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As health officials scrutinize marijuana vaping, it’s increasingly on law enforcement’s radar, too.From New York City to Nebraska farm country to California, authorities have seized at least 510,000 marijuana vape cartridges and arrested more than 120 people in the past two years, according to an Associated Press tally derived from interviews, court records, news accounts and official releases.A Wisconsin mother, her two adult sons and five other people were charged this fall in what investigators describe as a black-market 542

Barraged by hundreds of sex-abuse lawsuits, the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday in hopes of working out a potentially mammoth victim compensation plan that will allow the hallowed, 110-year-old organization to carry on. The Chapter 11 filing in federal bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware, sets in motion what could be one of the biggest, most complex bankruptcies ever seen. Scores of lawyers are seeking settlements on behalf of several thousand men who say they were molested as scouts by scoutmasters or other leaders decades ago but are only now eligible to sue because of recent changes in their states’ statute-of-limitations laws.By going to bankruptcy court, the Scouts can put those lawsuits on hold for now. But ultimately they could be forced to sell off some of their vast property holdings, including campgrounds and hiking trails, to raise money for a compensation trust fund that could surpass a billion dollars. The bankruptcy petition listed the Boy Scouts’ assets as between billion and billion, and its liabilities at 0 million to billion.“Scouting programs will continue throughout this process and for many years to come,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement. ”Local councils are not filing for bankruptcy because they are legally separate and distinct organizations.”The Boy Scouts are just the latest major American institution to face a heavy price over sexual abuse. Roman Catholic dioceses across the country and schools such as Penn State and Michigan State have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years.The bankruptcy represents a painful turn for an organization that has been a pillar of American civic life for generations and a training ground for future leaders. Achieving the rank of Eagle Scout has long been a proud accomplishment that politicians, business leaders, astronauts and others put on their resumes and in their official biographies.The Boy Scouts’ finances have been strained in recent years by declining membership and sex-abuse settlements.The number of youths taking part in scouting has dropped below 2 million, down from more than 4 million in peak years of the 1970s. The organization has tried to counter the decline by admitting girls, but its membership rolls took a big hit Jan. 1 when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — for decades a major sponsor of Boy Scout units — cut ties and withdrew more than 400,000 scouts in favor of programs of its own.The financial outlook had worsened last year after New York, Arizona, New Jersey and California passed laws making it easier for victims of long-ago abuse to file claims. Teams of lawyers across the U.S. have been signing up clients by the hundreds to sue the Boy Scouts.Most of the newly surfacing cases date to the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s; the organization says there were only five known abuse victims in 2018. The Boy Scouts credit the change to an array of prevention policies adopted since the mid-1980s, including mandatory criminal background checks and abuse-prevention training for all staff and volunteers, and a rule that two or more adult leaders be present during all activities.In many ways, the crisis parallels the one facing the Catholic Church in the U.S. Both institutions boast of major progress over recent decades in combating abuse. whether by priests or scout leaders, but both face many lawsuits alleging negligence and cover-ups, mostly decades ago.“We are outraged that there have been times when individuals took advantage of our programs to harm innocent children,” said Roger Mosby, the BSA’s president and CEO. “While we know nothing can undo the tragic abuse that victims suffered, we believe the Chapter 11 process, with the proposed trust structure, will provide equitable compensation to all victims while maintaining the BSA’s important mission.”The BSA said it is encouraging all victims to come forward to file a claim in the case. A deadline for filing claims has not yet been set by the bankruptcy court, but the BSA said that would likely happen later this year.Among other matters to be addressed in bankruptcy court: the fate of the Boy Scouts’ assets; the extent to which the organization’s insurance will help cover compensation; and whether assets of the Scouts’ 261 local councils will be added to the fund. “There are a lot of very angry, resentful men out there who will not allow the Boy Scouts to get away without saying what all their assets are,” said lawyer Paul Mones, who represents numerous clients suing the BSA. “They want no stone unturned.”Amid the crush of lawsuits, the Scouts recently mortgaged the major properties owned by the national leadership, including the headquarters in Irving, Texas, and the 140,000-acre Philmont Ranch in New Mexico, to help secure a line of credit.Founded in 1910, the Boy Scouts have kept confidential files since the 1920s listing staff and volunteers implicated in sexual abuse, for the avowed purpose of keeping predators away from youth. According to a court deposition, the files as of January listed 7,819 suspected abusers and 12,254 victims. Until last spring, the organization had insisted it never knowingly allowed a predator to work with youths. But in May, The 5265

