Nursing home workers have been posting abusive photos of elderly on social media

Chinese officials produce a lot of badly forged photos, but this might be the worst

Local Chinese officials are notorious for releasing photos that have been obviously and crudely altered to portray public relations stunts that never actually happened. The Guardian's China-based Tania Branigan has discovered the latest, and possibly greatest, of these photoshop failures. A group of officials in Ningguo, a Wichita-sized city in the eastern province of Anhui, recently released this photo. Soak it in:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Here's what the photo is supposed to show: Some of Ningguo's top officials, including Vice-Mayor Wang Hun at right, meeting with a local elderly woman, to demonstrate their filial piety and deep care for their constituent's well-being. Here's what the photo actually shows: Local and provincial Chinese officials have developed a reputation in recent years for horribly photoshopped publicity photos. This one is especially egregious: note the vice mayor's strangely disappearing legs, the elderly woman who appears 6 inches tall, the fact that none of the officials seem to know what to do with their arms. OK, that last point isn't related to photoshop, but the point is that this is seeping with awkwardness. Inevitably, of course, these photos end up flying around Chinese social media, where they are roundly mocked, until they up in Western press accounts like the one you are currently reading. That's been happening with increasing frequency. In June 2011, for example, officials at the Huili county government in southwestern Sichuan province had the poor judgment to release this photo, purportedly showing them inspecting a new road: Chinese Web users seized on the obvious forgery, photoshopping up their own spoofs to have a few laughs and to embarrass the officials, both of which are frequent pursuits on the country's popular social media platforms.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This April, when yet another horrendously faked photo of party officials flew around the Web, The Atlantic's Matt Schiavenza argued that the trend was a product of the fact that official state media are still figuring out that the world has changed. After decades of being free to publish whatever they like with little scrutiny and even less risk of backlash, the "doddering propaganda machine" hasn't learned that it can no longer be quite so lazy. He points to this photo, from 2004, which is perhaps the best-known bad Chinese photoshop, in part because the figure in the center is current Premier Li Keqiang:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There's also, Schiavenza adds, a tendency to keep churning out releases showing officials in a positive light, which can be tough if those officials aren't actually making any good-will trips or are on some long-term vacation somewhere, as they often are. So a local propaganda official might deploy a bit of cut-and-paste to get through the week, not anticipating he'll end up embarrassing the bosses he was hoping to please. The Anhui officials in that photo up top, for their part, have responded to this old-school Communist Party flub with an old-school response, blaming it on a lower-level official whom they've ordered to file a formal "self-criticism" report. Hopefully, it will come illustrated.

Powerful photos show gray-haired Venezuelan protesters clashing with police

For more than six consecutive weeks, violent demonstrations have overtaken cities in Venezuela, as the country has descended into an economic crisis that anti-government protesters are pinning on socialist President Nicolás Maduro. Since the protests broke out in early April, at least 39 people have been killed and hundreds more injured.  On Friday, however, the faces of the anti-government protesters represented a different demographic: abuelos and abuelas. In what was dubbed the “March of the Grandparents,” thousands of Venezuelan senior citizens took the streets of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, to demonstrate against Maduro and his government.   On social media, tweets and images from the seniors' protests were accompanied by the hashtag #PorNuestrosNietos, or “For Our Grandchildren.” The scenes were no less intense because they involved older protesters. Some demonstrators clashed with law enforcement officers, who wore riot gear and helmets and held large shields, when police tried to block them in the streets. Footage from the protests showed a few protesters wearing gas masks.    “Many Venezuelans are already at the breaking point,” Erickson wrote in April. “Food shortages have left much of the country hungry, and access to basic goods and medicine is intermittent at best. Inflation is spiraling out of control, and crime is a daily reality. Corruption and mismanagement have squandered the country's vast oil reserves.” Since then, the political unrest in Venezuela has only deepened.

