A mom found videos on YouTube Kids that gave children instructions for suicide
Most parents feel pretty safe letting their children watch YouTube Kids, the child-friendly version of the video platform.
But disturbing videos recently found by some moms show the social media site may not be safe for kids at all.
A Florida mother said she has found clips on YouTube and YouTube Kids that gave children instructions on how to kill themselves.
Free Hess said the first time she saw such a video was back in July when another mom alerted her to it after she and her son were watching cartoon videos on YouTube Kids. Spliced in the middle of one of the videos was footage of a man in sunglasses telling children how to slit their wrists.
Hess, a pediatrician, put out a call to action to different groups to report the video to get it removed from the site. Hess said it took YouTube Kids a week to pull it down.
What she saw shocked her
But this month she saw the video again, this time on YouTube. Once again, after the video was flagged by her and others, it took a couple of days for YouTube to pull it, said Hess, who has been writing about the issue on her parenting blog.
“It makes me angry and sad and frustrated,” Hess told CNN. “I’m a pediatrician, and I’m seeing more and more kids coming in with self harm and suicide attempts. I don’t doubt that social media and things such as this is contributing.”
But that’s not all she said she found. When Hess went to YouTube Kids and started exploring the site, what she saw there shocked her. She said she found videos glorifying not only suicide but sexual exploitation and abuse, human trafficking, gun violence and domestic violence. One video, inspired by the popular “Minecraft” video game, even depicted a school shooting.
“There were just so many that I had to stop recording,” she said.
Hess wants YouTube to do a better job of screening videos intended for YouTube Kids. She said she understands that Google (which owns YouTube) is a business and “they might not have the exact goals that I have, but I do want them to respond better when people report offensive videos, and I want offensive things taken down immediately when reported.”
In response to Hess’ allegations, YouTube said in a statement that it works to make the videos on YouTube Kids family-friendly and takes feedback seriously.
“We appreciate people drawing problematic content to our attention, and make it possible for anyone to flag a video,” the statement said. “Flagged videos are manually reviewed 24/7 and any videos that don’t belong in the app are removed.
“We’ve also been investing in new controls for parents including the ability to hand pick videos and channels in the app. We are making constant improvements to our systems and recognize there’s more work to do.”
She says parents need to step up
Hess did say that YouTube is faster about pulling questionable videos from YouTube Kids than from regular YouTube. But she thinks by the time someone reports something, it could have already caused harm.
“Once someone reports it, it’s too late because a kid has already seen it,” she said.
Hess also wants parents to be more aware of what their children are watching on YouTube and YouTube Kids, and for parents to do a better job in general of keeping up with technology.
“There is this disconnect between what kids know about technology and what their parents know because the parents didn’t grow up with it,” she said. “The kids are the digital natives and the parents are digital immigrants.”
Most importantly, she says, parents need to team up with each other to combat this problem.
“We need to fix this,” she said, “and we all need to fix this together.”
FL Cop suspended for letting suspects smoke and perform sex acts in patrol cruiser (small video clip here)
A Florida cop was suspended for nearly three weeks for letting two shoplifting suspects smoke and perform sex acts in the back of a police cruiser, shocking video shows.
Fort Pierce Police Officer Doug McNeal apparently set the mood with Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” playing inside his patrol car when he took suspects Zachary Moellendick, 23, and Krista Leigh, 24, to the St. Lucie County Jail last July, according to an internal affairs report obtained by Treasure Coast Newspapers.
Footage from the officer’s body camera — which was fixed beneath his cruiser’s rearview mirror — shows Moellendick without handcuffs while sipping a beverage in the back seat. He also had a lighter in his pants and a cigarette tucked behind his ear, according to the report.
Moellendick is later recorded cuddling with Leigh after she was placed in the back of the police vehicle without handcuffs, a violation of department policy. The amorous couple is then seen kissing before later fondling each other as White’s 1974 classic blares in the background, video shows.
McNeal then gave the amorous couple permission to smoke in the sally port of the jail.
“We didn’t think we were allowed to smoke in here,” Leigh said.
“Uh, you’re really not, but it’s fine,” McNeal replied.
Moellendick then lit a cigarette without hesitation, according to the footage, which apparently left an impression on another officer in real time.
“I think they’re making babies back there,” the female officer said.
