Famed medical examiner tends to Va. Tech victims

Submitted on April 19, 2007 - 2:35pm.

Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard

Her office handled victims of the sniper who terrorized the Washington area in 2002. She is an acclaimed expert on “mass fatality events” and the model for the heroine of a best-selling string of crime novels.

Now, Dr. Marcella Fierro is the last doctor to tend to the victims of Monday’s carnage at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

As chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Fierro’s job is to deliver medical findings to family members, the campus community and the world - all waiting anxiously.

Fierro is charged with directing a staff in four regional offices on how to proceed with autopsies amid tragedy. Currently, she has more than 30 families desperately seeking details of how the last minutes of their loved ones’ lives played out.

“We still see them as patients. We’re their last doctor, the last one to care for them,” said Dr. Kim A. Collins, a forensic pathologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She has worked closely with Fierro in national pathology organizations over the years. “Dr. Fierro has always conveyed that when I’ve worked with her.”
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Europe on a dime, or a bit more

This boat serves as a traveling fruit market, delivering fruit from mainland Greece to the island of Aigina. Markets are an economical source of fresh ingredients for preparing your own meals. SHNS photo by Kayla Webley

By KAYLA WEBLEY
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire
2007-04-17

In decades past, Europe was a bargain for Americans travelers. The euro did not exist. The dollar was worth more than most European currencies, and the true age of backpacking from country to country with pocket change was at its height.

Even with worse exchange rates, it is still possible to take in the history, food and culture of European countries without breaking your budget.

As you plan your summer trip, here are some things to consider, whether you are a college student booking hostels and living on bread and cheese or a family trying to pinch a few euro cents.

How far to hop?

To stay within budget, choose places that are relatively close together. Your trip’s cost will greatly increase if you want to hop around the whole of Europe in a short time. If you have less than a month, pick a region and hit all the places in that area. For your next trip, choose a different area. If you try to do too much, you’ll end up broke and exhausted.
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Tips for your summer trip to Europe

Travelers along the harbor area of Chania a small town on Crete, a Greek island. Tourists browse shops and stop to eat at waterfront restaurants, or just sit back and take in the view.
Photo by Kayla Webley

By KAYLA WEBLEY
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire
2007-04-17

Planning a trip to Europe can be hard if you don’t know an experienced traveler to ask for advice.

I recently spent five months living and traveling in Europe. As my friends gear up for summer trips, these are some of their most common questions.

How long to stay?

For most places I would suggest three nights. Of course you can stay longer, but I would not advise staying less than two nights - it just gets too hectic. Traveling from place to place generally takes a whole day. Even if your flight or train ride is short, traveling takes a bit more energy than other days and you won’t feel like doing much sightseeing when you first arrive. Don’t plan to do much else on travel days. That way if you end up doing something, it’s a bonus. You could spend a week in some places. I easily spent a week in Barcelona, Spain, but a week in other places, such as a beach resort out of season, could be too long.
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Kitsap’s Heavy Hitter: Finally, It’s Norm’s Time

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., chairs a recent session of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Environment. Photo by Ivan Pierre Aguirre

Decades of patiently biding his time until a leadership opportunity presented itself has finally paid off for the 6th District congressman.

Story by Kayla Webley, For the Kitsap Sun
April 8, 2007

WASHINGTON

For 30 years, Rep. Norm Dicks waited for his opportunity to be in the spotlight.

He sat on Republican-controlled committees for half that time, voted on budgets written by conservatives and spoke up when leaders gave him the opportunity — all the while waiting, planning and preparing to take the lead.

“The only reason I stayed is because I really wanted, at some point, to have a chance to get good things done for my state,” Dicks, D-Belfair, said. “Now is my chance.”

Since the November mid-term elections put the Democrats in charge of Congress and elevated Dicks to a powerful Appropriations subcommittee chairmanship, others have noticed his high spirits.

“What, the big smile on his face?” Sen. Patty Murray, a fellow Washington Democrat, said, noticing Dicks’ outermost reaction to his newly gained power.
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Gore brings inconvenient message to Congress

Submitted on March 21, 2007 - 5:20pm.

Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

WASHINGTON - Movie stars often champion favorite causes on Capitol hill. But it’s the rare movie star who was once a member of the very committees holding the hearing.

And when the star is former vice president Al Gore, Congress listens.

Gore spoke before House and Senate committee hearings Wednesday, urging Congress to find a bipartisan solution to the climate crisis.

“Our world faces a true planetary emergency,” Gore said. “What we’re facing now is a crisis that is by far the most serious we’ve ever faced. The way we’re going to solve it is by asking you on both sides of the aisle to do what some people have, as you know, begun to fear we don’t have the capacity to do anymore. I know they’re wrong.”

