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Fight Breaks Out at Boxing Dinner for Tyson
LONDON (Nov. 16) - Perhaps inspired by the presence of the "baddest man on the planet" in their midst, guests at a British boxing dinner for Mike Tyson launched into a mass punch-up.
Police said they were called to a "large fight" at the Heritage Hotel in Derby, central England, where Tyson had appeared to launch a four-date promotional tour of Britain.
Among the guests at the "black tie" function Tuesday night, where tickets cost 127 pounds a head, was former British heavyweight champion Frank Bruno.
"Police received an emergency call notifying them of a large fight taking place inside the hotel," a Derbyshire police spokeswoman said.
Officers found no actual brawling when they arrived but discovered four people had suffered minor injuries. One was taken to hospital after being hit on the head with a champagne bottle but he was later discharged.
Police said all the speakers at the function, including former world heavyweight champion Tyson, had left the hotel when the brawl erupted among some of the spectators.
"It seemed to be people who fancied a fight," the police spokeswoman said.
There were no arrests.
Student Allegedly Urinates in Ice Machine
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CARLISLE, Ky. (Nov. 18) - A Nicholas County High School student was suspended after he was accused of urinating in an ice machine that at least 31 people got ice from before the incident was reported.
Ben Buckler, chief of police for Nicholas County Schools, said another student dared the boy, who told officials he relieved himself in the ice machine in the gymnasium lobby just before physical education class Wednesday.
School law officials say charges will be filed, although officials were still trying to decide Thursday what to charge him with.
He was suspended for 10 days, pending an expulsion hearing.
Other students witnessed the incident, but it wasn't reported to Principal Doug Bechanan until Thursday morning. By the time the machine was taken out of service, some students and staff had taken ice from the machine.
School officials contacted the Department of Public Health in Frankfort.
"They said it was gross and morally wrong but not a health risk," Buckler said.
Health officials said urine is sterile because the body has its own filtering system. If any bacteria did make it through, the ice's temperature would have killed it.
But some students, parents and staff remained worried.
The Nicholas County School Board is picking up doctor bills "to ease the minds" of those who were exposed and want to be checked out anyway.
Daughter Wears Sign as Punishment
By SEAN MURPHY, AP
AP
Tasha Henderson and her daughter Coretha show the sign.
Talk About It: Post Thoughts
EDMOND, Okla. (Nov. 16) - Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson.
She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."
"This may not work. I'm not a professional," said Henderson, a 34-year-old mother of three. "But I felt I owed it to my child to at least try."
In fact, Henderson has seen a turnaround in her daughter's behavior in the past week and a half. But the punishment prompted letters and calls to talk radio from people either praising the woman or blasting her for publicly humiliating her daughter.
Marvin Lyle, 52, said in an interview: "I don't see anything wrong with it. I see the other extreme where parents don't care what the kids do, and at least she wants to help her kid."
Others disagreed:
"The parents of that girl need more education than she does if they can't see that the worst scenario in this case is to kill their daughter psychologically," Suzanne Ball said in a letter to The Oklahoman.
Coretha has been getting C's and D's as a freshman at Edmond Memorial High in this well-to-do Oklahoma City suburb. Edmond Memorial is considered one of the top high schools in the state in academics.
While Henderson stood next to her daughter at the intersection, a passing motorist called police with a report of psychological abuse, and an Oklahoma City police officer took a report. Mother and daughter were asked to leave after about an hour, and no citation was issued. But the report was forwarded to the state Department of Human Services.
"There wasn't any criminal act involved that the officer could see that would require any criminal investigation," Master Sgt. Charles Phillips said. "DHS may follow up."
DHS spokesman Doug Doe would not comment on whether an investigation was opened, but suggested such a case would probably not be a high priority.
Tasha Henderson said her daughter's attendance has been perfect and her behavior has been better since the incident.
Coretha, a soft-spoken girl, acknowledged the punishment was humiliating but said it got her attention. "I won't talk back," she said quietly, hanging her head.
She already has been forced by her parents to give up basketball and track because of slipping grades, and said she hopes to improve in school so she can play next year.
Donald Wertlieb, a professor of child development at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University, warned that such punishment could do extreme emotional damage. He said rewarding positive behavior is more effective.
"The trick is to catch them being good," he said. "It sounds like this mother has not had a chance to catch her child being good or is so upset over seeing her be bad, that's where the focus is."
Tears Save Sick Mother From Cremation Alive
BEIJING (Nov. 18) - A Chinese peasant woman who suffered a brain hemorrhage was left at the undertakers alive for cremation because her family could no longer afford hospital treatment, state media said Friday.
She was only saved by the tears in her eyes.
The case is the latest in a series of tragedies illustrating China's stretched health care system and the inability of rural workers to meet spiraling medical costs.
You Guoying, a 47-year-old migrant worker from southwestern Sichuan province, was taken for cremation by her husband and children in Taizhou, eastern Zhejiang province, where she worked, the China Youth Daily said.
Fortunately for You, the undertaker realized she was still alive when he saw her move and tears in her eyes, the newspaper said.
"This is not only a tragedy for the family, but also for society," it quoted Xu Yinghe, a Taizhou official, as saying.
"The fundamental reason is the absence of a social welfare system."