Ask Amy: Mom violates offspring’s Facebook privacy

DEAR AMY: My mother has been using Facebook more frequently in the last few months, and I think that’s fine. Unfortunately the majority of the pictures that she posts are of me. Her profile and cover photos are of me. I am not her “friend” on Facebook, but if I look up her name I can see dozens of photos of me all over her page. I really don’t want her plastering my picture everywhere, especially if her privacy settings are weak and anyone has access to the photos. My personal page is very private, and I only have friends that I actually know on my page. I have asked her to take down many of the photos but she refuses (or lies to me and says she did). I told her she could post one picture from my graduation but instead she posted 20. I understand that she wants to post pictures for family to see, but many times she does it just to show off and brag. I don’t feel comfortable when I look up her page on Facebook and all that I can see is my face attached to her name. Will she ever respect my wishes? Or because she is my parent does she “own” images of me? Am I overreacting? I am legally an adult. What should I do? -- Technically Frustrated DEAR FRUSTRATED: Facebook seems to have created a reverse metric in how generations use it. Generally speaking, the generation you are a part of, which grew up sharing on social media, seems to have grown much more circumspect about how you conduct yourselves on Facebook, while adults in your mother’s and grandparents’ generation don’t seem to have caught on. I have seen unintentionally hilarious examples of parents leaping over boundaries on Facebook while their young adult children comment: “Mom, NO!” I agree that (at least the way you describe it) this is a deliberate breach of your privacy. However, realistically you cannot do anything about this, other than avoid your mother’s omniscient camera at family events (by the way, she “owns” all of the photos she takes, even if they are of you). You should tell her, “Mom, this is an incredible breach of my privacy, and I’ve asked you to stop. This is disrespectful and you either don’t get it, or you don’t care.” After that, avoid her lens and stop checking her page. DEAR AMY: Twelve of us have been close friends for many decades, and we are all in our 60s. We have had a number of divorces within our group (I’m divorced), but most of us have remained friends in spite of this. Our friend “Jill” moved out of town after leaving her husband, “Jack.” Those of us who live in town see Jack on a regular basis. Recently, Jill invited me for a visit, and I accepted her invitation, as we had been friends for over 20 years before their divorce. I then heard through a mutual friend that Jack was upset about this. I asked him if he wanted to talk about it and was disappointed to hear that he finds my plans to be disrespectful of him. I love them both and certainly don’t want to be insensitive to either one of them. Seriously, this feels a little like a high school scenario. We’re senior citizens! Am I being insensitive? -- Concerned and Conflicted DEAR CONFLICTED: “Jack” doesn’t get to dictate who you are friends with, but he has been honest about his feelings and you should acknowledge this by saying, “I understand this has upset you and I’m so sorry. That was not my intent. But I’ve known ‘Jill’ forever and would like to maintain contact with her. Do you think you could grow to accept this?” DEAR AMY: “Concerned Dad” was worried that his longtime girlfriend would not be welcomed by his ex-wife and adult daughters when she finally moved to town. You say this girlfriend should be treated as a member of the family. If so, then why doesn’t he treat her like a member of the family and marry her? -- Norma DEAR NORMA: Marriage would definitely make a statement. Amy’s column appears seven days a week at www.washingtonpost.com/advice. Write to  Amy Dickinson  at askamy@tribune.com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.

