June 7 (Reuters) - A Michigan court threw out the convictions and sentence of a man who was 14 when he pleaded guilty to a 2007 quadruple homicide in Detroit that a professional hit man later confessed to committing, prosecutors and defense attorneys said on Tuesday.

Davontae Sanford's sentence of up to 90 years was vacated by Wayne County Judge Brian Sullivan, according to statements from the Dykema Gossett law firm, which handled Sanford's appeal, and the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, which also moved to overturn the conviction after a reinvestigation. He will be released from prison on Wednesday.

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After being arrested in 2007, Sanford gave an inaccurate confession to the killings and pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree homicide on the advice of an attorney now suspended from the practice of law, the Dykema Gossett statement said.

"In April 2008, two weeks after Sanford's sentencing, a professional hit man, Vincent Smothers, confessed to the Runyon Street killings and eight additional murders," the statement from the law firm said.

See more from the trial:

Murder convictions overturned in case of Michigan man who confessed when 14

CORRECTS YEAR OF WHEN PHOTO WAS TAKEN TO 2007 INSTEAD OF 2017 - This Aug. 7, 2007, photo provided by the Michigan Department of Corrections shows Davontae Sanford. A judge on Tuesday, June 7, 2016, ordered the release of Sanford who is in prison after pleading guilty to killing four people at age 14, a crime for which a professional hit man later took responsibility. (Michigan Department of Corrections via AP)

In this June 30, 2010 photo, Davontae Sanford sits in court as attorneys present their findings in Detroit. Sanford was just 14 when he told police he killed four people in a drug den. He was sentenced to at least 38 years in prison for the 2007 slayings, which police say were planned as a robbery but now insists his confession was a lie. A veteran homicide investigator agrees that the young man's statements were unreliable. And his attorney is seeking help from an unlikely ally: A hit man convicted in no fewer than eight other murders. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

David Moran, right, of the Innocence Clinic at University of Michigan law school and Megan Crane, left, of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University law school, speak to reporters Wednesday, April 15, 2015, outside the Wayne County courthouse in Detroit. They are asking a judge to throw out the murder convictions of Davontae Sanford, a young man who pleaded guilty in 2008 at age 15. A hit man, Vincent Smothers, has signed an affidavit taking responsibility for the murders. (AP Photo/Ed White)

In this photo provided by the Michigan Department of Corrections is Davontae Sanford, who pleaded guilty at 15 to killing four people at a Detroit drug house. Prosecutors have turned to Michigan State Police for help as two law schools seek to overturn the conviction of Sanford. (Michigan Department of Corrections via AP)

FILE - In this July 23, 2010 file photo is Vincent Smothers in a Detroit courtroom. In a decision released Friday, Sept. 27, 2013, an appeals court ruled that Smothers could give evidence in the case of Davontae Sanford, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after the September 2007 shootings of five people at a Detroit drug house, all but one of whom died. Sanford, who has a learning disability and one eye, was 14 years old at the time. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

FILE - This Aug. 3, 2013 file photo provided by the Michigan Department of Corrections shows imprisoned hit man Vincent Smothers. A judge ordered the release of Davontae Sanford on Tuesday, June 7, 2016. Sanford is in prison after pleading guilty to killing four people at age 14, a crime for which Smothers later took responsibility. The Wayne County prosecutor's office agreed Sanford's second-degree murder conviction should be vacated after state police took another look at the case. (Michigan Department of Corrections via AP, File)

More than 1,810 exonerations have been recorded in the United States since 1989, for murder and other crimes, and the pace has increased steadily over the years to about three a week, according to the National Registry of Exonerations run by the University of Michigan Law School.

The trend has been driven both by so-called innocence projects run by law schools and by special units established within prosecutors' offices to examine possible false confessions and official misconduct.

In the Detroit case, the judge ordered prosecutors to file a motion to dismiss the case, which means Sanford will not be retried, said a statement from Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office.

State police reinvestigated the case and found that a deputy who originally gave sworn testimony that Sanford drew an accurate diagram of the crime scene, later contradicted that testimony, the prosecutor's office's statement said.

The Michigan Innocence Clinic and other groups that work to overturn wrongful convictions had appealed the conviction, arguing that Smothers' confession matched the details of what happened in the murders, while Sanford's did not.

(Reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Peter Cooney; Additional reporting by AOL.com)

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Summary: Two weeks after Sanford's sentencing, a professional hit man, Vincent Smothers, confessed to the killings.


We have entered a new season of intense constitutional debate. Today's Supreme Court will, in the next few years, face serious challenges to the unprecedented constitutional reach of Barack Obama's health-care program—and likely to other ambitious federal ventures. As if to prepare the ground for a new confrontation, President Obama used his State of the Union address last January to scold the Supreme Court—with the chief justice and several other justices sitting right before him in the House chamber—for a decision giving free-speech protection to corporate political spending.

In this climate, Noah Feldman, Harvard law professor and prolific author, offers an overview of the intertwined careers of Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson. They were all appointed by Franklin Roosevelt in the aftermath of the bruising battle, in 1937, when FDR tried and failed to expand the size of the Supreme Court to ensure a pro-New Deal majority. Retirements in the next few years allowed him to appoint new justices who reinterpreted our constitutional doctrines to accommodate ambitious federal agendas.

So "Scorpions" might seem very timely. Mr. Feldman has certainly shown a knack for placing himself in the middle of great contemporary debates. On the strength of a brief period studying Arabic literature at Oxford, he was recruited in 2003 to advise on Iraq's interim constitution—when he was, himself, only a few years out of law school. His subsequent book, "What We Owe Iraq" (2004), was a liberal plea for a continuing military effort to stabilize Iraq. As opposition to the war mounted, however, Mr. Feldman distanced himself from other democracy advocates with "The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State" (2008), depicting Sharia law as a historic and still promising check on abusive government.