McNeal later told an internal affairs detective that he saw the couple kissing and said he was “fine with it,” according to the report. McNeal, however, denied seeing the couple engaged in any sexual activity.
Moellendick, of Palm Bay, and Leigh, of Melbourne, were taken into custody after allegedly shoplifting at a Walmart in Fort Pierce. Moellendick later pleaded guilty to petty theft and trespassing before being released from jail on Thursday.
Leigh, who pleaded no contest to petty theft, has also been released from custody after being sentenced to time served, according to Treasure Coast Newspapers.
McNeal, who has been employed by the department since 2014, was also disciplined for neglecting to tell dispatchers about his location and failing to report his mileage, WPTV reports.
“Officer McNeal has accepted full responsibility for his actions and understands the seriousness of the policy violations,” Police Chief Diane Hobley-Burney said in a statement to the station. “The conduct of this officer does not represent the values of this department or the dedicated men and women who serve our community with honor every day.”
McNeal’s 20-day suspension without pay took effect on Feb. 14.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/02/25/cop-suspended-for-letting-suspects-get-frisky-in-patrol-cruiser/
Driver dies after cops take him for DUI test instead of hospital
The death of a South Carolina dad is marked by questions as officials try to piece together why he was brought to a police station for a Breathalyzer test instead of a hospital.
Nathaniel Rhodes, a 58-year-old father, collapsed on Aug. 12, 2018, at Charleston Police Headquarters following a traffic accident and died four days later, according to his family’s attorney.
His relatives are now demanding authorities investigate whether protocol was followed when Rhodes was taken off a stretcher and taken to the police department.
The police report stated Rhodes claimed to have “no injuries that would stop him from completing tests” — but the law firm representing his family told The Post that he never signed a form refusing treatment.
The release was provided to The Post and showed an officer’s signature on the line for the patient.
“After he was put on a stretcher and put in an ambulance for transport to the hospital for medical treatment, a CPD officer fraudulently signed a ‘Refusal to Transport’ form on Rhodes’ behalf so the officer could conduct a field sobriety test,” Ryan Julison with Bamberg Legal said Monday.
“The officer then ordered that Rhodes be removed from the stretcher, taken off the ambulance and transported to the police station rather than the hospital,” attorneys said.
Rhodes’ family alleges he had eight broken ribs, internal injuries and a ruptured liver while he was being booked. Surveillance footage from the police station showed the dad in distress.
“While at the station Rhodes complained that he was in severe pain,” the law firm said. “His pleas apparently weren’t taken seriously as video captured one of the EMT’s who was supposed to be caring for Rhodes doing a dance and commenting how he (the EMT) ‘looked good on camera.’ ”
His loved ones claim the delay taking him to the hospital proved to be fatal.
“The family alleges that poisonous toxins could have been flooding his bloodstream while he sat at the police station,” attorneys said. “By the time Rhodes was actually transported to the hospital, it was too late.”
Photo Credit: Nathaniel Rhodes – Courtesy of Bamberg Legal
Mom forced healthy 5-year-old to use feeding tube, wheelchair
A healthy 5-year-old boy was allegedly forced to use a wheelchair and feeding tube as his mom collected his disability checks, according to officials.
Teresa Lynne Roth, of Georgia, is accused of faking her son’s illnesses over the course of two years and putting him on 28 unnecessary medications, news station WSBTV reported.
Deputies arrested the mom at her Gainesville home Thursday following a four-month investigation.
“Between January 2016 and October 2018, Mrs. Roth did cause her son unnecessary physical and mental pain by subjecting him to undergo unnecessary medical treatments and medications, jeopardizing his well-being,” Hall County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Scott Ware told WSBTV.
The child was allegedly strapped to an oxygen tank, used a feeding tube and confined to a wheelchair, officials said.
“It’s messed up, you know? It’s not normal,” Ware told the news station.
Roth faces first-degree charges for child cruelty. She remains in custody on $16,700 bond, according to court records.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/02/25/mom-forced-healthy-5-year-old-to-use-feeding-tube-wheelchair-cops/
Trump Calls Spike Lee’s Oscar Speech a ‘Racist Hit on Your President’
Article via NYTimes
On Sunday night, Spike Lee won his first competitive Oscar, then made an acceptance speech that gained a standing ovation. But the events did not please at least one person apparently watching: President Trump. On Monday, he called Lee’s speech a “racist hit on your President.”