ISIS fighters seem to be trying to sell sex slaves online

The woman is young, perhaps 18, with olive skin and dark bangs that droop onto her face. In the Facebook photo, she attempts to smile but doesn’t look at her photographer. The caption mentions a single biographical fact: She is for sale. “To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000,” begins the May 20 Facebook posting, which was attributed to an Islamic State fighter who calls himself Abu Assad Almani. The same man posted a second image a few hours later, this one a pale young face with weepy red eyes. “Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000,” the posting reads. “Yay, or nay?” The photos were taken down within hours by Facebook, and it is unclear whether the account’s owner was doing the selling himself or commenting about women being sold by other fighters. But the unusual posting underscores what experts say is an increasingly perilous existence for the hundreds of women who are thought to be held as sex slaves by the Islamic State. As the terrorist group comes under heightened pressure in Iraq and Syria, these female captives appear to be suffering, too — sold and traded by cash-strapped fighters, subjected to shortages of food and medicine, and put at risk daily by military strikes, according to terrorism experts and human rights groups. Social-media sites used by Islamic State fighters in recent months have included numerous accounts of the buying and selling of sex slaves, as well the promulgation of formal rules for dealing with them. The guidelines cover such topics as whether it’s possible to have sex with prepubescent prisoners — yes, the Islamic State’s legal experts say — and how severely a slave can be beaten. But until the May 20 incident, there were no known instances of Islamic State fighters posting photographs of female captives being offered for sale. The photos of the two unidentified women appeared only briefly before being deleted by Facebook, but the images were captured by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit group that monitors jihadists’ social-media accounts. “We have seen a great deal of brutality, but the content that ISIS has been disseminating over the past two years has surpassed it all for sheer evil,” said Steven Stalinsky, the institute’s executive director, using the common acronym for the Islamic State. “Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this.” Almani, the apparent owner of the Facebook account, is thought to be a German national fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, according to Stalinsky. He has previously posted to social-media accounts under that name, in the slangy, poorly rendered English used by many European fighters who can’t speak Arabic. Early postings suggest that Almani is intimately familiar with the Islamic State’s activities around Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in Syria. He also regularly uses his accounts to solicit donations for the terrorist group. In displaying the images of the women, Almani advised his Facebook friends to “get married” and “come to dawlah,” or the Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria. Then he engaged with different commenters in an extensive discussion about whether the $8,000 asking price was a good value. Some who replied to the postings mocked the women’s looks, while others scolded Almani for posting photos of women who weren’t wearing the veil. “What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?” one of his correspondents asks about woman in the second photo. “Nope,” he replies. “Supply and demand makes her that price.” The Islamic State’s leaders have historically used U.S.-based social media such as Facebook and Twitter to attract recruits and spread propaganda, but in the past year American companies have sought to block jihadist accounts and postings whenever they are discovered. Facebook in particular has garnered high marks from watchdog groups for reacting quickly to terrorists’ efforts to use its pages. But at the same time, the militants also have become more agile, leaping quickly from one social-media platform to another and opening new accounts as soon as older ones are shut down. The Facebook incident comes amid complaints from human rights groups about waning public interest in the plight of women held as prisoners by the Islamic State. The organization Human Rights Watch, citing estimates by Kurdish officials in Iraq and Syria, says the terrorist group holds about 1,800 women and girls, just from the capture of Yazidi towns in the region. After initial denials, the Islamic State last year issued statements acknowledging the use of sex slaves and defending the practice as consistent with ancient Islamic traditions, provided that the women are non-Muslims captured in battle or members of Muslim sects that the terrorist group regards as apostates. A report last month by Human Rights Watch recounted the ordeals suffered by three dozen Iraqi and Syrian women who escaped from terrorist-held towns in recent months. Among the women were former Yazidi sex slaves who described abuses that included multiple rapes by different men as they were sold and traded. The problems faced by such women appear to be growing worse as military and economic pressure against the Islamic State increases, the report said. “The longer they are held by ISIS, the more horrific life becomes for Yazidi women, bought and sold, brutally raped, their children torn from them,” said Skye Wheeler, women’s rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Meanwhile, ISIS’s restrictions on [non-enslaved] Sunni women cut them off from normal life and services almost entirely.”

