In North Carolina, Women Can't Withdraw Consent After Sex Begins

North Carolina is the only state in which a woman can’t withdraw consent after sexual intercourse has already begun. But a state lawmaker is now trying to change that, sponsoring legislation that would upend a decades-old state Supreme Court ruling that determined it can’t be rape if a woman offers her consent before penetration happens — no matter what her choice may be after that. 

“North Carolina is the only state in the U.S. where no doesn’t mean no,” state Sen. Jeff Jackson (D-Mecklenburg) told The Fayetteville Observer this week. Jackson is the sponsor of Senate Bill 553, which states that a person who “continues to engage in intercourse after consent is withdrawn” can be charged with rape. The bill applies specifically to vaginal intercourse. 

In 1977, Beverly Hester of North Carolina was on a first date when she was sexually assaulted. She later testified that she had willingly accompanied her date to a bedroom but that he had later “forced her to have intercourse with him even though she begged him not to,” per a 2004 report in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 

The state’s Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Hester’s date had not raped her. “If the actual penetration is accomplished with the woman’s consent, the accused is not guilty of rape, although he may be guilty of another crime because of his subsequent actions,” said the court decision.

That ruling has had devastating consequences to this day.

Jackson said state legislators “are hearing more and more about women who have been raped and are being denied justice because of this crazy loophole.”

Amy Guy of Wake County is one of these victims. Guy told WCNC.com in an interview last month that her estranged husband had initially been charged with second-degree rape after continuing to have sex with her despite her pleas for him to stop. Jonathan Guy had showed up intoxicated at her apartment last year demanding sex, she said. She initially consented, but when he turned violent during the act, she begged him to stop — a plea that he ignored.

Guy’s second-degree rape charge was eventually reduced to a misdemeanor assault because of the Supreme Court ruling from the 1970s, reported WRAL.com. 

“I was devastated. I didn’t understand how that could be because I knew I had been raped,” Guy told the station. ”I don’t understand how the law can say that I wasn’t.”

This week, assault victim Aaliyah Palmer, 19, also came forward with her story. Like Guy, she says she had initially consented to have sex with a man but withdrew her consent when he turned violent.

The January assault happened at a party near Fort Bragg. “I said, ‘You’re hurting me. Stop,’” Palmer told the Observe, saying she repeated this demand several times, but he refused to stop.

Four soldiers who had been present at the party and who filmed Palmer’s sexual assault were charged with “peeping Tom” counts. But the man who forced himself on her was not charged with any crime. 

“It’s really stupid,” Palmer told the Observer, that a law allows the man to escape without consequences. “If I tell you no and you kept going, that’s rape.”

Palmer and Guy said they had come forward with their stories in the hopes that the law would be changed to protect victims of rape. 

Jackson said, however, that his bill, titled “Revoke Consent for Intercourse,” never got a hearing in the Senate and will likely be dead for the remainder of the two-year legislative session. But he told WRAL that he’s undaunted and will continue to push similar bills “until the law is changed.”  

“There’s no reason for this to be partisan,” Jackson told the Observer. “It’s about doing what’s obviously right.”

According to a report on Vice’s Broadly site last month, North Carolina may be the only state that has “explicitly” determined that consent cannot be withdrawn once sex begins, but an overwhelming majority of states consider this a gray area. Only eight states, including California, Kansas, South Dakota and Maine, “affirmatively recognize that consent can be withdrawn at any time during intercourse,” reports Broadly. Only one, Illinois, has codified this in law. 

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

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Johnny Depp Cracks A Joke About Assassinating Donald Trump

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Actor Johnny Depp is under fire after making a crack about assassinating President Donald Trump

The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star was in Glastonbury, England, promoting his newest film, “The Libertine,” at an event called Cinemageddon when he brought up the president’s name. 

“I think he needs help,” he said. “There are a lot of wonderful dark, dark places he could go.” 

Then Depp told the audience:

“It’s just a question. I’m not insinuating anything. By the way, this is going to be in the press, it will be horrible, but I like that you’re all a part of it. 

When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”

The crowd cheered wildly. 

“Now, I want to clarify, I’m not an actor,” he added after a pause. “I lie for a living.” 

The comments come weeks after comic Kathy Griffin was criticized for posing with a bloody fake Trump head, which led to her losing a job with CNN. They also come amid protests in New York over a staging of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in which the title character, who is stabbed to death, looks like Trump. 

