Karl's Weird News

Russia furious over adopted boy sent back from US.

Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a woman fromTennessee was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems.The boy, Artyom Savelyev, was put on a plane by his adopted grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the actions by the grandmother “the last straw” in a string of U.S. adoptions gone wrong, including three in which Russian children had died in the U.S.

The cases have prompted outrage in Russia, where foreign adoption failures are reported prominently. Russian main TV networks ran extensive reports on the latest incident in their main evening news shows.

The Russian education ministry immediately suspended the license of the group involved in the adoption—the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton, Washington-based agency—for the duration of an investigation. In Tennessee, authorities were investigating the adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, 33.

Any possible freeze could affect hundreds of American families. Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States.

“We’re obviously very troubled by it,” U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington when asked about the boy’s case. He told reporters the U.S. and Russia share a responsibility for the child’s safety and Washington will work closely with Moscow to make sure adoptions are legal and appropriately monitored.

Internet-obsessed S.Koreans starved baby:

A South Korean couple left their baby daughter to starve to death at home while playing an Internet game which simulated child-rearing, police said Friday.

The man aged 41 and his 25-year-old wife were arrested Thursday, five months after they reported the death of their three-month-old baby, a police investigator in the city of Suweon just south of Seoul told AFP.

The father met his wife in 2008 through the Internet. They had been on the run since their baby died.

“They were formally arrested yesterday,” the investigator said, declining to give details.

The baby was found dead last September 24 and an autopsy showed her death was caused by a long period of malnutrition.

The couple had “raised” an online girl character while neglecting their own prematurely born daughter, feeding her just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at a neighbourhood Internet cafe, Yonhap news agency said.

It quoted police as saying they had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl character called “Anima” in the popular role-playing game “Prius Online”.

“The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn’t have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby,” Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Yonhap.

“They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby.”

Hat tip to Trish!

Children who are smacked when young are more likely to be successful, study finds:

Children who are smacked by parents often turn out more successful than those who have not, research has found.

The study concluded that children who had been physically disciplined when they were young, between the ages of 2 and 6, were performing better as teenagers on almost every measure that was taken into consideration than those who had never been smacked.

It was only in cases where it continued beyond the age of 12 that the children were found to be affected negatively, resulting in a dip on performance indicators.

The results of the US-based study undermines the efforts of various campaigners who have been trying to have physical punishment outlawed in the UK, who have claimed that it causes long-term damage to the children.

Mother Allegedly Used Young Sons to Commit 20 Armed Robberies in Arizona

A 51-year-old Arizona mom allegedly used her young sons and their friends to commit at least 20 armed robberies in a calculating and “revolting” scheme, police said.

 Cynthia Roberson was arrested Friday and accused of manipulating her adolescent sons and others into scores of gunpoint thefts in the Phoenix area by making them feel guilty about finances.

 Roberson was taken into custody along with some of the boys and young men involved in the armed robberies.

Father Who Ditched Nine Kids Via Safe Haven Law Has Twins on the Way

The Nebraska man who abandoned his nine children under the state’s Safe Haven law last year is expecting to become the father of twins, FOXNews.com has learned.

Gary Staton, 37, became a single father in February 2007 when his wife, RebelJane, died of a cerebral aneurysm shortly after giving birth to the couple’s ninth child. Unable to handle the burden alone, Staton made national news more than a year later on Sept. 24 when he dropped off his children — ages 1 to 17 — at a hospital in Omaha. According to the law at the time, parents could hand children up to age 18 over to state custody without prosecution. Legislators would later amend the law to limit its reach to infants up to 30 days old.

Joanne Manzer — the wife of RebelJane’s father, Jack Manzer — told FOXNews.com that Staton informed his children last week that he’s expecting to become a father again with his new girlfriend, a woman named Gail.

43 stun-gunned at prisons’ Take Your Kids to Work Day 

A total of 43 children were directly and indirectly shocked by electric stun guns during simultaneous ”Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day” events gone wrong at three state prisons, according to new information provided Friday by the Florida Department of Corrections.

Also, a group of kids was exposed to tear gas during a demonstration at another lockup. Three prison guards have been fired, two have resigned and 16 more employees — from corrections officers to a warden — will be disciplined due to the incidents that unfolded April 23, said DOC Secretary Walt McNeil. An investigation is ongoing.

 None of the children in any of the incidents required medical attention or was notably harmed, McNeil said. He said the children, who ranged in age from 5 to 17, were all children of prison officials.

In nearly every case, the guards had permission from parents or grandparents to administer the ”electronic immobilization devices,” McNeil said.

Slumdog Millionaire star Rubina Ali who played Latika is offered for sale by dad Rafiq Qureshi to the News of the World’s Fake Sheikh

THE poverty-stricken father of Slumdog Millionaire child star Rubina Ali plans to become a millionaire himself-by SELLING his nine-year-old daughter.

In a bid to escape India’s real-life slums, Rafiq Qureshi put angel-faced darling of the Oscars Rubina up for adoption, demanding millions of rupees worth £200,000.

As he offered the shocking deal to the News of the World’s undercover fake sheik this week, Rafiq declared: “I have to consider what’s best for me, my family and Rubina’s future.”

Rafiq tried to blame Hollywood bosses for forcing him to put his daughter up for SALE. As he tried to fix the illegal adoption deal, real-life slum dweller Rafiq declared: “We’ve got nothing out of this film.”

Mother ?sold her twins to pay for liposuction? – Times Online:

A mother has been accused of selling newborn twin boys for �9,000 to pay for cosmetic surgery. Sonia Ringoir, a 31-year-old restaurant worker from the Belgian tourist haven of Ghent, was arrested and charged last week after the allegations were made by her estranged husband.

