Society's ChildS


Question

Book released guiding readers on how to be discreet about going to the toilet

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'How To Poo On a Date' has become an Amazon sensation by tackling the toughest lavatory-related dating questions
When navigating the dating terrain, the potential minefields are endless. When do you make the first move? Is it too early to meet the parents?

But judging by the popularity of a new book, we're often preoccupied with explosive issues of a different kind. 'How to Poo on a First Date', has become an Amazon sensation, and is dedicated solely to issues of the heart and bowels.

The £5 dating bible, published by Prion, promises to solve all your toilet conundrums, from what to do if the urge arises at an awkward moment to how best to cover up any unromantic odours.

The authors, credited only as Mats and Enzo, spent five years researching this work of lavatory-related genius.

'One of the secrets of seduction (and this goes as much for a first date as for the rest of the relationship) is to stay faultless at all times,' the relationship scholars write in the book's intro.

'However, you are made of flesh and bone and this means that yes, sometimes you have to go to the loo.

Ambulance

Hidden camera captures two psychopathic 'carers' slapping brain-damaged patient while he groans in pain

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Facing jail: Rita Page (left) and Lynette Crook (right) were secretly filmed smacking the victim's legs.
  • Worried family hid secret surveillance cameras around the man's room
  • Rita Page and Lynette Crook were filmed in Bury, Greater Manchester
  • Crook jabbed patient in torso and head with a pen whilst he was asleep
  • Page slapped victim during struggle when she put pillow between legs
  • Relatives launch petition for cameras in care homes for vulnerable people
  • Page pleads guilty to two abuse charges and Crook pleads guilty to three
Two carers secretly filmed slapping, jabbing and humiliating a brain-damaged patient as he lay groaning in bed have been warned they face jail.

Shocking footage shows Rita Page, 68, and Lynette Crook, 33, smacking the young victim's legs and swearing at him as they changed his bedding at a £3,000-a-week Priory care home.

On the recording, made after relatives became concerned about his treatment at the private hospital, Page can be heard insulting the helpless patient as a 'b*****d' and a 'dirty scummy boy'.

She also tells her colleague 'there's this very fine line between abuse and neglect'.

Crook is captured telling the patient: 'I don't do sick, so stop it, scummy lad.'

Comment:
First do no harm? UK nursing home staff tried for abuse of residents
Elder abuse and neglect: Warning signs, risk factors, prevention, and reporting abuse
370,000 elderly people were abused in UK last year


Whistle

Why we need whistleblowers like Edward Snowden‏

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© Joe Magee'I realise why any organisation spits whistleblowers out like poison. They break the glue of discipline.'
A lawyer working for HMRC found that his boss, David Hartnett, was having "sweetheart" sessions with Goldman Sachs allowing the bank to avoid £10m in interest on tax. He thought this out of order and did what the rulebook said. Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (Pida) he wrote privately to the national audit office and to a committee of parliament. When HMRC found out, it went berserk. Using the anti-terrorist Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), it had his belongings, emails and phone calls searched. He was suspended and left "a broken man". He lost his job.

On Monday the public accounts committee chairman, Margaret Hodge, asked HMRC's boss, Lin Homer, to promise to never again use anti-terror laws against whistleblowers. Homer refused. She will have known she had ministers on her side. Jack Straw's Ripa has been an all-purpose state cosh against dissent ever since Tony Blair capitulated to the securocrats in 2000.

Eye 2

Oregon woman beat 4-year-old son to death because she thought he was gay

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Jessica Dutro
Prosecutors said an Oregon woman beat her 4-year-old son to death because she feared he was gay.

Zachary Dutro-Boggess was hospitalized Aug. 14, 2012, the day after his fourth birthday, with trauma to his abdomen that caused tears to his bowel, and urine and fecal matter seeped into his body cavity and damaged his vital organs.

He had collapsed at the homeless shelter where his family was living, reported The Oregonian.

He was removed from life support two days later, and his mother, Jessica Dutro, was charged with murder, murder by abuse, and second-degree assault.

Her boyfriend, Brian Canady, initially confessed to kicking the boy in the stomach because he would not sit down and watch television, like he was told, and instead took off his shoes first.

But the 24-year-old Canady later changed his story and took a plea deal earlier this month, admitting to first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault.

Heart - Black

Girl with "tomboy looks" removed from private Christian school because of "restroom concerns"

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The conservative Liberty Counsel made vague allusions to "sensitive" restroom use issues to defend a Christian school's decision to bar an 8-year-old girl over her tomboy looks.

Timberlake Christian School notified Sunnie Kahle and her great-grandparents that she cannot return because her boyish appearance contradicts a "biblical lifestyle."

"We believe that unless Sunnie and her family clearly understand that God has made her female and her dress and behavior need to follow suit with her God-ordained identity, that TCS is not the best place for her future education," the school's principal wrote in a letter.

Sunnie wears her hair short, collects baseballs and knives, and prefers to wear jeans and T-shirts, said her great-grandmother and legal guardian.

But the nonprofit legal organization defended the Forest, Virginia, private school, claiming media accounts had inaccurately described administrators' decision to refuse the girl enrollment next year.

Arrow Down

Tigers slaughtered in show of social stature for Guangdong businessmen

Dead Tiger
© China Daily/ReutersA dead tiger found during a police raid in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, last January. Trafficking and habitat destruction have cut tiger populations from about 100,000 a century ago to about 3,000 today.
More than 10 tigers have been killed as "visual feasts" in China to entertain officials and rich business people, state media reported.