Some celebrity comments over assassination have led to Secret Service inquiries. Conservative rocker Ted Nugent said he got a visit from agents after he said in 2012 he would be “dead or in jail by this time next year” if President Barack Obama was reelected.

It’s not clear yet if the agency plans to question Depp about his remarks.

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IBM-powered DNA sequencing could find bacteria in raw milk

Babies love milk. Adults love milk-based products. You know what else loves milk? Good and bad bacteria. It’s the ideal medium for bacteria growth and could cause various food-borne illnesses, especially if consumed in raw, unpasteurized form. Resear…

Amanda Knox Opens Instagram World: Creepy Fairy Tales, Cuffs And Cats

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Amanda Knox, the American convicted of murder in Italy and then freed, has gone public with her Instagram account two years after being exonerated, and a couple of the posts are fairy-tale bizarre.  

Two of the shots show Knox, 29, earlier this month dressed in full Little Red Riding Hood regalia with her beau, Christopher Robinson, dressed as a wolf stalking her in Germany’s Black Forest.

A post shared by Amanda Knox (@amamaknox) on Jun 11, 2017 at 12:43am PDT

A post shared by Amanda Knox (@amamaknox) on Jun 8, 2017 at 6:56am PDT

The photos were taken during the couple’s tour this May and June of France and Germany. How serious are the two? To Robinson, a novelist, Knox tweeted in May after a “birthday kiss” in Colmar, France: “Je t’aime.” 

A post shared by Amanda Knox (@amamaknox) on May 15, 2017 at 10:20pm PDT

A post shared by Amanda Knox (@amamaknox) on Jun 8, 2017 at 7:09am PDT

Knox, of Seattle, made headlines when she was arrested in 2007 after the death of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, while the two were studying abroad. Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollicito, were convicted of Kercher’s murder. Knox spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before Italy’s highest court overturned her and Sollecito’s convictions in 2015. (A third person charged in the murder, Rudy Guede, is serving a 16-year sentence.) 

Since then, Knox has become a journalist and the star of a Netflix documentary on her case. She has also been posting Instagram photos since her release — and keeping them private no longer. “What’s happening?” she asked on her Twitter account Tuesday. “Well, I made my Instagram public. No more hoarding all my amazing cat videos.”

The cat posts are cute, but some of the others are far more interesting. One of her posts in April is a selfie of Knox wearing a T-shirt featuring an image of handcuffs and reading: “It could happen to you.”

A post shared by Amanda Knox (@amamaknox) on Apr 4, 2017 at 10:53am PDT

That post is part of her work on behalf of the Innocence Project, which helps free people wrongly convicted of crimes.

Oh, and the cats featured in her Instagram posts are Emil, Fats — and Screams.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren Slams 'Blood Money' GOP Health Care Bill

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came out swinging against the health care bill unveiled by Senate Republicans on Thursday. 

In a tweet, Warren called the proposal “blood money,” saying it would pay for tax cuts with human lives.

She also released a video slamming the proposal, saying it would benefit the wealthy and health insurance company CEOs with tax breaks that would come from cuts to Medicaid. 

“Take a minute to think about what that means,” she said. “It means that one in five Americans who are getting their health care through Medicaid are going to have to suffer through those cuts.”  

She said that includes 30 million children and two out of three seniors in nursing homes.

The bill also makes changes to private insurance allowing cuts to essential services and cuts all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, she noted.

And she concluded by urging her supporters to call Republicans in the Senate to voice their opposition.  

“This bill does not represent our values,” she said. “This bill is not who we are as a country. We believe that health care is a basic human right, and we will get out there and fight for it.” 

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Tesla is laying the groundwork to build cars in Shanghai

If you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on one of Tesla’s electric vehicles, the upcoming Model 3 probably looks pretty appealing. The car promises 215 miles per charge, ample seating, the tech for autopilot and it starts at just $35,000. Well, un…

HP ZBook 15 G4 15.6-Inch Mobile Workstation With Intel Core i5-7300HQ Processor

HP ZBook 15 G4

Built for mobile creative and design professionals, the new HP ZBook 15 G4 boasts a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 Full HD SVA display, a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-7300HQ quad-core processor, an integrated Intel HD Graphics 630, an 8GB DDR4 RAM and a 500GB 7200rpm 2.5” HDD.

