Latest news with #Phelan
Extra.ie
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Play tells story of Vicky Phelan's heroic battle for justice
The late Vicky Phelan's fight to expose the cervical cancer screening scandal has been turned into play. The show is based on the life of the mother-of-two, who became a leading cancer awareness advocate. Ms Phelan, from Mooncoin, Co. Kilkenny, died in November 2022 aged just 48, in Co. Limerick's Milford hospice. Her death might have been averted had a 2011 smear test not produced a false negative result for abnormalities. A review by the HSE discovered the mistake from three years earlier, but Ms Phelan was not informed until 2017, and a year later she was told her diagnosis was terminal. The late Vicky Phelan's fight to expose the cervical cancer screening scandal has been turned into play. Pic: Leah Farrell/ She sued and won a settlement of €2.5million, and resisted a gagging order. In the aftermath of her case it was revealed that inaccurate smear test results had been given to at least 208 women later diagnosed with cervical cancer – the majority of whom were not told about the revised results. More than 20 of the women have died of cervical cancer since. The play, titled Smear and written by Christa De Brún, will be performed at the Coastguard Cultural Centre in Tramore, Co. Waterford, from June 20 to 22.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Navy Orders Forcewide Housing Inspections After Secretary 'Appalled' by Guam Barracks Conditions
Navy Secretary John Phelan visited Guam earlier this month and was "appalled" after seeing the conditions of an Air Force barracks where junior service members were living, prompting an ongoing Navy-wide inspection of more than 100,000 barracks units, according to a government watchdog and service officials. Conditions included exposed wires, corroded plumbing and dilapidated walls splattered with paint to cover mold; after Phelan's visit, more than 70 Marines and sailors were moved out of the Palau Hall barracks, a housing facility at Andersen Air Force Base. Another 77 airmen there are "in the process of being relocated" in anticipation of a $53 million renovation scheduled to start later this year, an Air Force spokesperson told on Friday. The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, obtained images of the squalid housing and correspondence sent by the Navy's head of installations, who ordered all regional commands to inspect their barracks by the end of May. Read Next: Air Force Wants Private Company to Take Over its On-Base Hotels The Navy official, Vice Adm. Scott Gray, noted that the Palau Hall barracks were "way outside of any reasonable standard" and that the conditions were "a failure of leadership across multiple echelons of command," according to the documents. Not all of the inspections have been completed, the Navy told Friday, but are expected to be finished by the end of June. Following his visit May 1-2, Phelan ordered Marines and sailors be moved out of the Air Force-owned barracks within 10 days and that new housing aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz be opened about a month ahead of schedule in response to the squalid conditions, according to POGO and confirmed by the Navy. "I actually thought the buildings were condemned," Phelan told POGO in an interview. "When we pulled up to them and saw what shape they're in, I was shocked." Days later, on May 5, Gray sent the email, with photos of the barracks conditions attached, directing the worldwide inspection and adding that "if you would not want a sailor's mother/family visiting them at the housing unit, then you have a problem that needs to be addressed. Fix It!" The inspections are meant to "ensure our sailors are residing in unaccompanied housing that meet living standards regardless [of] if they are Navy-owned or not," Leslie Gould, the Fleet and Family Readiness director for the service's installation command, told in an emailed statement Friday. Palau Hall is Air Force-owned, but it is not uncommon for troops from different branches to stay in cross-service housing. The Navy's inspection includes barracks where sailors are living, but that are operated by other branches. There are more than 104,000 unaccompanied housing units across the Navy, Gould said. They are given a "red, yellow or green" designator following a multi-leader inspection of the barracks' exterior, common areas such as kitchens and laundry rooms, and quarters, according to Gray's email. Within the "yellow" category, Gray urged leaders to apply the "Washington Post test," meaning that "if the pictures you have taken or the results of your assessment conducted of a particular facility were published online tomorrow, would you be able to personally justify sailors living there?" Gould said that housing facilities deemed to be "red" will result in a sailor being immediately removed from the barracks. Those identified as "yellow" will be prioritized for restoration. She said that there are currently no sailors or Marines living in Air Force-owned barracks on Guam, having been relocated to Blaz facilities, and that the Joint Region Marianas commander, Rear Adm. Brett Mietus, inspected all other barracks on the U.S. territory and found that they were not "below standards." René Kladzyk, a senior investigator at POGO and former reporter El Paso Matters in Texas, told in a phone interview Friday that her reporting stemmed from a tip the organization received this month. "I think it's pretty well known that the problems in barracks conditions are quite pervasive. It's not unique to Guam," she