Hello everyone!

 

I don't know how many of you saw the episode of this disturbing and strange thing on Dateline about a year ago. This a true story that fell under the category "Bizarre but true" Here is the update of that story ~

 

McDonald's must pay $6 million for strip hoax

Former employee forced to undress by police officer poseur

SHEPHERDSVILLE, Ky. - A jury awarded $6.1 million Friday to a woman who said she was forced to strip in a McDonald's back office after someone called the restaurant posing as a police officer.

Louise Ogborn, 21, had sued McDonald's Corp., claiming the fast-food giant failed to warn her and other employees about the caller who already struck other McDonald's stores and other fast-food restaurants across the country.

Ogborn had been seeking $200 million. McDonald's Corp. attorneys argued the company was not responsible and contended the company was being sued because of its deep pockets.

Ogborn accused the company of negligence leading up to the events in April 2004, when she was detained for 3 1/2 hours.

In the lawsuit, she said someone called the restaurant in Mount Washington impersonating a police officer and gave a description of a young, female employee, accusing her of stealing from a customer. The caller demanded the woman be strip searched.

Ogborn was forced to undress, endure a strip search, and to perform sexual acts, the lawsuit said. The events were captured on surveillance video, which was shown to jurors during the trial.

A former assistant manager, Donna Summers, was placed on probation for a misdemeanor conviction in relation to the incident. Her former fiance, Walter Nix Jr., is serving five years in prison for sexually abusing Ogborn during the 3 1/2-hour search.

A Florida man, David Stewart, was charged with making the hoax phone call but acquitted last summer. Police have said the calls stopped after Stewart's arrest.

 

Hello everyone!

 

For those of you guys who haven't heard, here is another chapter in the weird life of Britney and Cletus

 

 

Blatant disregard of judge's order seems like more than immature behavior

 

By Miki Turner

Entertainment writer

MSNBC contributor  Oct 1, 2007

 

On Monday afternoon, Britney Spears either got what she wanted or what she deserved when her two sons — Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, were taken from her. According to TMZ.com, Spears apparently disobeyed all of the court-ordered custodial stipulations issued by L.A. Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon.

This means that Spears’ ex-husband, Kevin Federline, now has sole physical custody of the kids “until further order of the court.”

Forget global warming. Something is definitely askew in the world when K-Fed is considered a suitable parent.

This news wasn’t really shocking, but it was distressing. I want to believe that Spears had to know that her failure to show up at the parenting classes and drug counseling sessions Gordon ordered her to attend and her apparent refusal to sign a judge’s order would result in the loss of her two kids.

But, I could be wrong. Maybe she had no one to remind her that she had to do it since her lawyer, manager, parents and a handful of friends and employees had either turned on her or abandoned her completely.

Some folks just don’t like riding on trains in which the next stop is a brick wall.

Of course, Spears could be suffering from the same kind of delusional malady that afflicts others of her ilk. Perhaps she was arrogant enough to believe that she was above the law. The worshipped often think they can beat the system because they usually do. I suppose she thought that people would be willing to overlook her less-than-stellar parenting skills and forget about her dubious public image because she’s Britney Spears.

Hopefully, now she realizes that money and fame can sometimes buy you out of a jam, but it really can’t buy you love and respect — the things that help you sleep well at night.There’s really no way of knowing how or why Spears developed such a warped sense of entitlement. The Louisiana native comes from rather humble beginnings and wasn’t really an overnight success. You could blame her adoring public, but at some point even the most vain celebrities realize that affection from strangers, or strange affection, won’t ever sustain you.

No one to tell her to stop

You could fault her parents, who apparently let her have her way because she moved them into a new tax bracket. You could take exception with her handlers, who obviously mishandled an immature child. Or you can simply take issue with her friends, who should have had the courage of their convictions and told Spears to slow her roll when they saw her spiraling out of control.

But at the end of the day, anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that infants should be at home in bed at 10 p.m. and not eating dinner at a Sunset Boulevard hot spot with their scantily clad mother. Sean and Jayden were her snotty-nosed, diaper-wearing accessories. It was almost as if Spears used her kids to show us that there was indeed something awry in her world.

Maybe this was the cry for help that no one around her heard.

Now Sean and Jayden will be accessorizing their father — a man with no real job or discernable talents. And as distressing as that might be, right now it’s the best thing for those kids. At least K-Fed has enough sense to leave the kids with the nanny before he hits the club.As for Spears, let’s pray that she uses this time away from her kids to reassess her priorities in life and grow up. At 25, she is obviously too young and immature to be anyone’s mother. I think she knows that and that’s why I believe that she totally orchestrated this whole episode.

I think losing her kids is exactly what she wanted. Sean and Jayden were getting in the way of her fun. What she might not realize now is that she lost the two people in the world who probably loved her unconditionally.

And that’s going to hurt when she wakes up.

She should also try and repair the relationships with those she kicked to the curb, starting with her mother, Lynne. Mama Spears might not be the best mother in the world — considering the disturbing evolution of her eldest daughter — but I think that most mothers instinctively know how to fix that which has gone awry. I just hope it’s not too late.

