After my dad passed, my stepmother changed the locks to keep me out

By
Monica Pop
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My father’s sudden passing changed everything. He was my rock, the only person who truly loved me and understood me, and now he was gone.

A few days after his funeral, I returned to my childhood home, but nothing could prepare me for what I experienced.

As I stood in front of the house, trying to get inside, I realized the locks had been changed. My stepmother, Carla, was inside the house, peaking from behind the curtains, and despite my attempts to make her get out and open the door for me, she pretended I wasn’t even there.

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And then, I noticed one of my late mother’s finished paintings on the porch, along with the ceramic urn with my childhood dog’s ashes and a letter written in Carla’s neat handwriting.

“Olivia, this house is now mine. It will be my children who will be moving in, not you. Time to grow up and move on.”

My heart shattered. I always knew Carla wasn’t fond of me, but I never assumed she would try to keep me out of my father’s home.

Devastated, I took my belongings and left.

And then, a couple of days later, I received a call from my father’s lawyer. He said he needed to talk to me about the house.

I explained that my stepmother changed the locks and kicked me out, but he demanded I see him first thing in the morning.

“Olivia, you see, your dad changed the will six months before his passing. He asked from me to protect you and make sure you are not left on your own. He put the house in a trust. For you.”

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At that moment, I recalled a conversation I had with my dad about his will, but I didn’t pay much attention at the time.

Now that the house was mine, I was about to teach Carla a lesson.

For the first couple of weeks, I stood quiet, letting my stepmother believe she had won when she changed the locks. And then, my dad’s lawyer filed the legal paperwork to reclaim the house from the trust.

Carla was served the papers at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday. At 9:15, my phone rang.

“How could you do this!?” she started shouting, accusing me of stealing the house from her.

I simply hung up the phone and blocked her number.

Carla had 30 days to vacate, but she refused to do so.

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On day 31, I arrived at the house with a lawyer and a locksmith, finally claiming what was always mine.

“You spoiled little brat!” Carla spat. “You think you can just take everything?!”

“Not everything,” I replied. “Just what’s mine. What Dad wanted me to have.”

I later learned that my stepmom was involved with someone else even when my father was still alive, and he learned that but never confronted her. He knew her true colors and protected me from her even after his passing.

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Horror moment boy gets decapitated on world’s tallest waterslide

By
Monica Pop
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What was supposed to be a day filled with fun turned into a freak accident and an unimaginable tragedy when 10-year-old Caleb Schwab took a ride on the world’s tallest waterslide.

The ride, called Verrückt, meaning ‘Insane’ in German, saw riders plummet down the almost vertical 17-story chute – measuring in as taller than Niagara Falls.

Caleb and his family visited the Schlitterbahn Waterpark on August 7, 2016, as part of an ‘Elected Officials Day.’

Unfortunately, the raft carrying Caleb became airborne on the ride’s second hump, forcing the boy into the metal supports covered in nets above the slide, decapitating him.

The view from the top of the terrifying ride of the world's tallest waterslide where tragedy struck and Caleb lost his life
The view from the top of the terrifying ride

His father, Scott, recalled he told Caleb and his other son, Nathan, 12 at the time, that brothers stick together, to what Caleb replied, “I know dad.” However, the staff at the park separated them.

Following the tragedy, it was Nathan who informed his parents of his brother’s tragic passing.

Recalling the fateful day, the boy’s mother, Michelle Schwab, said: “[Nathan] was screaming, ‘He flew from the Verrückt, he flew from the Verrückt.'”

She added: “There was a gentleman who wouldn’t allow me to come close enough to see what was going on, and he just kept saying, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to go any further’. I kind of knew in my mind that I shouldn’t see it, that I probably don’t want to see it.”

The devastated father said, “Six went to the park and five came back,” adding he didn’t even remember driving back home.

A 2019 documentary depicting the tragic incident revealed safety concerns. “There wasn’t a lot of science or ride engineering involved in the testing and design,” The Water Slide documentary maker Nathan Truesdell said. “They were sending sandbags down and basically hoping that they didn’t fly off of the slide. The netting that ultimately ended up killing the child was added to prevent the rafts from flying off of the slide completely.”

