Rishi Iyengar

The surgeon blames pressure to meet targets and faulty medicine for the deaths

The doctor at the center of a tragedy in which at least a dozen women died following sterilization surgery in Bilaspur, India, was suspended from duties and arrested on Wednesday night.

R.K. Gupta, 59, operated on 83 women in five hours on Saturday, according to the BBC.

“It was not my fault, the administration pressured me to meet targets,” local news outlet NDTV quoted Gupta as saying. The doctor attributed the deaths to the medicines given to the women after the surgery.

In January, the Chhattisgarh state government gave him a commendation for performing a record number of sterilizations.

Meanwhile, another woman lost her life at a different sterilization camp in the same district and 20 others reported postsurgery complications, the Indian Express reports.

Authorities are still investigating the fatalities, which occurred during one of the many mass-sterilization drives organized to combat the country’s rapid population growth. The exact cause of death remains unclear, but so far the quality of medicines administered, as well as the infrastructure of the hospitals where the operations were conducted, has been identified as possible culprits.

“To me it’s not the surgeon’s fault, because if there was a problem with the surgeon’s actions there would have been bleeding and damage to the organs,” says Dr. Ashutosh Halder of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi.

Halder speculates that the complications were most likely caused by inadequate sterilization of the equipment used or an unfavorable hospital environment, although a team of four AIIMS doctors who visited the site told reporters they were “satisfied” with the arrangements there.

Sujatha Natarajan, president of the Family Planning Association of India, says that although precautions are necessary, doctors are not the sole bearers of responsibility. “Quality of service involves much larger stakeholders than that,” Natarajan tells TIME. “Putting all the responsibility on the doctor is putting a very high risk on the program itself,”

India sterilized over 4 million people last year, about 97% of whom were women. People in rural areas are offered financial incentives to undergo sterilization.

Wayne Ellington Jr. has taken an indefinite leave of absence from his team

The father of Los Angeles Lakers guard Wayne Ellington Jr. was shot dead in Philadelphia on Sunday.

Police received a call about an traffic collision in nearby Germantown and found 57-year-old Wayne Ellington Sr. in the front seat of his Oldsmobile with a bullet in his head, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Ellington was immediately taken to the nearby Albert Einstein Medical Center for surgery, but was pronounced dead about three hours later.

A motive for his murder is not yet clear, and the city has offered a $20,000 reward for any further information.

Ellington Jr., who grew up in Philadelphia and joined the Lakers as a free agent in September, took an indefinite leave of absence from the team before traveling home earlier this week.

“I encourage anyone with any information to come forward to help authorities solve this case,” he said in a statement.

The Kill Bill director said the next two films after his latest release may well be his last

Quentin Tarantino revealed this week that he plans to call it quits after making his 10th film.

“It’s not etched in stone, but that is the plan,” the director of cult classics such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill told an audience at the American Film Market conference in Santa Monica, according to Deadline. “If I get to the 10th, do a good job and don’t screw it up, well that sounds like a good way to end the old career.”

The filmmaker was at a session with the cast-members of his latest release, a Western called The Hateful Eight. The film, which centers around a group of outlaws stranded in a blizzard, also happens to be his eighth. “I like that I will leave a 10-film filmography,” he said, “and so I’ve got two more to go after this.”

Read more at Deadline

The chief engineer received a 30-year sentence, while the other 13 members of the crew will serve up to 20 years

The South Korean ferry captain in charge of the vessel that capsized in April and killed more than 300 people, most of them high school students, was sentenced to 36 years in prison on Tuesday.

Lee Joon-seok, 68, on trial along with 14 other crew members for their role in the sinking of the Sewol ferry, was convicted of gross negligence, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors had demanded that Lee be given the death penalty.

The ship’s chief engineer was convicted of murder and handed a 30-year sentence while the rest of the crew were given sentences ranging from five to 20 years, South Korean agency Yonhap News reported.

Earlier in the day, South Korean authorities called off the search for the bodies of remaining victims with nine still unaccounted for.

[AP]

The former Minnesota Vikings safety first revealed he had the disease in 2007

Former NFL player Orlando Thomas died in Louisiana on Monday after succumbing to Lou Gehrig’s Disease, his agent told Bloomberg.

The 42-year-old former Minnesota Vikings safety had revealed in 2007 that he was battling the disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and named after the former New York Yankees star who died of it in 1941.

“If there was ever a test to strip your fight, courage and toughness and make you wallow in self-pity, this would be the disease and yet he was so incredible in his fight and never once made it about him,” said Thomas’ agent Mark Bartelstein.

Thomas spent seven seasons with the Vikings after joining as a second round draft pick in 1995, and notched up 22 interceptions during his career before retiring in 2001.

[Bloomberg]

An eyewitness at the theater says the woman "flipped out" when he tapped her on the shoulder

A man at a California movie theater who asked a woman to switch off her cellphone got far more than he bargained for after she sprayed mace in his eyes, Mashable reports.

The incident, according to an eyewitness who was sitting nearby, took place at a Monday night screening of the recently released film Mr. Turner.

The film had just begun at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theater when a man sitting in the back row began requesting the woman in front of him to switch off her glowing phone.

When he tapped her on the shoulder after being ignored a few times, the witness said she “flipped out,” accused the man of hitting her and threatened to call the police. Without warning, she then uncapped a bottle of mace and sprayed the man.

Mashable reports that the woman sat back down and watched 20 minutes of the movie before security came and escorted her out.

[Mashable]