For homeless on heroin, treatment can be elusive with no ID

For homeless on heroin, treatment can be elusive with no ID

PHILADELPHIA

Nearly two decades of using heroin and a year of living on the streets of Philadelphia had led Steven Kemp to a simple conclusion: It was time to get sober. But when he staggered into a detox facility on a recent Friday night, his head brimming with the thought that suicide would end the pain, he was told he couldn’t be admitted because he didn’t have a photo ID.

As the nation’s heroin and painkiller epidemic rages, small but vulnerable populations of homeless people are sometimes turned away from the nation’s already-threadbare system of drug- treatment centers because they do not have valid photo identification.

Transient lifestyles are not conducive to keeping the identifying documents that are often necessary during the screening processes for drug treatment facilities. To reapply for the documents can sometimes take months, especially if a person doesn’t have a stable address, birth certificate or Social Security card.

Flynn files financial form reporting ties to data firm

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump’s former national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, disclosed a brief advisory role with a firm related to a controversial data-analysis company that aided the Trump campaign, according to a filing Flynn submitted to the White House.

The disclosure of Flynn’s link to Cambridge Analytica came in an amended public financial filing in which the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general also discloses income that includes payments from the Trump transition team. The filing was made public by the White House on Friday in response to an Associated Press reporter’s request.

The amended disclosure lists Flynn as an adviser to SCL Group, a Virginia-based company related to Cambridge Analytica, the data- mining and analysis firm that worked with Trump’s campaign.

Tourists return to NC islands after power outage

RALEIGH, N.C.

Carloads of tourists rolled in, stores stocked seafood counters and kitchen workers chopped vegetables Friday as two North Carolina islands reopened to visitors after a weeklong power outage at the height of vacation season.

A line of cars was waiting to drive onto Hatteras Island at noon when vacationers were allowed to return, said Dare County spokeswoman Dorothy Hester. It was a welcome sign that things were returning to normal on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands a week after a construction accident cut power, threatening seasonal businesses’ bottom lines.

Word that power was fully restored Thursday set businesses racing to get ready for a wave of tourists arriving this weekend.

Doctor told to stop marketing 3-person baby technique

U.S. regulators warned a New York fertility doctor to stop marketing an experimental procedure that uses DNA from three people – a mother, a father and an egg donor – to avoid certain genetic diseases.

The doctor, John Zhang, used the technique to help a Jordanian couple deliver a baby last year.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, Zhang said his companies wouldn’t use its technology in the U.S. again without permission, yet they continue to promote it.

The procedure is not approved in the U.S.

Associated Press