According to a whistle-blower, “The only inspections we did were riding down slides once and saying, ‘It’s fine for the rest of the day.'”

The ride’s creator, Jeff Henry, envisioned creating the world’s tallest waterslide despite lacking formal engineering credentials, which eventually led to the tragedy.

Despite these safety concerns, the park did open in 2014, with a two year delay.

A grand jury brought charges of second-degree murder against Schlitterbahn’s co-owner Jeff Henry and senior designer of the slide John Schooley that they later dropped.

Currently, the park operates under new management.

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Comedian arrested for alleged drug possession during traffic stop

By
Monica Pop
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It seems that it truly was a rough Friday night for iconic comedian Paul Rodriguez after he was arrested during a traffic stop for alleged possession of narcotics.

According to TMZ, the 70-year-old comedian was driving in Burbank when he was pulled over for traffic violation that soon turned into an arrest for alleged drug possession after his vehicle was searched.

Comedian Paul Rodriguez was then arrested and taken into custody, but claimed the narcotics wasn’t his and accused the officer of acting inappropriately during the search.

According to the Daily Mail, the comedian believed the incident was racially motivated.

At the time his vehicle was pulled over, Rodriguez was asleep in the passenger’s seat and the officer, whom he described as “Caucasian,” allegedly slapped him in order to wake him up.

As of the drugs, he claimed it belonged to his friend, who was driving the car.

He was arrested even after his friend admitted the drugs were hers. Rodriguez claimed he was “roughed up” and his vehicle was being impounded.

According to the Daily Mail, officials reported that Rodriguez was cited and released for misdemeanor drug possession and that the case will be further proceeded to the city’s attorney for review. They, however, didn’t comment on his allegations.

Comedian Paul Rodriguez has been arrested for alleged possession of narcotics

Rodriguez have gone through some challenging times recently following the passing of his long time friend, Donald Serrato, who died while staying at the comedian’s Los Angeles home. Reports were that he died of natural causes.

Back in 2021, Rodriguez underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

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Rodriguez’s career as a comedian has spanned over 40 years. He has been part of high-profile TV programs such as The Golden Girls, Touched By An Angel and The Twilight Zone, and has landed his voice to cartoons like King Of The Hill, Dora The Explorer and The Proud Family.

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Years of mild symptoms result in shocking life-threatening cancer diagnosis

By
Monica Pop
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An unrelated work injury during which a man named Brian broke his hand and hurt his shoulder led to a devastating cancer diagnosis.

Recalling the past couple of years of his life, the 40-year-old man realized he has in fact always experienced symptoms, but they were mild and seemingly harmless.

The work injury required an X-ray that among the rest showed a lung mass doctors believed to be a bruised part.

Further tests, however, revealed he had limited-stage small cell lung cancer. This meant that only one part of his lung has been affected and can be treated with a single radiation field.

Brian, 40, diagnosed with lung cancer after sustaining an unrelated work injury
YouTube

According to the American Cancer Society, “This generally includes cancers that are only in one lung, and that might also have reached the lymph nodes on the same side of the chest.”

Taking to YouTube, Brian decided to share his story of how his work injury led to a cancer diagnosis.

“I’d been having this heartburn for years,” he said in a clip of The Patient Story.

“I went to the emergency room a couple of times and I was sure [that] I had cancer, but they assured me that I didn’t.”

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Doctors assured him it was just reflux, and according to Brian, he first addressed the issue some three years ago.

He, however, hadn’t experienced any other symptoms. What’s most, he has been working heavy jobs that involved lifting objects and taking 25,000 steps a day, but he still felt fine.

As of now, Brian is undergoing chemo and radiotherapy treatments.

In the clip he shared, he explains that he receives three consecutive treatments followed by 21 days off. He’s also receiving radiation therapy twice a day for five days a week.

Luckily, despite the intensive treatments, Brian isn’t experiencing any serious discomfort.

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One ‘unpredictable’ move can remove Trump from the White House, an expert warns

By
Monica Pop
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After a series of executive orders President Donald Trump started signing right after his inauguration, some of which controversial due to their conflict with constitutional principles, existing laws, or public opinion, his administration has yet again found itself under scrutiny.

Namely, political analyst Adam Boulton believes Trump should be more concerned for his own administration rather than the Democrats themselves.

