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29 March 2024

Crazy World: Teacher fired for relieving in class

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NEW JERSEY: A second-grade teacher has been fired for insubordination and inappropriate behavior, including urinating in his northern New Jersey classroom.

Ron Tuitt had taught in Paterson's schools since 1996.

State Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf approved removing Tuitt's tenure protection and firing him on April 18.

The state found the teacher once urinated in a classroom trash can, sometimes urinated in a plastic bottle and asked students to take his waste to the boys' bathroom and flush it, and let students sit in his motorized wheelchair.

Tuitt denied some of the charges and told the state that others were because he was ill and his principal removed some accommodations.

Cerf says any changes were not an excuse for his behavior. (AP)

Woman who found baby on beach is baby's mom

HAWAII: A day after a woman reported finding an abandoned newborn crying in the sand on a Hawaii beach, police arrested her and revealed she's the baby's mother.

Keala Simeona, 21, of Honolulu, was arrested Tuesday for filing a false police report. Police don't expect to pursue additional offenses at this time. She posted $250 bail and was released.

She had told police she was parked at Sandy Beach in east Honolulu sometime between 11:30 p.m. Sunday and midnight when she heard several people screaming. After the screaming stopped, she said, she walked toward the ocean and found the naked newborn and took her to a hospital.

It's up to Family Court to decide whether to return the child to her family or whether parental rights will be terminated, the state Department of Human Services said in a statement. An initial hearing is scheduled for Monday.

To determine parentage, the department plans to ask the court to order the mother to submit to DNA testing. It will also seek DNA testing for the father, if a father is identified.

Department Director Patricia McManaman said Monday that the full-term, 8-pound baby was born immediately before she was found. However, officials couldn't pinpoint an exact time of birth. The baby was doing well and drinking formula at the hospital, McManaman said, while police investigated the case as child abandonment.

A woman who answered the phone at Simeona's home identified herself as her sister said she wasn't home.

A spokeswoman for the human services department said officials had just learned about Simeona's arrest and didn't yet have any comment. The department had planned to file a petition this week with family court, seeking custody if no family came forward to claim the baby.

Human services officials are informally calling her Baby Sandy. (AP)

Baby name ban list

NZ: New Zealand officials released a list of baby names put forward by parents that were rejected because they were too bizarre or offensive, including "Lucifer" and "Mafia No Fear".

The list of 77 names reveals one child was set to be called "Anal" before the Department of Internal Affairs vetoed the proposal, while another narrowly avoided being dubbed "." or full stop.

Other names on the list included "4Real", "V8", and "Queen Victoria".

In some cases, parents appeared to have lost any inspiration for coming up with a moniker for their offspring, wanting to call the latest addition to the family simply "2nd", "3rd" or "5th".

The department's rules forbid any name that might imply a child holds an official title or rank, so "King", "Duke" and "Princess" were among those that had been turned down most since 2001.

"Justice" was the most popular, having been rejected 62 times, although "Justus" and "Juztice" also failed to gain official approval.

In 2008, New Zealand's family court ordered that a nine-year-old girl whose parents had called her "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii" should have her name changed because it was embarrassing and "makes a fool of the child".

At the time, judge Rob Murfitt criticised parents who gave their children bizarre names, citing examples such as "Number 16 Bus Shelter", "Midnight Chardonnay" and twins called "Benson" and "Hedges". (AFP)

Starving settlers turned to cannibalism in 1609

VIRGINIA: Settlers at Virginia's Jamestown Colony resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter of 1609, dismembering and consuming a 14-year-old English girl, the U.S. Smithsonian Institution reported on Wednesday.

This is the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas, according to the Washington-based museum and research complex.

A recent excavation at the historic site revealed not just the remains of dogs, cats and horses eaten by settlers during the cold "Starving Time" of that year, but also the bones of a girl known to researchers simply as "Jane."

Jane probably was part of a relatively prosperous household, possibly a gentleman's daughter or maidservant, said Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, who analyzed her bones after they were found by Preservation Virginia, a private nonprofit group.

Her back molars had not yet erupted, putting her age around 14 years, and there was a lot of nitrogen in her bones, indicating she ate a meat-rich English diet, Owsley said in a telephone interview.

It is not known whether Jane was killed or died of natural causes. The Smithsonian said there is no evidence of murder.

After her death, in a year when many Jamestown colonists starved, Jane's body was hacked apart by a butcher or butchers who barely knew what they were doing. She may have been chosen because others in her household were already dead and there was no one to bury her, Owsley said.

UNSKILLED CHOPPING

"There was very clear post-mortem dismemberment that involved chops to the forehead, chops to the back of the head that cracked the skull open," the scientist said.

"A puncture to the left side of the head was used to essentially lever and open the ... head to remove the brain. There are cuts all over the face and on the mandible, inside as well as out."

By 1609, Owsley said, the settlement was effectively operating under siege, with many of the male colonists killed by hostile Native Americans after venturing out.

Those who remained inside Jamestown's confines were often women, children and the sick. Those who dismembered Jane might well have been women, he said.

The cuts were "very tentative, hesitant," Owsley said. "This is not someone who's skilled in terms of kitchen work or butchery, and yet they know, out of sheer need, that this is what they have to do."

The brain, tongue, cheeks and leg muscles appear to have been eaten, with the brain probably consumed first because it decomposes soon after death, the Smithsonian said in an online announcement.

Scholars have speculated that extreme drought, hostile relations with the local Powhatan Confederacy and a lost supply ship made the Jamestown colonists desperate enough to eat humans. Writings had suggested it, but no hard physical evidence existed until now.

William Kelso, lead archeologist on the project, and his team discovered the girl's remains last summer.

"We found a deposit of refuse that contained butchered horse and dog bones," Kelso said. "That was only done in times of extreme hunger. As we excavated, we found human teeth and then a partial human skull." (Reuters)

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)

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