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Archive for April 1st, 2008

Katherine Heigl wants a baby

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

But her husband, Josh Kelley (i.e. a very, very lucky man), doesn’t. And who can blame him? The pair were just married last December, and we wouldn’t be ready to share Katherine Heigl’s attention yet, either.

So they have love, they have marriage. What’s next? Any thoughts of baby carriages?

“I think he’d prefer to wait a little more time, but I kind of wouldn’t, so I think we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”

Though with both stars shining so brightly right now, she added that it would be “foolish” to waste opportunities.

Tennesee school goes over parent’s head

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Seems like there was a bit of bad behavior on a Friday night off campus, a teacher caught wind of it, and instead of contacting the kids’ parents school officials decided to issue their own punishment. And Travis McGaha of the Seymour Herald — who seems to have a bit of a Libertarian bent — is none too happy about it:

One of the parents contacted an attorney who agreed that the school had violated due process rights by not informing the parent about the appellate process or her rights to have the action reviewed by a higher commission within the school system.

The mother, upon hearing this explanation, was shocked to find that the school could possibly administer stigmatizing punishments so easily for off-campus offenses with the only actionable response being expensive litigation.

Far from a school administration executing punishment in place of a parent who is hours away (by horseback or foot, I might add) to maintain good order, the school executed the over-reactive punishment even though the parent was less than 2 minutes away by automobile.

Even though the children apologized up front and were not disruptive towards the class, the teacher, the school nor the school system, their honesty and good order was met not only with verbal reprimand but by bullish interrogation by the resource officer as well as threats of further citation.

Colorado teacher accused of abusing a kid in class

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Brian, look. You’re a young guy, probably just out of college, so really, it’s not too late to make a career change. Because I don’t think working with children is quite your thing.

A Delta high school English teacher punished a student who was late for class by ordering him to do push-ups and sit-ups and letting other students hit him when he failed to complete the exercise, police said Monday.

Brian Havel, 22, faces charges of child abuse in the case, which allegedly happened March 14, said Delta Police interim Chief Roger Christian. He said police began investigating after the student, who is 15 or 16-years-old, told his parents what happened.

Christian said Havel demanded that the student do a certain amount of push-ups or sit-ups in a set amount of time when he arrived late for class. Christian said the student either refused to do the exercise or didn’t finish in time.

3rd graders plot teacher attack

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

OK, we’ll admit it — after covering a bunch of stories involving teachers getting attacked and beat up, their jobs might just be harder than we give them credit for. And if teachers think that they can play it safe and stick with teaching elementary school, think again:

A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday.

The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said.

“We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely,” Tanner said. “We feel like if they weren’t interrupted, there would have been an attempt. Would they have been successful? We don’t know.”

The children, ages 8 and 9, were apparently mad at the teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair, Tanner said. A prosecutor said they are too young to be charged with a crime under Georgia law.

Absolutely unbelievable. They even had the mindset to COVER THE WINDOWS? Where are they picking up this stuff?

Original “test tube twins” hit 25

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Nowadays the technical advances made in fertility treatments seem commonplace enough to not even be noteworthy any longer. But we’re old enough to remember back when the whole controversy surrounding “test tube babies” and the discussion of whether or not it was “playing god” — seems like it was just yesterday. But apparently not, as the first twins born through in vitro fertilization are celebrated their 25th birthday on the “Today” show:

With [Heather Tilton and her brother, Todd Tilton II] was their mother, Nan Tilton, 56, who had been told that she and her husband, Todd Tilton, Sr., would never have children and should quit trying. She was 30 years old in 1982 and the couple had been married for eight years and been trying to conceive for six.

But her fallopian tubes were blocked and his sperm count was low, and even after five surgeries between the two of them, their chances of conceiving were still virtually zero.

“We tried every technique and were told we would never have a child,” she told TODAY’s Ann Curry. That news was, she said, “absolute heartbreak.”

A Quaker, Nan Tilton prayed for guidance and felt strongly that she should not surrender to medical opinion. “I felt very strongly that if we tried and never gave up, it would work,” she said.

There was one chance, and it was a slim one at the time. It was a new and controversial technology called in vitro fertilization that generated massive media coverage in 1978 when the first child, Louise Joy Brown, was born in England.