Cops: Dad foils school attack plot

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What it’s like to live with lupus

Its mark on the body is often invisible. Yet millions around the world suffer from it.

Its symptoms, such as fatigue, confusion, shortness of breath and joint pain, are so common that many of its victims, predominantly women, are written off by society as “lazy or crazy.”

Yet inflammation can easily flare, leading to lengthy hospitalizations, even death. What is this frustrating, covert disease that can take such a toll?

Lupus, also known as systemic lupus erythematosus or SLE.
“But you don’t look sick,” is the most common refrain that a person with lupus will hear, said Christine Miserandino, a lupus patient and chronic disease advocate who runs a website by the same name butyoudontlooksick.com. As she often points out in her writings and speaking engagements, that well-meaning phrase can backfire.

“Many times, being pretty or not sickly looking makes it harder to validate an illness you cannot see,” said Miserandino.

Lupus risks

Lupus is a chronic inflammatory condition where the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy cells and tissues. Any system or organ in the body can be affected — the skin, lungs, blood cells, heart, joints, brain or kidneys — so lupus looks different in everyone.

Because of that, it can be hard to get a diagnosis, as doctors confuse symptoms with other diseases, or discount them entirely.

Selena Gomez and other celebrities

Actor Kristen Johnston, best known for “3rd Rock from the Sun” told her fans on Facebook that it took 17 doctors and “two fun-filled weeks in November partying at the Mayo Clinic” before she was diagnosed in 2013 with lupus myelitis. That’s a rare form of the disease that attacks the spinal cord.
When pop star Selena Gomez took a break from one of her tours, she battled rumors of substance abuse before telling the media that she had lupus.
“I’ve been through chemotherapy. That’s what my break was really about. I could’ve had a stroke,” she told Billboard.
The willingness of other celebrities to speak out, such as Grammy award winning singer Toni Braxton, U.S. soccer team player Shannon Boxx, actor and television personality Nick Cannon, and singer-songwriter Seal, who wears the scars of discoid lupus erythematosus on his face, have helped the disease gain national attention and foster understanding of its many challenges.

Lupus causes

Lupus can attack at any age, but most commonly arrives between the ages of 15 and 44. Women, African Americans, Hispanics and Asians are more likely to be affected. There is no cure and no definitive cause.

There is a form of drug-induced lupus, caused by certain antibiotic, seizure or blood pressure medications, but it normally resolves after the drug is withdrawn. In most cases, experts believe there could be a genetic component to lupus, triggered at some point by an outside cause, such as infection, even sunlight.

Lupus symptoms

Joint pain

Inflammation

Unexplained fever

Headaches

Chronic fatigue

Sensitivity to sunlight

Confusion, memory loss

Butterfly rash

Shortness of breath

While each case of lupus is unique, there are some common symptoms. Nearly everyone with lupus will experience joint pain and inflammation, which can progress to arthritis. Chronic fatigue, unexplained fever, shortness of breath, headaches, hair loss, mouth sores and sensitivity to sunlight are typical.

A facial rash that extends across the forehead, cheeks and nose, and shaped similar to a butterfly, occurs in about half of all cases.

One of the most frustrating symptoms of lupus is frequent confusion and memory loss. Around one in five people with lupus suffer from some sort of brain fog, which happens when lupus antibodies cross the blood-brain barrier and interfere with the brain’s memory center. Most attacks are mild, such as forgetting a familiar number or where you parked your car, but for some memory loss can worsen over time.
A "butterfly rash" on the face occurs in about half of cases.

Lupus also raises the risk of pregnancy complications, infections, even cancer, so obtaining treatment for the condition is critical to living with the disease.

Lupus treatment

Typical treatments for lupus include an immunosuppressant to slow the body’s attack on itself, prednisone and other types of corticosteroids to reduce inflammation, and over the counter pain relievers, such as naproxen sodium and ibuprofen to treat fever and swelling.
The first prescription treatment for lupus in over 50 years was approved in 2011 by the Food and Drug Administration. The drug, Benlysta, is a biologic, which means it was made in a living organism rather than chemically, and works by specifically targeting overactive antibodies, rather than suppressing the entire immune system. It’s given intravenously, and only to those patients for whom other treatments have become ineffective.
There is some evidence that vitamin D, fish oil and DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) supplements can help as well. Because sunlight is a trigger, it’s important that anyone with lupus wear protective clothing, sunglasses and sunscreen.

