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Nadya “Octomom” Suleman is in danger of losing her 14 children after police paid a visit to her La Habra, California home on Tuesday night after her hairstylist visited her home to do her hair, found deplorable living conditions, and filed a complaint. Not only were the youngest of her brood, the 3-year-old octuplets, dirty and walking around barefoot in only T-shirts, but they were being forced to urinate and defecate in training potties set up in the backyard because the house’s plumbing was not working, according to the stylist named Stephanie (who will not release her last name). Stephanie also took photographs, which have been obtained by TMZ, and claims that while she was giving Suleman a Brazilian blowout and haircut on April 18, the children were locked in a bedroom. In one photo Stephanie took, the mother-of-14 is shown happily flaunting her new ‘do — for which she paid $520 (that includes two previous haircuts and $80 worth of product), despite the fact she’s on welfare — while behind her a chair is wedged underneath a doorknob, as if it to keep the occupants inside.
Stephanie went to police to report the squalor she witnessed, which she says was difficult for her because she’s a longtime friend of Suleman’s, but she feels so terribly for the children. “The kids are in desperate need of help, and I tried to help and she’s not open to anyone helping her,” she told TMZ as she left the El Habra police station. “She thinks everything is fine with the kids, and it’s not.” When asked by the cameraman what exactly was wrong, she continued, “The kids don’t wear clothes. I went over there yesterday and they’re not wearing any pants. And they’re outside in the freezing cold, it was 60 degrees, and they’re shivering and she wouldn’t let them come inside until they finished eating their dinner. It’s just horrible.”

In other photos Stephanie took inside the Suleman home — which has been desecrated with spray-painted graffiti, presumably by her older children — one room has tiny mattresses on the floor with no sheets or blankets, as well as two cribs. The kids, says Stephanie, “are sleeping on the floor. I offered her bunk beds. I said, ‘We have bunk beds, you can take them.’ She said, ‘No, no I don’t want them. We’re ok right now. Everything’s fine.’ It’s not fine! It’s depressing, I want to cry.”
On Tuesday night, three reps from Child Protective Services along with a police officer went to the Suleman home to investigate Stephanie’s claims. In a video, children can be heard as the group repeatedly bangs on the front door until Suleman, 36, finally lets them in. Before the video cuts off, she can be heard telling them, “Excuse the graffiti.” After an hour-and-a-half, CPS left after determining the children were not in immediate danger, but a spokesperson did tell TMZ the investigation is ongoing and there will be a follow-up visit to the Suleman home.
“I love those kids, but they’re being neglected completely,” says Stephanie. “[Suleman] needs help, she can’t do this by herself. There’s too many kids and they’re not getting the help that they need. They’re not getting attention, they’re not even wearing clothes. The boys have girls’ clothes on! I go over there and cut the kids’ hair for free because you can’t tell which ones are boys and which ones are girls, they all look the same!”

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Update 10:30pm ET: This piece has been updated to reflect a breaking news development
Police say they have found a 3-day-old baby who was abducted after his mother was shot multiple times outside a doctor’s office in Houston, Tex.
The baby was safe when authorities found him and his father is on his way to be reunited, Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
Kayla Marie Golden, 28, was shot repeatedly after reportedly having an altercation outside a pediatric center where she had just left with her son. The alleged shooter, a woman described as being in her late 20′s, is said to have sped off in a bloodstained Lexus with the baby, Lt. Dan Norris said of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
“The child was being put into the suspect vehicle and that’s when the mother tried to get into the car. The car sped away, knocking the lady to the ground,” Lt. Norris said.
A male passenger was also reportedly in the vehicle with the shooting suspect.
Newborn Keegan Schuchardt was said to be wearing a green and white one-piece outfit that has the “Handsome” on the front.
Witnesses reported hearing as many as seven gunshots outside the clinic, shortly after 2pm local time on Tuesday. The shooting suspect is described as a “thin, gold-haired black woman, apparently in her late 20s or early 30s,” Norris said. They also said the Lexus was sky blue or light green.
“I thought she just passed out. Then somebody ran in here and said, ‘Somebody got shot,’” witness Joshua Jesson said.
Golden was pronounced dead after being brought to nearby Hermann Memorial Hospital.
“I saw a lady fall down here in the parking lot. I saw another lady get out and I saw a guy get out of the car that the lady who shot her was driving and get the baby out of the other lady’s car that was shot and they just got in the car and drove off,” witness Tia Collins told local tv affiliate KSAT.

