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Teenager repeatedly raped by father

 (AGENCY)

Teenager repeatedly raped by father, Teenage girl 'was raped by her father until she became pregnant to provide child for him and infertile partner', reports Daily Mail.
 
The girl was just 16 when her father forced her to have sex with him every day for a month until she fell pregnant, a British court was informed.
 
The father carried out the incestuous and abusive action in order to provide a child for his new partner, who had been left infertile following a hysterectomy.
 
Daily Mail reported that the girl, who is now 19, gave birth to a baby boy in December 2008 and passed him off as the son of her ex-boyfriend - although she had never slept with him.

 

Is Ronaldo the dad? 

The 34-year-old Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo has recently revealed on Twitter that he has taken a DNA paternity test and is awaiting the results to determine if he is the father of a 5-year-old child named Alexander who lives in Singapore.

The Straits Times reported that guests at a Brazilian embassy reception have questioned Ms Michele Umezu, the boy’s mother, whether the football star is the boy’s father.

"Life is full of surprises. After the sadness over yesterday's game (when his Corinthians team lost out to Fluminense in the Brazilian title race), today I got to know Alex, a beautiful, polite and healthy boy," the player wrote.

"Now we are waiting for the results of the test and will take on the responsibilities and pleasures that the results give us."

Umezu, has been trying since 2009 to have Ronaldo recognised as the father of her son and is demanding child support.

 

Nothing to LOL about

 

(SUPPLIED)

Adults are deliberately dumbing down language... and putting proper English in peril, reports Daily Mail.

Adults mimicking teen-speak should be held responsible for spreading sloppy English, which is putting the future of the language at great risk, an expert told the newspaper.

People's obsession with youth has led to older people trying to talk like teenagers, warned Marie Clair, of the Plain English Campaign.

As a result, it may be too late to ‘turn the tide on our declining English’, said Clair.

"Through Twitter, Facebook and texting, young people create their own language because they don’t want to sound like stuffy adults," the campaigner was quoted by the daily.

It is a worrying trend when adults start mimicking teen-speak and use slang words and forget grammar.

Examples of text speak in common use include LOL for laugh out loud and i luv u instead of I love you. Many shops often carry sale signs which read ‘sale 2day’.

The campaigner attributed the loss of letter-writing in schools as a major factor.
 
 
 
A phone app to write to Santa Claus

(AFP)

The 'All I want from Santa' app allows kids to type their wish list and also alter it if they need to.
 
Writing letters to Santa Claus just got a web 2.0 upgrade this holiday season.

A new software application for phones called All I want from Santa, allows children to create a wish list once they have registered.

They can type in their wish list and even alter it if they need to. Then they can send it straight to Santa or create a letter to Santa in their own words.

Some parents say it could make their Christmas season a little easier.

However, Santas have a different opinion.  "Well, I doubt that it could because that can create the interpersonal magic that occurs when a child looks at Santa."

Each letter and list is archived. So the messages to Santa will be available long after the Christmas season ends.
 
 

'Palinism', 'Obama-mess' among top words for 2011

(AP)

"Palinism" and "Obama-mess" are likely to be among the top global words of 2011, as the United States gears up for its next presidential elections, according to a language monitoring group.

The coming year will also likely be commonly deemed "Twenty-Eleven" as the English-speaking world moves away from disagreement over how to pronounce the first years of the decade, the Global Language Monitor said on Monday.

But the "great recession" is expected to hang around in 2011 as a well-used term while the world economy struggles to right itself.

"Palinism" has been around for a couple of years, used mostly to coin malapropisms from Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin, including her 2010 conflation "refudiate".

According to the UrbanDictionary.com, "Palinism" is also sometimes defined as "other illogical stream of conscious meanderings uttered by Sarah Palin."

Palin, who ran unsuccessfully for vice-president in 2008 as a Republican and is now a conservative political activist, best-selling author and TV star, is pondering whether to run for U.S. president in 2012.

Global Language Monitor president Paul JJ Payack said Americans were thus likely to see and hear more of Palin in 2011, adding that "the media needs an heir to 'Bushisms' and Sarah Palin is the candidate of choice here."

Payack said that "Obama-mess" is expected to be big in 2011. "If (President Barack) Obama regains his magic, he escaped his Obama-mess; if his rating sinks further, he continues to be engulfed by it."

The Texas-based Global Language Monitor has gathered the Top 10 words at the end of each year since 2000, according to citations in the media and on the Internet from throughout the English-speaking world.

