Results tagged “children”

The fashionable UK stroller company Maclaren is going to recall all the strollers they've sold since 1999, now that a dozen children have lost fingertips in the carriage hinge. The recall, which is expected to be officially announced tomorrow, affects some 1 million strollers. But for those parents who'd rather part with a child's finger than their beloved Maclaren, the company is also planning to send owners protective covers for the dangerous hinges.

The Queens woman who steered a van full of foster children into oncoming traffic Monday night had alcohol in her system and a crack pipe in her... possession, investigators say. The horrific crash claimed the lives of two of the five children in the van, but driver Sheila Bethea, 45, survived. Yesterday prosecutors charged her with manslaughter, assault, and endangering the welfare of a child. One witness tells the Times the crash "sounded like a truck hit a building."

Things are getting hairy for the NY Department of Education's pre-kindergarten program, so in their time of need they've turned to the proverbial port in the storm, Craigslist. Last year, the D.O.E. wasn't able to fill over 3,000 seats in the early education program, and forfeited $35 million in funding. Next Friday, October 31, marks the deadline for the D.O.E. to fill 5,400 seats this year, including 900 for full day programs, or lose millions in state funding again. So the D.O.E. has put up ad's on Craigslist to try to reach parents, among other last minute ideas.

It's common for boring female grownups to dress up as slutty nurses/schoolgirls/nuns or whatever on Halloween, but now pre-teens are mimicking their airhead elders, and there's a whole range of sexually provocative costumes on sale for pre-pubescent girls. The retail chain Party City is well-stocked with everything to make this Halloween a happy one for pedophiles, from a pirate costume for 8-year-olds dubbed the "High Seas Hottie" to a "Devil Grrrl" costume that comes with a red miniskirt, fishnets, a tiny pitchfork, and the sales pitch: "This grrrl devil likes to get things heating up!" It gets creepier...

Not us—see it below in all its NSFW, uh, glory. The "it" we're talking about here, be warned, is artist Jonathan Horowitz's 2008 piece "CBS Evening News/www.Britneycrotch.org," which frames two big digital prints on top of each other: The top image is Katie Couric at her news desk, and the bottom is Britney Spears’s infamous crotch shot, photoshopped to match Couric's upper half. It's the artistic antithesis of a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, and you can see it at P.S. 1 in Queens with your own eyes (though the museum politely asks that visitors not flush their gouged-out their eyes down the toilet).

A little girl is in serious but stable condition after falling out a seventh floor window in the Bronx. WABC 7 reports the eight-year-old "plunged from the window at the Castle Hill Houses on Seward Avenue just before 1:30 a.m... The girl survived the fall, and detectives believe she is not likely to die." She is being treated by Jacobi Medical Center for her injuries. The window at her apartment building also has window guards, so it's unclear how she fell out. Last week, two children fell to their deaths from windows. The city requires apartment buildings to have window guards in homes with children under 11 years old, but there are no such requirements for houses.

Air pollution from cars and cigarettes can lower a child's IQ. That's the finding of a new study that tracked mothers and their children living in Washington Heights, Harlem, and the South Bronx.

Mayor Bloomberg sought to calm worried parental units at a City Hall press conference yesterday, telling the press that most of the people going to the hospital with swine flu symptoms aren't sick, just scared: "While there are an abnormal number of people going to the hospital who are worried, virtually none, a very tiny percentage of them, have any symptoms whatsoever." But the mayor's downplaying of the outbreak comes as the city closes an additional three schools (bringing the current total to 25), and mourners bid farewell to Queens assistant principal Mitchell Wiener, swine flu's first city victim.

Matt Lauer gave it the old college try with Caroline Kennedy today, using her appearance on the Today Show (to plug the Kennedy Profiles in Courage awards) as a chance to solve the ongoing mystery over why she dropped her bid to occupy Hillary Clinton's vacated Senate seat. A Vanity Fair excerpt of the forthcoming book Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died cited an unnamed "family adviser's" assertion that Kennedy's children had intervened and begged her to drop her campaign, telling her "that if she was getting this worked up just getting the job, they didn't want to see what she would be like in the trenches of a political campaign or a fight in Washington."