Lupus triggers

Lupus is a variable disease, characterized by periods of wellness with few symptoms, followed by an extreme “flare” of the disease, often triggered by a factor in the patient’s environment. Common triggers include stress, cold, flu and infections, exhaustion, ultraviolet rays from sunlight and in some cases, florescent lights, and various medications, especially those that increase sun sensitivity.

See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

Experts suggest avoiding flares by practicing a healthy lifestyle: eat a well-balanced diet, get plenty of sleep and exercise, and avoid as much daily stress as possible. Staying out of sunlight is also key, as is keeping a journal of symptoms to help identify flares early and get immediate medical care.

Government watchdog to scrutinize security expenses of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trips

In a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Government Accountability Office said Monday it would begin the inquiry into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago visits “shortly,” after Cummings and Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse and Tom Udall requested the probe.

The scope of the inquiry will include how classified information is protected at the private club, what type of security measures are taken to screen “individuals with access to Mar-a-Lago” and what measures are in place “to ensure charges for travel-related expenses in connection with providing protection for presidential trips to Mar-a-Lago are fair and reasonable.”

The government watchdog will also look into whether Trump is keeping his promise to take any profits made at his hotels from foreign governments and transfer them to the US Treasury. Trump’s lawyer promised at a news conference in January that, in an effort to avoid conflict of interest, he wouldn’t keep such profits.

“He is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury,” said Sheri Dillon, Trump’s tax attorney. “This way it is the American people who will profit.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

The watchdog inquiry comes as Democrats raise questions about the costs and security questions that comes with Trump’s frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago, a private club he has owned since 1985 and a home he has visited for six weekends since becoming president in January.

Variations in each trip make it difficult to estimate how much it actually costs for Trump to spend weekends in Florida. But a 2016 GAO report about a four-day trip President Barack Obama took to Florida in 2013 found the total cost to the Secret Service and Coast Guard was $3.6 million.

Security concerns were heightened in February when Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to be strategizing over how to respond to a North Korean missile test while having dinner in plain sight on Mar-a-Lago’s candlelit patio.

“We have accepted this request to review security and site-related travel expenses related to the President’s stays outside the White House at Mar-a-Lago,” Chuck Young, managing director for public affairs at GAO, told CNN Tuesday.

Young said there is no time frame yet for their review, but that they will first work to “determine the full scope of what we will cover and the methodology to be used.”

“Until that is complete, we don’t have any projected dates,” Young said. “We handled it as we do all requests, from either side of the aisle, using our standard protocols.”

The GAO inquiry comes as Democratic Sens. Udall, Whitehouse, Jack Reed and Tom Carper introduced legislation in the Senate that would require the White House to publish a list of people who visit Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, introduced the same legislation in the House.

The Making Access Records Available to Lead American Government Openness Act — or Mar-a-Lago Act, for short — would treat the Florida club like the White House, where a log of visitors is required.

The act would allow for very few exceptions, including visits that would spark security concerns and “purely personal” visitors.

Spicer’s testy exchange with reporter

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Bill O’Reilly apologizes for racially charged joke

During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” O’Reilly reacted to a clip of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) delivering a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“I didn’t hear a word she said,” O’Reilly said of Waters. “I was looking at the James Brown wig.”

“If we have a picture of James Brown — it’s the same wig,” he added.

The remarks were widely denounced as both racist and sexist on Twitter, where O’Reilly’s name was trending Tuesday morning and afternoon.

Related: Conservative media at a crossroads early in Trump era

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, O’Reilly expressed regret for the remarks.

“As I have said many times, I respect Congresswoman Maxine Waters for being sincere in her beliefs,” he said. “I said that again today on Fox & Friends calling her ‘old school.’ Unfortunately, I also made a jest about her hair which was dumb. I apologize.”

The top rated host on cable news, O’Reilly actually drew some pushback before he even left the “Fox & Friends” set.

While one of the program’s male co-hosts, Brian Kilmeade, laughed heartily at O’Reilly’s comment, the lone female host — Ainsley Earhardt — stepped in to back Waters.

“I have to defend her on that,” Earhardt said. “You can’t go after a woman’s looks. I think she’s very attractive.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t attractive,” O’Reilly said. “I love James Brown. But it’s the same hair!”

