Saturday, January 7, 2012

UK experts: Assisted suicide legally possible

(AP) ? An independent panel of experts in the U.K. says there is a strong case for changing British law to help terminally ill people die.

In a report Thursday, the Commission for Assisted Dying described the legal status of assisted suicide in Britain as "inadequate and incoherent." It is illegal to help a terminally ill person commit suicide, but prosecutions are rare. In 2009, the government's top prosecutor said most people who help terminally ill friends and family members die were unlikely to be charged.

The Commission said it would be possible to legally allow assisted suicide for terminally ill people under strict criteria: those who were at least 18 years old and who were making a voluntary choice free from coercion or mental health problems.

The experts called for additional safeguards should assisted suicide be legalized, including requiring patients to be seen by at least two doctors. The system would not let doctors administer a lethal dose but would give such medication to the patient to take when he or she chooses after the other criteria has been met.

"The Commission is not recommending that any form of euthanasia should be permitted," the report said.

Critics, however, say the commission was biased, and the British Medical Association refused to participate in the report. The commission is supported by Dignity in Dying and other advocates who favor changing the law.

One anti-abortion group labeled the report "a renewed attack" on disabled and elderly people.

"This is part of a thoroughly nasty strategy to convince the public that many disabled people want to die," Paul Tully of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said in a statement.

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Online:

Commission for Assisted Dying report:

http://www.commissiononassisteddying.co.uk/

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2012-01-05-EU-MED-Assisted-Suicide-Report/id-56e57f15f84b4a05a04b27fcff4f988e

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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Second day of manhunt for killer of Mount Rainier ranger (Reuters)

SEATTLE (Reuters) ? SWAT teams searched Mount Rainier National Park for a second day on Monday for a heavily-armed Iraq war veteran suspected of killing a park ranger on New Year's Day and fleeing into the rugged terrain.

The manhunt prompted the evacuation during the night of carloads of more than 100 tourists by police escort down a winding mountain road.

"They're all down," Garry Olson, a Pierce County fire chief, said of the tourist evacuation. "They got kids out with young kids first."

Margaret Anderson, 34, the mother of two young children and wife of another ranger, was killed on Sunday when she stopped the gunman's vehicle at a roadblock, a park spokesman said.

The suspect, identified by police as Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, fled on foot.

SWAT teams, heavily armed officers and airplanes, using infrared technology to scan the ground for the gunman's body heat, searched the snowy landscape for him during the night.

Barnes, an Iraq war veteran with survivalist training, also is suspected in a separate early New Year's Day shooting incident that injured three men and a woman at a house party in the Skyway neighborhood of Renton, Washington near Seattle, according to the King County Sheriff's Department.

Photographs released to local television showed a heavily tattooed Barnes with the words "Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust" on the back of his neck.

Law enforcement began escorting 125 tourists from the park's Jackson Visitor Center at its Paradise landmark, and guests at the 25-room National Park Inn at Longmire just before midnight for the hour-long journey down a winding road through the park, said Garry Olson, a Pierce County fire chief.

Officers escorted the visitors in groups of five to 10 cars for 25 miles to the fire station in Ashford, where four FBI agents briefly interviewed each tourist.

Earlier, a motorcade with flashing blue lights escorted the body of the slain ranger from the park to Tacoma, Washington to the Pierce County coroner's office.

The park, which is about 80 miles southeast of Seattle, remained closed to visitors on Monday. About 1.7 million visitors traveled in 2010 to Mount Rainier National Park, established by Congress on March 2, 1899.

More than 35 square miles of permanent ice and snow cover Mount Rainier, 14,410 feet above sea level. The temperature on Monday morning hovered near freezing.

In nearby Eatonville, where Anderson lived, the mood among regular patrons at Mountain View Cafe was "very sad," said waitress Patty Wrzesien. "Everyone is wanting to know what they can do to help. It's not good."

(Editing by Greg McCune and Barbara Goldberg)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120102/us_nm/us_death_ranger

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