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Down a rutted dirt alley in Old Kabul, the “Girl in the green dress” — the subject of AFP’s Pulitzer-winning photograph — still has nightmares about the day a suicide bomber made her image world famous.
Tarana Akbari, 11, no longer wears her best dress, which was drenched in her own blood and that of her relatives who were among 70 people who died around her at a religious festival on December 6 last year.
AFP photographer Massoud Hossaini, 30, won the prestigious US journalism prize for his “heartbreaking image of a girl crying in fear after a suicide bomber’s attack at a crowded shrine in Kabul,” the Pulitzer committee said.
Tarana still cries sometimes when she remembers that day, but she managed an occasional shy smile in an interview with AFP at her modest home on Tuesday, as she cuddled her sisters, who were both wounded in the blast.
That her picture has been featured on newspaper front pages around the world means little to her, she says, with a small shrug and a fleeting smile.
But when she first saw the searing image she wondered: “How come I am alive. I can see all the dead bodies around me but only I survived.”
She is still frightened at times, and that bloody day still haunts her, awake or asleep, but she says she is getting better.
One of the two spartan rooms that Tarana shares with her family of seven has a television in a corner, but what she sees there does not always help her recovery.

Last Sunday, squads of Taliban suicide bombers infiltrated the capital and unleashed gunfire and explosions in an 18-hour assault before all being killed by security forces.
“It made me frightened again,” she said. “I am not happy, because that day when the bomb went off destroyed my family.”
Of the bomber and those who sent him on his mission, she says only: “They did a bad thing. They should not have done it.”
Her unemployed father, Ahmad, 35, lifts the shirt of Tarana’s four-year-old sister to show horrific scars covering her entire stomach from the shrapnel that ripped through the celebrating crowd.
Out of 17 women and children from her extended family who went to a riverside shrine near her home that day to mark the Shiite holy day of Ashura, seven died, including her seven-year-old brother Shoaib.
Tarana herself has scars on her legs and arms and walks with a limp. She no longer attends school because her legs hurt, she says, adding: “I hope I can get well soon and go back to school.”
Asked about her hopes for the future, the sweet smile makes an appearance and she says she would like to be a teacher, with the local language Dari being her favourite subject.
She spends her days playing with her sisters in the ramshackle house and in the dirt courtyard outside which leads to an alley where huddled young men openly inject heroin against crumbling mud walls.
Behind those walls, the “Girl in the green dress” nurses her pain and her fears, now dressed in a plain, baggy, shalwar khameez hiding the scars from the day her life was torn apart.

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LINCOLN PARK, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan woman who continued to get food stamps after winning a lottery jackpot was arraigned Tuesday on welfare fraud charges.
Amanda Clayton, 25, of Lincoln Park was arrested on Monday. If convicted of the two felony charges, she could face up to four years in prison.
Clayton stood silently during her arraignment at Lincoln Park’s 25th District Court. Defense lawyer Stanley Wise said he hopes to have charges dismissed at her next court hearing April 24. He didn’t elaborate.
“She’s upset but she’ll be fine,” Wise said.
Clayton won the $1 million jackpot on “Make Me Rich!” a Michigan lottery game show, and chose to take home a $735,000 lump sum, before taxes.
The case came to light last month when Clayton told Detroit TV station WDIV that she thought it might have been OK to keep using food stamps because she wasn’t working.
The state Department of Human Services has said it was Clayton’s responsibility to report her dramatic change in wealth within 10 days. She was dropped from the food program.