He later called Waters a “sincere individual” and said she should be commended for speaking her mind.

“Whatever she says she believes,” O’Reilly said. “She’s not a phony, and that’s old school.”

Related: The Wall Street Journal and Trump: a history of hostility

The congresswoman’s office declined to comment.

As clips of O’Reilly’s remarks made the rounds online, some media watchdogs noted that Waters found herself on the receiving end of another racially charged remark from a different Fox News personality years earlier.

In 2012, Fox host Eric Bolling said that Waters should “step away from the crack pipe.”

O’Reilly himself has faced charges of racism and sexism in the past. And in his bid for laughs, he has been known to crack wise about the physical appearance of some high-profile women.

At a comedy program in Long Island in 2015, O’Reilly made fun of the weight of both Rosie O’Donnell and Hillary Clinton.

In his joke about the former secretary of state, O’Reilly imagined a farcical scenario wherein the Clinton Foundation was forced to return thousands of pantsuits to the Chinese government.

“We don’t want them back,'” O’Reilly said, adopting a fake Chinese accent. “‘They don’t fit anyone here in this country.'”

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 28, 2017: 2:35 PM ET

A ‘fair chance’ airstrike killed civilians in Mosul, US official says

“We have an investigation going on, but our initial assessment … shows we did strike in that area, there were multiple strikes in that area, so is it possible that we did that? Yes, I think it is possible,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told reporters Tuesday.

Townsend, commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, said the US has sent experts to the scene of the airstrike in west Mosul to investigate allegations of civilian casualties.

He said investigators are assessing whether ISIS was fighting from the building with civilians in order to “lure” the US “deliberately, or they were just using them as human shields to try to protect their fighting position.”

“We know ISIS were fighting from that position in that building. And there were people that you really can’t account for in any other way why they would all be there unless they were forced there. So that’s my initial impression, the enemy had a hand in this, and there’s also a fair chance our strike had some role in it,” Townsend said.

On Monday, a senior Iraqi health official said 112 bodies had been pulled from the site of a March 17 US-led coalition airstrike in west Mosul.

Both the Iraqi and US defense departments have launched investigations into possible civilian deaths in airstrikes between March 17 and 23.

ISIS’ last stronghold in Iraq

US and Iraqi forces have been trying to regain control of Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city — from ISIS since October.

ISIS had a firm grip on Mosul since 2014, but suffered a huge blow when Iraqi security forces took control of eastern Mosul in January.

But the arduous fight for western Mosul continues.

CNN’s Arwa Damon, reporting from western Mosul, said the destruction is widespread. But many families couldn’t escape because ISIS has been using civilians as human shields.

She said it’s not surprising many civilians would be packed in one place.

“In an effort to protect themselves, a lot of families would cram into homes that they believed would be the sturdiest,” Damon said. “But as the fighting pushed forward, as airstrikes were called in, there have been significant civilian casualties.”

Bodies of 2 UN experts found

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said UN peacekeepers discovered the bodies of US citizen Michael Sharp and Swedish national Zaida Catalan on Monday outside the city of Kananga.

Sharp and Catalan were members of the UN Group of Experts on Congo who were investigating large-scale human rights violations in the region.

With them were four Congolese nationals — interpreter Betu Tshintela, driver Isaac Kabuayi and two unidentified motorbike drivers, according to Human Rights Watch.

On March 13, the DRC government announced they had “fallen into the hands of unidentified negative forces,” but did not release further information, HRW said.

Sharp’s father, John Sharp, expressed his sorrow Tuesday on Facebook. “Tonight I have no words except to thank you all for your support and prayers. Maybe words will come in time,” he wrote.

The day before, he posted that he’d been told that two Caucasian bodies had been discovered in a shallow grave in the region, which were highly likely to be that of Catalan and his son.

Ben Wideman, a Mennonite pastor, paid tribute to his college friend Sharp. “Even back in college it was clear that MJ would be a person who would head out to save the world,” he wrote, using Sharp’s nickname. “May we all strive to live out our lives like MJ, working for peace wherever we are called.”

Tributes

In a statement, Guterres said, “Michael and Zaida lost their lives seeking to understand the causes of conflict and insecurity in the DRC in order to help bring peace to the country and its people.”

