Mackenzie Phillips

At 10:00 AM, officers responded to Terminal 4, where 48-year-old Phillips was being screened by TSA. During the screening process, some baggies and balloons believed to contain heroin and cocaine were recovered.

The former “One Day at a Time” star has had a long history of drug abuse.

actress mckenzie phillips has been arrested on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance after being stopped at Los Angeles International Airport.

Airport police confirmed that Phillips, 48, was held in custody at LAX after security screeners allegedly discovered “what appeared to be heroin and cocaine” in her possession.

She was booked into jail in Van Nuys on a felony drug possession charge, with bail set at $10,000, according to an airport police spokesman. Phillips’ agent had no comment on the incident.

Phillips, who gained fame on the 1970s sitcom “One Day at a Time,” was reportedly later fired from the show for drug abuse. She has publicly spoken about her battle with drugs and her sobriety.

I know that a great many of you may not even remember mckenzie phillips from her hey day in the early 80’s but I do and know that she has since dealt with major drug issues over the years which, it would seem, she is still struggling with today. Hopefully this arrest will finally help Mackenzie come to grips with her demons. Sad, sad news.

The actress, 48, has been known to have problems with substance abuse. She has spoken publicly about her struggles during her time on the television comedy series,One Day at a Time. She left that production twice, due to drug addiction. Her claim to fame was her famous role inAmerican Graffiti, over 30 years ago. It was at least 10 years ago that her drug problems were public, according to the L.A. Times.

The most recent and famous appearances occurred on the 1990s TV hit, Beverly Hills, 90210, where she played a counselor, but she has worked regularly since then, theL.A. Times said.

Another interesting fact, in case you didn’t know, Phillips is the daughter of the late John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, reported the L.A. Times.

Airport police were called to the scene and arrested Phillips on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance.

“She is being booked at Pacific Division and then transferred to Van Nuys,” adds Holcomb. Bail was set at $10,000.

Phillips, who played sister to Valerie Bertinelli on the long-running CBS show, is well acquainted with the booking process.

During One Day at a Time’s 1979-80 season, she was collared for cocaine possession.

After turning up late for rehearsals on multiple occasions, producers gave her a six-week leave of absence. But her behavior continued to worsen until producers gave up and fired her.

Following a stint in rehab, Phillips rejoined the show, only to quit two years later when her drug problems persisted.

The daughter of Mamas & the Papas founder John Phillips (whom she blames for her drug habit) and socialite Suzy Adams, Phillips is the product of a showbiz family. Her stepmother is singer-actressMichelle Phillips and half-sisters include Bijou Phillips and Chynna Phillips.

Mackenzie Phillips, who performed as part of the revived Mamas & the Papas until her father’s death in 2001, got her start in the industry at the age of 13 in the 1973 TV movie Go Ask Alice, about a 14-year-old girl pulled into a world of sex and drugs. Other credits include roles in American Graffiti, Baretta, ER,NYPD Blue and, most recently, CBS’ Cold Case .

Judy Kay Zagorski of Michigan died in a freak accident on Thursday when a 75 pound stingray leaped out of the water and struck her in the face. The 57-year-old woman was a passenger in a boat her father was driving when the accident happened.

It was the impact, not the barbs that likely caused death, said Jorge Pino, spokesman for the Florida.

“He had absolutely no warning. It just happened instantaneously,” Pino said. An autopsy will be done tomorrow.

Spotted stingrays can reach a massive 500 pounds with a wingspan of 10 feet and have been known to occasionally jump out of the water to escape a predator give birth or shake off parasites. But human deaths from rays are rare - they aren’t aggressive.

 
In 2006, Steve Irwin died when a stingray barb pierced his heart as swam, near Port Douglas, Australia. And a month later at Lighthouse Point, an eagle ray jumped from the water and lodged a 2 ½” ray into a man’s chest, severely injuring him.

