Real bullets were fired at a Wild West shootout re-enactment in South Dakota that sent a South Connellsville optometrist, John Ellis, and two others to the hospital with gunshot-related injuries.
Investigators found live .45-caliber rounds and spent shells at the Dakota Wild Bunch Reinactors’ June 17 show in Hill City, S.D., said Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom.
The rounds were fired by re-enactor Paul Doering, 49, of Somerset, S.D., Sheriff Thom said.
When Eric Cantor shut down debt ceiling negotiations last week, it did more than just rekindle fears that the U.S. government might soon default on its debt obligations — it also brought him closer to reaping a small financial windfall from his investment in a mutual fund whose performance is directly affected by debt ceiling brinkmanship.
Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT. The fund aggressively “shorts” long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning that it performs well when U.S. debt is undesirable. (A short is when the trader hopes to profit from the decline in the value of an asset.)
According to his latest financial disclosure statement, which covers the year 2010 and has been publicly available since this spring, Cantor still has up to $15,000 in the same fund.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs agreed Monday to pay $925,000 to a man whose eyeball exploded during a routine outpatient cataract operation at the West Haven Veterans Affairs hospital.
The settlement, on behalf of 60-year-old Jose Goncalves, of Hartford, was reached as the case was being prepared for trial in U.S. District Court here.
According to the lawsuit, Goncalves was blinded in his right eye when a third-year resident at the VA hospital incorrectly administered an anesthetic during the Nov. 1, 2007, procedure.
Bernard said Dr. Yue Michelle Wang, the resident, incorrectly placed a needle with a local anesthetic “directly into Jose’s eye instead of behind the eye as was proper. Then, failing to recognize her error, she proceeded to inject so much anesthetic, so quickly, that Jose’s eye literally exploded.”
Good thing people are fighting to put caps on these frivolous lawsuits.