Woman admits letting three-year-old son freeze to death outside house while she slept off drug binge

A mother has admitted to letting her three-year-old son freeze to death outside her house while she slept off a drug binge.

Jamie Basinger pleaded guilty to the involuntary manslaughter of Landyn Melton and he 24-year-old will be expected to serve 36 months of supervised probation and between 19 and 32 months of prison time, after cutting a plea deal with Prosecutors in her home town of Morganton, North Carolina.

Basinger's mother, Brenda Basinger, said it was something her daughter was "going to have to live with this the rest of her life."

“She’s going to have a battle, we all are, she told the Morganton News Herald, adding that she still had unanswered questions about the three-year-old's death.

Landyn was found dead on 15 March after a neighbour called the police when they spotted him laying on the porch.

Assistant District Attorney Michelle Lippert said when he arrived at the scene he knocked so hard on the door "he was surprised he did not break the storm door glass".

He said Basinger's boyfriend, Joshua Steffey, answered the door and went to find Jamie. Both later admitted they smoking meth two days before Landyn's death and marijuana the night before.

Basinger's attorney, Frank Webster, said she had cooperated with the authorities because she wanted answers herself and was grief-stricken at her son's death.

He told the court: “She didn’t understand this. It didn’t make sense to her."

Man charged with raping stepdaughter, keeping her captive for 19 years

 A federal grand jury has indicted a 63-year-old man accused of kidnapping his stepdaughter and holding her captive for 19 years. Henri Michelle Piette is accused of kidnapping Rosalynn Michelle McGinnis in 1995 or 1996 and traveling with the intent to have sex with her, according to an indictment a grand jury in Muskogee, Oklahoma, handed up Wednesday. The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify people who say they have been sexually abused, but McGinnis has discussed her case publicly. McGinnis’ phone number is not publicly listed and she could not be reached for comment. Piette also faces state charges

93-year-old woman handcuffed and jailed after refusing to leave her care home

A 93-year-old woman was handcuffed and jailed after refusing to leave a care home she claimed was no longer accepting her rent.

Juanita Fitzgerald, was arrested on Tuesday after she said the National Church Residences’ Franklin House housing community Lake County, Florida had decided to “put her out” after blaming her for mould in her apartment.

Police said she was given notice of her eviction on Monday, but refused to leave the building the next day, reports Florida TV station WKMG.

According to a police report seen by the station, Ms Fitzgerald told officers: “Unless you carry me out of here, I’m not going anywhere.”

Kevin Hart Admits He's 'Guilty' of Cheating on Wife Eniko Parrish While She Was Pregnant

Kevin Hart is opening up about his past mistakes.

The Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle star was a guest on Power 105.1 FM's The Breakfast Show on Thursday, where he discussed cheating on his wife, Eniko Parrish, while she was pregnant with their first child together.

"I'm guilty," he confessed. "Regardless of how it happened and what was involved, the s**t that I can't talk about, I'm guilty. I'm wrong."

"It's beyond irresponsible," he continued. "There’s no way around it. The best way to do is just address it, right on. That's Kevin Hart in his dumbest moment. That's not the finest hour of my life. With that being said, you make your bed, you lay in it. You can't say, 'What were you thinking?' Because you weren't thinking."

Realizing what he had done, Hart said he took responsibility and had a conversation with his wife about what had happened.

"You don't plan to f**k up. You f**k up and then you go, 'Oh s**t, I f**ked up,'" he explained. "I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna address it, I'm gonna make my wife fully aware of what's going on in the situation that I have now put us in and I'm hoping that she has a heart to where she can forgive me and understand that this is not going to be a reoccurring thing and allow me to recover from my f**king massive mistake. That's what I'm trying to do not only as a man, but within teaching a lesson to my son."

"You do something wrong, stand in front of your own s**t," he added. "This was Dad's wrong s**t."

Pennsylvania cousins plead not guilty in alleged murders of 4 men

Cosmo DiNardo and Sean Kratz, two cousins charged in the brutal murder of four men entered not guilty pleas during their arraignment on Thursday. The 20-year-old men face charges of criminal homicide, abuse of corpse, robbery and conspiracy after the shooting deaths of 19-year-old Dean Finocchiaro, 22-year-old Mark Sturgis, 21-year-old Tom Meo and 19-year-old Jimi Patrick, whose bodies were found buried on a Solebury, Pennsylvania, farm after a five-day search in July.

According to a press release from the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office, DiNardo faces four counts of criminal homicide in the deaths of Patrick, Finocchiaro, Meo and Sturgis, while Kratz has only been charged in the deaths of Finocchiaro, Meo and Sturgis.

Both men remain imprisoned without bail. DiNardo is being held at the Bucks County Correctional Facility, while Kratz is at the Northampton County Prison.