Penning his opinion in The i Paper, Boulton notes, ”Should Trump become more of an unpredictable liability — tanking the economy with tariffs, say, or pushing America into an armed confrontation with an ally — then Republicans, including cabinet members, may decide that his comparatively squeaky-clean, family-oriented VP is a better bet to keep them in power.”

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Further, the veteran expert labels JD Vance “the most assertive US vice president of modern times, providing the ideological backbone to Donald Trump’s presidency, especially on foreign policy.”

In fact, Vance’s relationship with Trump is a rather controversial one. In the past, while he worked as a venture investor, Vance referred to the business mogul as to “America’s Hitler” and called himself “a never-Trump guy.”

Today, however, many consider him one of the most loyal men in Trump’s close circle and administration.

Most recently, Vance has gotten involved in sort of a political scandal when editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally invited in a private conversation of a Signal group.

The participants in the group were discussing a military attack on Yemen, sharing sensitive information.

As expected, inviting a journalist to join in the conversation by mistake raised plenty of questions regarding national security protocols and the use of unsecured channels for sensitive information, with the Senate Armed Services Committee calling for an independent investigation.

Once Goldberg spoke of the incident, he shared one of the messages sent within the group by Vance questioned Trump’s positions. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote.

Staffan Lindberg, a political scientist at V-Dem, warned that “the USA now seems to be heading towards a transition away from democracy under President Trump. In my view, the reverberations of this are and will be enormous across the world.”

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director, shared similar concerns with The Guardian: ”We are approaching Defcon 1 for our democracy, and a lot of people in the media and the opposition leadership don’t seem to be communicating that to the American people. That is the biggest danger of the moment we’re in now: the normalization of it.”

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Rising political tensions within the government could eventually lead to Trump’s removal from the White House. One way could be an impeachment, something he “survived” twice during his first presidential term.

Another possibility is invoking the 25th Amendment, a process in which Vance and the majority of the cabinet could designate Trump “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

The president could challenge this decision, leading Congress to take action, with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate needed to remove him.

A third option could be political pressure that would force him to step down from the position of a country’s leader himself.

However, even if this would be a possible outcome of Trump’s political career, many experts argue that Vance’s potential lead of the country wouldn’t be much different from what we are seeing now.

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Footage shows SeaWorld trainer’s tragic death after brutal orca attack

By
Monica Pop
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A heartbreaking footage that witnessed the unthinkable attack of Spanish orca trainer Alexis Martinez disturbed many.

The 28-year-old had been working with orcas at Loro Parque’s Orca Ocean in the Canary Islands.

Alexis Martinez was killed by the orca named Keto during a Christmas show rehearsal on December 24, 2009.

He tragically died two months before an orca attacked and killed Dawn Brancheau, a trainer of 14 years.

Orca trainer Alexis Martinez and killer whale Keto
Alexis Martinez and Keto/ Outside

According to Martinez’ partner, Estefanía Luis Rodriguez, he showed concerns over the behaviour of the killer whales just weeks before the attack during which he lost his life. She said that according to him, the whales were becoming disobedient, disruptive, and aggressive.

Keto, which has never seen the ocean, is a 6,600lb male killer whale born in captivity in 1995 in a SeaWorld park. At the time of Martinez’ death, Keto was on loan to Loro Parque from SeaWorld.

The tragedy happened when Martinez tried to perform a stand-on spy hop where the trainer balanced on the killer whale as he rose out of the water.

But Keto leaned on one side, and according to another trainer, the orca seemed to have deliberately positioned himself between his trainer and the stage.

Alexis Martinez and Dawn Brancheau/ Estefanía Luis Rodriguez

Martinez was instructed to slim slowly to another pool, while other trainers used controls that had always worked with killer whales, but Keto refused to obey. Instead, he used hi rostrum – the tip of his beak or snout – to push Martinez to the bottom where he violently played with his body.

Eventually, they managed to regain control over the orca and retrieve Martinez’s body, but he suffered serious injuries, including internal bleeding, that claimed his life.

The post-mortem stated that Alexis Martinez, the orca trainer, had “died due to grave injuries sustained by an orca attack, including multiple compression fractures, tears to vital organs, and the bite marks of the animal on his body.”

