Society's ChildS


Wolf

US: New York rape suspect Adam Croote was high-profile missing boy in 1990s

Adam Croote
© WRGB

Albany, New York - Upstate N.Y. man Adam Croote, now accused of raping a 10-year-old girl, was the subject of a missing child case that received national attention in the 1990s, including getting his photograph taken with President Bill Clinton at the White House, authorities said Thursday.

Croote has a troubled past that includes his father killing his mother, his abduction by his grandmother and a sex crime conviction in Massachusetts.

The 23-year-old was charged last Monday with attacking a young girl he was babysitting at a home in Berne, near Albany, police said. He pleaded not guilty Monday to attempted murder, rape and other counts.

Vader

US: Feds tweak airport screening rules for kids

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© YouTube/CBSA photo taken from the YouTube video of a 6-year-old girl getting a patdown.

Washington - The government has made a change in its policy for patting down young children at airport checkpoints, and more are promised.

Airport security workers are now told to make repeated attempts to screen young children without resorting to invasive pat-downs, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday.

There was public outrage in April over a video of a 6-year-old girl getting a pat-down in the New Orleans airport, even after she said, "I don't want to do this." She was patted down, Pistole said, because she moved during the electronic screening, causing a blurry image.

Eye 1

Newsweek's "Diana's Ghost" Issue in Poor Taste?

princess di, kate middleton
© AP PhotoPrincess Diana and Kate Middleton on the cover of the July 4, 2011, issue of Newsweek magazine.
On the cover of Newsweek this week, Princess Diana is alive, well and walking with her daughter-in-law, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. It's an interesting idea but the computer-generated image is being called "creepy" and "cheap."

The accompanying article is written by Diana biographer and longtime provocateur Tina Brown. She's also Newsweek's editor-in-chief, having taken over after her online publication, the Daily Beast, merged late last year with the decades-old publication.

"What would she have been like?" Brown writes of Diana, who would have turned 50 on Friday, nearly 14 years after her death in a Paris car crash. "Still great-looking: that's a given."

Briefcase

Amanda Knox lawyers: DNA could overturn verdict

amanda knox
© CBSAmanda Knox in court

Rome - Amanda Knox won a crucial legal victory Wednesday as an independent forensic report said that much of the DNA evidence used to convict the American student and her co-defendant in the murder of her roommate is unreliable and possibly contaminated.

The review's findings that DNA testing used in the first trial was below international standards will undoubtedly boost Knox's chances of overturning her murder conviction.

The review by the two court-appointed independent experts had been eagerly awaited: With no clear motive for the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher and contradicting testimony heard in court, the DNA evidence was key to the prosecution's case.

Family

Alcoholics Anonymous killed my marriage

My husband and I met in a war zone in Sarajevo at the height of the siege. They were hardly ordinary circumstances in which to meet and fall in love - but, then again, neither one of us was an ordinary person.

Both in our late 20s, and just starting out in our careers as war correspondents, both of us had already been tear-gassed in angry crowds in the Middle East, travelled with rebel armies in Algeria, and passed checkpoints at night, hoping we would not get shot.

We had both decided we wanted to live a life that was fuelled partially by adrenaline, partially by the desire to report from the worst places on earth, to tell the human story of war.

People

Forget fists: Why BOYS not girls are using the internet to bully others

Boys are more likely than girls to use the cover of the internet to bully others, a study has found.

Half of the boys and young men polled admitted to 'cyber-bullying', something that had been thought to be favoured by girls as they are less likely to use their fists to settle disputes.

In addition, almost 70 per cent of the males surveyed had been victims of electronic bullying, ranging from the forwarding of embarrassing photographs without permission to adding humiliating information to someone's Facebook account without their knowledge.

Alarm Clock

TSA defends removing adult's diaper for pat down

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© Associated Press
The Transportation Security Administration defended on Sunday the actions of its airport security officers at a northwest Florida airport after the agency came under criticism for requiring a 95-year-old woman to remove her adult diaper during a pat down.

The incident took place June 18 at Northwest Florida Regional Airport near Pensacola, Fla., while Jean Weber of Destin, Fla., escorted her mother, who suffers from leukemia, to Michigan to live with family members before moving into an assisted living facility, CNN reports.

"She had a blood transfusion the week before, just to bolster up her strength for this travel," Weber told CNN.

Dollar

Egypt says will not need IMF, World Bank funds

Finance Minister Samir Radwan said on Saturday Egypt would not need funds from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, although a deal had been agreed, after budget revisions cut the forecast deficit.

"We do not need to go at this stage to the bank and the fund," Radwan told Reuters, adding Egypt still had the "best relations" with the institutions.

Bad Guys

Russia says Bushehr nuclear plant ready for August launch

Tehran - Iran's first nuclear power plant is set to start up in early August, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday, AFP reported.

"The project has been completed and everything has been ironed out," Ryabkov said.

"If this happens in the first days of August, it will fully meet our forecasts and expectations. And if it happens a few days later, there is nothing terrible about that," he added.

Question

US: Police probe school principal over deaths of THREE students after he hypnotised them to improve their performance

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© UnknownInvestigation: North Port High School principal Dr George Kenney was suspended after hypnotising three students
Police have launched an investigation into a high school principal who hypnotised three students who later died.

George Kenney was suspended from his job after he admitted hypnotising a 16-year-old boy who a day later committed suicide.

But it has since emerged he hypnotised another student who killed herself and a 16-year-old who died in a car crash days after seeing the principal for the private session.

Investigators with the North Port Police and Florida Department of Health have launched a joint investigation into the activities of Kenney.

Comment: Somehow, we don't think the hypnosis had ANYTHING to do with the deaths.