Here we go: Park Avenue lawyer Madlyn Primoff, who was arrested earlier this week after forcing her squabbling children out of the car and driving away, now has a lawyer telling the press, "She wasn't abandoning her children. She expected to find her children." See, Primhoff had dumped the kids in downtown White Plains and told them to walk the 3 miles home to Scarsdale—but apparently she didn't really mean it because she drove around the block and couldn't find them! Primhoff reportedly picked up her husband and then started looking again, finding only the 12-year-old. A good Samaritan picked up the remaining daughter, 10, and, after stopping at Carvel to cheer the girl up with some ice cream, took her to the White Plains police station. Meanwhile, Primoff called the Scarsdale police about her missing younger daughter; Scarsdale cops, who say that Primoff didn't explain how the child went missing, told Primoff the girl was with the White Plains police. Primoff, who spent the night in jail for the incident, is free on bail and heads back to court next month.

Earlier this week, the NY Times reported that budget cuts were forcing the Juilliard School to cut its Music Advancement Program, which has been offering mostly free musical training to African-American, Latino, and Native American students (grades 3 through 8). Luckily, the article also sparked concern: Today the NY Times reports there are "numerous offers of help, including a major pledge from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation of Los Angeles."

Has PETA gone too far? Word is that last week the animal rights activists showed up unannounced and uninvited at a Hempstead elementary school, chosen for its proximity to the Nassau Coliseum, where Ringling Bros. Circus sets up shop starting tomorrow. Their plan was to school the children in circus cruelty, handing out stickers and coloring books that declared, "Circuses are no fun for animals." While this may be true, many are criticizing the organization for their tactics, saying their method is inappropriate—a psychologist noted that the children "might go home and be very anxious" because they "are less mature in their cognitive process."

The number of homeless families with children entering New York City shelters has risen dramatically in recent months, hitting an all-time high in November, when 9,720 families were reported in the municipal shelter system. According to figures released by the Department of Homeless Services, 1,343 new families were accepted into the shelter system last month, a 43% increase over the 935 who moved into shelters in November 2007.

The NYCLU has fired off a sternly worded letter to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly demanding that police stop arresting children in public schools under the age of 16. The state's Family Court Act prohibits police from arresting kids younger than 16 without a warrant unless they've committed a crime. But according to NYPD data obtained in a Freedom of Information Law request, 309 kids under age 16 were arrested between 2005 and 2007 for offenses like disorderly conduct, loitering, or possession of marijuana or fireworks. (In one case, an 11-year-old was arrested for trespassing at his school.) The NYCLU maintains that most of these are non-criminal offenses.

Two children are recovering from gunshot wounds after being hit by stray bullets during separate incidents Saturday night. On President Street in Crown Heights, 10-year-old Denia Kearse (pictured) was enjoying a block party when shots rang out around 8 p.m. Her aunt tells channel 7, "Everybody heard pop, pop, pop, and it sounded like it was blocks away. And then, the next thing you know, my niece is bleeding." The stray bullet tore across her chest, chipping her collar bone, and passed dangerously close to her neck. According to the Daily News, she's in Kings County Hospital and expected to recover. Later that night in Far Rockaway, an 8-year-old boy was grazed in the head by a stray bullet as he got out of a car with his aunt around 10:30 p.m. The unidentified victim is in critical condition, and police are still looking for suspects in both shootings.

What happens when a three-year-old plucks some leaves from a tree branch? Well, if a Parks Department employee is watching, the child's mom gets a summons.

In the span of a few days, there have been two separate incidents of adults acting stupidly and leaving children either badly hurt or dead.

A class action lawsuit was filed in New York federal court yesterday, alleging that real estate firm "Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn LLC (BHS) and its senior vice president and two real estate agents discriminate against families with children attempting to rent apartments in Brooklyn."