Gore’s lecture about the environment became a movie and won an Academy Award last month.
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Women can’t catch enough ZZZs

Submitted on March 6, 2007 - 5:42pm.

Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

WASHINGTON - College student Crystal Broadwater can’t fall asleep until 3 or 4 in the morning. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to go to bed earlier, she just can’t.

“Sometimes I wish I could go to sleep before then, but my body says no,” she said.

Broadwater, 23, has to wake up for class or her job as a pharmacy tech at CVS by 8 or 9 a.m., giving her just four or five hours in bed a night.

Broadwater isn’t alone. According to a study by the National Sleep Foundation, more than half of American women say they get a good night’s sleep only a few days a week or less.

“American women are not sleeping well, and that is affecting all aspects of their life,” said Kathryn Lee, a professor of family health care nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, who worked on the study.
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Washington state’s federal-state officials disagree on impeachment

Submitted on March 1, 2007 - 5:18pm.

Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

WASHINGTON - While the Washington state Senate is set to discuss whether Congress should impeach the president, four of the state’s representatives in Congress say the answer is already a no.

The Washington state Senate’s Government Operations and Elections Committee plans to hear the Senate Joint Memorial 8016, sponsored by Sen. Eric Oemig, D-Kirkland, on Thursday.

The memorial would call on Congress to investigate the activities of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, specifically their justification for the invasion of Iraq.

Washington Democrats U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Jay Inslee have said that, while they are not in favor of Congress taking up impeachment, they are not strongly lobbying against the state’s hearing.

Inslee told a state legislator Feb. 22 that he did not think the impeachment hearing was a “productive thing to do,” said Christine Hanson, Inslee’s press secretary.
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Bush presents Medal of Honor to Vietnam hero

Submitted on March 1, 2007 - 5:11pm.

Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

WASHINGTON - Retired Army Lt. Col. Bruce P. Crandall smiled proudly Monday as President Bush fastened the Medal of Honor around his neck.

The Manchester, Wash., man was given the nation’s highest military honor for his bravery on a South Vietnam mission that took place 41 years ago.

“In men like Bruce Crandall, we really see the best of America,” Bush said. “For the soldiers rescued, for the men who came home, for the children they had and the lives they made, America is in debt to Bruce Crandall. It’s a debt our nation can never really fully repay, but today we recognize it as best as we’re able, and we bestow upon this good and gallant man the Medal of Honor.”

Crandall, 74, was joined at the White House East Room ceremony by his wife, Arlene, three sons and three of his grandchildren. Military comrades were also there, including other Medal of Honor recipients.

Unable to attend the ceremony was Ed W. Freeman, Crandall’s partner on the mission. Bush said the Idaho resident was stranded in Iowa by a snowstorm. Freeman was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001.
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Where there’s smoke, there’s humor in museum show

A cartoon by Gary Markstein, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, criticizes the tobacco industry for targeting women and children. It is one of 60 on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington.
Collection of Dr. Alan Blum

Submitted on February 23, 2007 - 12:16pm.

Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

WASHINGTON - A man in a pinstriped suit sits behind his desk, a large smile encompassing his face. His nameplate reads “Big Tobacco.”

Another man tells him that women’s smoking deaths have doubled.

Good news?

It is for him.

“Finally, the focus is off is targeting kids!” he announces triumphantly.

The 2001 cartoon by Gary Markstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is one of 60 editorial cartoons in the National Museum of Health and Medicine exhibit “Cartoonists Take Up Smoking.”
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Supreme Court to interpret sentencing guidelines ruling

Submitted on February 20, 2007 - 5:49pm.

Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court heard two cases Tuesday about how to interpret an earlier decision that made criminal sentencing guidelines advisory.

The arguments questioned how the decision - made two years ago - should be applied. The court ruled in United States v. Booker in 2005 that mandatory federal sentencing guidelines violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury by giving judges, rather than juries, the job of determining the length of sentence.

To avoid invalidating the guidelines completely, the court then made the guidelines “advisory,” and directed judges to review sentences for their “reasonableness.”

One of the cases argued Tuesday, Rita v. United States, questioned the reasonableness of Victor Rita’s sentence. A retired Marine and former criminal investigator for the immigration service, Rita, 57, is in poor health due to injuries he sustained while fighting in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War.

He was convicted of obstructing justice and making false statements in a federal grand jury investigation about the sale of kits for making machine guns. At his trial, his lawyer argued for a sentence below the 33- to 41-month range recommended by the sentence guidelines because of his background. The trial judge imposed a 33-month sentence, a decision later upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.
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