More than anything, however, Spears needs to commit herself to a real rehab facility so she can start putting her life back together again. It won’t work if someone else signs the papers because its obvious that Spears rejects authority — even from those who love her.

If she doesn’t get the help she needs right now, she might find herself partying with Janis Joplin in the very near future.

 

Hello everyone!

 

I found this in one of the NY newspapers; it's another reason why I hate the goverment sometimes. Comments out there?

 

By ANGELA MONTEFINISE and MELISSA KLEIN

September 30, 2007 -- Just before 9 a.m., they file into large, sometimes windowless rooms.

In some cases, they punch time cards; in others, they scribble their names on a sign-in sheet.

They take their places in plastic chairs either grouped around tables or scattered haphazardly.

Some immediately pull out crossword puzzles or books. Some knit. Others hold golf-putting contests. One takes out his guitar and strums.

One day last week, another, wearing a leotard and tights, spread out on the floor and stretched before practicing ballet against a wall in a corner.

Nearby, gazing out a window, a man slowly fell asleep, his head in his hands.

It's all in a day's work on the city payroll.

For seven hours a day, five days a week, hundreds of Department of Education employees - who've been accused of wrongdoing ranging from buying a plant for a school against the principal's wishes to inappropriately touching a student - do absolutely no work.

In an investigation inside the nine reassignment centers called "rubber rooms" where these employees are sent, The Post has learned that the number of salaried teachers sitting idly waiting for their cases to be heard has exploded to 757 this year - more than twice the number just two years ago - at a cost of about $40 million a year, based on the median teacher salary.

The city pays millions more for substitute teachers and employees to replace them and to lease rubber-room space.

Meanwhile, the 757 - paid from $42,500 to $93,400 a year - bring in lounge chairs to recline, talk on their cellphones and watch movies on portable DVD players, according to interviews with more than 50 employees.

David Pakter, 62, has been in a rubber room for a year for buying a plant for his school and giving students watches he'd made, he said.

The DOE would not discuss ongoing investigations.

Pakter, a former "teacher of the year" honored at City Hall during Rudy Giuliani's mayoral tenure, just bought a new Jaguar with his $90,000 salary for "doing absolutely nothing."

"It's a present from [Schools Chancellor] Joel Klein," Pakter said. "I want to teach, they won't let me teach, but they'll pay me enough to buy a car. Can someone explain this to me?"

Another rubber-room attendant said she was unaware of the reason she'd been assigned there for more than a month. Yet another, an Army reservist who spent almost 3½ years in a rubber room before he retired, begged to be able to go to Iraq instead of staying in DOE Siberia.

Sam Lazarus, a social-studies teacher and union rep at Bryant HS in Long Island City, said he and his spotless 23-year teaching record were shipped off to a Queens rubber room last spring that was so "filled to the rafters" that he was forced to sit in a plastic chair outside the room.

"I think I'm the only one who actually had a grievance to get into a rubber room," said Lazarus, who was in this "detention" for six weeks before accusations of verbally abusing a student were dropped.

Some say the teachers themselves are to blame - their union contract requires a hearing before any tenured employee can be fired.

"The reason the rubber room exists is because of worn-out and, quite frankly, irrelevant union contracts that do more to protect people's jobs than they do to protect kids," said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, based in Washington, D.C.

Adding to that issue is the fact that the 20 arbitrators who review cases meet, on average, five times a month, or twice a month in the summer, making for a painfully slow and inefficient system.

Meanwhile, some teachers feel they're being attacked in a "guilty until proven innocent" atmosphere in which more powerful principals can easily remove teachers who question the system and students can easily get teachers they don't like removed by making up accusations.

The union now counsels its members to avoid becoming too involved - including even in breaking up student fights - because it could land them in a rubber room.

"Teachers are scared. The system wants to cover itself, not protect us," said Lenny Brown, a physics teacher who landed in the rubber room over accusations that he touched a student's breast in front of the class - a charge he vehemently denies.

The DOE admits it has become more proactive in trying to fire teachers.

"I've been pushing to try to charge more cases," said DOE general counsel Michael Best. "Sometimes I'd rather be more aggressive in terms of things, in getting folks who we should be trying to terminate terminated."

But Best says the system, governed by state law and contractual obligations, is cumbersome.

"I think everybody would like to resolve these cases more quickly," he said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, says the union is not interested in protecting bad teachers and adds that she is willing to compromise to fix the system. She hopes the future holds a quicker process and a rubber-room system where teachers will at least be working.

The city used to assign teachers under review administrative duties, but that ended with the 2002 school reorganization when district-run rubber rooms were turned into larger, citywide cells.

The DOE says it's handcuffed by a clause in the teacher contract saying rubber-room residents cannot be given "non-teaching duties," but the UFT says administrative work is just fine.

"Right now, the system is terrible for everyone," said Weingarten. "It's in everyone's interest, I think, to change it."

 

Hello everyone!

 

I was reading the paper and found this article; so whose telling lies?

 

The Smear This Time