You was taken back to hospital for further treatment with money donated by sympathetic citizens of prosperous Zhejiang, the newspaper said.
"Three days of treatment cost us more than 10,000 yuan," it quoted her daughter as saying, adding that was the sum of the family's life savings.
"If there had been another option, who would have the heart to send a member of their own family for cremation while there was still a hope of survival?"
The newspaper did not say if the family would face charges.
Vice Health Minister Zhu Qingsheng said last December that about half of all farmers could not afford medical treatment when sick.
A 42-year-old farmer too poor to afford treatment for lung cancer set off a home-made bomb aboard a bus in Fuzhou, capital of the southeastern province of Fujian, in August, killing himself and another passenger and wounding 30.
Also in August, a security guard hailed a hero for fighting off a purse snatcher jumped to his death from a hospital window in south Guangxi province because he couldn't afford the bills.
In the late 1970s, 94 percent of China's villagers were covered by cooperative medical schemes. But the collectives were disbanded during market reforms of the 1980s which ended cradle-to-grave welfare for the masses.
Town Adopts Name DISH for Free Satellite TV
By MATT SLAGLE, AP
DISH, Texas (Nov. 17) - Back in the 1950s, Hot Springs, N.M., was renamed Truth or Consequences, N.M., after a popular quiz show. During the dot-com boom of 2000, Halfway, Ore. agreed to become Half.com for a year.
This week, Clark, Texas, morphed into DISH in exchange for a decade of free satellite television from the DISH Network for the town's 55 homes. Residents in Santa, Idaho, meanwhile, are weighing the pros and cons of changing to Secretsanta.com, Idaho.
Across the nation, small communities are being courted by large corporations who say renaming a town provides a marketing buzz that can't be bought in television ads. Though some worry about corporate America's increasing influence in local government, many towns seem eager to accept.
In a deal unanimously approved Tuesday by the two-member town council, Clark agreed to become DISH permanently, effective immediately. It's part of an advertising campaign for Englewood, Colo.-based EchoStar Communications Corp., which operates the DISH Network satellite TV system.
The company pegged the deal at about $4,500 per home in the rural patch of ranch land, which is about a half hour's drive north of Dallas-Fort Worth.
Beyond the lure of free TV service for the 125 residents, the renaming is a way for the town to attract businesses and residents, said Mayor Bill Merritt, who courted EchoStar to pick the town.
"We really look at this as kind of a rebirth for our community," Merritt said. "We want everybody to come here."
The town was founded in June 2000 by L.E. Clark, who sharply criticized the renaming.
"I don't especially like it," said Clark, who lost to Merritt in May's mayoral election. "I worked my butt off a little over a year getting it incorporated."
Other towns also have accepted such corporate offers. In 2000, Halfway, Ore., become Half.com for a year in an agreement that put $100,000 in the town coffer and a new computer lab in the school.
Though the name is back to Halfway, the town still has signs that read "Welcome to Half.com, the World's First Dot-com City."
"It was a good experience," said Mayor Marvin Burgraff, who served as mayor after the decision had already been approved. "It was kind of fun. You look back on it and it's good thoughts."
In an age of pervasive advertising that many people try to ignore, such stunts are a good way to grab the public's attention, said Mark Hughes, chief executive of Buzzmarketing and the former Half.com executive who devised the Oregon deal.
"Word of mouth is the most powerful form of communication and marketing out there," Hughes said in a telephone interview from Santa, Idaho, where he's leading the effort to rename that town Secretsanta.com, after a gift-exchange Web site.
"No one's going to talk about the 3,000th Web site that launched this week," Hughes said. "What this does is give people a reason to talk."
Still, some offers of corporate interest have backfired.
In 2003, residents of Biggs, Calif., overwhelmingly rejected a California Milk Processor Board proposal to rename the city of 1,800 Got Milk? in exchange for a milk museum and money for the school.
"People's take on it was, 'This is just an advertising ploy by the milk board.' There was a certain segment of population that wanted to tar and feather the mayor for even suggesting it," city clerk Marlee Mattos said.
Gary Ruskin, of the nonprofit Commercial Alert, said towns should provide services such as trash collection and education, not "hawk television at its residents," he said.
"The names of our civic places reflect our values and our aspirations," Ruskin said. "It's wrong to sever the link between civic names and civic virtue."
But Merritt, mayor of the town now called DISH, said work had already begun to change the town's dozen street signs. He doesn't see the new name ever going out of favor.
"I can't see right now that people would want to change it," he said. "Clark will always be a part of our history, but this is our new identity.
Ants Reportedly Eat Woman's Eye in India
NEW DELHI (Nov. 15) - A woman died in a Calcutta hospital after ants ate one of her eyes as she was recovering from a cornea operation, media reports said Tuesday.
Gauri Chakraborty, 55, had complained of terrible pain after the operation at a state-run hospital, but a nurse told her it was normal and left her unattended, her son Soumen told the Press Trust of India news agency.
He said that when her bandage was removed the next day they found big black ants nibbling at her eye, PTI reported.
"She died a ghastly death. We don't even know the reason of her death," Amitabha Kar, Chakraborty's son-in-law told PTI.
Local Health Minister Surjya Kanta Mishra demanded a report of the incident from the hospital authorities. In response, hospital superintendent Sukumar Das said a five-member inquiry committee has been set up, PTI reported.
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