An autopsy conducted by medical examiners in Canada shows that Cory Monteith died from a lethal combination of heroin and alcohol, reports say. Cory Monteith Cause of Death Explained The British Columbia Coroners Service says an autopsy and toxicological analysis show a ” mixed drug toxicity , involving heroin and alcohol” took his life. The 31-year-old Glee star’s body was discovered by staff members at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in Vancouver, B.C., in the early hours of July 13. Cory Monteith’s death was an absolute shock, but the cause of death is tragically not, given the circumstances, and his ongoing struggle with addiction. He had completed a stint in rehab earlier this year and recently admitted that he began struggling with drugs and alcohol as a young teenager. Reports say he had been leading a double life of sorts, staying focused and sober at work while falling back into old habits back in Canada. R.I.P.
Eric might make it. Eric Snowden Offered Asylum According to CNN Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has offered asylum to U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, the state-run AVN news agency reported Friday, without offering details. The report came shortly after Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he would grant Snowden asylum in his country “if the circumstances permit.” Ortega didn’t elaborate on his announcement, made during a speech in Managua, except to say his country is “open and respectful to the right of asylum.” “It’s clear that that if the circumstances permit it we will gladly receive Snowden and will grant him asylum here in Nicaragua,” Ortega said. Meanwhile, an Icelandic lawmaker said Snowden would not get citizenship there, as he had requested, because Iceland’s parliament refused to vote on an asylum proposal before ending its current session. Do you think these countries are playing political chess? Continue reading →
This young woman had her whole life ahead of her. So sad. Woman Found In Lawyer’s House According to Mail Online The body of a 26-year-old woman was found on Saturday morning naked and face down in a bathtub full of water in the home of a high-profile Philadelphia ‘super lawyer.’ The identity of the woman is yet to be released, but police sources tell Philly.com that she is Julia Law, an employee of A Charles Peruto Jr., the attorney who owns the home where the body was found. Sources told the paper Peruto and Law were dating., Philadelphia’s Fox affiliate reports that authorities do not currently consider the death to be suspicious, although, the cause of death currently is unknown. The woman’s body was discovered about 10:30 a.m. by a maintenance worker who stopped by the home, located in Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood. Peruto told police he was at the Jersey Shore, in Avalon, when the body was found. It’s unclear when – or if – he’s physically met with police. According to his website, Peruto has been dubbed a ‘super lawyer’ – an honor for Philadelphia’s top attorneys – by his peers nine years in a row, and has achieved ‘Not Guilty verdict in over 200 jury trials and 2,500 non-jury trials.’ ‘He has been hired by other attorneys for the sole purpose of cross examining one or two witnesses in their cases,’ the website boasts. It goes on to say that ‘as can be seen on this website under “Past Cases”, he has been called a “ferocious cross examiner”, “gives a supreme closing argument to a Jury”, and “very entertaining on an otherwise boring case.’” In 2012, Peruto ‘successfully’ represented Philadelphia weatherman John Bolaris in a situation the media dubbed ‘ the real life Hangover.’ Bolaris claimed he was drugged and scammed out of $43,712 by Russian ‘bar girls’ in Miami. He subsequently lost his job with Philadelphia’s Fox affiliate. Police continue to investigate the circumstances of the death. This is so reminiscent of the Phil Spector case. What do you think? Facebook
This is sad, but unfortunately a reality that we still deal with daily in America’s society… According to Sacramento Bee: Federal prosecutors in Sacramento are once again taking on what they describe as a particularly flagrant hate crime. An indictment returned Jan. 16 by a grand jury and unsealed last week accuses three Yuba County men of an unprovoked attack on a couple because the man is white and the woman is black. The indictment charges Perry Sylvester Jackson, 27, Billy James Hammett, 28, and Anthony Merrell Tyler, 32, all of Olivehurst, with one count of conspiracy and two counts of beating the couple in 2011. The charges are grounded in the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a 2009 amendment to a statute that criminalizes violence motivated by race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity. Jackson, Hammett and Tyler were arrested by FBI agents last week and pleaded not guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd. Heading the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Steven Lapham, a supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office and one of its top prosecutors. At a hearing Friday, Lapham clashed with defense lawyer Mark Reichel over whether Jackson should be free on bail pending trial. After a protracted hearing, Drozd ordered Jackson held without bail to “ensure the safety of the community.” The strictures of the federal Bail Reform Act of 1984, juxtaposed with Jackson’s history of violence, made it “a difficult call,” the judge said. Hammett’s attorney did not challenge Lapham’s request for detention without bail, and Drozd granted it. He ordered Tyler released on a $150,000 unsecured appearance bond. Hate crimes have been a priority of U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner going back to his days as a line prosecutor who handled a number of them and who was the office’s hate-crimes coordinator. Hate crimes, Wagner said Monday, “are intended to send a message of intolerance and instill fear in a larger community. Consequently, it is important that they be aggressively prosecuted and people in the community see that something is being done.” As to the Yuba County case, Wagner said, “In our view this is a pretty egregious incident, and the district attorney up there agreed that a federal prosecution may have a greater impact. “Depending on the circumstances, punishment is generally more severe in federal court,” he explained. In his bid to keep Jackson locked up, Lapham told the judge that a hate crime is random, spontaneous and often occurs so suddenly that a victim is overwhelmed without warning, the prosecutor said. Hate crimes tend to be more violent, Lapham said, because they are not meant to temporarily incapacitate. More often than not, he said, they brutally inflict serious, sometimes lasting injuries. SMH. We must stop this unnecessary violence.