said. "When talking about barracks conditions, often we're talking about single, more junior service members who may be in a culture where they are kind of told or taught that they should just be willing to tough it out." "Exposed wiring has very real fire hazard risks. Mold can have a range of severe health impacts that often can be really hard to directly tie," she added. "It's worth mentioning that there are very serious dangers connected to not maintaining housing facilities." The Marine Corps announced last month that Marines and sailors began relocating into new barracks at Camp Blaz from Andersen, citing testimony from troops calling it a "huge upgrade," but did not disclose that the move was a result of poor conditions at Palau Hall. "Luckily, we were in a position to move them out of the Air Force barracks into the brand new built Marine Corps barracks," Capt. Brenda Leenders, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, told on Friday, adding that "there are nine [barracks facilities] still in the construction phase" on Guam. Barracks conditions for junior troops have been squalid for years as many service leaders recognized that upkeep and funding for their living conditions fell by the wayside as pressing operational needs took priority during 20 years of the Global War on Terrorism. In 2023, the Government Accountability Office found that barracks across the services were infested by mold, rodents, raw sewage and general dilapidation, leaving tens of thousands of young troops in substandard living conditions. While many of the services have said they are continuing to prioritize and fund fixing and building new barracks, reported on Wednesday that the Pentagon will shift $1 billion meant for Army barracks maintenance and renovation to its southern border mission. The "One Big Beautiful Bill" legislation working through Congress, meant to help enact President Donald Trump's agenda, allocates another roughly $1 billion for barracks maintenance and improvements. But that funding would be split between the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force, resulting in "a net loss here for them on an uphill battle for quality-of-life initiatives," Rob Evans, creator of Hots & Cots, an app where service members can leave reviews about facilities, told on Friday. "They are all impacted by this, and I would love to hear some sort of steps forward on what the secretary of defense's agenda is for addressing this stuff because this will impact retention and this will impact recruiting," he added. The Air Force spokesperson said that the service "is committed to providing safe and adequate living conditions for its service members," adding that it is prioritizing barracks restoration as part of a "4-year Dorm Master Plan" and had allocated roughly $115 million to four dormitories at Andersen. They noted that Typhoon Mawar in 2023 caused severe damage to facilities there. The service has a $49.5 billion backlog in maintenance and repair efforts, Michael Saunders, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy, installations and environment, recently told Congress. In recent years, service leaders have tied troop quality-of-life conditions to urgent strategic efforts, recruiting and retention. Guam, located in the Western Pacific, is also a key strategic asset for the military's ability to project power amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and China. "Maintenance and repair funding levels have not kept pace with the rising cost of construction, leading to compounding sustainment costs, widespread degradation, and increases in infrastructure issues that adversely impact mission execution," Saunders said in a statement to the House Armed Services Committee, noting that those conditions make "installations vulnerable to adversaries and [place] mission generation at risk." Related: Pentagon Diverts $1 Billion from Army Barracks to Fund Border Mission
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Navy halts dog and cat experiments; PETA writes Hegseth about US taxpayer-funded animal tests
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) penned a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan Thursday, thanking the Trump administration for its ban on Navy-funded dog and cat experiments announced this week and requesting a broader ban on all animal testing in all military branches. Phelan on Tuesday terminated all Department of the Navy testing on cats and dogs, saving taxpayer dollars and ending these inhumane studies. The effort was led by White Coat Waste, a 501(c)(3) bipartisan nonprofit organization and government watchdog. "This is long overdue," Phelan said in a video posted to X. "In addition to this termination, I'm directing the surgeon general of the Navy to conduct a comprehensive review of all medical research programs to ensure they align with ethical guidelines, scientific necessity, and our core values of integrity and readiness." PETA on Thursday further urged the Department of Defense to conduct a similar comprehensive, agency-wide audit aimed at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in cruel and outdated animal experimentation. Nih Closes Experimentation Labs Accused Of Brutally Killing Thousands Of Beagles For 40+ Years Specifically, the international organization requested the Department of Defense (DOD) ban the use of animals in Navy decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests and prohibit the use of dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, marine animals and other animals currently permitted in Army weapon-wounding tests. Read On