Ask Amy: Children in the buff shouldn’t be on Facebook

_**Dear Amy:** I am writing to you regarding people sharing pictures of children in the buff on Facebook, Instagram or other social media._ _I have a girlfriend who constantly posts naked pictures of her 3-year-old son._ _Even worse, some of these photos were taken on a public beach. Imagine the looks from others as they stroll by!_ _To me, this is not only distasteful, but also dangerous._ _I am afraid that some of the “friends” from Facebook or Instagram could be pedophiles who might take advantage of this innocent boy!_ _I discussed this with my mother and her mother, and both women are concerned._ _When we suggested to the friend’s mother that she should discuss this with her daughter, she said she would get defensive and maybe stop talking to her._ _I want to confront her about this through a private message._ _How can I approach this?_ **Fully Clothed** **Clothed:** I think this practice is risky (and disrespectful to the child, who cannot consent). Those photos can wind up anywhere (well beyond her own Facebook circle), and the photos of these innocent children can be grabbed and shared by pedophiles, who will hoard and trade them. The pictures will also surface off and on for the rest of the child’s life. I am not offended by the sight of a nude young child at the beach, but in this day of secret photographing and photo-sharing, I agree that this, too, carries risks. Reacting to posts and photos is expected on social media sites. Rather than privately soliciting opinions about this and gossiping about it, you should feel free to share your point of view with the mother posting these photos. I suggest sending her a private message and saying, “I really enjoy seeing pictures of your adorable son on Facebook and Instagram, but I worry that any nude pictures can fall into the wrong hands and be shared well beyond your own circle of trusted friends. I hope you’ll think about possible unintended consequences when you post photos.” Every young child deserves to have adults in their life who respect and guard their privacy. Children are completely defenseless when it comes to the questionable judgment of their parents. _**Dear Amy:** My grandmother is 78 and lost her husband about 10 years ago._ _I’ve noticed over the last five years that she has become very lonely and likes to do ALL the talking. Due to the distance between us, I am only able to see her one or two times a year and for only one or two days per visit. Spending time with her is not fun anymore. She never asks about me, my future husband, my upcoming wedding, etc._ _She doesn’t even ask me, “How are you doing?”_ _Our entire visit consists of her reminiscing about her past, and she will even cry over certain events, which results in me consoling her._ _When it is time for me to leave after staying for a couple days, I feel as if I didn’t get to actually talk to her. I feel like we are missing out on these years we have together._ _I hope this doesn’t make me seem selfish. I love my grandmother dearly; we used to talk till the cows came home, and it’s not the same anymore._ _I want to talk to her about it, but I am afraid I will hurt her feelings. What should I do?_ **Worried** **Worried:** You should be honest with your grandmother about your concerns: “Grammy, I’m worried about you. You seem so sad . . .” It sounds as if she might be depressed. Older people are just as likely as anyone else to become depressed, but they aren’t routinely screened for depression. Diagnosis and treatment could be a game-changer for her. Speak to your parents (and/or her) about this. Also, if you correspond with her by email or snail mail in between your visits, you will basically have the opportunity to tell her whatever news you have regarding your own life. Then when you are with her, you can say, “Remember how I wrote to you that I’m engaged? I have some pictures of my fiance — do you want to see them?” _**Dear Amy:** The question from “Sad” broke my heart. Sad’s younger sister was abusing the party drug Molly, and Sad was upset because her sister was mad at her when she intervened._ _I wish more people cared enough to intervene and let a family member be mad at them. Anger fades._ **Also Sad** **Sad:** Exactly. © 2016 by Amy Dickinson distributed by Tribune Content Agency

Old people are invading the Internet

My grandmother still marvels, each and every time I see her, at the magical possibility that newspaper articles exist “on the computer” — a.k.a., the Internet. But my grandmother, it turns out, is increasingly _not_ representative of her elderly cohort — stereotypical as she is. According to a new study out today from the Pew Research Center, the 65+ crowd actually loves to Internet. In fact, nearly a third of American seniors are on Facebook alone.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The survey, which polled 2,000 adults in October 2014, uncovered a huge jump in seniors on every major social network. Since 2013, for instance, the number of seniors on Facebook grew 11 percentage points, to 56 percent. And on Twitter and Instagram, networks where seniors haven’t traditionally made many inroads, their numbers doubled and sextupled, respectively. The survey also confirmed some more conventional wisdom about social media: While Internet types (i.e., Youngs) tend to hype Twitter quite a bit, the network is relatively niche — especially compared to behemoth Facebook. And while many of Facebook’s users tend to gripe about over-sharing and baby pictures and myriad other things, they still log on incessantly: 70 percent of Facebook’s users check the site daily, and half of those people log in multiple times a day. In addition to senior, Pew also found that Facebook has grown among men, whites, college graduates and people in households making more than $50,000 a year. (So if you string it all together, essentially, the social network’s booming with old, rich, white dudes.) We probably should have seen this coming, of course: Signs of the elderly invasion have been cropping up for months. First a 114-year-old woman joined Facebook. Then researchers began advocating senior Internet use as a means of cutting isolation and depression risks. Just this week, the outraged lawn- protectors of Twitter descended — like arthritic vultures! — on the network’s young Kanye fans, cawing about “culture” and the music of their “day.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But fear not, besieged whippersnappers: The Olds can’t keep this up forever. Before too long they’ll be gone, and Facebook will be gone, and some as-yet-uninvented technology will be the hot new thing. Call it the 21st century circle of life: We’ll be the new Olds, crotchety and late-adopting, rising to take the old Olds’ place.