BOSTON, Mass. – The girlfriend of a Boston College student who died by suicide in May repeatedly texted him to do so during their relationship, Massachusetts prosecutors said in announcing involuntary manslaughter charges against her.Inyoung You, 21, tracked Alexander Urtula's location on May 20 and was present when he jumped from a parking garage only hours before graduation, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins told reporters.Authorities said You, also a student at Boston College, was "physically, verbally and psychologically abusive" toward her boyfriend during their 18-month-long relationship.Investigators looked through a trove of text messages the two exchanged in which You allegedly tells Urtula, 22, to "go kill himself" or to "go die" and that she, his family and the world would be better off without him, prosecutors said. 866

At first, teachers at Sky Valley Education Center simply evacuated students and used fans to clear the air when the fluorescent lights caught fire or smoked with noxious fumes. When black oil dripped onto desks and floors, they caught leaks with a bucket and duct-taped oil-stained carpets.Then came the tests that confirmed their suspicions about the light ballasts.“Sure enough ... it was PCB oil,” said Cynthia Yost, who was among teachers who sent pieces of carpet and classroom air filters to a lab. Tests found elevated levels of the toxic chemicals, used as coolant in the decades-old ballasts that regulated electrical current to the lamps.Millions of fluorescent light ballasts containing PCBs probably remain in schools and day care centers across the U.S. four decades after the chemicals were banned over concerns that they could cause cancer and other illnesses. Many older buildings also have caulk, ceiling tiles, floor adhesives and paint made with PCBs, which sometimes have been found at levels far higher than allowed by law.Yet the Environmental Protection Agency has not attempted to determine the scope of PCB contamination or assess potential health risks, in large part because of lack of funding, political pressure and pushback from industry and education groups, according to dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of documents examined by The Associated Press.Members of Congress who promised three years ago to find money to help address PCBs and other environmental problems in the nation’s schools never introduced legislation.And an EPA rule that would have required schools and day cares to remove PCB-containing ballasts moved slowly under the Obama administration, then was quashed by President Donald Trump within days of his inauguration.That was the final straw for Tom Simons, a former EPA regulator who worked for years on the rule and said getting rid of ballasts was the least the EPA could do to protect children.“We thought it was a no-brainer: There are millions out there. These things are smoking and dripping, so let’s put this through,” said Simons, who retired shortly after Trump took office.___For decades, the presence of PCBs in schools flew under the radar.States, cities and environmental agencies focused on removing them from lakes, rivers and toxic waste sites because most exposure to PCBs is believed to come from people’s diet, including fish from contaminated waterways, and because PCBs do not break down easily. Studies have linked them to increased long-term risk of cancer, immune and reproductive system impairment and learning problems.PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are mixtures of compounds manufactured by Monsanto Co. and widely used as coolants and lubricants in electrical equipment until they were banned in 1979.By then they were in transformers, air conditioners, adhesives, carbonless copy paper and billions of fluorescent light ballasts in schools, hospitals, homes, offices and commercial and industrial buildings. They also were ubiquitous in the environment and building up in human bodies.Nobody worried about schools.Then a 2004 study by Harvard health professor Robert Herrick identified the widespread use of PCBs as a plasticizer in caulk in schools built before 1980, estimating that as many as 14 million students and 26,000 schools could be affected. The EPA had not been aware of its use in caulk before then, Simons said.The EPA later found that the chemicals can move from building materials into the air and