Latest news with #Higginbotham
Sunday World
4 days ago
- Sunday World
Passengers evacuated from bus after woman threatens to kill driver
Fiona Higginbotham (28) pleaded guilty at a sitting of Athlone District Court Bus passengers travelling on an evening service between two midlands towns had to be transferred to alternative transport in the aftermath of a vicious brawl that saw a 'highly abusive' woman issue a death threat to its driver before warning a garda she would 'smash his face in' shortly before spitting directly into the officer's face. Fiona Higginbotham (28) The Failte B&B, Slane, Co Meath pleaded guilty at a sitting of Athlone District Court to assaulting Garda Darren Murphy in the wake of an incident on December 17 last year. Higginbotham similarly entered guilty pleas to using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour as well as public intoxication after gardaí had been earlier called to the scene of a disturbance on board a bus at Fearmore, outside Moate, Co Westmeath. Fiona Higginbotham News in 90 Seconds - June 29th Sgt Paul McNally told the court how its driver had been forced to pull in the bus moments before gardaí arrived owing to a violent struggle which had broken out between two women. When gardaí arrived, the court was told officers found Higginbotham 'covered in blood' while sporting an injury to her eye and nose. The unseemly nature of that exchange, the court heard, resulted in an ambulance being called to treat the accused for her injuries while its passengers were forced to disembark and transfer to another bus. Sgt McNally said despite the best efforts of both its driver and gardaí to assist Higginbotham, the Meath woman's 'highly intoxicated' demeanour saw her adopt an abusive and unorthodox appearance, illustrated by her propensity to 'talk to her reflection in the window' of the bus. It was during those unconventional mannerisms that Sgt McNally said Higginbotham initially told Garda Murphy she would 'smash his face in' moments before menacingly vowing to kill the onlooking bus driver. Fiona Higginbotham outside Athlone Courthouse. It was at that juncture, gardaí arrested the accused by placing her in the back of a garda patrol van ahead of her transfer to Athlone Garda Station. During the course of that exercise, Sgt McNally said Higginbotham claimed to officers of how her injuries had been inflicted during a row with her friend. Despite those inferences, the court was told how the accused began to resist, push and lash out at gardaí within the confines of Athlone Garda Station. Sgt McNally said Garda Murphy, by that stage, had come to the aid of two other officers in a holding cell within the station by grasping Higginbotham's wrists in a bid to prevent her from hitting out at his fellow colleagues. The court was told it was during those attempts, and as another garda was attempting to cut a chord from Higginbotham's tracksuit bottoms, that the accused suddenly came forward and 'spat directly' into Garda Murphy's face. Those actions brought with it charges of assault and two counts public disorder, however no threat to kill or cause serious harm charge was brought against the accused for the remark she had issued to the bus driver. Higginbotham looked on stoically from the body of the court as details also emerged of how she had been under the auspices of a two month suspended prison sentence at the time of her arrest. That term, which was among her other 27 previous convictions, was handed down for a public order related offence at Tullamore District Court in November 2023 with its duration being suspended for a period of two years. Tony McLynn, defending, corroborated the State's evidence in terms of the scuffle his client had 'came off the worse in' with her friend and which left her 'bleeding profusely' as a consequence. That said, the local solicitor conceded there was little by way of an excuse for what unfolded on the evening in question and how its fallout culminated in the assault on Garda Murphy. 'Her reaction was inexcusable and she knows that,' he conceded, adding that Higginbotham had more than 'wised up' over the intervening seven months. Mr McLynn said it was a contention which was borne out by Higginbotham's continued sobriety since and by her decision to enter a private alcohol detox programme at a Co Louth based clinic. 'Although she has obviously had a number of different events in her life involving court, (those) incidents have all been fuelled by her alcohol addiction,' he said. Mr McLynn also reserved a special mention for Garda Murphy who, he said, had been more than acceptive of his client's contrition. 'He was very magnanimous about the matter and acknowledges that this lady is a totally, totally different lady off the drink and he accepted her apology magnanimously,' said Mr McLynn. The court was told Higginbotham was conscious of the 'very unpleasant and rude' nature of her wrongdoing, actions which Mr McLynn added was met by his client's 'genuine remorse' in choosing to seek Garda Murphy out to personally apologise at a previous court hearing. Judge Owens said Higginbotham had more than illustrated her desire to 'start on the right road' towards rehabilitation, telling her the challenge she now faced was to sustain that approach. She consequently ordered her to undergo a probation report and remanded her on continuing bail to a sitting of Athlone District Court on November 5.