Not only that, the system also packs a 720p HD webcam w/ dual-array microphones, an SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader, 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports, 3x USB 3.0 Type-A ports, 1x HDMI 1.4 ports, a 9-cell lithium-ion prismatic battery and built-in stereo speakers w/ Bang & Olufsen HD audio.

Running on Windows 10 Pro 64-bit OS, the ZBook 15 G4 provides WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2 for connectivity. The HP ZBook 15 G4 will set you back $1,319.99. [Product Page]

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BenQ GL 2070 19.5-Inch WXGA++ LCD Monitor With BenQ’s Proprietary Eye-Care Technology

BenQ GL 2070

Here comes a new 19.5-inch WXGA++ LCD monitor ‘GL 2070’ from BenQ. Utilizing BenQ’s proprietary Eye-Care technology such as ‘Flicker Free’ technology and ‘Blue Light Reduction’ technology, this new 19.5-inch TN LED-backlight monitor supports a native resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels and provides 16:9 aspect ratio, 600:1 contrast ratio (12 million:1 DCR), 200 cd/m2 brightness, 5ms response time and 90/65 degree viewing angles.

Certified for environmentally friendly certification, the GL 2070 provides 1x D-Sub and 1x DVI-D input ports. Backed by a 3-year warranty, the BenQ GL 2070 is available now. [Product Page]

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Buffalo Outs A New Line Of USB 3.1 (Gen1) Portable SSDs ‘SSD-PMU3A’

Buffalo SSD PMU3A

Buffalo hits back with a new line of USB 3.1 (Gen1) portable SSDs, the SSD-PMU3A. Coming in three different storage capacities: 120GB, 240GB and 480GB, these compact and lightweight SSDs (Black & Silver color options) feature a shock-proof and vibration-proof enclosure conforming to ‘MIL-STD-810G 516.6 procedure IV’ and a micro-USB 3.1 (Gen1) connection interface, and support for Windows 10, 8.1, 7 and Mac OS X 10.9 or later operating systems.

In addition, you can download ‘SecureLock Mobile 2’ and ‘Disk Formatter 2’ software for free. Performance-wise, the SSD-PMU3A portable SSDs can deliver high speed file transfer of about 421.6MB when reading and 370MB/s when writing.

The Buffalo SSD-PMU3A portable SSDs will be available this month for around $138 (120GB model), $208 (240GB model) and $400 (480GB model), respectively. [Product Page]

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The Medical Emergency Of Otto Warmbier

All that the doctors who treated Cincinnati, Ohio resident Otto Warmbier knew is what they had seen or maybe read in the news. They knew he had just been released on June 13 from imprisonment in North Korea where he had been held by for more than 17 months. He had been sentenced in March 2016 to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly removing a propaganda poster from a wall at a Pyongyang hotel where he had been staying. The University of Virginia honors student had been visiting the authoritarian state during a five-day trip with a group called Young Pioneer Tours, which is a group out of China – an important note.

Otto Warmbier’s ordeal began on Jan. 2, 2016 when he was removed from a flight that was about to leave Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, by two North Korean officials who explained that he was very sick and needed to go to a hospital. He was not sick and did not need to go to a hospital. He had just been arrested for allegedly trying to steal that poster.

Most of us have seen the video by now of Otto Warmbier in captivity from March 2016 – just a couple months after he was removed from the flight – he was alert and made a confessional statement in front of media cameras, where he pleaded for leniency and then broke down crying. In another video clip, we see him paraded before cameras being roughly escorted by two North Korean soldiers who had tight grips on each of his arms, his head bowed, his feet shuffling.

Then came the news well over a year later that through various means of diplomacy, he was being released to go back home to Cincinnati, but that he was in a coma and had been for most of his time in captivity. The explanation from the North Koreans? He had contracted botulism and had taken a sleeping pill.

Medically, that was pretty much the extent of what we knew about Otto Warmbier. Now, imagine you’re the doctor receiving this patient. You have no medical records, no tests whatsoever, no way of knowing what really happened. Not even the family can help – they, too, have no way of knowing what really happened. Where do you begin? How do you play medical detective to determine the extent of the damage done to Otto Warmbier’s body and what exactly caused it? And can you find a way to help him recover?