The UN will be launching an investigation into the cause of their deaths, the statement added, and urged the DRC government to conduct its own investigation. Efforts to find the four Congolese nationals who also went missing should continue, the statement said.

The US’ ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, released a statement offering condolences to the two UN workers’ families.

“It is always difficult to lose a brave American dedicated to service,” Haley’s statement reads. “Michael was working on the front lines of what we try to do at the United Nations every day: find problems and fix them.”

Ida Sawyer, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch said the team’s disappearance reflected a bigger picture of the violence in the Kasai region of the DRC.

“The Human Rights Council should establish a commission of inquiry into abuses in the region as soon as possible. Concerted efforts are urgently needed to address this increasingly desperate situation,” she said.

CNN’s Richard Roth and Joel Williams contributed to this report.

Sean Spicer’s shameful scapegoating

One of the alleged assailants was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. “I think part of the reason the President has made illegal immigration and crackdown such a big deal is because of tragedies like this,” Spicer said.

If the allegations in the Rockville case are true, they represent a horrific case of sexual assault. Nothing more, nothing less. The alleged incident should not be conflated with the immigration debate and should not be manipulated for political purposes. The fact is, immigration status actually has little to do with violent crime.

Asked about the Rockville High case at a press briefing, Spicer said, “The President recognizes that education is a state-run and a local-run issue but I think it is — it is cause for concern, what happened there. And I think that the city should look at its policies and I think that this is something that authorities are going to have to look at.”

Spicer seems to suggest that the undocumented student accused of raping his classmate did not belong in school. But this is not a matter of any city “policies” that “authorities” should examine. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that all children, including the undocumented, have a right to a public education.
State laws require young people to be in school (where, in any case, they have a much better chance of avoiding criminal activity to begin with). No one should be criticizing Montgomery County for meeting its legal obligations to students.
What is troubling is how the Trump administration leaps at this chance — and any other like it — to advance the false idea that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals. For his address to Congress last month, for example, President Trump invited several people whose family members had been killed by undocumented immigrants. In that speech, the President announced the creation of a new office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that will highlight crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. And on Thursday, the Department of Justice released the annual federal justice statistics, with a focus on immigration-related arrests.
However, research has consistently shown that that immigrants, including the undocumented, are associated with lower levels of crime than native-born Americans. Studies by the American Immigration Council, the Marshall Project, the Cato Institute and criminologists all support this conclusion.
So Americans are more likely to be the victim of a crime committed by a fellow citizen than by an undocumented immigrant. The alleged assailant in the Rockville High case is no more representative of all undocumented immigrants than the Border Patrol agent accused of sexually assaulting two sisters is representative of all border patrol agents.
One byproduct of the rhetoric surrounding the Rockville High incident is that Montgomery County Public Schools district, where the school is situated, has been besieged by threatening and xenophobic phone calls, tweets and emails. One caller threatened to burn down the school; another vowed to “shoot the illegals.”
How sad that for so many individuals, their response to reports of an unacceptable act of violence is to threaten more violence. And consider that some of these individuals who are so angry about the sexual assault allegations against an undocumented immigrant may well have supported a President with his own lengthy history of sexual assault allegations.

Yes, perhaps the Rockville High attack might not have happened if the alleged perpetrator had not been in this country without authorization. But we don’t know that — just as we don’t know yet if the allegations are in fact true. If we believe in the presumption of innocence, the cornerstone of our justice system, we should withhold judgment until the case has been tried in a court of law.

In the meantime, the focus of our concern should be our need for safer schools. Although the alleged attack by an undocumented student has generated outrage from everyone from Fox News host Bill O’Reilly to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, it is not the first such incident.
In the last school year, there were 250 sex-related “serious incidents” in the Montgomery County Public Schools district, 64 of which resulted in calls to police. Should one victim receive more attention because her attacker happened to be undocumented? Of course not. The same holds true for other cases across the country involving students who are victims of sexual assault. Crime is crime, and all of these cases deserve a complete investigation.

The Trump administration is wrong to play the blame game with undocumented immigrants. Crime victims need support, not scapegoats.

ICE will release DREAMer after 6 weeks

Immigration Judge John Odell granted bond for Ramirez, who has been in custody since early February, a spokesperson from Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

Ramirez, 23, testified for about 40 minutes during an immigration bond hearing on Tuesday and is expected to post $15,000 bond sometime before his release on Wednesday, said Manny Rivera, the spokesman for his legal team.