Lee opened his speech, after winning best adapted screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman,” by discussing slavery and his family’s experiences of it. “I give praise to our ancestors, who have built this country into what it is today along with the genocide of the native people,” he said.
“The 2020 presidential election is around the corner,” Lee said. “Let’s all mobilize. Let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate.”
[Read our analysis of the ceremony.]
Lee did not mention the president in his speech, but that call to action seems to have angered him. “Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President,” Trump said in a tweet in the early hours of Monday morning.
The president’s policies had “done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts, etc.) than almost any other Pres!” the president added.
Trump did not dwell on the issue for long. Shortly afterward he tweeted about “oil prices getting too high,” and a forthcoming meeting with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea (“With complete Denuclearization, North Korea will rapidly become an Economic Powerhouse,” he wrote).
[Read Lee’s speech here.]
Theo Dumont, Lee’s publicist, said the director would not be commenting on Trump’s tweet.
“BlacKkKlansman” is based on the story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. In interviews around its release, Lee said he wanted to draw a link between the Klan and events today. “We had to connect David Duke to Agent Orange,” he told The New York Times, using his own term for the president.
At the end of “BlacKkKlansman,” Lee included footage of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that descended into violence when protesters clashed with counterprotesters. He then showed footage of Trump saying there was blame on “both sides” for those events.
When “Green Book” won best picture at the ceremony on Sunday, Lee made a disgusted gesture and started walking out of the theater as “Green Book” producers gave their speeches. Backstage, when asked by reporters about the coronation of “Green Book,” which detractors complain has a retrograde view of race, Lee replied, “No comment.”
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Editor Backs KKK, Gives His Job to a Black Woman
Last week, he wanted the Ku Klux Klan to “night ride again.” Friday, he gave up his job to a black woman. Welcome to the strange month of Goodloe Sutton, who will retain ownership of the Democrat-Reporter of Linden, Alabama, but apparently gave editorial control to employee Elecia Dexter, the AP reports. “This is everybody’s paper,” says Dexter, 46, of the hand-over. “I think it can be helpful.” The move follows a shocking editorial in which Sutton, 80, criticized Democrats for “plotting to raise taxes” and wrote, “Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there. … Truly, they are the ruling class.” The editorial triggered an intense backlash from lawmakers who called on him to resign and the Alabama Press Association, which censured him, per AL.com, but Sutton refused to apologize.
He doubled down in an interview published Monday by the Montgomery Advisor: “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out DC we’d all been better off,” he said. “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.” Now he’s made Dexter (who says she was hired only this year) the newspaper’s publisher and editor: “Over the past 10 years, she has been a strategic leader with expertise in human resources, operations and change management,” the paper says in a press release. Sutton is aiming to sell the $1 weekly, which has been in his family for decades and has a circulation of 3,000. As for the editorial, still no regrets: “It got me about $10 million in free publicity,” he says. “I know I would do it all over again.”
via: http://www.newser.com/story/271701/editor-backs-kkk-gives-his-job-to-a-black-woman.html
R. Kelly Sex Tape Screenshots Tweeted Out By Attorney Michael Avenatti
Article via HotNewHipHop
Michael Avenatti says the visual proof “leaves no question” in Kelly’s guilt.
R. Kelly is facing 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against four alleged victims. The case built against the singer is strong, according to attorney Michael Avenatti, who is currently representing six clients including two alleged victims, two parents and two “whistleblowers.”
Avenatti recently tweeted screenshots from the sex tape that led to R. Kelly’s arrest on Friday, February 22. The will not be included on this page due to their sensitive nature. After receiving criticism for having published the content, Avanetti defended his decision. “These are all of R. Kelly. No minor is depicted or shown,” he stated, shortly after sharing the screenshots.
“The tape was shot in the late ‘90s, approximately 1999, it depicts two separate scenes shot on two separate days within Mr. Kelly’s residence at the time,” Avenatti explained. “The audio on the tape, you can clearly listen to it — it is clear — the video is far superior to the video that was used in connection to the 2008 trial. It is an entirely different video.” In this new video, R. Kelly is believed to repeatedly “refer to the victim’s age as 14” over 10 separate times.