The Fox News App The weapon-wounding tests, which were banned during the Reagan administration, were reintroduced in 2020 when the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) issued a policy allowing for the purchase of "dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, or marine mammals to inflict wounds upon using a weapon for the purpose of conducting medical research, development, testing, or evaluation." The Army in 2023, with encouragement from PETA, cut $750,000 in taxpayer funding for a brain-damaging weapon-wounding experiment on ferrets at Wayne State University in Michigan. While reviewing other branches, PETA obtained public records showing decompression sickness experiments at the Naval Medical Research Command sliced open baby pigs, implanted devices and locked them in high-pressure chambers for up to eight days before killing them. Researchers are also accused of administering a drug to a pig and inducing a severe escalation in body temperature and muscle contractions before killing the animal. Officials said potentially faulty sedatives may have prolonged the pig's suffering. Peta, Animal Rights Groups Praise Trump Admin For Phasing Out 'Cruel Tests On Dogs' And Other Animals In another incident, a rat suffocated to death after an equipment malfunction, and the researcher failed to report the incident for 23 days, according to PETA. The organization alleged the Navy has wasted more than $5.1 million in federal funding since 2020 for decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests on thousands of animals at Duke University, the University of Maryland in Baltimore, the University of California in San Diego and the University of South Florida. "Pigs, rats and other animals feel pain and fear just as dogs and cats do, and their torment in gruesome military experiments must end," PETA Vice President Shalin Gala wrote in a statement. "PETA appreciates the Trump administration's decision to stop the Navy's torture tests on dogs and cats, and we urge a broader ban across the Pentagon to end the use of animals in Navy-funded decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests, Army-funded weapon-wounding tests and DOD-funded foreign experiments." Trump Admin Cuts Additional $1M In Federal Funding For 'Transgender Animal' Experiments PETA also requested in the letter that Defense Department officials prohibit funding of tests on animals at foreign institutions. In one experiment in Canada, which is receiving $429,347 in DOD funding, a University of Alberta experimenter is using dogs as "models" of a muscle wasting disease. In another ongoing DOD-funded foreign experiment in Australia, which is receiving $599,984, a James Cook University researcher is burning 30% of rats' body surface with scalding water and into their livers, inflicting an "[u]ncontrolled hemorrhage." The Department of Defense, Secretary of the Navy's office and Navy Office of Information did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's requests for article source: Navy halts dog and cat experiments; PETA writes Hegseth about US taxpayer-funded animal tests
Hamilton Spectator
4 days ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Silks restaurant's 30th anniversary bash raises $1.7K for Red Roof
Silks Country Kitchen turned its 30th anniversary into a party on Monday, serving up free food, drinks and prize draws — while rallying the community to raise more than $1,700 for Red Roof Retreat. Guests at the anniversary open house were asked to donate to Red Roof in lieu of a cover charge and 100 per cent of it went directly to the local non-profit, which provides programs and support for individuals with special needs and their families. Jennifer Phelan, one of the sibling owners of Silks alongside Joel Dempsey, said the celebration drew an estimated 200 to 250 people throughout the evening. She said the turnout was great. 'Amazing, actually,' said Phelan. 'There were so many people.' Upon arrival, guests were greeted with live music, complimentary food, three free drink tickets and a free entry into door prize draws, which featured gift cards, tastings at Niagara Oast House Brewers, IceDogs tickets and more. A separate raffle featured bigger-ticket prizes like Toronto Blue Jays tickets, a signed Wendell Clark jersey and other items, with tickets sold for $10 each. Extra drink tickets were also for sale at three for $10. 'All that went to Red Roof,' Phelan said. Phelan and Dempsey were on site to welcome guests and reflect on 30 years of Silks in the community. Phelan said Silks intends to keep going strong: 'We're not going anywhere anytime soon.' paigeseburn@
Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Anna Grace Phelan dead at 19: What was the cause of Georgia TikTok star's death?
Anna Grace Phelan, the Georgia-born social media celebrity, passed away at the age of 19 following a brief fight with brain cancer. She died on May 23. Earlier, Jefferson native Phelan shared her experience with stage 4 glioblastoma on her TikTok account, which has almost 145,000 followers. She was diagnosed with the condition in 2024, just before she was scheduled to start college, according to her Instagram page. She had symptoms like slurred speech, eyesight problems, and numbness in her legs and face. 'It is with great sadness to announce that our beautiful daughter, Anna Grace Phelan, went home to be with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,' read the statement from her mother Nadine Phelan. 'So many of you have followed her journey through a difficult battle with cancer and bore witness to her powerful testimony of faith.'
