W![[IMG: needles]](images/needles.jpg)
hen a two-year-old boy in in rural Tarapoto, Peru, began suffering
abdominal distress, x-rays revealed that he'd swallowed eight sharp
pieces of metal, which had become lodged everywhere from within the
abdominal wall to beside his rectum. Surgeon Efrain Salazar reported
that the operation to retrieve them - and close a few extra holes -
revealed the objects to be medical needles, used to vaccinate farm
animals where his mother works. After the successful surgery, she
mused that 'maybe he swallowed them when he was there playing'.
Canada's Amira and Nadya Gill are 25-year-old sisters who earned fame
for selling face masks designed by indigenous artists after completing
a university education largely funded by Inuit organisations. What
they are not is Inuit, according to the Inuk woman they had cited as
their birth mother. The Gills and their actual mother, 59-year-old
Karima Manji, face two counts of fraud each for swindling two local
organisations and three national ones out of scholarships and other
benefits between 2016 and 2022.
One of the former plans to begin requiring applicants to provide a
copy of their long-form birth certificate, and the Royal Bank of
Canada, among the latter, has decided that 'self-identifying as
indigenous' is no longer sufficient.
Not long after the Norfolk, Nebraska, emergency services received reports of an illegal bull ride within city limits, police officers spotted the relevant animal - the Watusi bull Howdy Doody, a passenger in Lee Meyer's specially modified Ford Crown Victoria. According to Police Captain Chad Reiman, it wasn't clear why Meyer had eschewed his usual trailer in favour of the car he normally reserves for parades, a roofless, cattle-gate-equipped variant. Nonetheless, Reiman let him off with a warning, simply ordering him to drive back home.
Let's return to the operating room for a moment. This one was in New
Zealand, where surgeons identified the cause of a woman's 18-month
postpartum battle with severe abdominal pain: the 11 Auckland medics
performing her Caesarean section had left behind a soft-plastic wound
retractor 'the size of a dinner plate'.
Taking issue with district health authorities' claims that the
system had not failed, national Health and Disability Commissioner
Morag McDowell said: 'It is self-evident that the care provided fell
below the appropriate standard', stressing that the staff had no
explanation. After its staff left a swab inside a woman in 2018, the
hospital responsible instituted a 'count policy'. So perhaps they
merely have poor subtraction skills: they had swapped out a smaller
retractor for a larger one (half of which normally remains outside
the patient but removed only one in total.
Israel's cops have arrested visiting New York rabbi Yosef Mordechai
Paryzer for establishing concurrent sexual relationships with multiple
women by posing online with fake names and background details (claims
that he trains guide dogs for the blind etc.). Mid-row, the married
Paryzer, 35, told one woman the real names of two fellow conquests.
Comparing notes led to criminal complaints of 'rape by deception',
and at least 30 women have now been identified as fraud victims.
Paryzer's attorney argues that 'dating apps are full of lies, every
adult knows this, so anyone claiming these were serious relationships
lacks logic and common sense'.
'Do as I say, not as I do' might be a suitable motto for Utah mother
Ruby Franke's 2.5-million-subscriber parenting-advice YouTube channel
8 Passengers... if she continues it in the wake of her son's escape.
Despite duct tape and severe malnourishment, the 12-year-old climbed
out a window of Franke's home and begged a neighbour for help. Not
much later, he was joined in hospital by his emaciated 10-year-old
sister, newly freed from the home of Franke's business partner, Jodi
Nan Hildebrandt. Both women have been arrested, and two further
children have been taken into care or placed with alternative family
members.
Franke's adult daughter, Shari, responded: 'We've been trying to
tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally
decided to step up.' Alongside Franke's strict parenting advice,
Hildebrandt's pronouncements had been on the radar for a while: she
nearly lost her licence to be a 'pornography-addiction therapist' after
unauthorised public comments about a patient.
A 27-year-old British Columbia man 'offended on behalf of the military' rang Canada's Trail and Greater District RCMP to report a civilian for wearing camouflage trousers in public. The caller requested that officers find the man downtown and remove his trousers. According to Sergeant Mike Wicentowich, the complainant was informed that forced trouser-removal would be illegal assault. While officers kept their eyes open for the subject of the complaint, the camouflage meant that they 'unsurprising[ly] couldn't find him'.
Finding several under-twos at her New York City nursery ill, Grei
Mendez rang her husband, then 911. Shortly after he had lugged away
a few bulging carrier bags, medical personnel began treating some of
her charges for an inhalation-based fentanyl overdose. This was too
late for Nicholas Dominici, who had been at Divino Niño only a week.
Officers found a kilo of fentanyl under mats in the nap room, along
with three presses allegedly used for packaging drugs, whereupon cops
arrested Mendez and her tenant, a cousin of her now-missing husband.
While Mendez's 'only crime', according to her lawyer, 'was renting her
room to someone who had a kilo', Manhattan US Attorney Damien Williams
alleges that the two 'poisoned four babies, and killed one of them,
because they were running a drug operation from a daycare centre'.
City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan commented on a snap inspection
made 10 days prior: 'I'm very sorry, but one of the things that my
child-care inspectors are not trained to do is look for fentanyl.'
A 15-year-old student in Manchester had been advised to show up early
for her GCSE English exam, but the gates of Whalley Range High School
were locked when her father, delivery driver Hussein Alinzi, arrived
to drop her off. The 59-year-old father of seven concluded that she'd
planned to meet with a boy. She was even wearing make-up. So he began
beating her with the metal bar he kept under his seat for protection.
After regaining consciousness, she entered the exam hall, but the
dizzy teen ultimately was ushered out and admitted to A&E, where
medics found evidence of past beatings and bitings. These turned out
to be why she'd been wearing cosmetics, on her mother's advice.
Manchester Crown Court handed Alinzi suspended prison time, 80 hours
of unpaid work, and 25 'rehabilitation activity days' after the girl
stressed that, notwithstanding his death threats etc., she loves him,
regretted shaming her family, and has a brother who needs a father.
Our final item comes from Britain's Chapel St Leonard's, where police sirens were set to wailing after dog-walkers bound for the North Sea Observatory spotted the results of a ritual mass murder in a community space. The Seascape Cafe later reassured members of the public that 'someone [...] having seen several people laying on the floor [...] reported a mass killing in our building. Which actually turned out to be the yoga class in meditation'. This came as news to yoga teacher Millie Laws - by the time the cops descended on the scene, the group had dispersed.