“It’s simply common sense that million dollar lottery winners forfeit their right to public assistance,” Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement Tuesday. “We will continue to work with local, state and federal authorities to uphold state laws intended to ensure wise stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
Clayton wasn’t the first Michigan lottery winner to keep public benefits. Last spring, a TV station reported that Leroy Fick, 60, of Bay County, was using the food program despite winning an $850,000 lump sum prize in 2010. He told state officials about his wealth but was allowed to temporarily keep his card because lump-sum windfalls at that time were not counted as regular income under the program.
The state has since banned anyone with assets of more than $5,000, excluding a car, from the food stamp program. That ban knocked Fick off the rolls.

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It’s been quite the day for 6-year-olds in the news. Earlier, we told you about the courageous, 6-year-old Texas boy who has already raised $10,000 for his Dad’s cancer treatment.

In less positive news, a 6-year-old girl in Georgia was handcuffed by police and charged with assault after throwing a “tantrum” in her elementary school. Local tv affiliate 13WMAZ reports that Salecia Johnson, who is in kindergarten, was detained by police after her alleged outburst.
“Our policy is that any detainee transported to our station in a patrol vehicle is to be handcuffed in the back. There is no age discrimination on that rule,” Milledgeville Chief of Police Dray Swicord, told the station.

Swicord said the officer who handcuffed Johnson is not facing an investigation over his actions. Swicord added that Johnson was handcuffed for her safety as well as the safety of others. She was taken to the principal’s office after pushing two other students, according to a police report.
“The student was never placed in a holding cell or jail cell and the student’s safety was of the utmost importance,” Swicord said.

However, Johnson’s parents are trying to organize a community protest against the officer’s actions, including reported plans to contact civil rights activist and MSNBC host Al Sharpton.

The officer’s police report says Johnson began tearing items off the school principal’s office walls and was throwing furniture. The report says Johnson knocked over a shelf that injured the principal.

Johnson also was reportedly biting a doorknob and attempting to break a glass frame while jumping on top of a paper shredder.
“She has mood swings some days, which all of us had mood swings some days,” Johnson’s mother Constance Ruff told WMAZ. “I guess that was just one of her bad days.”

After Johnson was handcuffed, she was taken to the local police station and charged with simple assault and damage to property. However, because of her young age, Johnson will reportedly not be prosecuted.

“A 6-year-old in kindergarten. They don’t have no business calling the police and handcuffing my child,” said Earnest Johnson, Salecia’s father.

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Dropping $822,751 on a conference for about 300 people would be a scandalous waste in the private sector (maybe not if you’re Instagram)—but put that bill on a government tab, and it’s unfathomable: In fact, that sum is the amount of taxpayer dollars dropped on a Las Vegas junket by an agency that most Americans haven’t even heard of.

If  the U.S. General Services Administration wasn’t a household name before the wasteful office retreat, it sure is known now: The conference resulted in the resignation of administrator Martha Johnson; a congressional hearing; and some incriminating photos of the conference organizer, Jeff Neely, and his wife, living the preconference “suite” life in the Las Vegas hotel.
So what exactly does this agency do, aside from waste your money? Well, here’s the thing: The independent agency is tasked with developing government-wide cost minimizing policies. But along the way, the organization seems to have done the exact opposite.
It all started back in 1949, when President Truman authorized the General Services Administration as an independent government agency. It was the result of combining several government agencies: the national archives, the U.S. Treasury Department’s contract department, and the Federal Work Agency.

