Latest news with #O'Mara
The Journal
29-04-2025
- The Journal
'Huge shortage' in specialist Garda unit for serious road crashes leaving it 'snowed under'
A SPECIALIST GARDA unit to examine road crashes is suffering a 'huge shortage' of personnel, leaving it 'snowed under' amid a rise in traffic incidents across Ireland. The annual conference for rank and file gardaí heard that it has also meant investigators are 'potentially losing evidence' as they may have arrived to the scene of a crash the day after it happened, with weather among the issues affecting the scene. The Forensic Collision Investigators unit is not even at half strength, with 11 qualified members when the minimum recommended number is for 24. At its annual conference in Killarney, the Garda Representatives Association (GRA) union voted overwhelmingly to call on the Garda Commissioner to urgently address the shortage in Forensic Collision Investigators nationwide. A total of 54 people have died on Irish roads so far this year. The motion also seeks for An Garda Síochána to draft a policy to 'ensure the highest standards are maintained in fatal collision and life altering' collision investigations. The Garda body conference heard that a recruitment campaign 'collapsed' late last year, with one serving Garda who went through the process blasting it as 'shambolic'. Tipperary-based Forensic Collision Investigator Chris O'Mara told The Journal that it has become increasingly common for him and his colleagues in the region to have to travel to as far as Donegal to respond to fatal and serious crashes to plug the gap. He said he has found himself needing to get on the road at 3am to make it to the scene of a crash some 250km away, often on roads that must remain closed until the forensic work has taken place. 'We're one of the few areas in the Garda Síochána that's seeking more oversight,' O'Mara said. 'We want more management. The senior National Forensic collision investigator, that role has been vacant since he resigned in 2023. So for more than two years now, we've had no senior forensic collision investigator in the country. Advertisement 'It's a very simple fix this,' O'Mara said. 'We're calling for proper numbers of specifically trained and qualified experts that can do it.' Recruitment process hadn't met standards The conference heard that Garda management sent a brief note to applicants on 23 December last to tell them that the competition 'hadn't met standards' and been stopped. Asked for comment, the Garda Press Office said that a preliminary process is currently underway prior to 'announcing a new competition' for Forensic Collision Investigators in the near future. Shane Bonner, a Garda serving in the traffic unit of Dublin South Central, proposed the motion at the GRA conference. He told reporters that he brought the motion forward as he felt that gardaí are 'not doing the best that we can' when it comes to serious collisions. Bonner said this means that following a fatal accident, people are left 'waiting for answers' but the 'workload is so heavy' that it's causing delays to the reports produced on serious road incidents. Garda Shane Bonner brought the motion to the GRA conference in Co Kerry. CONOR Ó MEARÁIN CONOR Ó MEARÁIN 'We're seeing a huge shortage of FCIs, the forensic collision investigators. People are waiting for answers,' he said. He further pointed the finger at senior Garda management, saying they were responsible for the 'failure' in staffing the forensic collision investigators unit. 'We're potentially losing evidence, we're leaving scenes closed for longer,' Bonner said. He said this could impact on personal injury cases as people who suffer 'traumatic' injuries may find their claims affected by the delays as well. 'We're not doing the best that we can, we aren't giving the service that we need to be giving,' Bonner said. 'One member last year did 18 fatal accidents, the recommended number is five to six in a year,' Bonner continued. 'So he has three times the workload. How do you produce proper files and proper investigations, to the coroners court, to the family, to everyone that deserves the proper information,' Bonner said. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
OhioHealth collaborating with Ad Council to tackle gun violence
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A Central Ohio hospital system is teaming up with the Ad Council to tackle gun violence -especially when it comes to children. The joint effort aims to spark important conversations between healthcare workers, educators, and families, all with the goal of preventing firearm-related injuries. As part of the initiative, OhioHealth is partnering with the Ad Council to launch a series of public service announcements addressing gun violence and firearm-related deaths. The campaign also features a new resource aimed at helping parents, teachers, and healthcare providers have meaningful conversations about safety and preventing violence. 'This is so important as a health issue crisis in a public health issue that we had to come together and say something we had do something outside of politics outside of laws, but about the safety of children,' Ohio Health Trauma Surgeon Shay O'Mara tells NBC4. For two decades Dr. O'Mara has worked in the high stress field of trauma surgery. He tells NBC4 the prevalence of youth being involved in one that needs to end. 'The number one cause of death under the age of 17 is gunshot wounds and gunshot injuries,' O'Mara says. 'Something has to be done, and we have to do it.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Axios
15-04-2025
- Health
- Axios
OhioHealth joins national youth gun violence prevention campaign