He is certainly alert to the politics that surrounded (and often threatened to engulf) FDR's Supreme Court appointees. Mr. Feldman devotes well over a third of the book to tracing the paths by which these "great justices" got to the court. Hugo Black (1886-1971) used his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s to get himself elected to the Senate. Then, as a Supreme Court nominee, he reassured fellow senators with carefully worded (and misleading) disavowals of Klan connections. Roosevelt, grateful that Black had supported his court-packing plan, looked the other way.

Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), a Harvard professor and Roosevelt confidant since the latter's days as New York's governor, was not consulted about the court-packing plan in advance. But he withheld public criticism—offending his long-time patron, Justice Louis Brandeis, an open opponent of FDR's scheme. William O. Douglas (1898- 1980) had charmed Roosevelt with his bullying of Wall Street as SEC chairman in the mid-1930s. Robert Jackson (1892-1954) caught FDR's eye arguing the administration's dubious and partisan tax claims against former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Even after taking their seats on the court, both continued to attend intimate White House poker games. While a justice, Frankfurter was not invited to play cards, but he continued to offer private advice on all manner of subjects to the Roosevelt White House and the Justice Department.

The book offers a wealth of anecdotes but no revelations. Almost all the material in "Scorpions" is drawn from previously published accounts. Mr. Feldman tells these stories in a graceful narrative, cutting back and forth between different characters, situating personal doings in the great events of the era. It's effective popular history.

For a scholar who holds a chair at Harvard Law School, though, Mr. Feldman is remarkably uninterested in legal analysis. The core of the book takes readers through a dozen or so landmark legal disputes of the 1940s and 1950s, but even here he keeps his focus on the interplay of personalities on the Supreme Court. He makes little effort to evaluate the weight of these cases as precedents and offers no discussion at all of the cases in the early 1940s, when the Roosevelt appointees repudiated all past limits on federal regulatory power. It is not much compensation to get two chapters on Justice Jackson's dramatic moments as Nuremberg prosecutor—with no explanation of the actual charges in these cases and the simple assurance that "most historians consider the Nuremberg tribunal to have been a highly consequential historical event."

The biggest problem with Mr. Feldman's account is that, while all the Roosevelt appointees agreed that there should be broad constitutional scope for New Deal programs, they emphasized different reasons and followed the arguments to different results as they encountered new issues. Frankfurter, for example, consistently urged judicial deference to legislative judgments, while Black insisted that the courts must uphold the words of the Constitution—which in his reading allowed almost limitless scope for economic regulation but set sharp limits on government in other areas.

Over the years, their divisions became increasingly personal and acrimonious (so much so that Black and Douglas threatened to resign if Jackson were appointed chief justice after the war). Mr. Feldman acknowledges these differences—starting with his title (drawn from a Frankfurter law clerk's characterization of the Supreme Court as "nine scorpions in a bottle")—but tries to celebrate all four "great justices" equally, as if their negative estimations of each other were mere personal foibles. He acknowledges, for example, that some legal scholars view Douglas's opinions as "arbitrary and outrageous"; others view him as "the most advanced exponent of liberal principle ever to sit on the Court." Mr. Feldman is content to acknowledge that "there is truth in both propositions"; he is not interested in defining any possible boundary between "liberal principle" and "arbitrary" constitutional decisions.

At the end, Mr. Feldman assures us, whether "by principle, by pragmatism or by policy, the justices at their best make the Constitution their own." And so, he thinks, do we all: "To interpret the Constitution by one's own best lights is to be an American." What if your best lights are dim or distorting? Do we have millions of constitutions or only nine?

If this was intended as a defense of liberal jurisprudence, it suggests that, even at Harvard, what liberals are mainly selling is nostalgia. There was a time when simply supporting the New Deal could earn a judge a great reputation. Those happy days don't seem to be here again, now.

—Mr. Rabkin is professor of law at George Mason University.

Summary: Jeremy Rabkin reviews Noah Feldman's "Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices."


Hershey has great news for vanilla enthusiasts everywhere: the chocolate maker has begun swapping out the artificial ingredient “vanillin” for the real deal in its kisses and chocolate bars.

The Hershey chocolate maker in Pennsylvania implemented the change a few weeks ago, so that bags of the more natural chocolates are now hitting shelves, the AP reports. The move is the first in a series of changes to remove all artificial ingredients from the chocolates.

Hershey announced the commitment in February, saying it would transition to “simple” and “easy-to-understand” ingredients. This first change is likely undetectable, but people can nonetheless embrace the upgrade as cause for chocolate celebration and consumption.

Summary: Will swap an artificial ingredient for the real deal


Over the course of its history, photography has left a trail of also-ran processes—techniques that flourished and faded, alternate ways of recording reality. In a new exhibition, the J. Paul Getty Museum at Los Angeles’ Getty Center will draw attention to paper negatives, an early method that some curators and collectors revere for its painterly riff on photographic clarity.

“Real/Ideal: Photography in France, 1847–1860,” which opens Aug. 30, recalls the careers of Édouard Baldus, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq and Charles Nègre. All four created photos developed from paper negatives to capture the buildings and byways of Second Empire France.

Paper negatives had “a brief moment of glory,” says the Getty’s Karen Hellman, who relied on the museum’s renowned photography department for most of the 150 works and objects on view. The paper process first flourished in France in the late 1840s, following a cross-Channel rivalry between two of photography’s pioneers. Louis Daguerre was capturing real images on small sheets of silver-treated copper—soon widely known as daguerreotypes. In England, William Henry Fox Talbot was creating negative images on sensitized paper, which could then be used to create “positive” photographic prints.