“I expect R Kelly to also face federal charges in the coming weeks/months. These charges will be distinct from the crimes for which he was charged yesterday and will result in a separate criminal proceeding,” Avanetti wrote earlier today. “Ultimately, R Kelly will rightly spend his remaining days in prison.”
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With women in combat roles, a federal court rules the male-only draft unconstitutional
Article via USAToday
The ruling comes as an 11-member commission is studying the future of the draft, including whether women should be included or whether there should continue to be draft registration at all.
The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service released an interim report last month giving no hints on where it would come down on those issues. But commission chairman Joe Heck told USA TODAY, “I don’t think we will remain with the status quo.”
The government had argued that the court should delay its ruling until that commission makes its recommendations. But Miller said Congress has been debating the issue since 1980, and the commission’s final report won’t come until next year. And because the commission is advisory, there’s no guarantee that Congress will act, he said.
Miller said Congress has never fully examined the issue of whether men are physically better able to serve than women. In fact, he noted in a footnote, “the average woman could conceivably be better suited physically for some of today’s combat positions than the average man, depending on which skills the position required. Combat roles no longer uniformly require sheer size or muscle.”
Quoting the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning bans on same-sex marriage, Miller ruled that restrictions based on gender “must substantially serve an important governmental interest today.“
The judge denied the government’s request for a stay of the ruling, and Justice Department officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But the ruling came in the form of a declaratory judgment and not an injunction, meaning that the court didn’t specifically order the government how to change Selective Service to make it constitutional.
“Yes, to some extent this is symbolic, but it does have some real-world impact,” said Marc Angelucci, the lawyer for the men challenging the draft. “Either they need to get rid of the draft registration, or they need to require women to do the same thing that men do.”
Teen girls, ages 14 and 15, charged after allegedly robbing a bank
FALL RIVER, Mass. (Meredith/AP) — Two teenage girls in Massachusetts have been charged after police say they allegedly robbed a bank.
Fall River police say a 14-year-old girl walked into a BayCoast Bank branch in the city on Wednesday afternoon and told a teller she would “blow everything up and kill everybody” if the teller did not hand over cash.
A bank employee handed the girl an “undetermined” amount of money and she left.
The girl was seen on surveillance video getting into a black Toyota Camry outside the bank allegedly driven by a 15-year-old girl.
Police got a look at the license plate and traced the car to a home in the city where they found the girls.
Both are charged with armed robbery. Their names were not released because of their ages.
Man Returns Home, Finds Stranger and Kids Living There
Kent Foster says he knew something was wrong the instant he returned to his house in Union, South Carolina, last week.
A dog he’d never seen before was in his yard — and a car seat was barricading his front door, he told local Fox affiliate WHNS.
He wasn’t sure what was going on. Then he heard a baby cry.
Moments later, a woman he was unfamiliar with poked her head out the door and asked, “What are you doing at my house?” Foster said.
“I said, ‘Excuse me?’ I said, ‘I live here.’”
Standing outside his house while the woman remained inside with the door shut, Foster immediately called 911.
When police arrived, the woman opened the door and said, “Can I help you?” Foster recalled.
He replied to the woman, “Yeah, the first thing you can do is leave my house.”
The length of time from which Foster had been away from the house was not immediately clear, Union Public Safety Captain Kevin Powers tells PEOPLE.
The woman, identified by police as Savannah Rhinehart, 25, left the house – wearing Foster’s wife’s clothes from head to toe, he said. Two children came out wearing his children’s clothing.
The dog he saw had urinated in the house and the family that had allegedly moved into his clean home had trashed it, he said, even eating his food.
After being taken to the hospital to be evaluated, Rhinehart was arrested and charged with burglary, neglect of a child and petty larceny, Powers tells PEOPLE.
Authorities do not know exactly why she allegedly moved into the home or chose that house.
“I spoke to the officer who responded who said that in her mind she thought she lived there,” Powers tells PEOPLE.
Rhinehart’s two children were placed in emergency protective custody, he says.
Foster said he still cannot believe someone actually moved into his house while he was gone.
“I feel violated,” he tells WHNS. “I feel extremely violated.”
Rhinehart has not yet entered a plea. It is unclear whether she had retained an attorney to speak on her behalf.