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Boys and Girls Club treated to vacation Bible school, School Supply Giveaway
Jun. 14—Beltline Church of Christ sponsored its fifth annual Oak Park Boys and Girls Club one-day vacation Bible school and School Supply Giveaway on Friday to bring children together and provide needed school essentials. From 9 a.m. to noon, children from the Boys and Girls Club, Beltline Church of Christ (BCC) and the community learned about the story of Jesus healing the blind man through music, games, food and crafts at Oak Park Elementary. BCC gives children an introduction to faith they may not get elsewhere, said Maurice Ayers, director of Oak Park Boys and Girls Club. "They give the kids the opportunity to learn about the word of God, to introduce them to God," Ayers said. BCC provided school supplies because many of the kids needed help obtaining them, said Anna Higginbotham, Beltline Church of Christ VBS and School Supply Giveaway coordinator. "Our entire church gets behind this event and sponsors it, and that's a huge blessing, because it takes a lot to get an event this size pulled off — and purchasing all the school supplies," Higginbotham said. The event began with an interactive song and dance session led by BCC youth minister Sam Welsh. The vacation Bible school consisted of five stations with different activities that incorporated this year's theme, Higginbotham said. Activities included a relay race, a game of dodge ball and a skit by the BCC youth group to relate to the children, said rising high school senior and BCC youth group member Annabelle White. "And we just try to make fun snacks that relate to them and fun little crafts and things they can take home to remember the lessons," White said. The BCC youth group held work days to prepare for the event and the skit, White said. "I was really excited for the skit. I loved doing it and watching the kids laugh and stuff," White said. Each year approximately 100 to 175 children attend the event, Higginbotham said. The age of the participants varies each year. The event was open to those in the community who wanted to attend. "I mean, the more the merrier, you can never get enough people to learn about God," Ayers said. Children made mud pudding as a snack, and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs were served for lunch around noon. Boxes of school supplies were distributed at the end of the program. Boys and Girls Club at Oak Park appreciates what Beltline Church of Christ does for the kids, Ayers said. "And it's an awesome thing that a church would actually pour into the kids, take a day out of their members' time and come out and enjoy the kids and enjoy the environment," Ayers said. Beltline Church of Christ is always searching for ways to help, Higginbotham said. "We are always looking for outreach opportunities, and ways that we can help our community," Higginbotham said. — or 245-340-2438.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Progressive Health of Houston sees healthy buy-in since opening a year ago
TUPELO — One year after reestablishing emergency services in Chickasaw County, health care officials at Progressive Health of Houston say they hope to continue their growing momentum and ensure the rural hospital lasts generations. In March of last year, Progressive Health of Houston opened its doors under its new name and new ownership after being closed for a decade. Director of Operations Jennifer Higginbotham said she was proud of the progress the hospital made over its first year and hopes to expand services into the next year. 'The year has been very challenging but also very rewarding,' she said, noting that services started slow but have grown over time. 'There is hope for the future. There is no going back. 'We want to make sure this is here for our grandchildren,' Higginbotham said. The emergency room averages about 400 patients a month in a county of nearly 17,000, Higginbotham said, noting that of that 400, they average 25 transfers to larger systems, including transfers to Oxford, Tupelo, Columbus and out-of-state hospitals. The system's new fiscal year begins in July, and Higginbotham and Progressive Health of Houston have multiple goals for the coming year, including increasing outpatient care and observation. Observation comes in many forms but typically is a level of care that health care professionals use to monitor symptoms. The example Higginbotham used was an individual needing intravenous therapy. While the plan is to increase observation capacity over the next year, she said that goal has already been started. Higginbotham, who worked in the hospital for 28 years, also noted the buy-in with other services in the region. She said airlift companies have been very cooperative throughout the year. She said being a 45 minute drive to a larger system is a challenge, but those nerves can be alleviated by knowing that air services are a phone call away. Oxford-based health care company Progressive Health Group purchased the rural emergency hospital, formerly known as Trace Regional Medical Center, in November 2023. An emergency room that went from closed to open within three months is a remarkable thing, Higginbotham said. She added the rural emergency hospital is also staffed with ancillary medical services around the clock, which speeds up the process and helps those in need. 'The buy-in is growing each month,' she said. 'Health care's changing every day. Meeting those (needs) here, it is amazing to be able to do that.'