Daguerreotypes were better for portraits, Ms. Hellman says, but prints from paper negatives were more suited to architecture and landscapes. She admires the photos’ “rich shadows,” comparing them to charcoal drawings.

Ms. Hellman says that the title of the exhibition is a reminder that photography is “tied to the real” but is also “a medium with creative possibilities.” The title also suggests the vivid but dreamy quality of the photos that resulted from the paper-negative process.

The four photographers were often drawn to similar subjects, like historic buildings, and the show chronicles the early emergence of individual photographic styles. Baldus (1813–89) and Nègre (1820–80) both photographed Avignon’s Papal Palace, in the south of France. Baldus aimed for a monumental, panoramic effect, says Ms. Hellman, while Nègre shot the scene from a lower vantage point to get a more pedestrian point of view.

Le Gray (1820–84) was one of the first to treat his paper negatives with wax, which Ms. Hellman says helped to consolidate the paper fibers in the paper negative, so the image recorded was sharper and more detailed. When glass-plate negatives began to replace the paper technique during the 1850s, he promoted the newer technology.

Today, Le Gray is the best known of the four, and his works now fetch the highest prices at auction, says Darius Himes, Christie’s international head of photographs. In February, a pin-sharp Le Gray naval scene from 1856-57, developed from a glass-plate negative, sold for $965,000 at a sale at Christie’s New York. The presale estimate was $300,000 to $500,000.

The Getty show, which closes Nov. 27, includes loans from Paris’s Musée d’Orsay and France’s National Library. The exhibition includes actual paper and glass negatives as well as the finished photos. Museum-goers can consider whether, as glass-plate negatives replaced paper, something unusual and compelling was lost.

Summary: In ‘Real/Ideal: Photography in France, 1847–1860,’ Los Angeles’ Getty Center will look at the painterly style of paper negatives.


Well, this is awkward: Colin Kaepernick's protest of the national anthem at a preseason game sparked a flurry of outrage and disagreement over its merits. Now a 49ers fan has hit back with a protest of that protest, set once again to the national anthem.

Kaepernick said that he sat during the anthem as a protest of the police violence that has raised tensions in communities across the country. The San Francisco quarterback said he plans to continue sitting for the national until conditions in America improve.

But this exercise of his First Amendment rights is not sitting well with many self-described patriots, who see Kaepernick's gesture as offensive and anti-American. One 49ers fan felt compelled to exercise his own First Amendment rights, setting fire to the quarterback's jersey while "The Star Spangled Banner" played.

Salty 49ers fan burns #Kaepernick's jersey. Oh brother... pic.twitter.com/zp9aLasYAW

— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) August 28, 2016

The sincerity of the 49ers fan is something to behold -- watch how he holds his hand over his heart for the duration of the song, as that Kaepernick jersey is devoured by the flames.

Then again, maybe he was just looking for an excuse to burn the Kaepernick jersey. You'd hate to be one of those people to have bought in way too early on the quarterback's potential.

As for Kaepernick, he's free to protest as long as he likes. He just better hope he makes San Francisco's regular-season roster -- otherwise he might not have a pre-game anthem to protest.

Colin Kaepernick, Football, NFL, San Francisco 49ers

Summary: A San Francisco 49ers fan burns a Colin Kaepernick jersey after the quarterback's protest of the national anthem.


Yao Ming was the opening speaker Friday at the Basketball Hall of Fame inductions, and fittingly he set the bar very high with a killer punchline.

"When I heard that I would be the first speaker here tonight, I think that maybe somebody made a mistake," Yao said.

That line drew some laughs, but it was only part of his set-up.

"Don't laugh," Yao said, "because I think this spot belong to great Allen Iverson. You know why?"

"Because I need more practice than him."

Check out the video, including Iverson's reaction:

.@YaoMing up here talking about practice! https://t.co/FJEvVaDge4

— NBA TV (@NBATV) September 9, 2016

Yao's comedic skills were evident throughout his NBA career when he starred in commercials with Yogi Berra, Verne Troyer and Charles Barkley.

Aside from Yao and Iverson, other Hall inductees this year include Shaquille O'Neal and Tom Izzo.

Allen Iverson, Basketball, Basketball Hall Of Game, Induction Speech, NBA, Practice, Yao Ming

Summary: Yao Ming shows his comedic skills with a line 'Practice' line about Allen Iverson at his Hall of Fame induction speech.


WA Premier Colin Barnett is facing a leadership spill tomorrow.

Colin Barnett will remain the Western Australian premier after a motion to spill the Liberal party leadership was defeated.

The motion was defeated 31-15 in a Liberal party room meeting this morning.

Backbencher Murray Cowper had called for the spill after two ministers, Tony Simpson and Dean Nalder, resigned over the weekend.

Both declared they had lost confidence in Mr Barnett, and Mr Nalder was expected to have stood for the leadership if the motion had been successful.

Mr Nalder congratulated the premier, who he said had a "great track record" over eight years, and only ever wanted what was best for the party.

"My role has always been to seek the best way forward for the Liberal party," Mr Nalder told reporters.

"I'm just really looking forward to working with the government, making sure we give the Liberal party the best chances at the 2017 election."

Mr Nalder also ruled out another spill and said his intention was to contest the March election and represent his electorate.

"I have no interest in any further challenge to his leadership ... in any leadership challenge,' he said.

Liberal party secretary Brian Ellis denied there had been any shutting down of debate.

"As most spill motions happen, they're dealt with very quickly. There was never a request for it," he told reporters..

