A banker caught on tape watching semi-nude photos

In trading rooms and banking rooms, the presence of a camera and live reporting is pretty common. However, what becomes fascinating is when the person who is speaking on camera does not become popular, instead the person not facing the camera, or in any way connected to the event happening on the news becomes more popular. And what is that ? Well, it became quite clear during the interview that a certain banker in the background was viewing semi-nude photos of a model Miranda Kerr.
This clip became very popular on Facebook and led to popularity that the banker would certainly not have wanted. Even the bank, Maquarie, was embarrassed and sent the banker home for the day; however, an internet campaign has started to prevent the banker from being affected (link to article):

That colleague, David Kiely, was caught on camera opening up an email and linking to photos of a semi-nude model, Miranda Kerr, in her recent spread for GQ magazine. It's hard to notice what Kiely is up to at first until he magnifies the image on his computer screen around the 1:30 mark of this 1:52 minute video (see below -- he's sitting with his back to the camera, slightly to the left of Lakos's head). Emails like this are standard trading room fodder, but usually the recipients aren't caught on tape.

Parents locked 12 year girl into closet for an year

Parents are supposed to be the ones responsible for ensuring the development of their children, for educating them; so it becomes very difficult if the parents themselves are responsible for preventing the growth of the child, or for creating a set of circumstances in which the child cannot develop. In such cases, society has to step in, and ensure that the child is separated from the parents and placed in better circumstances.
In this case as well, where this girl was allowed to go to school, but when home, she would have to stay in a closet; and she was the only child on whom this restriction was placed while her brothers were free. The amount of psychological damage this does to a child can be immense (link to article):

Police officers say a young girl was kept locked away in a closet in a West Brownsville duplex by her parents for about a year. She attended school every day and held steady grades, but once she was home she was not allowed to watch television or play with her brothers, investigators said. The 12-year-old girl had to stay inside the closet.
No one would have known of the abuse, police officers said, if one of her brothers had not reported it to officials at his school, which initiated an investigation by Child Protective Services. “Everyone in the house knew what was going on, but you have children, who based on fear, hold this secret,” Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique, Brownsville Police Department spokesman, said.

Girl auctions her virginity for getting money for tuition

This has happened time and again. A few years ago, a girl put up a trend by getting money by auctioning her virginity; she needed money to fund her higher studies, and was willing to sleep with anyone who paid the most amount of money. This was innovative, and she got enough money to fund her studies. At that time, there was condemnation for this sort of moral grey issue, but now seems to be something that other girls have also adopted, since we keep on hearing this time and again.
Now, there is another case of this happening, where a girl earned $32,000 dollars by auctioning her virginity online, and in the country of New Zealand, this is not illegal. If the girl does indeed go through with this arrangement, she would have got money to pay for her college fees (link to article):

A New Zealand teenager who says she auctioned her virginity online for $32,000 to raise tuition money did not break any laws but it might be risky for her to follow through on the deal, police warned Wednesday. She said in a post that more than 30,000 people had viewed her ad and more than 1,200 had made bids before she accepted an offer of more than New Zealand dollars 45,000 ($32,000).
Prostitution is legal in New Zealand under laws considered more liberal than many countries. Prostitution among consenting adults is allowed in brothels and on the streets, and offering sexual services in print ads and online is also legal. National police spokesman Jon Neilson said no law appeared to have been breached.

Getting arrested for a Facebook poke

A Facebook poke is a pretty innocent event, with many of us even ignoring when somebody gives us a poke. However, when you combine the 'online' world with the real world, you end up in dangerous zones or questions that are only resolved by courts. Consider the case when a person has been warned by a court against communicating in any way with somebody else, and a facebook poke happens. Is this a violation of the court order, or will the 'poke' be seen as a continuation of the earlier activities that led to the restraint order ?
A court resolved this to some degree by finding the person in this case guilty of violating the restraining order, and was sent to jail with a bail set at $1500. Now, the person faces a possible jail sentence and a fine (link to article):

Beware: a Facebook poke could land you behind bars. Just ask Shannon D. Jackson of Hendersonville, Tennessee, who faces that very real possibility.
Jackson was arrested and transported to Sumner County Jail on September 25th with a bond set at $1,500 after she violated an order of protection by allegedly poking a woman on Facebook. The alleged poke broke the terms of the court order: “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”

Boy cries tears of blood

Almost all of us would have cried sometime or the other in our lives, and you would see tears coming out (slightly salty). It pains a mother to see her child crying, but consider how horrific a mother would have felt when she would have seen her child crying out tears of blood for the first time. This is a medical condition which is somewhat rare, but happens (link to article):

The Tennessee boy cries blood uncontrollably, sometimes three times a day, and doctors cannot tell him why.
"Sometimes, I can feel it coming up, like a tear. I feel my eyes watering," Inman told ABC News affiliate WATE. "Sometimes, it will burn as it comes out."

Very young mothers - even at the age of 5 and 9

Society gets horrified when you see kids the age of 15 or 16 having children, since it is believed that children are not mature enough to handle the responsibility of having children, and, they deserve the chance to enjoy their own life to some degree before they take on the task of becoming parents. As a result, most societies have made it a crime for girls below the age of 16 or 18 to have children, and can result in a sentence of rape. What happens in these cases (link to article) ?

BEIJING: A nine-year-old girl has given birth to a healthy child in northeast China, making it possibly the first case of childbirth at such a Another report from Shanghai based hospital said 30% of young girls who had surgical abortions were school students. The hospital run by the People’s Liberation Army revealed that 50% of them were in vocational schools and the rest studied in colleges. The hospital reported that most cases of pregnancy took place immediately after school and college vacations. At least one-third of the cases were in the secondary or advanced stages of pregnancy by the time the girls came to the hospital, it said.

And Wikipedia (link) has a whole listing of such girls.
1939: Lina Medina of Paurange, Peru gave birth to a 2.7 kg (6.0 lb) son, named Gerardo, by caesarean section on May 14, 1939 in Lima at the age of 5 years, 7 months, and 21 days. Her parents, who assumed their daughter had a tumor, took her to a hospital, where she was determined to be seven months pregnant. Although Medina's father was arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse, he was later released due to lack of evidence, and the identity of who impregnated Medina was never uncovered.
2006: A girl from Huanuco, Peru, gave birth to a baby weighing 2 kg (4.4 lb) by caesarean section at a hospital in Lima in December 2006. Her ninth birthday occurred a couple of days later. She became pregnant after being raped by two of her cousins.

Trying to get sleep and having a host of problems

If you are trying to get sleep, and are not easily able to get sleep (too much TV, too many memories, or other such problems), or need medication to get to sleep, then you are not alone. In today's world, there are a huge number of reasons why it is difficult to get sleep, and then the biggest worry is about what to do. Read this article (link to article) to learn more from this person's articulation of her problems:

When sleep won't come, the nights are lonely, long, and way too quiet. I have brewed my chamomile tea, taken my rightful place on the sofa (experts insist it's a bad idea to get into bed until you're really ready to doze off), and had three whispered phone chats with three fellow insomniacs.
I'm too tired for sex, too wired for rest, and too busy kicking myself for all those little things I did not manage to accomplish during the day, like mailing that thank-you note I wrote a week and a half ago, or buying Cascade, or giving birth to two more children and moving to the suburbs. I just can't seem to locate the switch that turns off my brain and closes my eyes.