A 14-year-old girl owes $20,000 in damages after a house party - and her parents are on the hook

After using her parents’ credit card to rent a house in which to throw a wild party, a Canadian 14-year-old is in major trouble — $20,000 worth, actually. That’s the amount of damage the teens caused, and which her parents must now pay.

Last week, police responded to a call that reported an “uncontrolled party” at a neighborhood home in West Vancouver, where nearly 200 teens were seen “flooding out” once officials arrived, according to CTV News. Left in their wake was a house with much destruction — to walls, furniture, and artwork, all of which her parents will be held accountable for.

According to the police report, the young girl responsible for the event had used her parents’ credit card without their permission. But the parents will still have to find a way to pay.

And while that might seem like a nightmare to any mom or dad, parents in the U.S. would not only be financially liable, but likely criminally as well, thanks to the threat of social host laws in many states.

There have been numerous cases of parents facing charges for hosting parties that involve underage drinking. While in this particular case, the parents weren’t present and the fete wasn’t even at their own home, their names were on the credit card used to lay out payment for the rental house.

“Social host laws hold non-commercial individuals, including parents, landowners, and tenants, responsible for underage drinking events on property they own, lease, or otherwise control,” according to the Center for the Study of Law and Enforcement Policy — meaning that guardians remain responsible whether they provide the alcohol or not. (Luckily for these parents, though, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled against social host liability law in the 2006 case of Childs v. Desomoreaux.)

Legal problems aside, though, the Canada party disaster can serve as a much-needed teachable moment for teens who may be thinking about throwing their own out-of-control party.

“The first thing parents have to do is talk to their kids,” child and adolescent psychologist Barbara Greenberg tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “Approach it in a two-pronged way. Empathize with your kid and align yourself with them so that they know you’re on their side. Explain the peer pressures and negative outcomes. Secondly, explain that this is our home that we’ve worked so hard for, and as a part of the family, you need to protect it too, and our resources.”

It’s also important to have an adult supervising, she says, as a grown-up’s presence can help a teen deflect inevitable peer pressure.

“You’re actually helping your child by having an adult in the house or a neighbor stopping by, because you’re giving your child an out,” Greenberg explains. “Kids get really scared, and they’re going to be secretly grateful that you helped them,” especially with social media‘s ability to turn a seemingly innocent party into something that is out of a kid’s control.

As for what can be learned after a child makes the mistake of throwing a party that results in financial disaster? Greenberg says the bottom line is that “young teenage children and unlimited credit cards are a dangerous recipe.”

“These parents should work out a plan for the teen to pay,” she says of the 14-year-old Canadian girl, adding that this extreme example should serve as a talking point for parents everywhere. “Show your kids the article, and ask them what they think. They want to know that you value what they say. They want to feel relevant and want to be heard.”

Horrifying New Details About The Woman Who Was Raped In An Airplane Bathroom And Why The Man Responsible Still Hasn't Been Arrested

A woman who said she was raped during a recent flight claims the man responsible still hasn't been arrested. 

Aubrey Lane, a 31-year-old married mother from Colorado, said she was assaulted while on a red-eye flight from Phoenix to New York this past June. The man who sat next to her on that flight appeared to be drunk. 

"My first thought was this guy's drunk. He was super chatty,' Lane said in an interview with the Dallas Morning News. 'I've flown a lot. I'm used to people saying hello. This is the most anyone has sat down and started talking to me."

  

Even though the man seemed drunk, Lane said flight attendants continued to serve him alcohol throughout the flight. A few hours into it, she got up to use the bathroom. 

She said the man got up and followed her into the bathroom where he raped her. 

Lane said she immediately reported the incident to the flight attendants who moved her to a seat at the back of the plane. 

"I was feeling overwhelmed," she said. "All of a sudden, I was thrown in a middle seat, bawling. On top of being sad and hurt and scared, I was also embarrassed."

When they landed in New York, authorities were called to meet the plane at the gate — but they only took Lane to the hospital. 

  

Her attacker wasn't taken into custody and today she still doesn't even know his name. Because the alleged raped happened in the air, FBI has to investigate and prosecute. 

Lane said she's looking to sue American Airlines for letting the drunk man board the plane and continuing to serve him drinks. 

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Lane said American responded to her attorneys with a letter this past December and called her allegations a "nuisance claim." They offered her a $5,000 payout, which she has not accepted. 

"I'm coming out now because [American] hasn't made it evident it wants to change this," Lane said. "What's going to stop this from happening again unless I make a big fuss about it?"