The guy claims he accidentally sent the message to ALL of his contacts in his phone!! 24-year-old Chris Evans has been in jail for the last 18 months after he was charged on inciting a child to engage in adult activity. He was freed after the Judges decided they couldn’t figure out who the message was intended for. According to The Daily Mail… …after he accidentally sent a saucy text message intended for a lover to every contact in his phone book. The 24-year-old swimming coach ended up in prison for lewd offenses after the text also found its way to two young schoolgirls. Evans had typed an intimate invitation to his girlfriend asking her if she would like to engage in adult acts with him ‘skin on skin’. Excruciatingly, a slip of the fingers on his BlackBerry smartphone resulted in it going out via BlackBerry Messenger to all the numbers on his phone. Among the recipients of the text were two girls aged 13 and 14, which led to Evans, who teaches swimming in a leisure center, being arrested and charged with causing or inciting a child to engage in inappropriate adult activity. …his lawyers went to the Court of Appeal in London to have his conviction overturned. They argued that Evans’s ‘misguided use of his BlackBerry’ made it ‘difficult to conclude that he was targeting anyone’. Granting the appeal, Lord Justice Elias said the circumstances were ‘unusual’ and agreed that Evans had been ‘evidently misguided’ in the use of his phone. He added: ‘The facts of this case are rather unusual. Messages… were sent to every single contact in his phone, including members of his own family.’ This guy is still a perv. The Judges suspended the remaining nine months of his sentence and Evans is now a free man. Hopefully this guy doesn’t get another smartphone since he can’t figure out how to use the damn thing! Images via facebook/shutterstock
Just when it looked like we might dodge a movie based on Ouija (which even McG had the good taste and common sense to abandon at Paramount), along came Universal to pluck the Hasbro property out of turnaround like a dusky Goodwill relic. And now, with a release date looming, the studio has handed the project off to a new team that will get it in shape for 2013. But wait — it gets better. Variety reports that Knowing screenwriters Juliet Snowden and Stiles White will do both the scripting and directing honors for co-producers Michael Bay and Jason Blum, the latter of whose Paranormal Activity franchise will serve as the “high-concept, low-budget model” for Ouija . OK? I mean, I have difficulty envisioning anything engineered to move a board game off Wal-Mart shelves as “high-concept,” but low-budget, sure: Previous reports put the project’s budget, whose previous incarnation at the ‘Mount totaled a very, very ill-advised $150 million, at under $10 million. And even that might be too much under the circumstances — didn’t Breaking Bad already corner the market on foreboding uses of Ouija? Just bring back the Salamanca cousins! [ Variety ]
Epitome of a bad son? Dez Bryant might as well be called Mr.Can’t-Get-Right because his list of off field troubles continues to grow: The Dallas Cowboys wide receiver was arrested on domestic violence charges and is free on bond after an incident in DeSoto, Texas. The DeSoto Police Department told NFL.com that Bryant was arrested Saturday and charged with misdemeanor domestic violence. Bryant was charged with a Class A misdemeanor for assaulting a female family member, police told KDFW-TV in Dallas. The woman did not need to be taken to the hospital for her injuries, the report said. KDFW-TV said police declined to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the arrest or Bryant’s relationship to the alleged victim. Bryant was charged with a Class A misdemeanor for assault of a female family member, police told Dallas TV KDFW. The report also said the woman did not need to be taken to the hospital. The run-in with law enforcement was the second in six months for Bryant and the latest in a string of off-field problems for the third-year receiver from Oklahoma State. Assaulting his own mother? Looks like Dez and his former mentor, Deion Sanders now have more than playing for the same team in common. But before we cast judgment — let’s not forget his mom used to slang yayo… Who knows what’s behind this fight. SMH! Source