Many Liberal colleagues strongly backed Mr Barnett on their way into the meeting.

Emergency Services Minister Joe Francis said Mr Barnett would come out of it stronger.

"Clearly, this will draw a line in the sand to the small number of disgruntled members of the parliamentary Liberal party," he said.

Health Minister John Day said the move was "foolhardy, ill advised and hasn't been thought through".

Deputy Premier Liza Harvey has backed Mr Barnett and ruled out standing for the leadership.

You can get breaking news alerts on your phone by downloading our app, 9NEWS Alerts, available on iPhone and Android.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: The leadership of Western Australia is in disarray after Liberal backbencher Murray Cowper confirmed he will call a leadership spill at tomorrow’s party room meeting, in a bit to oust Premier Colin Barnett.


FORTUNE — You may be experiencing neck strain if you’ve been trying to track Wal-Mart’s position on a federal minimum wage increase over the last couple of days. Bloomberg made waves on Wednesday when it reported that the mega-retailer was looking at backing a federal wage hike. Considering the company’s size — it employs 1.3 million people in the U.S. alone, roughly 1% of the entire private-sector workforce — such a pronouncement could have a seismic impact on the living-wage debate heating up in the capital.

Except that the company isn’t considering throwing its support behind the Democratic push. Wal-Mart WMT spokesman David Tovar, who gave the interview to Bloomberg that set off the frenzy, made that much clear on Thursday in follow-up interviews with other outlets, including Fortune.

The company, Tovar says, is simply monitoring the debate to assess what impact any new policy could have on its business. That said, Wal-Mart will remain neutral unless it decides a proposed minimum wage increase either unfairly targets the company while exempting other retailers, as it did in Washington, or doesn’t allow employers to phase the higher wage in over time. “If a proposal meets those conditions, we’ll stay out of it,” Tovar says. “If they don’t, we’ll strongly consider opposing it.”

MORE: How Gap’s wage hike will boost its bottom line

But if history is any guide, it seems the company is at least partially responsible for the confusion over its position. Most of the reports this week stated that Wal-Mart lent crucial support to a higher federal pay standard when the issue was last before Congress, in 2007 (and the rate rose from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour). But the evidence of that support is limited to a speech then-CEO Lee Scott delivered in 2005. In that address, to company directors and executives, Scott gave what appeared to be a stirring exhortation in support of raising the wage. “We can see first-hand at Wal-Mart how many of our customers are struggling to get by. Our customers simply don’t have the money to buy basic necessities between paychecks,” Scott said. “While it is unusual for us to take a public position on a public policy issue of this kind, we simply believe it is time for Congress to take a responsible look at the minimum wage and other legislation that may help working families.”

A year later, with both chambers of Congress considering legislation to accomplish just that, Wal-Mart went missing. The company’s then-top lobbyist, Lee Culpepper, told me at the time that Scott’s comments had been misinterpreted. The chief executive wasn’t calling on Congress explicitly to raise the minimum wage; he was just asking lawmakers to consider it. “We haven’t said anything more or less,” he said. Last year, after President Obama used his State of the Union address to call for raising the rate to $9.00 an hour, Wal-Mart was similarly circumspect, saying only that it was “reviewing” the proposal.

MORE: Minimum wage fight: Here we go again

The fence-straddling makes sense from a strategic perspective. The company has worked in recent years to sand the harder edges off of its anti-labor rep — a mission that has taken on some urgency as the store expands its footprint into urban areas heavily represented by Democrats in Congress.

The shift in approach is evident in Wal-Mart’s political giving. The company directed just 21% of its contributions to Democrats back in the 2002 election cycle. A decade later, it more than doubled Democrats’ share to 48%, according to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Besides, if the company was inclined to oppose the federal wage hike but nervous about public blowback, it could always lean on heavy-hitting trade associations to make the case for it. Both the National Retail Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce strenuously oppose the raise. Says Tovar, “Anybody involved in trade associations will tell you not every member agrees with every trade association position.” Get that? And for the record, Tovar says the company told its trade associations the same thing it’s telling us: They’re conditionally neutral.

Summary: The world's largest retailer is disavowing a report that it's "looking" at supporting a Democratic push. But the company has a history of playing word games on the wage issue anyway.


A man has been charged with murdering another man who was fatally stabbed in the chest near the NSW-Victoria border.

The 35-year-old victim was found with a stab wound to the chest on Sunday night at a home in Webb Street, Lavington, a suburb of Albury.

He was pronounced dead after arriving at Albury Hospital.

A second man, who police say was with the deceased when they arrived at the scene, has now been charged with murder.

The 43-year-old accused was refused bail and is due to face Albury Local Court on Tuesday.

Summary: A man has been charged with murder over a fatal weekend stabbing in the NSW-Victoria border town of Albury.


A firefighter has been hospitalised in far north Queensland as nearly a dozen fires burn across the state.

Aged in his 40s, he was struck down by heat exhaustion as his crew battled to contain a blaze at Cooktown that threatened several homes and destroyed a shed.

Residents have been urged to learn their bushfire survival plans and remain vigilant by drinking lots of water and wearing protective clothing.

Several fires in central Queensland remain within containment lines but heavy smoke is affecting Rockhampton and nearby areas.

Fires inland of the Sunshine Coast are also under control but motorists are being asked to drive with caution.

Summary: Queensland firefighters are battling close to a dozen bushfires across the state, including one that has threatened several homes in Cooktown.


Queensland state MP Lawrence Springborg, who spearheaded the move to forge the Liberals and Nationals in Queensland into one party, has announced he will quit state parliament at the next election.

The former leader has informed his local LNP branch that he will not contest the next election, due in early 2018.

