A young Palestinian woman who was imprisoned for 10 years in a series of dark rooms by her father, said she survived the ordeal by listening to the radio, dreaming of seeing sunshine again and finding small pleasure in an apple she was fed each day.
Baraa Melhem, 20, said she was enjoying her first taste of freedom after a decade of isolation and threats of rape and abuse, and she hopes to use her experience to help others.
“I have joy now. My life has begun,” the young woman, dressed in red sweat pants, white shoes, a black shawl for warmth and a headscarf, told the Associated Press.
The war is not over between Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell yet.
The British pop star has reportedly told friends that she wants the reality show mogul to stop using her name to publicise his TV shows.
Apparently, she's turned down his offers to return to The X Factor or join the Britain's Got Talent panel after she was shamefully axed from The XFactor USA.
"There's absolutely no chance in hell Cheryl will even consider doing Britain's Got Talent," the supposed insider told Metro. "She's not even willing to discuss it. She's turned it down before.
"Simon knows by mentioning her it will get publicity for his shows. She's fed up. Cheryl's walked away from it all and moved forward."
They added: "Simon keeps dragging it up and her name. Cheryl's in a great place right now and has always said that music is her main focus... The XFactor is history for her now."
Marilyn Monroe spent her last night alive at Frank Sinatra’s lodge with a Mafia boss, according to extraordinary new claims.
Marilyn Monroe with Frank Sinatra at a casino. A new account claims she spent the night before her death at his retreat in Lake Tahoe.
The Hollywood actress is said to have spent the evening with Sam Giancana after taking the singer’s private jet to Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. There the gangster – with whom she was allegedly in love – apparently tried to persuade her not to go public about her affair with President John F Kennedy. She flew home to Los Angeles early the following morning and was found dead that night. Later a coroner ruled that the death was a ‘probable’ suicide.
The claims are the first time that any mention has been made of such a trip in the days before Monroe died in 1962. If true, they would rewrite the final act in the actress’s life and raise fresh questions about her death. The disclosure was made by George Masters, Monroe’s hair and make-up stylist, in recordings he made a month before his death in 1998. The cassette tapes were found by his nephew, Jeff Platts, and have now been made public. In a frail voice, Mr Masters can be heard on the recordings saying: ‘The night before she died, the last time I saw her, was in Lake Tahoe at the Cal-Neva Lodge. She was there with Sam Giancana, who was the head of the Mafia.’
Monroe and Mr Masters apparently flew back to Los Angeles where he dropped her off at her home around 9am on Sunday August 5 1962. It has been documented that Monroe was at Sinatra’s lodge two weekends before her death, but now it appears that she was called back for a one-to-one chat with Giancana, a friend of Sinatra. Mr Platts, 60, a sales consultant from California, said: ‘What if this trip George talks about was a last-ditch effort to get her to agree not to talk [about the Kennedys]? ‘What if Sam Giancana said, “Look, Frank, you didn’t get it done. She’ll listen to me. Let’s bring her back again so I can have a shot at it”. ‘George specifically told me that Marilyn spent the evening with Sam Giancana. The only other person he mentioned that was there was [singer] Buddy Greco. ‘No Frank Sinatra, no Dean Martin. George also said that the person she was really in love with at that moment was Sam Giancana.’
Following Monroe’s death a host of conspiracy theories emerged, but on the tapes Masters is clear about the reason why he believed she died. ‘It was because of the Kennedys. I really think the FBI did it,’ he says. Masters also appears to confirm the theory that Monroe was moved around before she died. ‘Did you know she was pronounced dead, and then they brought her back to the house, and she was still alive, and they took her back to the hospital, and brought her back home, and then the coroners came over, and they found her dead in another bed – somebody moved her,’ he says.
A 64-year-old art teacher who punched a student several times in the face after he allegedly called her obscene names and backed her against a wall has been cleared.
The teacher’s second punch gets the student on the jaw and his head swings back
Though Sandra Hadsock, of Hernando County, was originally charged with child abuse and can be seen clearly punching the student in the video, the State Attorney’s Office has decided not to file criminal charges, saying it is not clear whether she wasn’t acting in self-defense.
The video, taken by one of the other students in the classroom, shows the teenager towering over the teacher at the wall.