Police in the port city of Zhanjiang, in the southern province of Guangdong, seized a freshly slaughtered tiger and multiple tiger products in a raid this month, said the Nanfang Daily, the mouthpiece of the provincial Communist Party.

Local officials and prominent businesspeople gathered to watch the tigers being killed as "eye-openers" to show off their social stature, it said. Video footage of a killing two years ago showed the tiger, kept in an iron cage, having an electrified iron mass prodded into its mouth with a wooden stick and passing out after being electrocuted for more than 10 seconds, the paper said.

An experienced cattle or pig slaughterer is normally hired to butcher the carcass, it said, adding that tiger bones sold for an average of 14,000 yuan (£1,360) a kilo while the meat fetched 1,000 yuan a kilo.

Black Magic

Goat, chickens, pigeons found with throats slashed in Washington DC park

Royal Creek Park
© Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington PostAnimals including a goat, chickens and pigeons were found near this area with their throats slashed.
Animal welfare officials are investigating whether a religious or ritualistic practice was behind the death of nine animals - six chickens, a pygmy goat and two pigeons - whose carcasses were found along an isolated path of Rock Creek Park in the District.

Some of the animals had been decapitated. Some still had their heads, but their throats had been slashed. Investigators believe they were killed elsewhere and dumped in the park.

"They were sacrificed and left there," said Scott Giacoppo, a vice president with the Washington Humane Society.

The carcasses were taken Wednesday to a laboratory in Virginia for necropsies. Veterinarians and investigators will look for clues that could point to a specific group or individual.

But what was done to the animals may not be a crime - if they were killed in a humane way.

"You have to do it in one fell swoop," Giacoppo said. "It has to cause instantaneous death. Anything short of that we can argue, is cruelty, and [we can] prosecute."

The animals were found Tuesday afternoon by a person walking along the path in a section of park in the 3500 block of 17th Street NW, near Piney Branch Parkway. The area sits behind a large apartment complex.

Question

Weird symbols appear on London roads. What could they mean?

Strange Symbols
© GetWestLondon.co.ukGrove Road symbol.
If you see one, please log the position, take a picture with friends or a 'selfie' and tweet it to us @getwestlondon or email tms-newseditor@trinitymirror.com

Strange marks have started to appear on roads in the area.

Reader Maria Speechley spotted one at the junction of Grove Road, Uxbridge and Grove Way.

"No one seems to know what it is for and I have not noticed any others in the immediate vicinity," she said.

There is another of the white, spray painted symbols in the pedestrianised section of Uxbridge High Street, close to Lloyds Bank.

Attention

Boston Psychiatric Unit's imprisonment of teenager Justina Pelletier needs State investigation into reckless endangerment of psychiatric diagnosing

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“Medical care that causes severe suffering for no justifiable reason can be considered cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and if there is State involvement and specific intent, it is torture.” - United Nation’s 2013 Report by the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
For thirteen months, Lou and Linda Pelletier's youngest daughter, Justina, has been a prisoner at the hands of Boston Children's Hospital psychiatric unit accused of suffering from an obscure "mental disorder," Somatoform, which a leading psychologist describes as being "nothing more than a destructive and unreliably applied label." In deteriorating health, and confined to a wheelchair, the 15-year-old learned this week that there will be no pardon from the Massachusetts Psychiatric Puritans.

Because a child's well-being hangs in the balance, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) calls on the Massachusetts State Attorney General to investigate Boston Children's Hospital Psychiatric Unit, "Bader 5," specifically requiring that the treating psychiatrists provide medical/scientific proof of the alleged diagnosis, Somatoform.

CCHR also supports legislative action instigated by Mass State Representative Marc Lombardo to start the process of releasing Justina Pelletier to her parents but said this should be expanded to investigate the harmful influence of psychiatrists' opinions resulting in state removal of children from their families.

Comment: Read the chronology of this horrifying story:

Parents lose custody of teen after seeking 2nd medical opinion; girl indefinitely detained in psych ward

More food for thought: Mother jailed for refusing to drug daughter with a highly controversial antipsychotic - Child ends up in a mental institution


Pistol

UK Police State: Tasers used 28 times EVERY DAY in 2013, over 10,000 in total

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Use of Tasers by police officers in England and Wales has increased by a third to 10,380 deployments in the past 12 months, Home Office Data shows
* Tasers used by officers 10,380 times in England and Wales in 2013

* Figure is up from from 8,161 deployments in the previous year

* Home Office data suggests the stun guns are used 28 times per day

* Follows growing fears the devices are being misused by officers

* Yesterday, PC Stuart Wright was only told to apologise after he shot blind Colin Farmer with a Taser thinking his stick was a sword

* In December, three teenagers with learning difficulties were Tasered

The use of Tasers by police officers has surged by nearly a third to more than 10,000 deployments last year, new data shows.

Use of the stun gun in England and Wales increased from 8,161 fires in 2012, to 10,380 in 2013 - Home Office figures reveal.

The figure, a 27 per cent increase, is the same as 199 uses a week, or 28 times per day.

The most common use of a Taser in each of the last two years was so-called 'red dot' use, accounting for 51 per cent of fires.