Son of Robert F. Kennedy charged over clash with nurses

February 26, 2012 -- Updated 0541 GMT (1341 HKT)

Kennedy charged over clash with nurse

                                    

New York (CNN) -- Robert F. Kennedy's son, Douglas, faces misdemeanor charges over an incident at a New York hospital last month in which he knocked down a nurse while holding his newborn son, attorneys for both sides say.
He was arraigned Thursday on harassment and child endangerment charges, both attorneys said.
Kennedy -- a Fox News contributor -- was trying to take his newborn son for a walk "to get fresh air" outside Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, when two nurses intervened to prevent him from leaving, they said.
Kennedy, who was accompanied by a hospital doctor, allegedly twisted the arm of one nurse to move her away from a door and kicked another after she approached him on January 7, according to Elliot Taub, the attorney for both nurses.
The doctor who accompanied Kennedy, Timothy Haydock, was a longtime family friend, who said the nurses had initially agreed to let Kennedy take the baby outside.
"The nurses were the only aggressors," Haydock said in a statement delivered by Kennedy's attorney.
But Taub said both nurses had not recognized Kennedy as the child's father and intended to protect the baby, who apparently had not been discharged. They were trying to enforce hospital rules, Taub said.
Kennedy denied those allegations, saying "the nurse had no right to grab our child out of his father's arms."
His attorney, Robert Gottlieb, said his client was "calm and considerate" and only became aggressive when the two nurses tried to take the baby.
Gottlieb said one nurse said to Kennedy, " 'Absolutely not,' and got very aggressive."
"Dr. Haydock told the nurses he was going to go with (Kennedy)," according to Gottlieb, who said the baby was wrapped in a blanket and had a cap on his head. "He wasn't kidnapping him, obviously."
Gottlieb said one of the nurses then lunged for the baby.
He said Kennedy then pushed the nurse with his knee, prompting the woman to fall backwards onto the hospital floor.
Mount Kisco police not were immediately available for comment.
The late Robert F. Kennedy was the younger brother of slain President John F. Kennedy and a former U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator. He was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Journalist Marie Colvin died trying to get her shoes, her paper reports

(CNN) -- Marie Colvin, a veteran correspondent who was killed in Syria last week, died trying to get her shoes so she could escape a shelling attack, her paper reported Sunday.
Colvin, a New York native, worked for London's The Sunday Times.
As is the custom in Syria, she took off her shoes upon entering a building that was serving as a makeshift press center. She was on the ground floor when rockets hit the upper floors, The Sunday Times reported.
Thinking then that the building was a target, Colvin rushed to retrieve her shoes in the hall. A rocket landed just a few yards away, the paper said.
Colvin, 56, was the only British newspaper journalist inside the Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr, was killed alongside French journalist Remi Ochlik in the attack Wednesday.
Her mother, Rosemarie Colvin, said aid workers have been trying for days to remove her daughter's body from the war-ravaged country. They tried again Saturday, but ultimately determined that the situation was too dangerous.
Her daughter's body may be buried inside Syria now, she said.
"We were told yesterday that today was probably the last day," the elder Colvin told CNN.
She added that she believes her daughter was deliberately targeted by Syrian government forces.

Remembering Marie Colvin

Colvin's death amid Syria's growing war

"They were first in another house, and the top floors there were blown off," she said. "First (the Syrian forces) rocketed the front of the building," she said, fueling suspicion that the attack against a makeshift media center where Colvin and Ochlik were holed up was no accident.
The Syrian government was not immediately available for comment.
The day before she was killed, Colvin had given media interviews to networks like ITN and CNN about the ongoing clashes in Homs, and about a child who was killed in the city.
"The baby's death was just heartbreaking," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "We just watched this little boy, his little tummy, heaving and heaving as he tried to breathe. It was horrific. My heart broke."
Colvin reported Tuesday that there was "constant shelling in the city" and that the child's death was "just one of many stories" in violence-wracked Homs. "It's chaos here."
Journalists and activists have been sneaking into Syria in an effort to report on the protests and clashes that have persistently challenged the authority of President Bashar al-Assad.
Colvin said graphic images like that of the dying child, who was reportedly struck in the chest by a piece of shrapnel, needed to be shown.
"Something like that I think is actually stronger for an audience, for someone who's not here, for an audience for which the conflict, any conflict, is very far away. But that's the reality," she said.
The siege of Baba Amr, where 28,000 civilians are "hiding, being shelled, defenseless," Colvin reported, has become a flashpoint of the country's bloody year of violence.
"That baby probably will move more people to think, 'What is going on and why is no one stopping this murder in Homs that is happening everyday?'"
"There are no military targets here," Colvin reported, refuting Syria claims that its forces are only hunting terrorists.
"It's a complete and utter lie," she said of the government's response. "The Syrian Army is basically shelling a city of cold, starving civilians."
A day later, Colvin and Ochlik were killed.
Colvin, a Yale graduate renown for reporting on war's more human consequences, had for years worked in conflict zones and high risk areas, despite losing an eye in 2001 during a grenade attack in Sri Lanka.
Since her death, her family has started a fund in her honor.
"We felt we had to do something so there was a place that people could donate," said family member Michael Colvin.
The Marie Colvin fund is intended to direct resources to charities that her family says she would have supported.

Antipsychotics death risk charted in dementia patients

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

In the UK 180,000 people with dementia take antipsychotics

 Some antipsychotic medication may increase the risk of death in patients with dementia more than others, according to US research.

The drugs have a powerful sedative effect so are often used when dementia patients become aggressive or distressed.
A study, published on the BMJ website, argued that antipsychotics should not be used "in the absence of clear need".
Experts said better alternatives were needed to antipsychotics.
A study in 2009, suggested 180,000 people with dementia were taking antipsychotic medication in the UK and said the drugs resulted in 1,800 additional deaths.

Data differences
 
Researchers at Harvard Medical School followed 75,445 people in nursing homes who had dementia and were prescribed antipsychotics.
The researchers said some drugs were associated with more than twice the risk of death than risperidone, another antipsychotic which was used as a benchmark to compare the other drugs.
The study concluded: "The data suggest that the risk of mortality with these drugs is generally increased with higher doses and seems to be highest for haloperidol and least for quetiapine."
However, the way the study was conducted meant it could not say definitively that certain drugs actually caused more deaths, merely that there was a link between the two.
The Department of Health said antipsychotic use was "resulting in as many as 1,800 unnecessary deaths per year. This is simply unacceptable."

Michelle Fraser says two years on antipsychotics had "horrendous" side effects on her father Michael Rainford

 "That's why reducing the level of antipsychotics prescribing for people with dementia by two-thirds is one the key priorities in the National Dementia Strategy."

The Dementia Action Alliance - which includes the Alzheimer's Society, Age UK and the Department of Health - has called for all prescriptions for antipsychotics to be reviewed by the end of March 2012.
Dr Chris Fox, who researches dementia at the University of East Anglia, said: "This study provides an interesting insight into the differential harm of these medicines.

"More work is needed on alternatives to these medicines in dementia with behavioural problems.
"In addition, there is a need to consider duration of use in more acute situations such as severe distress. Is six or 12-week use safe in people with dementia?"

Alzheimer's Research UK's chief executive Rebecca Wood said the risks of antipsychotics were "well-established" yet "progress has been frustratingly slow" in reducing their use.
She said the drugs "should only be used for people with dementia where there is no alternative for dealing with challenging behaviour".

Dr Anne Corbett, research manager at Alzheimer's Society, said: "For a minority of people with dementia antipsychotics should be used, but then only for up to 12 weeks, and under the correct circumstances. For the majority, they do far more harm than good."