"This decision gives a proper and respectful amount of time for those interested in representing the LNP, to talk with their families and put their names forward," Mr Springborg said in a statement.

"These are never easy decisions, but I believe that it is the right decision on balance."

Mr Springborg was narrowly defeated in a leadership spill by current LNP leader Tim Nicholls earlier this year.

The father of the LNP, Lawrence Springborg, is quitting state politics.

Mr Nicholls today paid tribute to the former leader, thanking him for his contribution to political and public life.

"I look forward to working alongside Lawrence as he continues to strongly represent the people of Southern Downs and be part of the team that is determined to see the LNP returned to government at the next election," Mr Nicholl said in a statement

There is speculation the LNP is clearing house before the next election, with Lockyer MP Ian Rickuss already announcing he will not contest the next election, and a question mark on whether party stalwart Jeff Seeney will follow suit.

Mr Springborg was the driving force behind amalgamating the Liberal and National Parties in Queensland in 2008, which gave conservative politics credibility in the state again after decades in the wilderness.

He led the party three times, however never won an election, although he served as health minister in the Newman government.

Recently federal Queensland senator George Brandis speculated the LNP would split back into its respective parties due to a change in the state's voting laws making the arrangement irrelevant.

Senator Brandis is also widely rumoured to be considering quitting despite being recently re-elected to a new six-year term, sparking speculation Mr Springborg could make a move to the federal level.

Summary: Long running Queensland MP Lawrence Springborg has announced he will not contest the next state election in early 2018


Ambulance Victoria received "several dozen" calls from people with breathing problems yesterday as thunderstorms rolled in across the state. (AAP)

Ambulance Victoria has revealed hopes for a system to predict future thunderstorm asthma events so resources “aren't wasted” every time a storm appears on the horizon.

The organisation received "several dozen" calls from people with breathing problems yesterday afternoon as thunderstorms rolled in across the state.

But of the 60 respiratory cases recorded, only four were active treatment for asthma.

"All the others ... had nothing to do with what we would term thunderstorm asthma," Ambulance Victoria state health commander Paul Holman told 3AW this morning.

Victorians have been on high alert about the potential for thunderstorm asthma attacks after eight people died after a storm event two weeks ago.

Extra ambulance crews were rostered on yesterday as authorities warned asthmatics of the potential increased risk.

Mr Holman said that was partly to reassure the community.

"I don't want to be doing this every time we see a thunderstorm on the horizon because we're just wasting resources," he said.

"Aggressive" work is now underway to develop a scientific thunderstorm asthma forecasting system.

"If it can be predicted, then we can take some action in terms of health warnings and resourcing,” Mr Holman reported.

Victorian temperatures peaked at 37.3 degrees in Charlton yesterday with 31.7 degrees recorded in Melbourne.

Thunderstorms hit the city's west, areas around Port Phillip Bay, the inland north and central highlands.

"It's looking more settled for the next couple of days," Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Chris Godfred said.

"But we do have another relatively strong cold front that's going to move across Victoria on Thursday morning that will bring widespread showers and the risk of storms."

Thunderstorm asthma is caused when dust and pollen is blown in or ahead of a storm.

Moisture causes pollen grains to burst into tiny fragments that can penetrate deep into the airways.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016


CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) Daxter Miles Jr. scored a season-high 20 points and No. 15 West Virginia overcame an early lull to beat VMI 90-55 on Saturday and give coach Bob Huggins his 799th career win.

West Virginia (8-1) followed up a 53-point win over Western Carolina on Wednesday night with a lackluster first half to finish its final exams week.

Miles went 6 of 9 from the field, including 5 of 6 from 3-point range. He missed the first three games with an unspecified illness and was ejected for throwing an elbow in the first half of a close win over Virginia last Saturday.

VMI (1-7) accomplished what no other mid-major opponent has done in the first half this season - handle West Virginia's full-court pressure defense and keep up in scoring for a while.

QJ Peterson scored 17 points for VMI, which was limited to three field goals over the final 12 minutes of the game.

Summary: MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP)  It took nine games for West Virginia's Daxter Miles Jr. to start to find a rhythm.


H ISTORIC breakthroughs are not, alas, what they used to be — at least in the world of art. Take the exhibition of photographs by William Eggleston that opened this week at the Museum of Modern Art (through Aug. 1). We are invited by John Szarkowski, director of the department of photography at the museum, to look upon this as a very significant event. To underscore the point, the museum has prepared a poshy, hard‐cover book of 112 pages ($12.50, M.I.T. Press) to accompany the show—a fairly unusual procedure for the first solo exhibition by an artist few people have ever heard of. In his text for the book, Mr. Szarkowski throws all caution to the winds and speaks of Mr. Eggleston's pictures as “perfect.”

Perfect? Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly. A perfect example of what, for Mr. Szarkowski and many like‐minded connoisseurs of contemporary photography, is now a. la mode. But this is not, of course, what Mr. Szarkowski means by “perfect.” He means that Mr. Eggleston's pictures achieve a rare degree of excellence and originality, and that—to put the matter mildly—is something about which opinions will differ.

What does make this show unusual, if not exactly historic, is that it is the museum's first major exhibition of photographs in color. The book, “William Eggleston's Guide,” is likewise the museum's first publication on color photography, with 48 plates—more than half the exhibition—printed in color. Even the text is printed on paper that is the color of green bathroom shower in one of Mr. Eggleston's pictures.

As color is now one of the “hot” problems in this medium long dominated by black and white images, it would be news indeed if Mr. Eggleston's pictures were the masterpieces they are claimed to be. In my opinion, they are not.

