the SEC’s enforcement division brought a staggering 755 cases, collecting a record $4.1 billion

Out of all of these cases, the $90,000 penalty put on StateTrust is one of the largest the SEC has levied in connection with the Puerto Rico bond sale.

Many homeowners decide to make updates to their homes and change up their interior designs during the spring and summer months, but according to the Huffington Post, interior designer and author of the new book “Decorate Fearlessly” Susanna Salk has revealed that there’s one thing that a lot of people forget — the ceiling.

Most people spend time picking out the perfect wood for their flooring, the exact right shade for their carpeting and area rugs, and the paint color for the walls, but Salk says that painting the ceiling can make a huge difference in the overall design of a room.

Changes in furniture and elegant drapery can change the entire look and feel of a room, but Salk says that painting the ceiling — even just a few shades different from the color of the walls — can make a huge impact.

Not only does painting the ceiling draw the eye upward and make the room seem bigger, it is also much more visually interesting than a plain white ceiling.

“I don’t mean suddenly going crazy and making it a super dark color if you have light colors on the wall, but just another shade that’s different, that kind of draws your eye up,” Salk explains. “It also makes the room feel bigger and it gives that sense of whimsy that every room needs.”

If a homeowner really wants to add interest with prints and patterns on the ceiling, Salk warns that there is a right and wrong way to do it.

“If you do a pattern ceiling, you just have to make sure that pattern and color is somehow echoed in pattern of the fabric or the rug or the colorations that you use below, so it doesn’t stand out so much that it detracts from the rest of the room,” Salk cautioned. “It has to harmonize somehow while still bringing your eye up and calling attention to itself.”

Beauty may only be skin deep, as the saying goes, but as research shows, looking good can also correlate with feeling better about oneself — especially at work.

The New York Times profiled individuals who have undergone cosmetic treatments, ranging from cosmetic dental work to facial reconstructive surgery.

Philip Fear, a 49-year-old physician from Saratoga Springs, NY, had been miserable with his teeth up until last fall, when he shelled out $60,000 for porcelain veneers. Before his treatment, he’d had a gold crown tooth, but he said it drew too much attention to the rest of his teeth, which were discolored by antibiotics used as a child.

Allie Wu, a 31-year-old actuary with a life insurance company, had to have cosmetic dental surgery after previous treatments had left her teeth misaligned and made her chronic jaw pain even worse.

Yet both Fear and Wu say that since their surgery, their lives have improved.

Fear no longer hides his smile and said that he feels a lot more confident in his appearance.

For Wu, she could only chew on one side of her mouth before having corrective treatments. But now, she says that the cosmetic treatments she received have helped boost her confidence.

“My smile looks natural,” she said. “My speech is better. I don’t have a lisp anymore. I can eat. The veneers corrected the color and the functionality.”

And science backs up these claims: This January, two University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee scientists assessed the facial features of 667 chief executives and found that appearance mattered when it comes to getting a high profile job.

It also explains why more people, especially in the United States, are looking for a small but simple approach to improving their appearance, rather than more invasive work with longer recovery time.

In 2012 alone, the number of Botox injections increased 8% to 6.1 million total procedures performed; it’s no wonder, considering that these treatments take just minutes to administer and have lasting effects for up to four months. Over the past few years, more and more Americans have been looking for ways to reduce scars and wrinkles with other non-invasive treatments, such as skin tightening and photofacials.

Yet cosmetic surgeries are still performed worldwide, and sometimes with disastrous results. That’s why TV shows like Botched, which airs on the E! network, profile these plastic surgery disasters and try to have them corrected.

It’s not an issue unique to the United States, either. Lejla Zvizdic, a Bosnian TV presenter, recently went under the knife in the hopes of enhancing her already pretty looks when appearing on camera.

But she was left with something that she now says “ruined her life.” Graphic photos of Zvizdic were released to the press, showing the talk show host with a puffy upper lip, swollen cheeks and infected wounds along her nasolabial folds.

The doctor who performed her surgery claimed that it wasn’t his fault. He blames the results on an anti-allergy treatment for a bee sting Zvizdic suffered while on a vacation, which she took shortly after having her surgery.

Perhaps these incidents make the case for getting small work done to help boost one’s confidence.

As Wu said of her procedures, “I work in the insurance industry, and appearance is not as important for me as it is for someone in modeling. But I feel it gave me self-confidence. I feel more confident going into work.”

A little more than half — 53% — of homeowners agree that now is a good time to renovate a home, a fact that is reflected by the boom experienced by the U.S. home remodeling industry in recent years. However, although now may be a good time to renovate your home, is it worth ruining your relationship?

While renovating a home may seem like a great opportunity for a couple to bond, it can easily turn into a nightmare. A simple trip to a furniture or home improvement store can get ugly, and fast.

In fact, the newly named “IKEA meltdown” is a actually a real thing and can spell trouble for couples who may already be experiencing relationship stress, according to a new report published in the Wall Street Journal. Those couples may enter the store hand-in-hand feeling hopeful, but may leave angry, drained, and tearful.

In couple’s therapy, it’s common for couples to discuss fighting while home improvement shopping or while assembling furniture, said clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula. In fact, it’s become so common the Santa Monica, CA-based therapist has now embraced these tasks as communication exercises for her patients.

As the world’s largest furniture retailer boasting over 367 stores in seven countries, IKEA might seem like a domestic wonderland brimming with the latest and greatest home goods — not to mention those meatball. However, it can quickly become a domestic minefield rife with hidden triggers. “The store literally becomes a map of a relationship nightmare,” explains Dr. Durvasula, who is also a professor of psychology at California State University Los Angeles.

Just browsing in an IKEA demo kitchen, for example, can serve as a reminder or spark disagreements over who does most of the cooking and cleaning. Or walking through the children’s section can lead to a heated discussion over when is the right time to start a family. The next thing you know, you’re in the throes of a full blown “IKEA meltdown.”

Based in Almhult, Sweden, IKEA understands that the entire home improvement process can be emotionally taxing and may lead to arguments, says Janice Simonsen, design spokeswoman for IKEA U.S. “While IKEA has no set philosophy on couples shopping together, we want everyone to have a good experience,” she explains.

While IKEA doesn’t have counselors or mediators on standby for couples, they do have home-furnishing consultants at roughly 85% of their U.S. stores who can provide design advice. After working as an IKEA furnishings consultant, Simonsen compiled a list of guidelines for couples to help them prepared for an IKEA visit.

Couples with existing communication issues are most likely to experience an “IKEA meltdown,” but no relationship is entirely immune. A 2013 survey conducted by home design site Houzz revealed that 46% of couples tackling remodeling projects together considered the experience frustrating, while 12% of couples surveyed admitted to considering separation or divorce during the remodeling process.