30,000 jobs will be lost after Toys R Us shuts down

The demise of Toys R Us will have a ripple effect on everything from toy makers to consumers to landlords.

The 70-year-old retailer sought court approval Thursday to liquidate its remaining 735 stores, eliminating the jobs of some 30,000 employees while spelling the end for a chain known to generations of children and parents for its sprawling stores and Geoffrey the giraffe mascot.

The closing of the company’s U.S. stores over the coming months will finalize the downfall of the chain that succumbed to heavy debt and relentless trends that undercut its business, from online shopping to mobile games.

And it will force toy makers and landlords who depended on the chain to scramble for alternatives.

CEO David Brandon told employees Wednesday the company’s plan is to liquidate all of its U.S. stores, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

There is still some hope. Toys R Us will try to bundle its Canadian business, with about 200 U.S. stores, and find a buyer. The company’s U.S. online store would still be running for the next couple of weeks in case there’s a buyer for it. Workers in the U.S. will get paid for the next 60 days if they show up for work, but after that all benefits and pay will be cut, Brandon told employees at the meeting, according to the recording. Some workers will be asked to stay longer to help with the liquidation. The company said that gift cards will be honored for the next 30 days. It will not accept returns once the liquidation sales start.

It’s likely to also liquidate its businesses in Australia, France, Poland, Portugal and Spain. It’s already shuttering its business in the United Kingdom. That would leave it with stores in Canada, central Europe and Asia, where it could find buyers for those assets.

Toys R Us Asia Ltd. has more than 400 retail outlets in Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. It is a Hong Kong-based joint venture with the Fung Group, which owns a 15 percent stake. It also controls Asian sourcing giant Li & Fung, a major supplier to Western retailers like Wal-Mart.

A Fung spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

When Toys R Us initially announced it was filling for bankruptcy protection last year, the Asian venture said it was not affected and operated as a separate legal entity independent of other Toys R Us businesses around the world.

In Hong Kong, where Toys R Us has 15 stores, parents said there were few other choices in a retail market dominated by a few big players.

“If you want something like a mainstream toy shop, then Toys R Us is the only place you can go,” said Ching-yng Choi, whose home and office are both within walking distance of Toys R Us shops.

“Basically either it’s Toys R Us or you go to specialized and very expensive toy shops that sell, for example, wooden toys that come from very far away countries like in Europe,” she said.

Toys R Us had about 60,000 full-time and part-time employees worldwide last year.

“We worked as hard and as long as we could to turn over every rock,” Brandon told employees.

But in his address, Brandon took shots at shoppers and vendors who cut back on their support for the chain in recent months.

“I believe that all of them will live to regret what is happening to our company,” he said.

When the chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall, saddled with $5 billion in debt that hurt its attempts to compete as shoppers moved to Amazon and huge chains like Walmart, it pledged to stay open.

But Brandon told employees its sales performance during the holiday season was “devastating,” as nervous customers and vendors shied away. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization — a measure of the company’s operating performance — was a paltry $81 million for the critical fourth quarter. That compared with $347 million in the year-ago period, according to the court filing. That made its lenders more skittish about investing in the company. In January, it announced plans to close about 180 stores over the next couple of months, leaving it with a little more than 700 stores.

The company’s troubles have affected toy makers Mattel and Hasbro, which are big suppliers to the chain. But the likely liquidation will have a bigger impact on smaller toy makers that rely more on the chain for sales. Many have been trying to diversify in recent months as they fretted about the chain’s survival.

Toys R Us has been hurt by the shift to mobile devices taking up more play time. But steep sales declines over the holidays and thereafter were the deciding factor, said Jim Silver, editor-in-chief of toy review site TTPM.com.

The company didn’t do enough to emphasize that it was reorganizing but not going out of business, Silver said. That misperception kept customers away from its stores because they didn’t think they would be able to return gifts.

Now, the $11 billion in sales still happening at Toys R Us each year will disperse to other retailers like Amazon and discounters, analysts say. Other chains, seeing that Toys R Us was vulnerable, got more aggressive. J.C. Penney opened toy sections last fall in all 875 stores. Target and Walmart have been expanding their toy selections. Even Party City is building up its toy offerings.

“Amazon may pick up the dollars, but won’t deliver the experience needed for a toy retailer to survive and thrive in today’s market,” said Marc Rosenberg, a toy marketing executive.

Toys R Us had dominated the toy store business in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it was one of the first of the “category killers”— a store totally devoted to one thing. Its scale gave it leverage with toy sellers and it disrupted general merchandise stores and mom-and-pop shops. Children sang along with commercials about “the biggest toy store there is.”