Monroe County Sheriff Deputy Becky Herrin said today’s accident was beyond bizarre. “The ray just jumped in the boat,” she said.

This definitely gets filed under WTF. There are some accidents that make you shake your head in wonder…

Spotted eagle ray that killed tourist
Photo shows the spotted eagle ray that jumped into a boat and killed a woman tourist on Thursday on the Atlantic Ocean-side of Marathon in the Florida Keys. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating. (Photo courtesy of Monroe County Sheriff’s Homicide Detective Mark Coleman / March 20, 2008)

A tourist was killed by a large sting ray off the Florida Keys Thursday morning when the barb-tailed animal jumped out of the water into the woman’s boat, officials said.

Judy Kay Zagorski, of Pigeon, Mich., was sitting in a boat going 25 mph when a spotted eagle ray that weighed about 75 pounds and had a wingspan of 5 to 6 feet flew out of the water, said Jorge Pino, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The 57-year-old woman’s father was driving the boat on the Atlantic Ocean side of Vaca Key, where the city of Marathon is located, Pino said.

“He had absolutely no warning. It just happened instantaneously,” Pino said.

 The impact likely killed the woman, but it was not immediately clear if she had any puncture wounds from the ray’s barb, Pino said.

An autopsy will determine an official cause of death, Pino said.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office identified the animal as a spotted eagle ray, he said.

Rays are common in South Florida waters, but rarely swim near humans.

“Rays jump to escape a predator, give birth and shake off parasites,” said Lynn Gear, supervisor of fishes and reptiles at Theater of the Sea in Islamorada in the Florida Keys. “They do not attack people.”

Deaths from rays are rare.

In 2006, James Bertakis was severely injured in the Intracoastal Waterway in Lighthouse Point when an eagle ray jumped out of the water and lodged its 2-1/2-inch barb in his chest.

A month earlier, the popular TV “Crocodile Hunter,” Steve Irwin was killed when a stingray barb pierced his heart as he swam near Port Douglas, Australia.

Spotted eagle rays can grow up to 17 feet in length, weigh up to 500 pounds and have a wingspan of up to 10 feet. They are known to occasionally jump out of the water but are not aggressive and use the venomous barb at the end of their tail as a defense mechanism.

Dennis Quaid said there was “blood everywhere” as doctors and nurses worked to save his newborn twins after they were given an overdose of a blood thinner.

“They were working on [my son] Boone, whose belly button would not stop bleeding. … Blood squirted across the room about six feet and landed on the wall,” the actor told CBS’ 60 Minutes.

The twin boy and girl born to Quaid and his wife, Kimberly, by a surrogate mother were mistakenly given an overdose of heparin, a blood thinner, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles last November.

“We all have this inherent thing that we trust doctors and nurses that they know what they’re doing,” Quaid said in his first at-length TV interview about the ordeal. “But this mistake occurred right under our noses.”

Quaid, 53, said the twins “were basically bleeding out at that point.”

In December, the Quaids sued Baxter Healthcare Corp., saying the drug maker was negligent in packaging different doses of the medicine in similar vials. 

While Dennis Quaid and wife Kimberly are lucky that their twins are still with them today after a hospital-administered overdose of an adult blood thinner had them fighting for life in November, not all victims of medical mistakes are so lucky. In fact, according to a 2000 Food and Drug Administration article, 44,000-98,000 Americans die each year not from the medical conditions they checked in with, but from preventable medical errors.

The Quaid twins, Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone, had been admitted to the hospital shortly after birth for routine treatment of a staph infection. They were supposed to receive a dose of a pediatric blood thinner, but were instead given lethal doses of Heparin, which thinned their blood to a consistency like that of water, according to Quaid in a 60 Minutes Interview March 16.

According to the Institute of Medicine, medication errors result in more than 7,000 deaths each year just in hospitals, with thousands more in outpatient facilities. Kimberly and Dennis Quaid are launching a foundation with hopes of building awareness about medical malpractice and negligence and finding ways to eliminate it.