SEE THE VIDEO HERE
The mother-of-two can then be seen swinging at the teen, just missing his jaw. She takes another shot, gripping his jacket collar as she does and catches him on the jaw.
Her punch is so powerful, the student’s head snaps back and the rest of the students in the classroom can be heard screaming and shouting with one saying: ‘Oh my God! He didn’t do anything. You can’t punch him in the face.’
Mrs Hadsock replies: ‘He pushed into me.’
The student is then heard saying: ‘I didn’t touch her. You guys saw that, right? I didn’t touch her.’
It was reported at the time that the 64-year-old’s assault gave the teen a cut lip and she was arrested on a single count of child abuse.
According to the St Petersburg Times, prosecutor Brian Trehy said the video doesn’t provide conclusive evidence that the 64-year-old veteran teacher wasn’t acting in self-defense when she swung at the student.
He said that students who witnessed the incident said the teen made contact first and the teacher was responding to that.
‘You couldn’t put a piece of paper between them,’ Mr Trehy said. ‘You can’t tell if he actually made contact, but it’s certainly reasonable to believe that it could have happened.’
Mrs Hadsock told the Times: ‘It was the right thing to do. I was defending myself, and he made the right decision.’
She claims that the student licked a classroom window and left saliva and refused to clean it up when asked, so she told him to go to the principal’s office.
It was then that he launched a verbal assault on her and called her a f***ing c*** and then walked towards her.
The 64-year-old’s attorney Ty Tyson said that the video speaks for itself.
‘If she would have done nothing, you might have been talking about some very severe injuries to a 64-year-old teacher. She wasn’t going to wait to find out.’
The student was suspended but not arrested.
Mrs Hadsock started with the district as a substitute teacher in 1985 and became a full-time teacher three years later, a faculty member when Central opened in 1988.
She has a clean disciplinary record and was voted by students for the school’s Teacher of the Year award last school year.
She said she hopes school officials will consider the facts of her case and her record, and allow her to return to the classroom, but it’s still unclear if that will happen.
Jurors found China Arnold, 31, guilty of aggravated murder for ‘cooking’ her baby daughter in a microwave oven, in her third trial.
China Arnold could face the death penalty for her grisly crime.
Little 28-day-old Paris Talley died the grisly death in August 2005 in Ohio. Arnold could receive the death penalty. Sentencing will begin Monday in Dayton, Ohio court. Prosecutors said Arnold placed baby Paris in the microwave after arguing with her live-in boyfriend, Terrell Talley, over her paternity. She reportedly told investigators that she was intoxicated.
Arnold’s first trial ended in a mistrial. She was found guilty in the second trial, in 2008, but that conviction was reversed last fall. Arnold had been sentenced to life in prison without parole. The death penalty had been taken off the table at that time after the jury deadlocked over sentencing.
But the 2nd District Ohio Court of Appeals in Dayton ruled that Arnold should be freed. The appeals court said there was misconduct by prosecutors and that the trial court made an error by not allowing a material witness to testify in Arnold’s defense. The defense had argued that someone else was responsible.
Assistant Prosecutor Dan Brandt told jurors that Arnold’s actions were ‘even more purposeful’ than a slaying with a gun or knife, the Dayton Daily News reported. During closing arguments, Mr Brandt told jurors: ‘Baby Paris is without life, but she’s not without a voice. Please listen to her’. Mr Brandt claimed that Arnold had to carry the baby over, place her in the microwave, shut the door and press buttons. Then she waited while her child cooked to death, Brandt claimed. Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion argued that the evidence pointed as much to Mr Talley as it did his client. Mr Rion told jurors: ‘This doesn’t make sense to you. It doesn’t. I’ve been watching your faces’.
The prosecutor cut and fit evidence to show ‘this loving mother somehow was so evil that she killed her baby in this way’, he said. Mr Rion has said he ‘realized from the first day’ that Arnold was innocent. Prosecutors said Arnold had a criminal past and was convicted of abduction in 2000 and forgery in 2002. Arnold reportedly took Paris to the hospital the following day but she succumbed to her injuries. Arnold was initially arrested but then released due to lack of evidence. She was re-arrested in November 2006.
Imprisoned for a decade...by her father