You begin with the basics, just like anyone coming into any emergency department in America. You take vital signs – respiratory rate, pulse, blood pressure, temperature, pupil responsiveness, general responsiveness to physical and verbal stimulation. You establish an I.V. to support him with fluids and as a way to administer any medications he may need.

You begin testing. You take blood for a variety of reasons – a CBC (complete blood count) to be sure, which will give a great deal of information regarding the kinds and numbers of cells in the blood – red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, leukocyte count, etc. – which give an indication of anemia, infection, blood disorders or diseases, and a host of other things. Something to look for immediately is blood sugar level.

Then you begin with scans. And in Otto Warmbier’s case, I would do a complete work up – from X-Rays to CT scans and eventually MRIs, a bone scan and thyroid scan. I would leave no stone unturned. Then there’s something that medical personnel refer to as A-E-I-O-U TIPS. It’s a mnemonic device we use to remember the protocol for examining someone who exhibits altered mental state, like Otto Warmbier’s. Let’s take a look at each letter individually to see what needs to be covered:

  • AAlcoholism, Abuse of substances, Acidosis. You never know what someone like Otto Warmbier might have been subject to while in captivity, especially in a place like North Korea. You check for alcohol or drug intoxication, diabetic ketoacidosis, hypoventilation due to COPD, asthmatic airway obstruction, or neuromuscular disease.
  • E – Environmental; was there an issue with hypothermia or hyperthermia or evidence of any other sort of environmental issue? Epilepsy; what about an epileptic seizure or a seizure of any kind for any reason? Electrolytes; what is Otto’s balance like – any hyponatremia or hypernatremia, hypocalcemia or hypercalcemia? I’d check for encephalopathy; either Wernicke’s (exhaustion of B vitamins, especially B1, which could lead to neurological symptoms) or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE – which is a degenerative condition found in those who have had repeated blows to the head). Also endocrine disease, where I’d look for adrenal insufficiency or thyroid disease.
  • I – Infection. Sepsis, for sure, meningitis, and a host of other possible infections that could cause a comatose state.
  • O Overdose of any sort of drug – like more than one sleeping pill. Also, oxygen deficiency, which is what the doctors treating him suspect. That there was a period of time that his brain was deprived of oxygen, causing brain tissue to die and Otto’s lapse into an unresponsive conscious state.
  • U Underdose; not enough prescription meds to control a condition. I’d also look for uremia, which is excess urea in the blood as a result of kidney failure or heart failure.
  • T Trauma; and it would just be my medical inclination, but I’d be very suspicious of this – is there any evidence of a concussion or traumatic brain injury, or increased cranial pressure? Tumor; unlikely in Otto’s case, but you never know. You have to rule it out.
  • I Insulin; what are the levels? Any issues with hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia?
  • P Poisonings; any evidence of any sort regarding this? Any evidence of nerve agents of any sort, like sarin, for example. People who receive a dose of sarin that doesn’t kill them can ultimately suffer permanent neurological damage. Is there a possibility of psychogenic issues? The emotional and mental stress of sudden captivity in harsh conditions could manifest in physical illnesses.
  • S Shock; a spinal cord injury could cause neurogenic shock. Also, one could suffer cardiogenic shock caused by a heart attack in which there is insufficient circulation and therefore oxygenation of tissues, which could permanently affect the brain. And there’s always the possibility of a stroke, given the conditions of captivity.

The doctors who treated Otto Warmbier described him as having a “severe neurological injury” and that he was in a state of “unresponsive wakefulness.” They also said he had extensive loss of brain tissue. In a statement from his family, they said Otto was “unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands” when he returned to the U.S. He was in bad shape.

Sadly, just six days after his June 13 release from captivity in North Korea, he died. As you can see going through the A-E-I-O-U TIPS scenarios, there are so many paths to explore to get to the bottom of what happened to Otto Warmbier and what caused his death. Even after extensive testing, often nothing definitive emerges. Rest assured, his doctors did everything they possibly could to give him a chance to recover. But the sad truth is that it’s likely we may never know what caused his condition or his death.

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To learn more about Dr. Sudip Bose, MD, please go to SudipBose.com and visit his nonprofit TheBattleContinues.org where 100% of donations go directly to injured veterans.

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