Marc Poppe, 48, told an undercover reporter for Dutch television that Ringoir had sold the babies to a friend to fund liposuction, the fat removal procedure. He said the couple had searched the internet to find a quick way of making money: ?It was financially attractive to us. Of course we wouldn?t do it for nothing.?

Since Belgium has no law banning the sale of children, Ringoir has been charged with ?degrading treatment? of the twins. She has also been charged with fraud after a Dutch couple alleged she had conned them by falsely offering to be a surrogate mother. If convicted, she could face between one month and five years in jail.

Girl, 13, who smokes drinks and has sex ‘rewarded’ by mother with cigarettes

A 13-year-old girl who has had four sexual partners, smokes dope, drinks beer and has been excluded from school 40 times is considered “sweet” by her mother and given cigarettes as rewards for good behaviour.

Tracy Holt, 43, says there are a “lot worse things” her daughter Sam could be doing than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and believes that because she herself hasn’t yet suffered from cancer, “she’ll probably be alright anyway”.

She knows her daughter hangs out with friends in the street, drinking cans of lager and smoking pot, but says she is simply glad Sam is not “a proper drunk” and has not graduated to harder drugs.

Mom gets life in prison for microwaving baby

A woman has been sentenced to life in prison without a chance of parole for killing her baby daughter in a microwave oven.

Twenty-eight-year-old China Arnold chose not to be in the courtroom for Monday’s sentencing.

Arnold was convicted of aggravated murder in the 2005 death of month-old daughter Paris Talley.

She was spared the death penalty because jurors could not reach a consensus on the punishment.

Police: Hot Sauce, Beer, Live Snake Used In 2-Year-Old’s Abuse

Police said a Somerset man draped a live snake around his 2-year-old son’s neck, fed him hot sauce, and otherwise abused him for nearly a year.

Jason Flick, 27, is charged with aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of children and related charges. He was arrested Friday and taken to the Somerset County Jail on $25,000 bond.

Mom charged with beating kids on plane

A California mother was charged with beating her children, ages 2 and 4, on a commercial aircraft and interfering with the flight crew.

Tamera Freeman, 38, who appeared in court on Wednesday, was arrested on Monday at Denver International Airport upon her arrival on a Frontier Airlines flight from San Francisco, California.

An FBI affidavit quotes passengers as saying Freeman appeared intoxicated, was abusive with her children before she boarded the plane and repeatedly hit and yelled at them during the flight.

The affidavit also alleges Freeman threw a drink at the feet of a flight attendant and followed her into an aisle yelling and pointing her finger, causing the attendant, who had intervened on the children’s behalf, to feel threatened.

Tot safe after night trapped in car

Two-year-old Adonis Ribott started the night as the fawned-over birthday boy at a party in his honor. He ended it trapped inside a car alone.

The Clifton boy was found dehydrated but safe yesterday morning, nearly nine hours after his father parked his car at an auto body shop and unknowingly left the toddler in the back seat overnight, police said.

Police said the father, Danny Ribot, 32, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child following a bizarre sequence of events that sent the 2-year-old to the hospital and Ribot to jail.

Lawyer: Prosecutors claim parents drugged child over money

Prosecutors believe the parents accused of fatally overdosing their 4-year-old daughter killed the girl because she wasn’t earning them the same amount of government money as her two older siblings, the woman’s defense lawyer said Monday.

Michael Bourbeau, Carolyn Riley’s lawyer, told The Associated Press a prosecutor outlined for him the motive, which he called “a sick theory.”
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“He said they went to this doctor in order to get the drugs and place the child on disability, and when they couldn’t and when Rebecca wasn’t bringing in any money, they killed her,” Bourbeau said.

Aunt’s Whipping of Boy in Class Investigated

Prince George’s County public schools officials are investigating an incident in which the aunt of a second-grader at a county charter school ordered him to remove his pants and underwear and whipped him in front of his teacher and classmates Friday.

Kenneth Jones, principal of Turning Point Academy in Lanham, a charter school founded last year, acknowledged in a letter to the regional superintendent that the incident had taken place. Jones said the aunt would write a letter of apology to the parents of the students in the class.

Girl Lost in Poker Game Pleads for Help

A teenage girl in southern Pakistan, whose late father lost her in a poker game when she was 2 years old, has asked authorities to save her from being handed over to a middle-aged relative.
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Her mother, Nooran said her husband racked up a debt of 10,000 rupees, or $151, to Haider playing cards.

“My husband didn’t have money to pay, and instead he told Lal Haider that he could take Rasheeda when she grows up,” she said.

Despite being paid his money last year, she said Haider still insisted the girl should be given to him because of tribal customs.

New neglect case shocks Austria:

A row has erupted in Austria over three girls who were kept cut off from the outside world by their mother for seven years, Austrian media report.

After the mother’s separation from her husband the girls were reportedly kept in darkness at the family home and lived amid human filth.

Authorities in Poestlingberg near Linz removed the girls from the house and placed them in care in October 2005.

Details of the case only emerged in the Austrian media at the weekend.

As dad plays blackjack, boy is left in brutal cold:

Handcuffed and glowering, Kang Sam Choi stood in a locked courtroom Friday afternoon and heard himself accused of endangering the life of his 4-year-old son by leaving the boy in a parked car on a subzero night while he played blackjack in a casino.

Police say woman left children in cold car while tanning:

A Sheboygan woman was arrested Wednesday after police say she left her two children — one under 2 years old — in the car in subzero wind chills so she could go tanning.Lori Yeager, 27, was arrested about 5:50 p.m. in the 500 block of South Taylor Drive near Taylor Heights Shopping Center, according to the Sheboygan Police Department.

“She said she was going on vacation and apparently felt that the tanning was a priority,” Lt. Jeff Johnston said this morning.