WIRED
13-03-2025
- WIRED
Companies Might Soon Have to Tell You When Their Products Will Die
If everything's computer, it would be nice to know how long computer last. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Losing access to a device sucks. Whether it's a laptop still running Windows 10, a router that's been phased out by your internet provider, or an expensive AI gadget that has suddenly been bricked, it's a bummer to be permanently disconnected from a thing you paid money for. That's where a group of consumer advocates hope to help, by calling on US lawmakers to create policies that support connected products at the end of their lives. Stacey Higginbotham, a Policy Fellow at Consumer Reports and former journalist who covered internet-of-things devices for more than a decade, has been through the dead device gauntlet more than a few times. She's used every weird, swiftly forgotten gadget since the Quirky Egg Minder—a smart egg carton that was meant to keep you appraised of how many eggs you had, but ultimately failed to capture a market. (Though you can still buy one if you really want to.) Turns out, lots of stuff has gone this route. 'I had hundreds—I'm not kidding, hundreds —of devices that have died over these decades,' Higginbotham says. 'I have lived through hundreds of poorly thought out, poorly executed IoT products that have come into the market, failed and then left a trail of e-waste and unhappy consumers behind them.' Higginbotham helped put together a new joint report by the consumer advocacy groups Consumer Reports, US PIRG, and the nonprofit Secure Resilient Future Foundation. The report suggests language for potential legislation that it hopes will be picked up and championed by lawmakers at the state or federal level. The Connected Consumer Products End of Life Disclosure Act, as they call it, would require device manufacturers to indicate how long they plan to support the devices they sell, and give users fair warning when their devices are headed toward the end of their lifespan. It's a problem that some consumers will be more familiar with than others. The US Federal Trade Commission, in response to a public letter put out by US PIRG, reviewed the websites of 184 products and found that 89 percent of them did not disclose how long the manufacturer intended to support its product. Lucas Rockett Gutterman, director of PIRG's Designed to Last campaign, says that legislation like this could affect more people than just the early adopters of out-there gadgets like the Quirky Egg Minder or the recently deceased Humane AI Pin. It would apply to people's phones, laptops, fitness trackers, fridges, stoves, printers, microwaves, cars—nearly every device in your house, office, and driveway that can (or probably will someday) connect to the internet. 'I mean, President Trump just said it,' Gutterman says, referencing the US leader's reaction to seeing the dashboard of a Tesla during a recent publicity stunt at the White House: ' 'Everything's computer.' That's true, it is all computer.' When the online services that power a connected device go away, either because a company collapses or just stops supporting certain products, those devices can wind up bricked and broken. They can also remain mostly functional for years, even if the user doesn't realize that software support has ended. That means devices may no longer have access to regular security updates, which can make them vulnerable to cyberattacks or use as an insidious node in a wider botnet of zombie devices. The proposed act would require companies to disclose a 'reasonable' support timeframe on a product's packaging and online where it is sold, letting users know how long they can expect a device to have access to those connected features. It would also require companies to notify customers when their devices are approaching the end of their support lifespans, and inform them of what features are going away. Finally, there's the cybersecurity angle, which would require internet providers to remove and exchange company-provided broadband routers from consumer homes when they reach their end of life. 'The cybersecurity piece really coalesces around the requirement that internet service providers that lease or sell smart connected devices to their customers take responsibility for managing end-of-life devices on their networks,' says Paul Roberts, the president of the Secure Resilient Future Foundation (SRFF), an advocacy non-profit that focuses on cybersecurity. If the router-specific thing feels a little out of left field, that's because Roberts says it is a deliberate two-pronged approach. 'Those are two somewhat distinct issues, but they're all part of the bigger problem,' Roberts says, 'which is putting some guardrails and definition around this smart-device marketplace. Saying to manufacturers, there are rules you need to abide by if you want to sell a smart connected product. It's not the wild west.' Roberts hopes that if the law gets support from lawmakers, and is eventually turned into real legislation, it will create market incentives for companies looking to make more secure software products, similar to how seatbelts and airbags became widely accepted in motor vehicles. However, it's less clear whether that legislation will ever get any traction at the federal level in the US in a political climate dominated by wanton, whirlwind deregulation. While the European Union has led the way on regulation about product repairability, and end-of-life treatment for vehicles and e-waste recycling, the US hasn't made similar moves. 'We are in a place where the FTC and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are not really going to do anything that's pro consumer,' says Anshel Sag, a principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategies. 'I don't see any real appetite for regulation.' Sag also feels there's a possibility that such legislation has the potential to dampen the thirst for innovation that drives startups. If companies know they have to support a product for a set amount of time, it could limit the kind of risks they're willing to take. 'I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing,' Sag says. 'I just think there's a lot of startups out there that aren't willing to take on that risk. And I think, because of that, it could impede innovation in some ways.' Higginbotham is far less worried about this. She points back to her vast collection of dead devices—what has amounted to a veritable pile of e-waste. 'I don't know if that really counts as innovation,' Higginbotham says. 'We need to recalibrate our default setting based on the last decade and a half of experience. Maybe you don't have to just throw a bunch of stuff out into the ether and see what sticks.'