That bathroom shower is an index to the kind of subject Mr. Eggleston favors. He likes trucks, cars, tricycles unremarkable suburban houses and dreary landscapes, too, and he especially likes his family and friends, who may, for all I know, be wonderful people, but who appear in these pictures as dismal figures inhabiting a commonplace world of little visual interest. The locations are Memphis, where Mr. Eggleston lives, and Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, where his family's cotton farm is.

The use of color, alleged to lend a special distinction to these pictures is, to my eye at least, similarly commonplace. It varies from being obviously pretty (a bright blue pickup truck seen through the growth of wisteria in bloom) to being obviously austere (the gray — black — off — white tones of the interior of a household oven). Mostly it is postcard bright, in the outdoor daylight pictures, or ponderously atmospheric, in the interior shots.

There is no great formal intelligence at work in these pictures, either. Mr. Szarkow ski makes much of the fact that Mr. Eggleston places most of his subjects plunk down in the center of his pictonal space, or just off center, as if this were some remarkable esthetic feat. It is not.

The truth is, these pictures belong to the world of snapshot chic—to the post‐Diane Arbus, antiformalist esthetic that is now all the rage among many younger photographers and that has all but derailed Mr. Szarkowski's taste so far as contemporary photography is concerned.

To this snapshot style, Mr. Eggleston has added some effects borrowed from recent developments in, of all things, photorealist painting—a case, if not of the blind leading the blind, at least of the banal leading the banal. For purely negative reasons, this is a show—made possible, as they say, by grants from Vivitar Inc. and the National Endowment for the Arts—that has to be seen to be believed.

What a relief it is to turn from these pictorial banalities to the work of a genuine imagination! Clarence John Laughlin, whose exhibition of photographs called “The Transforming Eye” is now at the International Center of Photography, Fifth Avenue at 94th Street (through June 6), is not a discovery, of course. He is one of the great classics of American photography — an artist with an almost feverish gift for invention. Working within the traditional limits of the blackand‐white print, he achieves an extraordinary visual poetry—an art of the fantastic that is one of the special accomplishments of our time.

Mr. Laughlin has long been a resident of New Orleans, and some of the enchantment of that magical city has found its way into his pictures. Some of the romance of Surrealism—especially the romance of the unconscaous — has deeply affected‐ his art, too. The result, whether his pictures are “straight” or elaborately composed of separate, incongruous images superimposed to form a haunting evocation of an interiar universe, is a feast for‐the eye.

New Orleans providtis Mr. Laughlin with some Of his most bizarre “straight” pictures. (With cemeteries and architectural ornament like New Orleans's, who needs embellishments?) So do the decayed and abandoned touisiana plantation houses Of a few decades ago that. he made one of his photographic specialties. These pictures alone would guarantee, Mr. Laughlin a place among classics.

But his other specialty is what he calls the “visual poem”—a term he reserves for a particular category, of picture but that I would apply to all of his “invented” images. These range from synthetic landscape fantasies (Passage to Never Land”) enveloped in a macabre, painterly light, to pictures in which a figure standing beside a doorway filled with debris, say, peers at us through an elaborate oval picture frame (”The Ego‐Centrics”). We are in a world of deliberate, devilish symbolism in these pictures, and their sheer visual power is extraordinary.

It says something about the force of Mr. Laughlin's imagination that even, his architectural photographs often look as if their subjects have been invented in the darkroom. He is an original, a romantic of the generation —I often think of Martha Graham when I see his pictures— that looked upon'the pictorial specifications of ,the world we inhabit as a key to an inward, infinitely, absorbing universe of poetic implication.

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A version of this archives appears in print on May 28, 1976, on page 62 of the New York edition with the headline: Art: Focus on Photo Shows. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Photographs by William Eggleston at Museum of Modern Art revd by H Kramer


Is the quest for clean doing more harm than good?

That’s the question at the heart of a debate between cleaning-products makers, researchers and environmental advocates. The outcome could affect millions of Americans who use antibacterial soaps, body washes and shower gels to fight germs—as well as the companies that supply the $5.5 billion market for soap, bath and shower products.

In September, the Food and Drug Administration will announce a decision on whether companies that make and market antibacterial soaps containing certain ingredients have demonstrated they are safe and more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illness. If the FDA decides against them, the companies must reformulate the products—a step a number of big manufacturers have already taken, citing public concerns—and may need to remove claims from their labels.

The proposed new rules are part of a more sweeping review of virtually all antiseptic products used in the war against germs that are rinsed off or left on, including those used in hospitals to fight the rise in virulent bacteria and protect patients from infection. The FDA also plans to review hand sanitizers, including those based on alcohol, and it’s weighing separate rules for food-processing workers.

The chemicals used in antibacterial cleaners have been around for decades and are used in a wide range of other products There’s a lack of hard data linking them to human health outcomes. The FDA first judged some chemicals were safe and effective in 1994. But the most commonly used chemical, triclosan, was always under separate scrutiny, and while the FDA never took formal action, since then studies have suggested it can interfere with hormones and cause changes in thyroid, reproductive-growth and developmental systems. And some research indicates that the booming use of antibacterials is contributing to the creation of superbugs that are resistant to the antibiotics long used to fight them.

With new evidence that exposure is higher than previously thought and advances in technology to detect chemicals in the body, new data is needed to assess long-term effects, says Theresa M. Michele, director of the Division of Nonprescription Drug Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

“We now know we can measure small amounts of ingredients in blood and that things you put on your skin can potentially be absorbed into the body,” Dr. Michele says. Her advice: “At this point, wash your hands with plain soap and water, because we don’t have enough data demonstrating these antibacterial soaps are any better” in fighting disease.

