It may make sense that certain public displays of affection should be off limits for junior high students, but a ban on hugs?

It has come to that at an Arizona school district, where administrators are taking a hard line on student-to-student embraces.

Mesa Public Schools always had rules against public displays of affection by students, but the administrators recently took additional steps to remind students what types of hugs and other activities, such as kissing, are unacceptable.

"We really don't want students having inappropriate behavior in the hallways," Kathy Bariess, a school administrator, told the TV station, which reports that students who hug longer than two seconds will be broken up.

Parents are split over the school district's policy, while students at Shepherd Junior High School staged a protest over the hugging ban.

Imagine giving birth to an 18-inch baby. That would be hard enough for the average-sized female, but for Stacey Herald, who is 2-feet, 4-inches tall, it was an amazing task.

The Guinness Book of World Records is investigating Herald’s claim that she is the smallest woman to ever give birth to such a large baby.

Herald, 33, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disorder that causes bones to break easily.

She gave birth five weeks ago to baby Makaia, who is unaffected by the disorder and will grow to an average size. However, Herald’s 16-month-old daughter, Katira, also suffers from the disorder.

“My whole life I've been told that I wasn't able to have children, (and) I would not live through the pregnancy – that with the size of my torso, the baby would grow up underneath my lungs and smother out my lungs and my heart, and we would both die” .

“Something inside me just didn't believe that.” Doctors originally told Herald she should abort Katira, but Herald, and her husband Wil refused.

If you were born in a leap year and February 29, how can you celebrate your birthday? You can do it once in every four years. Hey you are at least saving money! Down side is watching others celebrating their birthday every year; that may become painful.

You could do it one day earlier or one day later for non leap years. But thats not your birthday after all.

You may not wanna get in a fight with the cook. They may feed you stuffs you would never wanna eat!

A Wisconsin restaurant cook is out of a job and facing a felony charge after being accused of hiding hairs in a ribeye because a customer complained the first steak served to him was overcooked.

Kevin Hansen, who dined at the steakhouse with friends and family Saturday, said he ordered a 16-ounce ribeye cooked medium rare, with a warm, red center, according to the criminal complaint filed against cook Ryan Kropp.

When restaurant service manager Michael Liberatore stopped by the table, Hansen told him the steak was cooked medium, not medium rare.

Hansen declined an offer of a new steak, but Liberatore persisted and offered a new steak he could take home, the complaint said.

Liberatore then took what was left of the first steak and showed it to Kropp and the other cook on duty "so that they could both learn what a medium rare steak was supposed to look like," the complaint said.

Hansen went to police Sunday to complain of hair in the second steak. A police officer observed "several strands of what appeared to be hair coming out of the middle of the steak," the complaint said.

Kropp, 24, of West Bend, was charged Wednesday with a felony of placing foreign objects in edibles, carrying up to 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He was released on a signature bond.

Kropp admitted to police he put a few of his facial hairs on the steak, saying he was angry the customer sent the other steak back and thought he was "just trying to get free stuff," according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, a second kitchen worker told police Kropp put a slit in the steak and pushed something inside, then stated, "These are my pubes," referring to pubic hair.

Travis Doster, a spokesman for the Texas Roadhouse chain of 288 restaurants in 44 states, said Thursday night that Kropp and the other worker were both terminated.

"Food safety is our number one priority and we will not allow anyone to compromise that," Doster said. "As a company, we're not only shocked, we're angry that someone would pull such a reckless stunt as putting facial hair in a steak."

He said the West Bend restaurant has an excellent inspection record. "I just feel for the staff because they really work hard, and one silly stupid stunt impacts everybody," he said.

Kropp has a hearing scheduled March 26 in Washington County Circuit Court. 

A university professor allegedly caught in a Saudi-style honey trap has been sentenced to 180 lashes and eight months in jail — for having coffee with a girl.

The man, a prominent and well-respected Saudi teacher of psychology at Umm al-Qra University in the holy city of Mecca, was framed by the religious police after he angered some of their members at a training course, his lawyer said.

The academic has not been named by the local media, which have given his case wide coverage, but one senior Saudi journalist told The Times he was Dr. Abu Ruzaiz, a married man in his late 50s with children.