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A Man and his Linotype machine
City officials unearthed a piece of history Monday when they discovered an old 1,100-pound Linotype machine in the vacant Higginbotham Printing building that was demolished by city crews on Moore Avenue. Like a rusting steam engine in a rail yard, the old Linotype machine—coated in dust and rust—stood as a relic of an era when hot lead was used to set type for printing presses. Before the wrecking ball sent the old machine to its final resting place photos were taken to document the retired behemoth. The Anniston Star visited Higginbotham Printing in March 2001 for a feature article on Eugene Burnham, the business's Linotype machine operator at the time. Burnham, 71 then, passed away at age 72 in June 2002. The machine was a Mergenthaler Linotype NY, Model 31. The Linotype is named after its inventor, a German immigrant named Ottmar Mergenthaler. In 1884, he patented a machine that allowed printers to set an entire line of type at once—hence the name Linotype. Before then, type was set by hand, one character at a time, much as it had been when Gutenberg invented the printing press 400 years earlier. The Linotype quickly became the standard for newspapers and printing shops, remaining in widespread use into the 1960s. 'When I go, it'll go,' Burnham said in 2001. The Linotype had been at Higginbotham since 1957, and Burnham was probably its last operator. Higginbotham Building BW This is a photo from 2001 of Eugene Burnham operating the Linotype machine for the business. Photo by Bill Wilson, The Anniston Star When Burnham turned on the massive machine, the steady, smooth spinning of rubber belts made the Linotype sound a bit like an old sewing machine. Burnham had 54 years of experience with the Linotype in 2001. He learned the craft at The Jacksonville News in the 1940s and took a job at Higginbotham in 1960. He sat in a battered chair that was surely as old as the machine itself. A built-in lamp illuminated the keyboard. Lowercase letters were on black keys to the left, numerals and punctuation in blue in the middle, and capital letters in white on the right. Each keystroke moved a small brass matrix, or mat, into position; the mats contained the mold for the required letter. A magazine above Burnham's head held upwards of 1,500 mats. 'That T is doubling,' he said. 'I heard it that time.' He was ever-vigilant against typos. 'We don't have spell-check on this machine,' he said. Years of focusing on individual letters, numbers, and punctuation marks had ruined him for reading normally. 'I've set the type so long, I read everything in a line,' he said. At full speed, the machine came to life like one of those contraptions in a Dr. Seuss book. Higginbotham Building BW This is a photo from 2001 of Eugene Burnham operating the Linotype machine for the business. Photo by Bill Wilson, The Anniston Star Elevators, cranks, mold discs, levers, dogs, pins, clutches, and pots worked in speedy synchronicity—all to produce a single metal slug. All that for a slender strip of metal a few inches long, with tiny, perfectly formed letters rising from its surface. 'It's an amazing machine,' Burnham said. As a classic Linotype operator's gag, Burnham made a slug for The Anniston Star reporter and handed it to him while it was still warm—just seconds before it cooled from its 550-degree molten state. White scars on Burnham's forearm marked his own encounters with the hot metal. Globs of metal on the ceiling above the machine served as evidence of near misses. Such encounters explained why many Linotype operators weren't sad to see the machines go. In 2001, Phillip Sanguinetti, president of Consolidated Publishing, which owned The Star, recalled the day in 1970 when the paper shipped off the last of its 13 Linotypes. One of the operators gave the departing machine a swift kick, Sanguinetti remembered. 'You S.O.B., you won't spit on me anymore,' the worker said. Paper and print shop owners weren't sorry, either. The Linotype's immediate replacement, cold-type offset printing, was far faster and cleaner. Higginbotham once had four Linotypes and four operators. By 2001, demand for Linotype printing was rare, but the machine was still useful for jobs on pre-printed paper or paper with multiple thicknesses. When the Linotype was needed at Higginbotham, they called Burnham. He was the only one left who could run it. Burnham said in 2001 that he and the Linotype would leave together. Higginbotham Building BW An old Linotype machine was discovered by city officials that had been in place since the 1950s. Photo by Bill Wilson, The Anniston Star Now, as city crews prepare to haul away the rusting Linotype to an unknown fate, it marks the final end to Burnham's long kinship with the old letterpress machine.