Following Martinez’s death, SeaWorld temporarily stopped in-water interactions with whales at three of its parks.

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Keeping Tucker Carlson in our thoughts during this difficult time

By
Monica Pop
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Right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, who served as a long time host on Fox before launching his own media ventures, shared on X that his father, whom he considered “the toughest person in the world,” passed away.

Richard “Dick” Warner Carlson died in his home in Boca Grande, Florida, surrounded by his children.

Just like his son, Dick worked as a reporter at the start of his career, before serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the Seychelles under President George H. W. Bush in the early 1990s. Before that, he worked as Director of Voice of America under President Ronald Reagan.

In his tribute to his father, Tucker wrote, “Throughout his life, he fervently loved dogs” and after a six-week illness, Dick Carlson “refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his feet.” 

Born on Feb. 10, 1941 in Massachusetts, to a Swedish-speaking mother who was 15, Dick was left in an orphanage is Boston. He spend his childhood years moving from one foster family to another before being adopted. At 17, he was thrown out of school and joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

“He was a free thinker and a compulsive book reader, including at red lights,” Tucker said of his father.

“He left a library of thousands of books, most dog-eared and filled with marginalia. His reading and life experiences convinced him that God is real. He had an outlaw spirit tempered by decency.” 

Throughout his life, he worked in different countries, meeting various world leaders.

“He was a fundamentally nonjudgmental person who was impossible to shock, and he described them all with amused affection,” Tucker added about his father.

Wikipedia Commons / VOA

Dick Carlson was a singe father who raised his sons on his own after his wife departed for Europe and didn’t return, dreaming of leading a bohemian lifestyle, according to Tucker.

Dick often took his boys to reporting trips and educated them at the dinner table “on topics that ranged from the French Revolution to Bolshevik Russia, PG Wodehouse, the history of the American Indian and, always, the eternal and unchanging nature of people.”

He married Patricia Swanson, heir to the Swanson Foods fortune, in 1979.

“They were together for 44 years, all of them happy,” Tucker Carlson wrote. “She died sixteen months before he did and he mourned her every day.”

Richard “Dick” Warner Carlson is survived by his two sons, his five grandchildren, and his daughter-in-law.

May he rest in peace.

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Mom warns about common drink after 28-year-old’s heart attack

By
Monica Pop
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Katie Donnell, a 28-year-old woman described by her mother as an “epitome of health,” died of a heart attack. Her devastated mother, Lori Barranon, believes a popular drink is to be blamed for her daughter’s tragic passing.

Namely, the tragedy struck back in 2021, while Katie was out with her friends. She was rushed to the hospital, where she had spent ten days on life support, before the family made a heartbreaking decision to let her go.

While Katie was “fitness mad,” she did consume a lot of energy drinks, which her mother believes is what led her to her heart attack.

“She would start with a pre-workout before she went to work to supposedly wake up or she went to the gym and did cardio at five in the morning.

“I didn’t realize how much she was drinking until after she passed. Her boyfriend said she would buy a four-pack every two to three days,” Lori explained.

Katie Donnell, a 28-year-old woman described by her mother as an "epitome of health," died of a heart attack.

“Not to mention she was drinking a lot of coffee and doing the pre-workout.

“One of her friends said she’d hardly see Katie without an energy drink in her hands. When I cleaned out her car after she passed it was full of cans, at least three or four in there.”

According to Healthline, consuming energy drinks can lead to cardiovascular issues, including high blood pressure and heart arrhythmias. If the consumption is excessive, it can also lead to heart attack.

However, besides Lori’s belief that the consumption of energy drinks was the cause of her daughter’s heart attack, doctors say that it is hard to determine a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

The safe amount of caffeine intake per day is around 400 mg, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Kennedy News and Media

“At 28, you just don’t see people dropping dead of a heart attack.

“She was a workout queen, she ate real clean, she ate organic food, she was the epitome of health other than [having energy drinks],” Lori said of her daughter.

“Doctors said they see this happen a lot with people that do a lot of pre-workout or energy drinks but they wouldn’t give the cause of death to that. I know for a fact that was what was wrong with her.

“I beg people to counsel your kids and watch what they’re doing, I think energy drinks should be banned.”

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