Ramirez’ case rattled immigrant rights groups, which have been increasingly nervous about President Donald Trump’s immigration policy including its impact on DREAMers.

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, was first introduced in 2001 and had been reintroduced in Congress several times, but failed to pass. The bill aimed to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented children who grew up in the United States.

DREAMers are undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and can apply to stay in the country as long as they pass background checks. The program established by Obama’s executive order in 2012 is called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA.
Ramirez came to the US from Mexico with his parents illegally when he was 7. He had twice been granted permission to temporarily live and work in the country under DACA, his lawyers said.
Ramirez was arrested February 10 in Washington during an ICE raid that initially targeted his father.

“Daniel has been in detention for almost two months,” said Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., a member of Ramirez’ legal team. “We are relieved that he will be released and look forward to arguing the merits of this case in federal court.”

Conflicting portrayals of the man

While his lawyers call Ramirez a “law abiding” young father, federal immigration officials have an entirely different label: “self-admitted gang member.”

The government alleges Ramirez told immigration agents he is a gang member, an affiliation that generally disqualifies undocumented immigrants from gaining DACA protection.

But Ramirez’ lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court, saying he is not a gang member and that immigration agents never had any legal cause to take him to a holding facility where it was alleged to have made the disputed confession.

Meanwhile, advocates hope that Ramirez’ arrest does not indicate that the Department of Homeland Security is proceeding in a new direction for DREAMers.

About 750,000 people have received permission to stay under DACA.

When asked whether DREAMers should be worried, Trump previously told ABC News, “They shouldn’t be very worried. I do have a big heart.”

CNN’s Rosa Flores, Jason Hanna and Ariane de Vogue contributed to this report.

Facebook’s transformation into Snapchat

Starting Tuesday, Facebook (FB, Tech30) users around the world will be able to use the company’s latest Snapchat-like features: an effects-filled camera, short visual stories and more disappearing messages.

The updated camera, accessible from a new button on top of the news feed, includes more than 100 animated overlays and effects. There are rainbows, masks, cityscapes, sloth hats and yes, beards filled with glitter.

The Stories tool — nearly identical to a feature Facebook-owned Instagram added in 2016 — lets people cobble together photos, video snippets and effects into short narratives that disappear after a day. It will appear as a row of circles on the top of the news feed, with your closest friends shown first.

Facebook is also adding an option to share disappearing Stories and photos directly with individual friends, without opening the Messenger app.

The new features are the social network’s latest unsubtle attempt to imitate Snapchat. Facebook was unable to strike a deal to buy the rival messaging company for $3 billion in 2013, and it has spent the intervening years imitating Snapchat’s greatest hits.

Snapchat (SNAP), meanwhile, has been busy going public and dabbling in wearable cameras.

Related: How going public may change Snapchat

Facebook does credit Snapchat with pioneering the Stories format but says its own move into more visual content is a response to what users are already doing. Facebook has noticed an overall shift from text-based status updates to images and videos.

Snapchat stock was down nearly 4% on the news.

The rise of more visual forms of communications is changing how we communicate, especially on mobile devices. New emoji releases are hotly debated. Apple (AAPL, Tech30) launched an entire ad campaign around the new stickers in its Messages app.

Perhaps that’s why Facebook is so earnest about the new additions. According to Kristen Spilman, Facebook’s director of art and animation, the new camera filters and effects are meant to enhance people’s thoughts, help them connect on a deeper level and make them part of a community. That’s a lot of pressure for an animated slice of pizza or gold trophy.

Related: Facebook’s new feature is yet another Snapchat ripoff

Facebook has spent months testing the new tools ahead of the roll-out. It killed an early incarnation that automatically turned on the camera when a user opened the app. In addition to partnerships with well-known artists like Hattie Stewart, Facebook is making promotional filters with movie studios and hopes to have users add their own in the future.

Facebook now includes various Snapchat-like features in all its major apps, and some of the tools do the same things. But the company isn’t worried about syncing up the tools just yet. For now, it’s focusing on making the best, most effective glitter facial hair experience possible.

CNNMoney (San Francisco) First published March 28, 2017: 8:02 AM ET