dust, where they can be inhaled or ingested. They also can be absorbed by walls and other surfaces as an ongoing source of exposure.Regulators also discovered that old fluorescent light ballasts remained a potentially widespread source of PCB contamination. The EPA had allowed the ballasts to remain in use because chemicals were in enclosed capacitors that experts thought would last only about 12 years. But it turns out they can last a half century or longer, said Simons.The older they are, the more likely ballasts will leak, catch fire or smoke. And that has happened repeatedly in schools, office buildings, restaurants and factories in recent years, according to reports reviewed by the AP.But the EPA has mostly voluntary guidelines, including recommended indoor air limits for PCBs that it says should protect children from health problems.The agency does not require — or encourage — schools to test for PCBs, so few do. If they are found in materials such as caulk, schools could be forced to undertake expensive cleanups when many are struggling to keep basic infrastructure intact and meet educational needs. Drawing attention to the issue also risks alarming parents.PCBs are illegal in building materials in concentrations exceeding 50 parts per million — a threshold set by the EPA decades ago based on how much contaminated material could affordably be removed rather than health risks.Rather than fostering “a very confusing and fearful situation,” the EPA should recommend that schools test classroom air for PCBs, then identify and address specific sources if the results are elevated, said Keri Hornbuckle, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Iowa and one of the nation’s top researchers of PCBs in schools.“There is a good reason PCBs were banned, so ... let’s remove the worst cases and where (kids) are most vulnerable and have the highest exposure,” she said. “But you have to have the data.”Whether PCBs are addressed often is determined by ZIP code.In California’s wealthy Santa Monica-Malibu School District, parents, including model Cindy Crawford, sued to force the district to address PCBs after tests of caulk found levels up to 11,000 times the 50 ppm threshold. The district ultimately agreed to get rid of PCBs. It has torn down a middle school and continues to remove them from other buildings.In Hartford, Connecticut, the ending was far different. John C. Clark Elementary and Middle School, in a largely low-income African American neighborhood, was permanently closed in 2015 after PCBs were found and the city could not afford to remove them. The city has sued Monsanto and a company that manufactured caulk to recover the costs.“It was the crown jewel of the neighborhood,” Steven Harris, a former city council member and grandfather, said as he walked the deserted school grounds. “Our school board is doing the best they can. The reality is we don’t have a lot of money. And it’s going to take money to fix this problem.”Monsanto, now owned by Bayer Crop Sciences, has denied responsibility in lawsuits involving several school districts, saying it did not manufacture the building materials or components that contained PCBs.Concerns over schools like Hartford’s are one of the issues that ultimately kept the EPA from taking stronger steps to address PCBs.The agency, which originally recommended that schools test for the chemicals, was warned by the Association of California School Administrators that forcing schools to remove PCBs could create “a civil rights issue” if low-income minority schools could not afford it. What’s more, many of those schools have other environmental problems — including lead, asbestos and mold — that could be higher priorities.So instead, the EPA developed guidance that promotes vigilant cleaning and better ventilation and suggests schools could cover materials suspected of containing PCBs until the buildings are renovated or razed.But the recommendations were released quietly on the agency website to avoid publicity that might frighten the public, according to former EPA officials who said the agency was hamstrung by a problem that could cost billions of dollars. There are no rules requiring school officials to tell parents if they find or suspect their buildings have PCBs.Judith Enck, administrator of the EPA’s Region 2 under Obama, said the EPA bowed to intense political pressure.“The debate was never based on science and health. It was ‘We don’t want the grief from schools, and it’s a lot of work and we have other priorities,’” said Enck, who led an effort to get ballasts out of New York City schools. “I disagreed.”A bill introduced in 2010 by three New York congressmen aimed at funding school PCB cleanups was withdrawn after New York City officials agreed to replace aging ballasts. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts released 8392

And they're off!A video of dinosaurs went viral as a swarm of Tyrannosaurus rexes took to a Washington horse track on Saturday for a race. Video of the race has since gone viral. After the video of the race was shared on Facebook, it has been shared more than 250,000 times. 288