The FDA article lists some of the most common types of medication errors, according to the American Hospital Association:

*Incomplete patient information (not knowing about patients’ allergies, other medicines they are taking, previous diagnoses, and lab results, for example)
*Unavailable drug information (such as lack of up-to-date warnings)
*Miscommunication of drug orders, which can involve poor handwriting, confusion between drugs with similar names, misuse of zeroes and decimal points, confusion of metric and other dosing units, and inappropriate abbreviations.

*Lack of appropriate labeling as a drug is prepared and repackaged into smaller units
environmental factors, such as lighting, heat, noise, and interruptions, that can distract health professionals from their medical tasks.

If you or someone you know has been the victim of medical mistakes, contact a Medical Malpractice Attorney to discuss your legal options.

What a rush! Charlie Rose Face Plants To Save His MacBook Air! Yeah, you read that headline right. Apple couldn’t pay for better press than this.

Viewers of the Charlie Rose show tonight were stunned to see the normally composed Rose looking like he’d just been in a bar fight. He has a very bad black eye and a bandage over part of his forehead. I contacted the show’s producers to hear what happened. Earlier today, they said, Rose tripped in a pothole while walking on 59th Street in Manhattan. He was carrying a newly purchased MacBook Air and made a quick (but ultimately flawed) decision while falling: sacrifice the face, protect the computer. “In doing so, he pretty much hit the pavement face first, unfortunately,” they said.

Luckily the MacBook Air survived the fall. “The Macbook Air is fine, he showed us the blood stains on it this morning.”

Rose, one of the hardest working journalists I’ve met, records multiple shows per day and cancellations are rare. Falling directly onto his face apparently doesn’t qualify as a good enough excuse to postpone a show.

By the way, Rose says he always has to have the newest gadgets as soon as possible. After we recorded an interview two weeks ago (see it here) he invited me to dinner along with Matt Rutherford, the show’s head tech guy.

He had three different cell phones out at various times - here’s a picture with a Blackberry, an iPhone and a…what is that? A Samsung?

Source: What’s New In
 

At least 10 people were injured, the mayor said, and police and firefighters were searching for eight missing people.

The 43-story apartment building under construction at 303 East 51st St. had been about half built. The crane was scheduled to be extended today for work on the upper stories, Bloomberg said at a press conference from the site.

“We are still looking for other victims potentially trapped in the rubble” Bloomberg said.

He said several people were critically injured, and that nearby buildings had been evacuated.

“This is going to be a painstaking hand operation as we try to remove the rubble and make sure we don’t cause further collapse or injure anyone,” Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said during the press conference.

“A shelter run by the American Red Cross has been set up at the High School for Arts and Design near Second Avenue for residents forced to evacuate their buildings”, Bloomberg said.

“It looked like a bombed-out area,” said Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough president, in a telephone interview from the scene.

Rescue Operation

Scoppetta said rescue workers were able to get a man out of the four-story townhouse that was destroyed, and had received reports a woman had been in the building. He said they had not managed to make contact with her yet.

“The focus is a rescue operation, it will continue all night if necessary,” Scoppetta said.

The crane is owned by New York Crane and manufactured by Favelle Favco Bhd., said Robert LiMandri, first deputy commissioner at the New York Department of Buildings, at the press conference. James Cannelli is the developer of the site.

The New York Department of Buildings Web site indicates the construction site has had 13 violations since January 2006, a “normal” number for such a site, LiMandri said. The site had received a stop work order today on an issue unrelated to the crane.

“It is police all over, and fire departments and ambulances,” said Youssef Semlali, an employee at the Zarela Restaurant on Second Avenue, which is across the street from the incident. He said the building completely destroyed by the crane’s collapse contained a bar named Fubar.

Fubar owner John PlaGreco told the Associated Press that he worried that one of his employees was dead in the accident. “The crane crashed the whole building,” he told the wire service.

Source: Bloomberg News.