Man Jailed For Putting Urine In Coffee At Work
Co-Workers Say Man Put Urine In Coffee Pot For Several Months(who figured this out? Did someone say they had tasted it before?)UPDATED: 7:18 am EDT September 19, 2006
AKRON, Ohio -- There will be no trial for an Ohio postal worker accused of urinating in his co-workers' coffee.
Thomas Shaheen admitted Monday that he put urine in the break room coffee pot at the Wolf Ledges, Ohio, post office branch earlier this year. Shaheen was sentenced to six months in a jail work release program.
He was also ordered to pay his co-workers $1,200 to reimburse them for the video camera they rented to help capture him in the act.
Shaheen told his former co-workers during his sentencing that he was sorry for what he did.
"I just wanted to tell you I'm really sorry," said Shaheen. "I don't know what came over me. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me. I'm really sorry, I just want to get my life over, get my life going again."
But before he apologized and was sentenced, some of the postal employees he worked with at the transportation maintenance shop gave Shaheen a piece of their minds.
"He not only watched us drink the coffee but the majority of the shop, his own friends and fellow workers, about 20 of us all together, he would sit in the same room with people and watch them drink his sick little brew and think nothing of it," said postal worker Jene Jackson.
Postal workers said Shaheen poured urine in the coffee pot several times in a four- to six-month period. Employees said Shaheen was jealous of some of his peers who had certain work privileges.
"Some guys would go out in the morning and deliver trucks out to the stations, which a lot of guys would prefer doing that, and then he would stay and he would get upset about that," said one worker.
Former co-worker Jim Jackson said, "Everybody's got their own idea on the matter, it was a pretty disgusting ordeal, but it's done. I do feel for his family, we didn't deserve it and his family definitely didn't deserve what he's put them through."
Doctors Report Successful Penis Transplant(Hey Doc my horse just died and I was wondering if....)
POSTED: 12:39 pm EDT September 19, 2006
Chinese doctors said they successfully transplanted a penis on a man who lost his own in an accident, but had to remove it two weeks later because of psychological problems experienced by the man and his wife.
The case appears to be the first such transplant reported in a medical journal -- European Urology, published by the European Association of Urology.
The Chinese doctors could not be reached for comment, and their report does not explain how the 44-year-old man lost his penis. It says only that "an unfortunate traumatic accident" left him with a small stump, unable to urinate or have sex normally.
Surgeons led by Dr. Hu Weilie at Guangzhou General Hospital performed the transplant in September 2005, a hospital spokesperson said Tuesday. The penis came from a 22-year-old brain-dead man whose parents agreed to donate his organ.
"There was a strong demand from both the patient and his wife" for a transplant, and the operation "was discussed again and again" and approved by the hospital's ethics committee, Hu writes in the journal.
Despite how shocking and radical the operation sounds, it involves standard microsurgery techniques to reconnect blood vessels and nerves.
From a medical point of view, "the main hurdle is the functional recovery," said Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, chief of plastic surgery at the University Of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
From arm and leg reattachments, it's known that nerve regrowth occurs at a rate of about an inch a month and often is insufficient to allow normal use, he said.
However, the ethical and psychological challenges in such cases can be even more paramount, as this and other recent transplants involving hands and faces illustrate.
"Some of the considerations for a penile transplant are the same as for a hand or face transplant," such as the need to take lifelong immune-suppressing drugs to prevent rejection of the new organ, Lee said.
The drugs can cause kidney and other damage, acceptable risks when the transplant involves a vital organ such as a liver or heart, but more ethically perilous when the operation is aimed at improving quality of life rather than extending it, Dr. Yoram Vardi, a neurology and urology specialist at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, writes in an accompanying commentary in the urology journal.
Psychological issues are keenly important. The world's first hand transplant recipient stopped taking immune suppression drugs and later requested that the hand be amputated.
Lee recalled speaking with the recipient of the world's first double-hand transplant in France, who told him it took months for him to accept his new hands and stop referring to one as "it."
Fourteen days after the penis transplant, the recipient and his wife requested that the organ be removed "because of the wife's psychological rejection as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis," the surgeons report in the journal.
Lab examination showed no sign of rejection, the doctor’s report.
If adequate attention had been paid to the need for counseling and other psychological concerns surrounding the transplant, "the need for penile amputation could probably have been avoided," Vardi wrote in his commentary.
Teacher's X-Rated Font Surprises ParentsKinky Font Used On Open House HandoutsPOSTED: 1:30 pm EDT September 19, 2006
MONROE, N.Y. -- It wasn't as easy as ABC.
In fact, these ABC's are leaving some parents uneasy.
School officials in upstate New York are apologizing for an X-rated type style that was used on a third-grade spelling packet. The font showed male and female stick figures in provocative poses to form the letters of the alphabet.
Parents at Pine Tree Elementary School in Orange County got the spelling packet at an open house. Administrators said the veteran teacher didn't use the font on purpose.
The design of the font was so subtle that school officials and many parents missed it, according to the Record Online. Many parents didn't know about the kinky font until they received a letter of apology from school Principal Jean Maxson.
"This packet was reviewed by a number of people, including myself," Maxson wrote. "I take full responsibility for this inappropriate publication."
"It was very unintentional. No one did this on purpose," Superintendent Joseph DiLorenzo said, according to the Journal. "It was missed. It was a mistake."
Monroe is about 45 miles northwest of New York City.