Its first task: A complete renovation of the White House.  Today, the agency is responsible for overseeing federal buildings and supplies. It is in “the business of government,” as its website states, offering “private sector professional services, equipment, supplies, telecommunications, and information technology to government organizations and the military. GSA policies promote management best practices and efficient government operations.”
These are the guys who are in charge of presidential transitions, historic preservation, and, yes, even running the rules and regulations of travel and conferences for federal agencies, as the acting deputy administrator Dan Tangherlini points out in his mea culpa message on the site’s blog.

By KEN RITTER | Associated Press – 7 hrs ago

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 9-year-old boy arrived at school Monday with a grisly story: His mother and sister were dead at their home four blocks away.
Minutes later, police found the bodies of a 10-year-old girl and her mother — along with a blood-covered father and an unharmed 4-year-old boy — in a modest home in a West Las Vegas neighborhood, authorities said.
The five people belonged to a single family, police Officer Jacinto Rivera said.
The man, who was hospitalized with a head injury, was not immediately identified as a suspect or charged.
Police wouldn’t immediately say how or when the slayings occurred, but Rivera said there was no immediate evidence of a break-in at the home or that a suspect was on the loose.
One neighbor, Lucinda Jackson Griffith, said she heard at least one gunshot early Monday.
Longtime neighbor, Dick Webb, said he had walked past the home less than 90 minutes before the boy arrived at school. He said he didn’t notice anything amiss.
Rivera called it too early in the investigation to determine a motive, and said investigators were working carefully to collect evidence inside the single-story stucco home with a motorcycle and two sport utility vehicles in the driveway.
“We get one shot at a homicide scene. Our No. 1 priority is to find out what happened,” the police spokesman said. “Right now we don’t know what happened.”
Clark County spokesman Erik Pappa said the 4-year-old and 9-year-old boys were in the custody of child protective services because they didn’t have an adult caregiver.
Clark County Department of Family Services officials planned to try to locate other relatives before placing the boys together with a foster family, department spokeswoman Christine Skorupski said.
Police cordoned off the entire block near the home during their investigation.
Officials said the boy was uninjured when he arrived at Mabel Hoggard Elementary School, where his older sister also was enrolled.
Principal Celese Rayford declined comment.
Clark County School District spokeswoman Amanda Fulkerson wouldn’t describe how or what the boy told school officials, or whether other students were told what happened.
School administrators quickly notified police about the boy’s story and began mobilizing its crisis response team to help students process the tragedy, Fulkerson said.
The campus, with about 450 students in grades kindergarten through 5, was “struggling to sort out emotions and details of a tragedy that claimed the life of a student at home this weekend,” she said.
Students also were being reminded that school “is always a safe zone with caring adults that can help in uncertain situations,” Fulkerson said.

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LONDON (Reuters) – Fifteen people were injured when a Virgin Atlantic plane made an emergency landing on Monday at London’s second airport, Gatwick, the airport said.
The Virgin Airbus A330 aircraft, which was travelling to Orlando, was forced to turn back soon after take-off due to a fire in the hold, according to media reports.
Passengers suffered injuries, including suspected fractures and cuts as they escaped the aircraft using the emergency chutes.
Passenger Kirsty Bonwick said passengers came down straight onto concrete.
“A lot of people were hurt, breaking their arms and elbows and bleeding,” she told Sky News.
David Davis, of the ambulance service, said a range of injuries were being treated.
“People with suspected broken ankles and legs and arms and people suffering with pain which could be indicative of injuries in their back and spine,” he said. “There are other people with abdominal injuries, or suspected abdominal injuries.”
The injured were among 13 crew and 299 passengers on the flight which left Gatwick just before 11 a.m. local time.
The incident led to the temporary suspension of flights in and out of the airport, leading to some knock-on delays.
“Due to a technical problem on board the aircraft, the captain decided as a precautionary measure to immediately evacuate the aircraft,” Virgin said in a statement.
“Our teams at Gatwick are now looking after our passengers and assisting with their immediate requirements.”
Virgin Atlantic Chief Executive Steve Ridgeway told Sky News he could not confirm reports by some passengers on Twitter that they had seen smoke in the cabin. “I have just been with the passengers and none of them mentioned that to me,” he said.
Virgin Group owner, British billionaire Richard Branson, posted a message on Twitter apologizing to passengers on flight number VS27 and saying staff were doing all they could to look after them.
(Reporting by Michael Holden, Stephen Mangan and David Brunnstrom; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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If you had almost five billion dollars, what would you do? For Karl Wlaschek, the answer is marry a lot.

