Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Tyson's daughter dies after accident, police say


Heavy weight champion Mike Tyson's 4-year-old daughter was pronounced dead at 11:45 a.m. local time Tuesday. She was on life support before she passed and was in critical condition. Her older brother had found her the day earlier strangled with one of the cords on the families treadmill in their Phoenix home in Arizona. The boy called his mother and she untangled her and tried to perform CPR while calling 911 but by the time the emergency workers arrived she already needed to be on life support. After an investigation, it was found that this was just a terrible accident that happened while she was supposedly playing on the treadmill like it was on.


I believe that this is a terrible accident. The article said that about 1,000 children under the age of 14 die of unintentional strangulation each year. This is an alarming number. I did not know that this many children die each year from this. The article also said that 88 percent of the children are under the age of 4. This is just terrible to think about. It is a shame that we can child proof and child proof our homes, but it is still not enough sometimes. It is terrbile that some children are killed by the very things that they live with everyday. I cannot even begin to think of how the Tyson is feeling, or what they are going through. I feel terrible for them and anyone else who has lost their children for any reason. I cannot believe that this happened.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Saudi judge: It's OK to slap spendthrift wives


Recently, Judge Hamad Al-Razine, from Saudi Arabia, stated, "if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment." The women in the court house heard this and were outraged. They were shocked to hear this from a judge. Arab News said that Al-Razine was trying to state the reason for domestic violence in Saudi Arabia. He said that women and men shared their responsibilities, but added that "nobody puts even a fraction of blame" on women, Arab News said. Al-Razine "also pointed out that women's indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country," it added. Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN, "This is how men in Saudi Arabia see women. It's not something they read in a book or learned from a friend. They've been raised to see women this way, that they're less than a person."




I believe that this Judge said some things that were very ignorant. I think that these men have been brought up to see women as someone that is not a person. I cannot believe that countries still have these beliefs. I do not understand this custom because I was not brought up in this way. I do not understand how someone can even believe this. I know how you are brought up, is how you are going to act when you do grow up, but I still do not undersatnd. How can you look at someone that is just a different gender than you and believe that you are better than them, just because of that difference between you? Sexist beliefs that this should not be practiced, I believe. It is just something that I feel is completely wrong. You cannot be better than someone else just because you may be a different gender. I feel that this judge was completely out of line when he made this comment and ruling. I thought that if you were a judge you were supposed to have an unbiased opinion and that you were just supposed to rule on justice and what is right and wrong. It seems to me that this judge had already made up his mind on who he was going to side with before he even started this case. I think it is wrong that this judge made such a sexist comment, and that he should not have made his ruling on his opinions but on justice instead.