“He is highly respected and above-board. Nobody believes the religious police’s version of what happened. The whole of Jeddah (the main city near Mecca) is in uproar about this. Everyone believes he is innocent and was set up,” the journalist said.

Contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited in the desert kingdom where religious police, commonly known as mutaween, patrol public places in teams to enforce their brand of ultra-conservative Islam.

Usually bearded and often wielding canes, they ensure women are not harassed, sexes do not mix and shops close for prayers. They are under the command of the Saudi Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Abdullah Al-Sanousi, the academic’s lawyer, told local newspapers that his client had drawn the ire of some of the Commission’s staffers for speaking at length during a training session about how important it was for them to be polite to the public. Some of the trainees also wanted revenge because they had failed the course while others were not happy with their examination results.

Ruzaiz is said to have received a call from a girl purporting to be one of his students who asked to meet to discuss a problem that she did not want to talk about over the phone. The professor agreed to meet at a family cafe, provided she brought her brother along as a chaperone.

When he arrived, he was surprised to find the girl alone, and was promptly surrounded by religious policemen who handcuffed him and hauled him into custody. He was accused of being in a state of khulwa — seclusion — with an unrelated woman.

His lawyer insisted that because the two met in a public place frequented by hundreds of families, the question of khulwa, or illegal seclusion, never arose. The commission, however, insists that the family sections at coffee shops and restaurants are meant only for families and close relatives.

The professor is said to have taped a later conversation with the girl in which she admitted that she had been sent to the cafe by the religious police. The professor is relying on an appeals court to overturn the verdict. His lawyer has urged local human rights associations to back his plea for reviewing the case.

A spokesman for the Commission in Mecca denied that his officials had conspired against the professor. “They are honourable people and would not create such a trap for any kind of personal revenge,” Ahmad Kasim Al-Ghamdi, told Arab News, a local paper.

The controversial case is the latest of several involving the often over zealous religious police that brought widespread international coverage that has embarrassed the Saudi authorities.

Kim Howells, the British Minister for Middle East Affairs, raised the issue of human rights with the Saudi authorities during a visit to the Kingdom this week. “He also mentioned certain high profile cases that have made international headlines recently,” a British official told The Times.

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and mother-of-three was recently thrown in jail for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop.

In another high-profile case, an illiterate Saudi woman is hoping that King Abdullah will spare her life after she was condemned to death for “witchcraft.” Her accusers included a man who claimed that the woman, Fawzi Falih, had made him impotent with her sorcery.

An international human rights group said Falih — who faces being publicly beheaded — was allegedly beaten by religious police and forced into fingerprinting a false confession.

Prosecutors are currently investigating 57 young men arrested last week for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca. They were accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to catch the attention of girls. The men insisted they were just trying to “have fun” without “imposing themselves” on the women.

And a teenaged victim of a gang rape was sentenced last year to 200 lashes and six years in jail for having been in an unrelated man’s car at the time. She was pardoned by King Abdullah, although he maintained the sentence had been fair.

A nanny in Westfield, New Jersy says she drugged two toddlers.

Jennifer Wolff pleaded guilty to third-degree child endangerment Wednesday and faces up to 180 days in jail under a deal with prosecutors. The 24-year-old had faced up to 10 years in prison under the original charges.

Wolff told the court she was tired and worried that she might not be able to handle the 3- and 1-year-old boys.

Wolff said she spiked their juice with an anti-allergy sedative.

Prosecutors said the children's mother because suspicious when she tasted the juice and one of her son's referred to his "medicine bottle."

An Atlanta, Georgia man was arrested for murder after he allegedly shot and killed a motorcyclist who he said was following his teenage daughters home from a Target store.

Richard Harold Gear's two daughters, ages 17 and 19, called their 45-year-old father from their cell phones to tell him they were being followed.

When they got home their father was at the end of their driveway with a pistol.

Gear allegedly shot his .40-caliber semiautomatic gun two or three times at Bryan Joseph Mough, 21, after he drove past the house, turned around and made another pass.

The teens said they made obscene gestures at Mough after he cut them off, adding at one point he ran into their car.

Police said there is evidence of a collision between the vehicle and the motorcycle, but they haven't been to determine who initiated it.


PIC: Richard Gear