Forbes is reporting via Vienna News that Austrian retail tycoon Wlaschek will wed for the fifth time at the ripe old age of 94. His bride-to-be, girlfriend Friederike ‘Ricki’ Schenk, won’t reveal her age, but is likely a good three decades behind her groom. That means Wlaschek, a self-made mogul, has defied stereotypes by proposing to a woman who’s closer to his age than the average Hef-to-twin-sisters ratio.

Still, the billionaire with the prolific marriage history is a plot-line we’ve seen over and over again. Revlon honcho Ron Perelman wed number five two years ago, shortly after the ink dried on his brutal divorce from actress Ellen Barkin. Larry Ellison and T. Boone Pickens are up to number four and the night is still young.

Five-timer Wlaschek earned his $4.7 billion dollar bank account by founding Billa, a European supermarket chain. He’s since become one of the biggest real estate magnates in Austria. He announced his engagement at one of his own properties, a sprawling five star hotel in his native country, where he once played as a struggling young jazz pianist, back when the musical genre was in its infancy.

The groom met his future bride at a Vienna event a few years back, and soon realized somewhat touchingly or morbidly depending on your vantage point, that they’d both lost their last spouses on the very same day.

The couple’s wedding is set to take place in a few days, according to Forbes (although some German gossip pages are saying the big day already happened this past Saturday).

The self-made Wlaschek already has four kids but still wants “another five or six children, at the very least.” His bride laughed that comment off, saying “I am not so young any more.”

Two large quakes strike western Mexico within 12 hours, shaking buildings in the capital more than 200 miles away

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Reuters in Mexico City
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 April 2012 04.28 EDT
Article history

Two large earthquakes have struck western Mexico, shaking buildings as far away as the capital and sending people rushing out of offices on to the streets.

There were no reports of major damage after the first of the two tremors.

The the US Geological Survey said the first quake, on Wednesday evening in the western state of Michoacan, had a magnitude of 6.5 and was recorded at a depth of 12.4 miles.

The second, in the early hours of Thursday off Baja California, was stronger and shallower. It had a magnitude of 6.9 and a depth of 6.2 miles.

Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard, writing on his Twitter account after the first quake, said there were no initial signs of serious damage. Key services in the capital, including its underground system and the international airport, were operating normally.

“There was a nasty crunching sound in my bathroom and everything moved,” said Adela Arceo, who was looking after two young children in the central Roma neighbourhood of Mexico City.

There were no initial reports of casualties. Emergency services in Michoacan and in the neighbouring state of Guerrero, which has been hit by a series of recent quakes, reported no significant problems.

“You could feel it, but there’s no major damage. There are no reports, no emergency calls,” said Agustin Lule, a spokesman for the fire services in Uruapan, a town in Michoacan near the epicentre.

Reuters reporters in coastal areas of Guerrero and neighboring Oaxaca state said there was no damage.

The Honolulu-based Pacific tsunami warning centre said it had issued no warning, but oceanographer David Walsh noted the quake was close to water, big enough and potentially deep enough to cause one.

The quakes followed two others in Mexico within the past month. A 7.4-magnitude shock struck on 20 March, damaging hundreds of buildings in the south-west. It was followed by dozens of aftershocks.

An 8.6-magnitude earthquake also struck off Indonesia on Wednesday, raising fears of a tsunami similar to the one that devastated the Indian Ocean rim in 2004. Authorities, however, said there were no reports suggesting a major threat.