Newslog #16

Firefighter Refused Call to Giffords Shooting

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/17/firefighter-refused-call-to-giffords-shooting/

In the Tucson, Arizona shooting last month, a firefighter refused to respond to a call because he believed that "political bantering" would get in the way of Senator Gabby Giffords' condition. The firefighter, Mark Ekstrum, and his team are especially trained to handle extensive medical emergencies. They didn't go to the crime scene until 90 minutes after the shooting occured. Ekstrum's boss said that his actions delayed the team and that they could have gotten more accomplished if they had just gotten there on time. In result, Ekstrum retired two days after the shooting, yet his bosses were still pondering on how to punish him. The boss, Williams, had stated that Ekstrum had started to say something about how he had a different political viewpoint than the rest of him team and was worried about what would happen at the crime scene. Ekstrum replied by saying that that statement was false and that he actually had voted for Giffords in the last election.

Whether or not Ekstrum had different political viewpoints than Giffords and his team is no excuse to not perform his duty. He should have put his differences aside to help save peoples' lives. Granted, he did feel guilty about his actions, because he "retired" two days after. But if I ever found out that a firefighter didn't help save me because they had different viewpoints than me, I would be furious.

Newslog #15

Diet soda tied to stroke risk, but reasons unclear
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_on_he_me/us_med_stroke_diet_soda;_ylt=Aoew1iCMRsqXs5KoUS0OlDKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpNjlnMWVjBHBvcwMzNwRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDZGlldHNvZGF0aWVk

A recent study has shown that those who drink diet soda everyday have been linked to stroke and heart attack compared to people who don't drink soda at all. However, there is no direct reason why this is happening. These symptoms might be because those who drink soda everyday might be those who don't exercise, are overweight, have high blood pressure, and smoke. Researchers looked into these reasons from 1993-2001 and even today, nothing has changed. Over that 8 year span, a Northern Manhattan study was put into effect that tracked the diets of 2,500 Hispanic and African-American people, whose ethnicities have been shown to have high rates of stroke. There were 116 daily diet soda drinkers and they were found to have a 48 percent higher risk of heart attack and stroke compared to the 901 people who didn't drink any soda at all. Of course, smoking, diabetes, and waistline sizes were also taken into account. Also, it was shown that even though most diet sodas don't have sugar in them, their corn sugar still makes people crave sweets instead of fruits, vegetables, and grains.


To be honest, I don't like drinking soda because I don't know most of the ingredients in it. I do have a can once in a while, but in order to be healthier, I drink water or juice instead. In addition, I was surprised to see that people crave sweets when drinking diet soda, especially because most of the time, there is no sugar in in.