The far right turned this Muslim woman into a ‘monster’ online. That’s despicable.

The image showed a man on the ground; frantic bystanders look on. The group happened to include a woman in a hijab. She was on her phone. She looked horrified. But as her picture began fluttering across Twitter, a different story emerged. The unnamed woman was “paying no mind” to the atrocity unfolding in front of her. She didn’t care that a man lay dying in front of her. Maybe, some people suggested, she was happy about the attack.     (Of course, observers noted, the Muslim woman wasn’t the only one on her phone.) This kind of thing happens all the time. Someone takes a photo of a person who seems Muslim, suggests that it tells a particular, nefarious story about the faith, then spreads it around. Pretty soon, the subject of the photograph is getting trolled, hard. It doesn’t matter if that person is totally innocent. The truth doesn’t matter at all.  The picture got little attention then. But after the Brussels attack, a Facebook page posted a link to the image. The accompanying caption read: “Dumb, dumber, Angela: Did Merkel take a selfie with one of the Brussels terrorists?” The post went viral. Suddenly, Modamani’s image was being shared by everyone. His face was being cropped and distorted to make him look like the other suspected terror suspects.    The image of a Sikh man was photoshopped by a Twitter user (who's since been suspended) to suggest that he was responsible for the terrorist attack in Paris. Veerender Jubbal lives in Canada (he says he’s never traveled to Paris). But after the November attacks, someone stole a selfie of him holding an iPad and doctored it to look like he was holding a Koran and wearing a suicide vest. The image of the “Islamic State attacker” was then circulated. The same images were used to tie Jubbal, a freelance writer, to the truck attack in Nice. As my colleague Abby Ohlheiser wrote: Just this week, a social media user with ties to the French far-right shared a video that showed a man hitting two nurses. The user claimed it was shot at a public hospital in France, where the two nurses were treating a migrant. “We treat them,” he wrote, “and they are thankful for it, the proof.” Several influential social media accounts linked to the French far-right shared this video, and all suggested that it depicted a migrant waging an antiwhite attack. The video was viewed more than 7 million times. Except.

Why Twitter gave a woman’s home address to her cyberstalkers

This story begins with a woman named Renee, but we aren’t using Renee’s last name at her request. That’s because Renee is the victim of cyberstalkers — and, thanks to Twitter, they now have her address. Since early last summer, when Renee began advocating publicly for childhood vaccination, a dedicated clique of Twitter trolls has hounded her every tweet. They’ve filmed nasty videos, defamed her to colleagues — even posted photos that suggest they’ve followed her on the street. But Renee was particularly irked when some of her stalkers began posting photos of her, and her toddler, that they’d lifted from her private Facebook account. She filed several several harassment reports to Twitter, but the photos weren’t taken down. Desperate, Renee reached out to an acquaintance at the company, who assured her the photos would come down faster if they were reported for copyright instead of harassment. So Renee filed a complaint to Twitter under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Unfortunately, Renee didn’t realize that DMCA complaints are forwarded on to the people that they complain about. And Renee’s complaint included her phone number, email and home address — which Twitter had just effectively handed out to her stalkers. “Was DMCA the best option [to get the photos removed]? Obviously not,” Renee said. “But when you’re a mom who just wants to get a picture of her baby off the Internet, then yeah, DMCA seems like a great f—ing option.”   “This isn’t a copyright issue or a violation of ownership in images,” said Caroline Sinders, a user researcher who lectures widely on online abuse. “It’s a sustained digital stalking issue — and those are really different things.” Copyright first emerged as a solution in these kinds of cases because most online service providers, as a rule, take copyright complaints far more seriously than they do harassment reports. Thanks to the DMCA, companies, such as Twitter or Facebook, can be held financially liable if they don’t comply with a valid copyright takedown request. (There is no such built-in enforcement mechanism when it comes to harassment.) On top of that, it’s easy and cheap to file a DMCA notice: You don’t necessarily have to hire a lawyer or take anyone to court. That said, the law applies to a narrower slice of content than some DMCA takedown firms would have you believe. You must have taken the photo yourself, for instance; photos in which you merely appear do not count, unless the photographer transferred copyright ownership explicitly. On top of that, it’s a matter of debate whether the DMCA applies to sites hosted outside the United States. Which means you might have luck filing a DMCA with Twitter for the takedown of your private pictures … but not with, say, some jerk’s personal blog. There’s also this issue of anonymity and privacy in DMCA takedown notices, which Renee ran up against. You can have someone else file a notice on your behalf, but the law does not require that sites, such as Twitter, tell you that. They also do not have to specify exactly what will happen to the person you file the claim against, or what information will be forwarded to him. Twitter’s form says, vaguely, that it “may provide third parties, such as Lumen and the affected user, with a copy of this complaint.” (In a statement, a Twitter spokesman said that the company “strongly discourage[s] users from using DMCA for non-copyright purposes” and warns that notices are public.)  “No system will ever be able to stop all abuse,” said Jennifer Urban, a professor of law at the University of California in Berkeley who studies the DMCA. “But it should take into account this kind of abuse and improve procedures to avoid it. It’s a challenge and a balance, because as a matter of legal process, people in a dispute need to be able to know who their accusers are and what the claims are. But agents, proxies, etc. are possibilities if done correctly.” In hindsight, Renee wishes that Twitter would have made the proxy option clearer. But mostly, she wishes she didn’t have to file the DMCA takedown request at all. As she points out, the only reason for a victim to resort to copyright is when other systems have failed them. Sinders, the user researcher, agrees: No matter how expedient it may seem, she argues, the DMCA makes an inadequate solution for harassment — particularly when someone at the site itself suggests it. “You hire product designers from Stanford,” she said. “You can’t do better than this?”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad joined Instagram. Here are his first photos.