The OhioHealth hospital system has joined over a dozen other health care organizations to form a national initiative to prevent youth gun violence. Why it matters: Firearms have been the leading cause of death for U.S. children ages 1-17 for three years in a row. Driving the news: The newly formed " Agree to Agree" campaign will share tangible actions that individuals and communities can take to reduce firearm injuries among children and teens. The big picture: Agree to Agree aims to "comprehensively address" the issue of gun violence with an apolitical message focusing as much on suicide and unintentional shootings as intentional shootings. Despite suicides making up the majority of gun deaths in America, Shay O'Mara, clinical VP of surgery for OhioHealth Clinical Enterprise, tells Axios that "people aren't talking about potential suicide and potential accidental injuries. All we hear about in the news is homicides." By the numbers: OhioHealth says it treated 423 gunshot wounds last year at its Central Ohio trauma centers and emergency departments. Between the lines: Unlike some movements based around legislation or political change, Agree to Agree is focusing largely on branding and marketing to reach common ground. The nonprofit Ad Council will lead outreach efforts, which O'Mara says is a crucial part of the program. "If you look back at their history — Smokey the Bear, drug campaigns, all the other things they've done — they have actually moved things forward and made a difference because it started a conversation and brought public awareness." Friction point: The campaign's coalition also includes gun owners, and O'Mara says "nobody's interested in" talking about banning or taking any guns. "We're not talking about owning or not owning a gun, we're talking about that gun being used on a child." Zoom in: Partner organizations are leading their own local outreach efforts. OhioHealth's first program will be a lock box giveaway at Grant Medical Center in June, which is Gun Violence Awareness Month.
Gulf Today
19-03-2025
- Business
- Gulf Today
Musk brought Silicon Valley mindset to Trump's Washington
Mark Z. Barabak, Tribune News Service Washington has never seen anything like the rule-breaking, power-taking, government-torching, protocol-scorching force of delighted havoc and gleeful mayhem that is Elon Musk. Margaret O'Mara has. The University of Washington historian charted the spectacular rise and all-swallowing influence of the tech industry and its titans in her excellent, highly readable 2019 work, 'The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.' Musk, who grew rich by age 30 through his start-up work, is a relatively small character in the book, for reasons of narrative and focus. Instead, O'Mara centreed her history on the founders and back stories of the major platform companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. But there's an attitude, a worldview and a fundamental set of principles that guide the tech industry and its progeny, like a secular catechism. O'Mara sees those beliefs very much in evidence at Musk's fancifully named Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and his wrecking-ball efforts to raze huge swaths of the federal government in a single, unfettered swoop. Several elements are present and accounted for. The 'techno optimism,' as O'Mara described it, with its unshakable faith that technology is inherently good and will improve things — 'even if there might be some collateral damage along the way.' The drive to move quickly and scale rapidly, if recklessly. The importance of personal relationships, such as the transactional bromance between President Donald Trump and Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to put his ally back in the Oval Office. The two are masters of 'the modern attention economy' — getting people to sit up and take notice — 'and have a kind of shamelessness,' O'Mara said, 'that is to their advantage, business-wise and politically right now.' O'Mara worked in government and politics before teaching and undertaking her big-sweep cataloging of American history. (Other books include one looking at four presidential races that shaped the 20th century.) Raised in Little Rock, O'Mara went from college to volunteering for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. After he won, she took a position in the White House, working from the West Wing on economic and social policy. Though O'Mara served for a time on the staff of Vice President Al Gore, an early techie adapter and one of Silicon Valley's strongest political allies, she didn't work on tech policy. 'I was in the room next to the room where that was happening,' she joked on a Zoom call from her home office on Washington state's Mercer Island. Her dog, an enthusiastic Labradoodle named Zuka, offered brief commentary off-camera. O'Mara's graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania led her to Silicon Valley, as her dissertation explored the domestic economic effects of the Cold War. 'Once you start looking at that question,' she said, 'it gets you to a whole host of things, including the electronics industry and micro-electronics and transistors. So I kind of came to tech through politics.' O'Mara's book explains how the federal government built Silicon Valley, a fact many of its entrepreneurs and legends — basking in the reflection of their self-glorification — choose to ignore, or fail to understand. 'That's actually part of the secret,' O'Mara said. 