"To project possible top words for 2011, we analyzed the categories that we monitor and then chose words from each representative of various world trends," Payack said.

The monitoring group's projected Top Words of 2011 are:

1) Twenty-Eleven - to pronounce the word 2011

2) Obama-mess

3) Great Recession

4) Palinism

5) TwitFlocker - a placeholder for the next big trend following Facebook and Twitter
 
 
 
Facebook rage: Woman smashes laptop with a broom

(REUTERS)

A woman was so fed-up with her boyfriend's Facebook obsession that she smashed his laptop with her broomstick, reports Daily Mail.

Kimberley Hall used the handle of her brush to damage Bruce Yates’s computer after complaining that he used to too much to view the social networking site.

Several keys were sent flying across their house in Gloucester, said the newspaper.

The judge ruled there was not enough evidence be sure beyond reasonable doubt that any unlawful force was used by the husband during the incident.

‘Each party has accepted behaving in a way which they most certainly should not have done in front of young children and the court deprecates the behaviour of both parties in certain aspects of what they acknowledge unfolded in the house that day,’ said the judge in his ruling.

The court had been told that Yates was in the kitchen accessing Facebook on his laptop on May 12th this year when his wife complained about him spending too much time on the social networking site.

She hit the computer with her broom and the couple then got into a scuffle.

According to the prosecution, he broke the broom and hit her with it, injuring her arm, the daily added.

But he maintained that all he did was restrain her from assaulting him by holding her in a 'bear-hug'.
 
 
 
NJ pilot gets probation for toilet paper toss

(REUTERS)

A North Jersey pilot who alarmed people on the ground when he tossed rolls of toilet paper from a small plane has been placed on probation and will have to write a letter of apology.

The Record of Woodland Park reports that 60-year-old Warren Saunders of Westwood entered into the plea agreement Monday with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

He pleaded guilty to dropping objects from an aircraft in a populated area. He'll write a letter to the town's mayor apologizing.

Saunders said he did the drop over the Westwood Middle School athletic fields on October 13 as a test run for a streamer drop he planned to do at a high school football game.

People on a nearby soccer field called police, prompting a large law enforcement response.
 
Conjoined twins born in Panama share heart

Picture used for illustrative purposes only. (REUTERS)

Doctors in Panama say two girls born attached at the abdomen who share the same heart are in intensive care and face a situation with a high mortality rate.

Children's Hospital Director Alberto Bissot says the twins were born early Saturday and also share a pancreas and liver. Bissot said Monday that the girls' heart also has structural abnormalities.

Dr. Honorina Espinosa says the girls' situation is 'very complex.'

This is the second time conjoined twins have been born in Panama in little over a year. In the previous case, twin girls born in August 2009 and were separated but one of them died.  

 
Cell phone exposure linked to bad behaviour in kids: study

(AGENCY)

Pregnant mothers in Denmark who regularly used mobile phones were more likely to have children with behavioural problems, according to a study released Tuesday.

The risk was higher when the kids themselves began using cell phones at a very early age, researchers reported in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Leeka Kheifets of the University of California at Los Angeles and colleagues examined the health records of 28,000 seven-year-olds and their mothers enrolled in the Danish National Birth Cohort.

The survey, which included nearly 100,000 women between 1996 and 2002, was designed to track the long-term health of the children.

Mothers supplied detailed information about their lifestyles, diet and habits during and after pregnancy, including cell phone use.

When their kids reached the age of seven, moms were again quizzed on their own and their children's health and behaviour.

The researchers found that kids who had been exposed to mobile phones both before and after birth were 50 percent more likely to have behavioural problems.

The findings held true even after factors that might have skewed the outcome were taken into account, they said.

Kids exposed to cell phones only while in the womb were 40 percent more likely to show abnormal behaviour, with the percentage dropping to a fifth for children whose first access to the devices occurred after they were born.

The results mirror an earlier study by the researchers of 13,000 other mothers and their kids enrolled in the same national survey.

In both groups, about three percent of the children were found to exhibit abnormal behaviour, with another three percent borderline.

The author cautioned against drawing a straight line between cell phones and difficult children, but said the findings were troublesome.

"Although it is premature to interpret these results as causal, we are concerned that early exposure to cell phones could carry a risk which, if real, would be a public health concern given the widespread use of the technology," they concluded.

 

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