It’s not as though Peter O’Toole died this week when he announced his retirement from acting, but contemplating the Irish great’s absence from stage and screen alike nevertheless yields a bittersweet fog of remembrance through which our hearts and souls must now navigate. I think they call it a “hangover.” Thankfully, there is video (to say nothing of the gloriously soggy moment in time, above, when Roger Ebert and Jason Patric found themselves supporting the legend). For my money, nothing beats his epic entrance on a 1995 episode of The Late Show , where David Letterman welcomed O’Toole and a thirsty camel named Topsy to the stage in London. What happened next put Lawrence of Arabia to shame. Previously, during a drunken stint on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show , O’Toole had confessed to… another drunken stint on The Tonight Show . And who will ever forget (ahem) O’Toole’s celebrated performance as the sodden title character in Keith Waterhouses’s play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell ? (Dialogue NSFW, though under the circumstances what could possibly go wrong with slowly turning your chair to your boss and/or any other objecting parties and woozily sputtering, “It’s Peter O’Fucking Toole . Listen!”) Here he is duetting with — and tackling, naturally — his late, lamented contemporary Richard Harris ahead of a rugby match in Ireland. It’s not quite O’Toole, but back on The Late Show in 2011, you can practically taste the sauce in Ryan Gosling’s tale of confronting the actor on Oscar night a few years earlier. And just for fun, here’s Bill Hader helping to cement O’Toole’s legacy, SNL style: Oh! And he acted in a few things en route to becoming the losingest (0-for-8, ouch) acting nominee in the history of the Academy Awards. He did, however, deliver a reasonably sober acceptance speech for the honorary Oscar he received (despite trying to refuse ) in 2003. By way of our partners at ENTV, here’s a run through O’Toole’s screen highlights. Happy retirement, Peter! We’ll send whiskey. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Smack is wack. Mother Injects Heroin Into 12-Year-Old Daughter More Than 200 Times A Pennsylvania mother of two is accused of getting her teenage daughter hooked on heroin and injecting her with the drug hundreds of times when she was too weak to do it herself. Authorities say that Brandi Baumgardner, 38, of Beaver Springs, began smoking marijuana with her daughter when the girl was 12 years old, The Daily Item reports. The girl, whose name is being withheld due to the nature of the case, told police that she began using harder drugs, like heroin, when she was 14. The now 14-year-old says that she has abused prescription pills and crack cocaine, in addition to heroin and marijuana. Baumgardner allegedly injected the child with heroin about 200 times when she was too “sick” to do it by herself. A 22-year-old Beaver Springs man is also accused of shooting the teen up — in exchange for sex. The girl says that Robert Thomas Hannick gave her suboxone, a drug prescribed for opioid dependence. Hannick denied that he provided the girl with drugs, authorities said. It is unclear how Hannick came into contact with the teen, or what connection, if any, he has to Baumgardner. B-b-but wait it gets worse. Baumgardner admitted that she and her daughter had a drug problem when she was interviewed by state police, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Item. The daughter told authorities that her mother would sometimes take her to the hospital with a fake illness to get prescription drugs. The 14-year-old also says that she and her mother would share Fentanyl patches. Fentanyl is a prescription pain killer that is 100 times more powerful than morphine. Put this junkie beyotch in a cell and misplace the key, please and thank you! Image via Facebook Source
We’ve lost another young talented sister too young. Via The Root.com : Erica Kennedy, an author and blogger best known for popular novels Feminista and Bling, has died. She resided in Miami Beach, Florida and was 42 years old at the time of her death, according to a family member. Additional details on the circumstances are not available yet. A former fashion publicist, Kennedy started her writing career as a special correspondent for the New York Daily News. She went on to write about fashion and entertainment for magazines such as Vibe, In Style, Paper and Elle UK, according to her website. In 2004 she published a satire on the high stakes world of hip-hop with her debut novel Bling, which went on to become a New York Times best-seller. Five years later she released her second novel, Feminista, a story about smart, modern women. Fellow author Rebecca Walker interviewed Kennedy for The Root in 2009. We remember reading Ms. Kennedy’s book “Bling” and thoroughly enjoying it. So sad. May she rest in peace. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her friends and family. Photo Via TheFrisky.com
