The stick has made it into the Toy Hall of Fame, narrowly beating out the tin can and the family cat.
The lowly stick, a universal plaything powered by a child’s imagination, has landed in the National Toy Hall of Fame along with Baby Doll and the skateboard.
The three items were chosen Thursday to join the Strong National Museum’s all-star lineup. Previous inductees range from the bicycle and Mr. Potato Head to Crayola crayons and the cardboard box.
Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. Move over, Nevaeh!
Barack Obama may have a “funny name,” as he once said — but it might just catch on among the nation’s newborns.
A Florida couple became among the country’s first to bestow it on their child, even before most news outlets had declared the Illinois senator the president-elect.
Sanjae Obama Fisher was born at 8 p.m. EST at Hollywood’s Memorial Regional Hospital to Patrick and Sasha Hall Fisher.
A new study is purporting that the more kids watch sexual antics on television, the larger the risk of teen pregnancy. Hmm, we’re a bit skeptical that there’s a little causation/correlation stretching going on here.
Boys and girls ages 12 to 17 years old who watched the most sexual content on TV were twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who watched the least sexually suggestive shows, according to research in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics.
The study is the first to find a link between exposure to sexual content on television and teen pregnancies, according to the researchers. Almost 1 million 15- to 19-year-old females become pregnant each year in the U.S. Based on these findings, the television industry needs to balance sexual content in programs with messages about the risks and responsibilities of sex, said study author Anita Chandra.
In these TV programs, “no one is talking about the negative consequences of sex or contraceptive use,” said Chandra, a behavioral scientist at Rand Corp., a nonprofit research company based in Santa Monica, California, in an Oct. 31 telephone interview. “There are many factors that contribute to our high teen pregnancy rate. We’re not saying it’s the only predictor. It’s one factor that should be examined and should be part of the discussion with teens.”
A man tired of having his McCain/Palin yard signs stolen got creative and rigged up his latest sign to deliver a jolt of electricity to anyone who touched it.
On Monday, Shawn Turschak ran wires from the latest yard sign to a power source from an elecric pet fence. Then he hooked up a surveillance camera in a nearby tree and wired it to a digital recorder.
On Tuesday, the camera recorded a somewhat shorter person approaching the McCain-Palin sign with a replacement Obama-Biden sign. The stranger grabbed the wired advertisement, got a jolt and ran away at top speed.
The family of a girl who was accused of causing the death of a toddler she was babysitting is now suing the city of Seattle and the Seattle police department.
The lawsuit seeking unspecified damages claims police acted with “deliberate indifference and conscious shocking action” in their questioning of Ashley Howes, who was 13 in 2005 when she was questioned by police in the death of the child.
The lawsuit claims police interrogated the teenager for hours without advising her of her right to remain silent or allowing her access to her parents or a lawyer. It also alleges detectives continued questioning the girl after she said, “My mom and dad are getting a lawyer” and ” My dad said I’m not supposed to talk to anybody unless him or a lawyer’s … present.”
“It’s shocking because it is a case in which four, maybe more, officers were involved in the 19-hour interogation of a 13-year-old girl and apparently not one of them recognized that she has civil rights,” said one of her attorneys, Lincoln Beauregard.
A 10-day-old baby girl died after she contracted herpes simplex virus, the same virus that causes cold sores.
Most babies who contract herpes do so from their infected mothers via the birth canal.
Far less common is for a neonate — a baby in the first month of life — to become infected through contact with another infected person, according to Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, who has only seen two such cases during his career.
“Herpes virus in a neonate is a dangerous infection,” Abramson said. “And most parents aren’t aware.”
But Raveney was not infected with HSV-1 during her pregnancy because Mira’s blood tests showed no antibodies against the virus, antibodies that would have been passed through the placenta.
Raveney believed she contracted HSV-1 in the days following Mira’s birth, likely from her husband, who had become infected years earlier, but had not had any outbreaks since the two had been together.
Police in Austin, Texas have charged a mother with beating her 4-year-old daughter and then throwing her into the path of an oncoming SUV.
The driver of the brown Suburban braked and did not strike the child.
Aurelia Gallardo, 24, could face up to 20 years if convicted. Bail was set at $25,000.
Lt. Dana Brockington with the Austin Police Department told The Associated Press early Friday he did not know whether Gallardo had an attorney.
When the incident happened Tuesday, Gallardo and her three children were waiting for a city bus.
A witness at the bus stop told police he saw Gallardo lift her daughter by the arm so forcefully that he thought the girl’s arm “was going to dislocate out of the socket.” The witness told police that Gallardo then violently threw the girl into the street and pulled her by her hair before throwing her into a parked vehicle, according to an arrest affidavit.
Former suburban Chicago school principal Daniel Markofski has been sentenced to a year in prison and 18 months of supervision for sex acts with two teenagers.