But the company lost ground to discounters like Target and Walmart, and then to Amazon, as even nostalgic parents sought deals elsewhere. GlobalData Retail estimates that nearly 14 percent of toy sales were made online in 2016, more than double the level five years ago. Toys R Us still has hundreds of stores, and analysts estimate it still sells about 20 percent of the toys bought in the United States.

It wasn’t able to compete with a growing Amazon: The toy seller said in bankruptcy filings that Amazon’s low prices were hard to match. And it said its Babies R Us chain lost customers to the online retailer’s convenient subscription service, which let parents receive diapers and baby formula at their doorstep automatically. Toys R Us blamed its “old technology” for not offering its own subscriptions.

But the company’s biggest albatross was that it struggled with massive debt since private-equity firms Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and Vornado Realty Trust took it private in a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout in 2005. Weak sales prevented them from taking the company public again. With such debt levels, Toys R Us did not have the financial flexibility to invest in its business. The company closed its flagship store in Manhattan’s Times Square, a huge tourist destination that featured its own Ferris wheel, about two years ago.

In filing for bankruptcy protection last fall, Toys R Us pledged to make its stores more interactive. It added demonstrators for the holiday season to show people how toys work, and began opening Play Labs at 42 stores, areas where children can play with different items.

Chicago students trash Walmart during walkout over gun violence

Chicago police are trying to identify the dozens of students from Simeon Career Academy who they say took part in a vandalism spree while they were supposed to be protesting guns.

Shoppers and store employees were stunned by the destruction Wednesday morning at the Walmart in Chatham Market on the South Side.

Chicago police say it started when students at neighboring Simeon Career Academy were allowed to leave the school for 17 minutes to take part in the nationwide walkout to protest guns.

Police say between 40 and 60 of those students crossed the street and trashed parts of the store, knocking over product displays, yanking items off shelves, breaking packages and stealing small items like chips and candy.

In a statement, a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson says: "We are very concerned by these allegations and we are reviewing the matter."

Some of the students that FOX 32 talked to at Simeon say they're angry that a walkout intended to promote peace instead led to vandalism and violence.

FOX 32 showed the video to 21st Ward Alderman Howard Brookins, who was instrumental in getting the big box retailers to move to the South Side.

"We've worked too hard to try to get these national retailers here in our community. And this doesn't help us. It makes no sense to tear up the community which you call home,” he said.

A Chicago police spokesman says they're reviewing what he calls "high quality" video surveillance from Walmart to identify the students at fault, as well as videos posted to social media.

He says those students will likely be charged with misdemeanors and face discipline from the school.

Teens Face ‘Corporal Punishment’ in Rural Arkansas for Participating in Student Walkout

Three students in a rural part of Arkansas have allegedly been smacked for participating in Wednesday’s national walkout protesting against gun violence.

Despite that drastic punishment, one student’s mother, Jerusalem J. Greer, applauded her son and the other students at Greenbrier Public School for their defiant protest following the deadly shooting that killed 15 students and two adults at Stoneman Douglas High School last month in Parkland, Florida.

“My kid and two other students walked out of their rural, very conservative, public school for 17 minutes today,” Greer wrote on Twitter. “They were given two punishment options. They chose corporal punishment. This generation is not playing around.”

Jerusalem Greer@JerusalemGreer

My kid and two other students walked out of their rural, very conservative, public school for 17 minutes today. They were given two punishment options. They chose corporal punishment. This generation is not playing around. #walkout

1:36 AM - Mar 15, 2018

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Greer later said that the students faced what the school calls “swats.”

According to Greenbrier Public School’s official policy, the school board “authorizes the use of corporal punishment to be administered in accordance with this policy by the Superintendent or his/her designated staff members who are required to have a state-issued license as a condition of their employment.”

The handbook says that before students are smacked they are to be “given an explanation of the reasons for the punishment and be given an opportunity to refute the charges. administered privately, i.e. out of the sight and hearing of other students.”

While 31 states across the U.S. have banned corporal punishment, four years ago The Washington Post reported that 19 states still allow administrators to hit students. 

Greenbrier Public School, which is located in a town of roughly 5,000 people, only first adopted the seemingly outdated disciplinary policy in 2005 and last updated it in 2012.

The rural Arkansas school’s policy does caution administrations that the physical punishment should not be “excessive, or administered with malice” and should be administered in the presence of another school official or licensed staff member of the district.  