The FDA review, which includes 22 chemicals, has pitted the $30 billion cleaning-products industry, which maintains the products are safe and more effective than regular soap, against environmental groups and some scientists who charge they are not only no more effective than regular soap, but are dangerous to health and should be banned or restricted to fighting dangerous outbreaks in hospitals.

Both sides in the debate have submitted reams of evidence to the FDA supporting their stance, offering up conflicting studies that make it a challenge for the average consumer to make informed decisions.

Most of the controversy focuses on triclosan and a related chemical, triclocarban, first introduced in the 1950s and 1960s, respectively. Triclosan is an antibacterial chemical agent widely used in liquid hand soaps, other personal-care products such as body and face washes, cosmetics, school supplies and kitchenware. It works by killing or weakening bacteria, similar to the way antibiotic drugs prevent or treat infections. But while antibiotics are prescribed to cure disease, antibacterials are aimed at preventing the spread of disease-causing bacteria to people who aren’t infected, including by handling contaminated food and objects, or skin-to-skin contact.

In the case of antibiotics, because the drugs have been used so widely for so long, many types of bacteria have adapted. The FDA and some scientists are now concerned that antibacterial chemicals like triclosan, which linger in the environment and can be absorbed in the body, are also contributing to antibiotic resistance. A new Minnesota law will prohibit some cleaning products like hand soap and body wash containing triclosan after Jan. 1, 2017.

The American Cleaning Institute, which represents about 140 companies, is moving to satisfy the FDA’s data requirements for the safety and effectiveness of antibacterial ingredients, says Richard Sedlak, executive vice president, technical and international affairs. The institute and others have asked the FDA to defer rule making on three other ingredients companies are using as an alternative to triclosan—benzalkonium chloride, benzethonium chloride and chloroxylenol—to allow time to submit new safety and effectiveness data. The FDA’s Dr. Michele says it is considering the request.

But the cleaning institute takes the position that the FDA has “neglected a substantial amount of existing safety data” showing the chemicals are effective in reducing the level of bacteria on the skin and more effective than soap that’s not antibacterial.

Along with another organization, the Personal Care Products Council, it has submitted extensive data to support its view that triclosan has been used safely for decades and has been extensively reviewed and permitted around the world, with no data directly linking it to human harm. Makers of antibacterial bath products also dispute that they are contributing to the creation of superbugs, noting that studies have shown that overuse of prescription antibiotics in humans and livestock is the driving force behind antibiotic resistance.

And the organizations warn that banning antibacterial products would increase the level of risk and exposure of the general population to bacteria, leading to increased infection and disease, including 7.5 million cases of food-borne illness and $38 billion in health-care costs annually. An FDA spokeswoman says the agency has no comment on that estimate.

The FDA initially proposed a rule that would have disallowed triclosan in hand soaps in 1978 because there wasn’t enough evidence to show it was safe and effective. In 1994, the FDA amended that to say some chemicals were safe for consumer soaps, but continued to propose that additional data were needed for other ingredients, including triclosan. The nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council sued the FDA in 2010, alleging the agency had unreasonably delayed taking action.

The FDA signed a consent decree to settle the suit, and issued a new proposed rule in 2013, continuing to propose that triclosan not be available for use in consumer washes unless additional safety and effectiveness data were provided to the FDA. The consent decree imposed a September 2016 deadline for a final rule for consumer soaps and set out future deadlines for the FDA to rule on health-care antiseptics and consumer hand sanitizers, including those that are alcohol-based.

A 2014 review of evidence and regulatory actions published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology acknowledged there is a “paucity of data” on triclosan’s adverse effects on humans. But the review notes that U.S. streams have a 60% to 100% likelihood of containing detectable quantities of the chemicals, and they have been detected in high levels in municipal sludge and drinking water, and urine and breast milk. While consumers may use soaps for a few seconds and wash them down the drain, their environmental afterlife is much longer, measured at time scales of up to several decades, the review found.

“There is undeniable evidence that these chemicals have suffused modern life, and we have to question whether this is a good idea,” says Rolf Halden, author of the review and director of Arizona State University’s Biodesign Center for Environmental Security. “It’s virtually impossible to link one particular exposure to these agents, but on a population basis, you see associations between exposure and effect.”

Antibacterial agents “can play an important role in hospitals and health-care settings, but they do not belong in all households, our food supply and our bodies at all times,” he says.

The American Cleaning Institute’s Mr. Sedlak says the vast majority of chemicals are removed during wastewater treatment, but even if some remain, “there is no expectation that there should be adverse consequences of minute traces of triclosan in the environment,” where it continues to break down. He adds that the institute isn’t aware of any studies demonstrating high levels in drinking water.

The National Toxicology Program, at the request of the FDA, is studying the potential for cancer to occur through skin exposure to triclosan. The cleaning institute has told the FDA in comments that it does not believe the study is necessary based on earlier studies of oral exposure that found no evidence of a cancer-causing effect relevant to humans. And Mr. Sedlak says his organization isn’t aware of any studies that link the low levels of triclosan exposure from its use in consumer antiseptic products to a risk of cancer.

Researchers continue to disagree over whether antibacterial soaps provide any benefit over washing with soap and water. A study by South Korean researchers, published last year in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, found that under “real life” hand-washing conditions of about 20 seconds, antibacterial soap containing the maximum amount of triclosan allowed by law was no more effective than plain soap at reducing contamination from 20 bacterial strains.

But in a 2014 study partly funded by the American Cleaning Institute and the Personal Care Products Council, researchers at Rutgers University had study participants’ hands inoculated with Shigella bacteria before washing their hands then handling melon balls. Three antibacterial cleansers, including one containing triclosan, were significantly more effective in reducing the concentration of the bacteria on their hands and the melon balls relative to two regular soap products. The study was published in the Journal of Food Protection.