The 61-year-old Stamford, CT man accused of sexually abusing three children in two different Brooklyn park bathrooms begged for mercy as he was being apprehended, but pleaded not guilty in front of a judge. Michael Martin was arrested after allegedly molesting three children at two Brooklyn parks. After the second incident, Martin was quickly caught by civilian patrol officers at the park and begged them not to call the police. He allegedly yelled, "I know what I did! I'll seek professional help!"

A 61-year-old man from Stamford, CT, Michael Martin, was arrested Thursday afternoon after he allegedly abused three children at two separate restrooms in Brooklyn parks. The first incident occurred at a park in Gravesend, Brooklyn Thursday, when Martin is accused of following an 8-year-old girl and a 4-year boy into a public restroom where he sexually assaulted them. Later, he is accused of attacking another 8-year-old girl in the bathroom of a Kensington, Brooklyn park. Cops say that Martin ran off on both occasions when the children began to cry.

Sure, politicians, pundits, psychiatrists, and anyone else who can string together two words have weighed in on Eliot Spitzer's disgrace. But it's just cuter when a little princess explains it all.

Two separate incidents Brooklyn resulted in the death of a 27-year-old man on a Brownsville sidewalk, a nine-year-old girl wounded, and a 13-year-old boy clinging to life. Police are investigating whether the shot that struck the nine-year-old girl in the arm yesterday was related to the shooting that killed Robert Morgan two blocks away in Brownsville.

Last week a group of concerned Bay Ridge parents and local officials held a rally and picket line outside a neighborhood Verizon Wireless retailer. The group was demanding the company remove the cell phone receivers installed on a rooftop near P.S. 185; they say the receivers emit dangerously high radiofrequency (RF) emissions and should not be placed near schools. They are also calling for legislation limiting where the receivers can be installed.

In the wake of the deaths of three children on Saturday, apparently killed by their mother, the Nassau County Children's Protection Services supervisor was suspended today.

New York University's Child Study Center is pulling the plug on a controversial ad campaign publicizing childhood mental health problems that was considered stigmatizing. The campaign was meant to raise awareness of conditions like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Asperger's Syndrome, autism, depression, and bulimia.

Remember that cruel(la) couple from Long Island that enslaved two Indonesian women who worked in their mansion? After their million dollar bail plan was announced back in June we hadn't heard much about these two. Today, however, silence was broken after Varsha Mahender Sabhnani and her hubby Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani's trial has ended...and the latest is not good news for them!

Some time ago the New Yorker ran an amusing “Talk of the Town” feature on nightlife crusader Roy Den Hollander, who, unlike most nightclub scolds, isn’t fighting against excessive noise and loose morals – he’s out to put a stop to the scourge that is Ladies’ Night. And not because he disdains the ladies or the night, but because Den Hollander, attorney at law and self-styled pick-up artist, sees it as yet another way The Man tries to keep down the, er, man.

A nine-year-old girl remains in critical condition following surgery yesterday at Long Island Jewish Hospital after an unregistered van carrying school children was struck by a city bus. The accident occurred Friday morning allegedly after the passenger van cut off a Q46 bus in Fresh Meadows, Queens. The bus clipped the van, sending it into a spin, shattering its windows, and ejecting a bench seat into the street.

Earlier this morning, an MTA bus collided with a school van transporting children in Fresh Meadows, Queens. Details of the accident are thin, but initial reports say that up to 9 people are injured, most of which are children. The collision occurred just after 8 a.m. when the Q46 bus struck the van. The FDNY says that two critically injured children were sent to Long Island Jewish Hospital with one other child. Three other children were sent to Mary Immaculate Hospital and two more people were taken to Queens General Hospital and to New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens.

Have you seen the copper-toned glow emanating from Rockefeller Center? It's not The Tree...it's a penny harvest field! The installation is the first phase of Penny Harvest, and the copious coins came from students in NYC who have collected $1 million in change. The pennies will later go to different charities and towards improving the students communities.New York first lady Silda Wall Spitzer joined hundreds of public school children on Monday to unveil a mass...