'The indirect nature of the spending, the fact that it's flowing through universities and private companies in a way that is kind of stealthy and hidden.' Of course, there was a profusion of great minds in California's fertile Santa Clara Valley, innovators and visionaries blessed with a superhuman capacity to peer around corners and deep into the future. All that brainpower would have been for naught, however, save for the beneficence of Uncle Sam. As a customer. A subsidizer of research. A producer of human capital, through generous education funding. As an angel investor. 'We think of low taxes and deregulation as absence of government,' O'Mara said. 'But actually those are government decisions that were made favorable — very deliberately so — (to) this industry.' Call it ignorance or arrogance, there's a deeply embedded notion in Silicon Valley and many of its denizens that because government is not market-driven 'it is, by definition, stodgy and inefficient and wasteful and corrupt,' O'Mara said. They think that people working in government 'aren't very smart. The smart people all go to work in business.' That mentality goes a long way toward explaining the meat-ax approach Musk has applied, with Trump's encouragement, to whole agencies and federal programs. Doubtless, there is waste, fraud and abuse that could be thoughtfully and deliberately carved out. Government is, after all, a human endeavor.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House lawmakers reintroduce legislation to close Pennsylvania's gender earnings gap
Rep. Roni Green (D-Philadelphia) speaks at a rally for equal pay for women Monday, March 17, 2025, at the Pennsylvania Capitol. (Capital-Star/Peter Hall) Women in Pennsylvania earn less than men by a wider margin than the nation as a whole. Legislation reintroduced in the state House aims to close the gender pay gap. When the commonwealth first passed a law to address gender discrimination in the workplace in 1959, women earned 59 cents for each dollar earned by men. Since then the gap has narrowed, Rep. Jennifer O'Mara (D-Delaware) said, but women are still at a disadvantage in the workplace. 'Closing the gender wage gap isn't just about fairness, it's about acknowledging and repairing systemic biases that perpetuate inequality in the workplace,' O'Mara said at a rally Monday at the state Capitol. 'It's time to accelerate progress towards true equality by demanding equal pay and equal opportunities for all individuals.' According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women in Pennsylvania earned 82.4% of men's wages in 2023. That's below the national average of 83.6% and four of the commonwealth's six neighboring states. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE O'Mara and Rep. Melissa Schusterman (D-Chester) are co-sponsors of House Bill 630, which would explicitly prohibit employers from paying workers less because of their gender, race or ethnicity and protect workers from retaliation in wage discrimination matters. It would also bar prospective employers from using an applicant's pay history to set their wages. House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D-Philadelphia) recalled as a young lawyer applying for a job, she was asked how much she wanted to be paid. After seven years in university and law school, she had no idea how to negotiate for a salary. 'No one explained … to make sure you're getting paid what they would pay a man,' McClinton said 'It's unacceptable that in Women's History Month in this commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we are stuck with these inequities.' Legislation similar to H.B. 630 passed in the House last May but was not considered in the GOP-controlled Senate. Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) and President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R-Westmoreland) did not respond to emails to their offices. The gender pay gap is wider for women of color, Annmarie Pinarski, staff attorney with the Women's Law Project, said. 'Black women in Pennsylvania typically earn only 65 cents for every dollar, a figure that drops to 57 cents for Latinas, who represent the fastest growing population in the commonwealth,' Pinarski said. Using a job applicant's salary history perpetuates inequality, Pinarski said, noting that lawmakers haven't updated the state equal pay law since 1967. Meanwhile, 21 other states and numerous cities, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, have enacted bans on the practice. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'Does the Pennsylvania Legislature believe that rural women don't deserve the same protection? Meanwhile, poverty rates in rural Pennsylvania are already higher than in urban areas,' Pinarski said. Schusterman used a Wawa soft pretzel as a visual aid representing one dollar earned by men. She broke off pieces to demonstrate the significance of the gap until only about half the pretzel remained, representing what Latina women earn compared to men. That affects households as a whole, Schusterman noted, meaning families have less money for clothing, car payments, retirement or vacations. 'The women in your households are earning less money, and it's about time your wife or partner made the same amount of money as her male coworker for this same work,' Schusterman said. O'Mara said the difference in earnings translates to an average of $10,000 less per year. 'As someone raised by a single mom, I can't imagine what that additional $10,000 would have done and meant for our family,' O'Mara said. With the cost of child care and no requirement for employers to offer paid family leave, O'Mara said the burden falls disproportionately to women. 'The harsh economic reality that we live in means that women are choosing to stay home rather than work because it's cheaper to do so,' she said. 'That is not a reality that we should be living in in the year 2025. Women should never have to choose between contributing to the workforce or their families.'