Popular alcohol-based hand sanitizers are considered less of a threat to human health and the development of antibiotic resistance. Still, the FDA has asked for additional data about alcohol-based sanitizers used in hospitals, where staffers may clean or sanitize their hands up to 100 times a day.

For cleaning-products makers, the stakes are high. The FDA estimates the costs of the proposed rule could be as high as $369 million. The agency probably wouldn’t require any product recalls, but companies wouldn’t be able to put more on the market that didn’t meet new standards.

 Henkel Corp. , the maker of Dial soaps, says that beginning in December 2014, it removed triclosan from all retail hand soap and foaming-wash products and replaced it with benzethonium chloride, which has equivalent performance. Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson have also phased out triclosan, saying that while evidence has shown it to be safe, to respond to consumer concerns they are reformulating products with other ingredients.

Colgate Palmolive is approved to use triclosan in its Total toothpaste, where studies have shown it is effective against gingivitis, but removed it from the Softsoap brand in 2012. Colgate settled a class-action suit last year claiming it falsely advertised the soaps could kill most germs. A spokesman says it did so to avoid the cost of a trial, and denies the allegations of deceptive labeling and marketing.

Some hospital groups are backing away from certain antibacterials. Kaiser Permanente has banned triclosan and identified 13 antimicrobial chemicals it wants banned from its hospitals because they don’t have health benefits and may be toxic, according to Kathy Gerwig, Kaiser’s environmental-stewardship officer and vice president of employee safety, health and wellness. “We want to use our purchasing power to send a message that it’s not OK to use ingredients that might be harmful to our health,” Ms. Gerwig says.

Ms. Landro, an assistant managing editor of The Wall Street Journal in New York, writes the Journal’s Informed Patient column. She can be reached at laura.landro@wsj.com.

Summary: Their makers say there’s no cause for alarm, but lab and animal studies suggest these big-selling products may be dangerous. Now the FDA is preparing to rule.


"The turkey you're eating," my brother told me as I bit into my sandwich, "is actually tofu. And the cheese is actually rice cheese."

That's probably the most memorable thing I heard during week 21 of "The Money Diet." I was on a hike with my brother, Kevin, and we were sitting on a bench on the trail, somewhere in a forest in some park near Germantown, Ohio, overlooking a scenic river. We'd been hiking for about an hour when we decided to stop for lunch. This activity -- the hiking, not the eating of lunch -- was some time coming, and something I need to do more of.

As anyone who reads this column regularly knows, I'm in the midst of a quest to lose weight, and I've been primarily trying to do so by cutting out snacks and junk food and then, as motivation, adding up what I'm saving by not buying this stuff.

While it worked pretty well for awhile -- I lost 20 pounds then gained a few back -- I'm in my "plateau stage," as I like to call it. That, in a sense, is what brought me to the tick-infested woods in 87-degree weather, eating a rice cheese and tofu sandwich on low-calorie bread.

"Where do you even find this?" I asked Kevin. "I mean, this isn't bad. The tofu is surprisingly tasty, and I could even see me buying rice cheese."

"On the perimeter of the grocery store," said Kevin. "You know, around the walls. It's, like, a whole different grocery store there. We hardly ever go into the middle of the store any more."

told me," I said, adding, "She's this nutritionist

for The Money Diet column thing I write. It's like you're channeling her."

For anyone looking to eat a healthier sandwich and unfamiliar with tofu and rice cheese, I can now tell you that it's tastier than you'd expect.

As for how I did this week, well, I still haven't lost any more weight, which I find mystifying. It seems like it's been years -- instead of weeks -- since I've been to a fast food restaurant for anything other than a diet soda -- and I've gone light on the snacks for months now. And, granted, it

just one hike, but it was about a three-hour hike across some really steep hills. In fact, I even had an Indiana Jones moment, in which I tripped, twisted in the air, fell on the ground and was suddenly clinging to a tree root. If I'd rolled over, off the path, I would have kept going down a 50-degree incline and landing either on another path, 20 feet down, or perhaps, another that was maybe 300 feet down. It wouldn't have been pretty.

But do the diet gods reward me for this? No. I haven't lost a thing. Here's how my weight, once again, looks:

But at least I have extra money this week. Here's what I think I saved.

I had two, day-long business trips this week, during which I drove from my house to a company about two hours away. In the old days, I would have grabbed breakfast at a fast food place and would have bought a snack on the way back. Other than Diet Coke, I purchased nothing, packing my own breakfast and ate no snacks. Total estimated savings, given that I had four opportunities to spend money: $14.

The day before my hike with my brother, I went to two parks with my oldest daughter. Then I treated her to some ice cream and bought nothing for myself. Savings: $1.99.

On the day I went hiking with my brother, I was invited to a dine-in restaurant with my parents, grandmother and some relatives. It's a monthly thing, but Kevin and I decided to do our hike instead. While the restaurant wasn't really a fast food joint, it does serve burgers and fries, which I probably would have ordered, so I'm better off, nutritionally speaking, for having skipped it. Estimated savings: $8.

I went to the grocery store at least twice this week, and I avoided buying chips and candy, two of my weaknesses in the past. The worst thing I believe I purchased were some fiber bars to snack on. Estimated savings: $6.

What's really troubling is that I'm on the verge of driving several states away, to Milwaukee, to be in a wedding with a bunch of my old college friends. Not only will I show up at this unofficial, almost 20-year college reunion not looking slim and trim, but there'll likely be plenty of opportunities to eat high-calorie, delicious but unhealthy foods. Oh, joy.