Sandy Hook mom and dad speak out in rare interview: 'You don’t heal from grief'

It was five years ago that a young man invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and shot and killed 20 young children and six staff members, a tragedy that indelibly scarred that small city and lives on in the collective national memory. But school shootings didn’t begin, or end, with Sandy Hook. Yahoo News looks at the aftermath of four of these tragedies and the lives they changed. In this story, we look at how the parents of a girl killed in Newtown are coping with their loss. In other stories, we examine how 20 years on, Jonesboro, Ark., is still traumatized by an attack carried out by two middle-school boys — and how survivors deal with the knowledge that the killers are now grown men and free from prison; and at the lessons from Sandy Hook that may have helped save lives at a California school just last month. 

Five years ago this week, the lives of JoAnn and Joel Bacon were forever altered with the death of their daughter, Charlotte — an intelligent, energetic 6-year-old who loved dogs and was “independent, bold, and adventurous,” says her mom. She was among the 20 children shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. And while life has gone on for the bereaved couple and their 15-year-old son, Guy — particularly through the energy they channel into their Charlotte Helen Bacon Foundation, which champions causes from comfort dogs to grief support — they’ve also spent these years struggling with the reality of their personal anguish and grief. And that’s something many people prefer not to acknowledge, says JoAnn.

“I dislike it when people bypass my pain only to point out all my accomplishments since Charlotte’s death,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “It is the triumph-over-tragedy narrative that is appealing and most comfortable for others, but I have worked hard with my grief, and I have scars. I do not want them glossed over. I do not see it as my responsibility to soothe and comfort others by hiding the real.”

This week, as Yahoo marks the fifth anniversary of the Dec. 14 rampage in Newtown, JoAnn and Joel reveal “the real,” giving voice to what they feel have been some of the most unsung truths about the Sandy Hook tragedy and the fractured families in its wake.

It is a personal tragedy first and foremost, and a collective tragedy second.

“I think there’s a need for us to know that people remember our loved ones, and not just as a group, like, ‘Remember Newtown,’ or ‘Remember the 20 children,’ or ‘Remember the 6 educators,’ kind of all lumped together,” says JoAnn. “They were individuals, and they each had something special about them, and I feel that gets lost in these mass tragedies. And that makes me really sad.”

Often, she adds, “there’s more attention on the event, or the murderer, or on the investigation and what happened to the school. But no one really wants to focus on the individual. And as a parent, I want to know that people actively remember.” Further, she says, as various community recovery efforts, advocacy organizations, or memorial sites have sprung up in response to the shooting. “Many of these decisions have created considerable pain for my family, sometimes leaving us feeling like our loss is being exploited for a particular agenda,” she says. “It has required a lot of vigilance to have our voice heard.”

‘Afrika’ Cartoon Continues to Make Waves

The ripple effect of an offensive cartoon featuring Turkish President Erdogan republished by Turkish Cypriot daily ‘Afrika’ continues.

The Turkish embassy in North Nicosia said that the cartoon was an insult to Turkish President Erdogan and that it had filed a criminal complaint with the court. The cartoon created by a Greek cartoonist depicts a Greek statue urinating on President Erdogan. It was originally published in a Greek newspaper following the Turkish President’s visit to Greece.

Prime Minister Huseyin Ozgrugun condemned the cartoon saying that it did “not fit journalism or humanity”. He said that he would do whatever was legally necessary and would follow it up personally. The PM said: “Turkey is a country with diplomatic relations. It is my motherland. They even respect it those who do not call her motherland… But you do not do that to a President of a country that you have a relationship with it. On the other hand, Mr Tayyip is a man of state who loves our country and gives serious value to our country”.

Leader of People’s party (HP), Kudret Ozersay, also commenting on Erdogan’s caricature to Kibris TV, argued: “I think that that this caricature is kind of insulting….This caricature, which was published in Greece, was made to humiliate a person, on top of this, the person is the President of a state. (…) For this reason, a case should be opened in Greece for insult”. Furthermore, Ozersay said that since the case is in court, then the court will decide whether is an insult or not. He added that as it has been understood, there are two files; one is against the Turkish Minister Responsible for Cyprus Affairs (Recep Akdag) statements.

Under the headline “A Lynching Campaign”, Turkish Cypriot daily ‘Afrika’ newspaper which had republished the cartoon writes: “The dimensions of the lynch campaign that Ankara started against our newspaper are expanding”, adding that there are two campaigns, one is the election campaign and the other is “a lynching campaign”.

The paper also reports that Sener Elcil, general secretary of the Turkish Cypriot Teachers’ trade union (KTOS), in a written statement, said that the main aim of the attack is to silence and to suppress the Turkish Cypriot community, adding that the new attack was launched in order to silence ‘Afrika’ newspaper using the cartoon as an excuse. Elcil explained that Turkey’s officers, who are hiding behind the guarantors of the Republic of Cyprus and are trying to transform the north part of the island into their colony, are on a new attack in order to silence Afrika newspaper, which is the voice of the Turkish Cypriot community.

Elcil noted that Turkish Minister Akdag’s statements, threats and insults regarding this issue are clear proof that this incident cannot be explained away with a cartoon.

Kibris Postasi, Afrika