Markofski was charged in April, after police said they found him watching pornography with two teenage girls at a Super-8 Motel in Glendale, Wis. The girls, now ages 16 and 17, were in various states of undress, according to police reports.
After Markofski completes his prison and supervision sentence, he will be required to register as a sex offender for the following 15 years.
Markofski was removed from his post as principal at Spring Grove Elementary following his arrest in April. After the incident, Nippersink District 2 officials denied Markofski’s resignation request and fired him.
Things have managed to get even more horrific in the case of the murder of Jennifer Hudson’s nephew, Julian King. Several UK papers are stating that unsubstantiated reports are indicating that King’s body was found with one hand severed, perhaps in a botched ransom attempt.
The same day a post mortem found Julian had died of multiple gunshot wounds, but made no mention of his hand.
Balfour had a relationship with Julian’s mother Julia Hudson, 29, the older sister of the actress.
Police have said they believe the killings were the result of a domestic dispute.
The boy’s body was found on Monday in a stolen car abandoned on a Chicago street, four days after Hudson’s mother and brother were shot dead in their home.
A Muslim cleric in Indonesia faces criminal charges after marrying and possibly having sex with a 12-year-old girl that was chosen for him through a contest. He had also announced plans to also marry a 7- and 9-year-old.
Pujiono Cahyo Widianto, a 43-year-old owner of an Islamic boarding school, wed and likely slept with Lutfiana Ulfa in August after she won a contest to become Pujiono’s second wife judged by his first wife, 26, and followers, the Jakarta Post reported.
The girl’s parents admitted that financial difficulties led them to marry their daughter to Pujiono and said the marriage is valid in the eyes of their religion (kawin siri), though not registered with the state, Indonesian Child Protection Commission secretary Hadi Supeno told the Post.
The commission planned to immediately report Pujiono, his first wife and Lutfiana’s parents to the police for a criminal investigation, Hadi told the Post. All could face a maximum of 15 years in jail and a $30,000 fine, for forcing, swindling and/or trading a minor into sex.
A New Jersey boy is in critical condition after falling off a haunted hayride at his church.
Police say the boy was on the side or front of a landscaping trailer that had wood framing and was being pulled by a tractor at the Shrine of St. Joseph church.
At least 10 other people on the ride didn’t notice the boy fall Friday. Volunteers saw the boy on the ground.
His parents were at the church, but not on the ride.
A 14-year-old in Columbia, South Carolina has been charged with two counts of murder — one for his mother, who he allegedly shot to death, and one for her unborn baby.
Sherryle Terry, 35, who was eight months pregnant, was shot several times in her home on Sunday night. The girl she was carrying also died in the shooting, Darlington County Coroner Todd Hardee said.
The boy was arrested a few hours later at a relative’s house after witnesses told police he was the shooter, said Darlington County Chief Deputy Tom Gainey, who would not talk about what the teen said to investigators.
He is charged with two murder counts because the baby could have lived outside the womb, said Prosecutor Jay Hodge, who plans to ask for the teen to be tried as an adult.
The teen also shot his 12-year-old sister in the neck, but she is expected to survive, Gainey said. The boy had not been in trouble with the law before and deputies have no motive for the killings, Gainey said.
A 2-year-old child in Bradenton, Florida who police say was beaten for over four hours and left in a coma has died.
Authorities say Dwight A. Baldwin, 21, beat the boy because he soiled himself.
Deputies say Baldwin will now be charged with murder.
Baldwin denies responsibility for a debilitating blow to the boy’s head, but admitted to investigators Monday afternoon that he struck the toddler more than 20 times with a belt and fly swatter on his back and buttocks, according to a Manatee Sheriff’s report.
Baldwin’s girlfriend, Audrey L. Lawrence, 25, told investigators she witnessed the beating and yelled at Baldwin once to stop, but did not call authorities.
Lawrence – who, with Baldwin, takes care of the boy because she says the toddler’s mother is a drug addict – also told detectives that this is not the first time Baldwin has struck the boy.
A drunk woman in Michigan fell into the Clinton River while pushing her 22-month-old child in a stroller, and is now being charged with child abuse.
German exchange student told police he saw commotion by the gazebo at about 5:30 p.m. Monday and realized the woman and the stroller carrying the baby fell in.
Nicolas Eckhoff jumped in the frigid waters and pulled the child from the stroller and out of the water. Eckhoff was with a Mt. Clemens woman who laid down on the wall to reach for the mother.
The toddler was treated at Mt. Clemens Regional Medical Center, and then turned over to the county’s child protective services for foster care placement, said police.
Preliminary breath tests revealed Branch had a blood-alcohol level of 0.28% — more than three times the drunken driving limit in Michigan of .08.