The school’s assistant principal, Brett Meek, hung up the phone when The Daily Beast reached out for comment on the school’s regulations. The school’s superintendent, Scott Spainhour, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Wylie Greer, one of the students punished, spoke out in a statement to The Daily Beast late Thursday night:

Walking out of class at ten on Monday morning was not an easy thing. Many students were vocally insulting and degrading to the idea of the walk-out and anyone who would participate. At 10:00, I walked out of my classroom to a few gaped mouths and more than a few scowls. I exited the building, sat on the bench, and was alone for a few seconds. I was more than a little concerned that I would be the only one to walk out. I was joined by two others eventually, two of the smartest students at the school. We sat outside the front of the building and were approached first by the principal, who asked us “if he could help us” and “if we understood that there would be consequences.” After we answered affirmatively, he went back inside. A few minutes passed and the dean-of-students approached us. He asked “what we were doing,” we told him that we were protesting gun violence. He told us to go inside. We refused.

After the 17 minutes had passed, we re-entered the building and went to our classes. Over the next two hours, all three of us were called individually to talk with the dean-of-students. He offered us two choices of punishment, both of which had to be approved by our parents. We would either suffer two ‘swats’ from a paddle or two days of in-school suspension. All three of us chose the paddling, with the support of our parents.

I received my punishment during 6th period. The dean-of-students carried it out while the assistant principal witnessed. The punishment was not dealt with malice or cruelty, in fact, I have the utmost respect for all the adults involved. They were merely doing their job as the school board and school policy dictated. The ‘swats’ were not painful or injuring. It was nothing more than a temporary sting on my thighs. The dean-of-students did stress however that not all punishments like this ended this way.

I believe that corporal punishment has no place in schools, even if it wasn’t painful to me. The idea that violence should be used against someone who was protesting violence as a means to discipline them is appalling. I hope that this is changed, in Greenbrier, and across the country.

Wylie A. Greer

Class of 2018

Greenbrier High School, Arkansas

A custodian takes advantage of National School Walkout and steals $180 from students' book bags

While students in a South Carolina school participated in the National School Walkoutthis week, a custodian helped herself to their cash, police said.

The incident occurred at Richland Northeast High School on Wednesday.

Aisha Evans, a custodian at the school, went into a classroom while students were outside and rummaged through three book bags, the Richland County Sheriff's Department said.

In all, Evans stole $180, the department said.

The custodian was arrested soon afterward and charged with three counts of petty larceny.

Evans, 32, was employed by Service Solutions, an agency that provides custodial services to the district's school.

The agency terminated the woman, the school district told CNN affiliate WIS.

"On Thursday, March 15, Service Solutions notified Richland Two that Evans is no longer an employee of the company and was informed that she cannot come on any Richland Two property," Richland Two School District said in its statement to the affiliate.

It's unclear whether Evans has retained a lawyer.

Extend research from labs to land, redefine 'R&D': PM Modi to scientists

The government has set a target of 100 GW (gigawatt) of installed solar power by 2022.

Addressing the inaugural session of the 105th Indian Science Congress in Imphal on Friday, March 16, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged scientists to extend their research 'from labs to the land'.

He further said that the time was ripe to redefine 'R&D' as research for the development of the nation, adding that it would be for the greater benefit of the people.

"It is time to reclaim our rightful place among the front-line nations in this field," he said, calling upon the scientific community to extend its research from "the labs to the land".

Emphasizing India's rich tradition and a long history of both discovery and use of science and technology, PM Modi said the country has to be "future ready" in implementing technologies vital for the growth and prosperity of the nation.


"Technology will allow far greater penetration of services such as education, healthcare and banking to our citizens," he said.

There is a need, the Prime Minister said, to communicate our scientific achievements to society.

This, he said, will help inculcate scientific temper among the youth.

"We have to throw open our institutions and laboratories to our children. I call upon scientists to develop a mechanism for interaction with school-children," he said.

He said it was his "personal request" that scientists spend 100 hours per annum with 100 students of classes 9 to 12 to discuss science and technology as it could help nurture scientific temperament among the youth.

The government has set a target of 100 GW (gigawatt) of installed solar power by 2022, Modi told the gathering.

"Efficiency of solar modules currently available in the market is around 17-18 percent. Can our scientists take a challenge to come up with a more efficient solar module, which can be produced in India at the same cost," he asked.

He also said the government is committed to increasing the share of non-fossil fuel based capacity in the electricity mix above 40 percent by 2030.

India is a leader in the multi-country Solar Alliance and in Mission Innovation. These groupings are providing a thrust to R and D for clean energy, the prime minister pointed out.