Bashar al-Assad is waging a protracted, bloody civil war that has fractured his country and killed thousands, but the Syrian leader still found time to launch an Instagram account.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The account, which has already posted 66 pictures, will look familiar to people who follow the president’s other propaganda outlets. Many of the images, including this much-debated picture of Assad’s not-pregnant wife Asma, have appeared on his official Facebook page. On July 24, the Twitter account of the Syrian presidency — which has been widely reported as Assad’s account, though it’s not verified by Twitter — invited supporters to follow the account to see the president’s activities “first hand.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The account presents the Assad regime in a polished, sunny light, something Syria’s first family is reportedly quite good at. There are dozens of images of a smiling Asma chatting with children and sitting on the edge of hospital beds. Assad himself is usually surrounded by cheering crowds or important- looking officials. You would never guess, from the pictures, that Syria is in the midst of a civil war that has killed 100,000 people, according to United Nations estimates, and displaced more than a million.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A trip into the comments section, where pro- and anti-Assad Instagrammers spar, gives a touch more insight into Syria’s actual state of affairs. “Keep swallowing the propaganda, you imbecile,” one commenter wrote to an anti-Assad commenter who has posted dozens of criticisms of the photos and who shot back, “What exactly do you think this Instagram account is?”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The account's administrators are, it appears, beginning to police the comments for remarks critical of Assad and his regime. In a one-hour period Tuesday morning, at least half a dozen negative comments disappeared from the most recent images, though many criticisms still remain.

When botched surgeries and suicides go viral: The revolting rise of ‘medical gore’

A woman in California was horrified to learn that a photo of her recent suicide attempt — in which she stuck two pencils through her eyes — had been shared by a hospital worker and posted online.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico She would, perhaps, be even more horrified to learn she’s not the only one. Despite strict privacy laws that govern the sharing of patient information, and policies against obscenity on most mainstream social sites, the Internet enjoys a steady trade in so-called “medical gore”: graphic, bloody images from surgeries, accidents and morgues, passed around YouTube, Imgur and more shadowy sites not for educational or training purposes, but for the macabre titillation of amateurs. There are pictures of children with weeping burn wounds. Blood-stained images of dog maulings, shark bites and broken ankles. YouTube videos of graphic rectal surgeries that we’d hesitate to even describe. (In one, the surgeons actually pause the procedure to take a picture around the patients’ prone, unconscious body.) The provenance of this material is usually unclear, as is, generally, the identity of the patient. But judging from the fact that many images are clearly taken inside operating rooms — and that, frequently, the patient is unconscious — it would appear that at least some medical gore is produced by doctors, nurses or other health-care workers, perhaps without the patient’s consent. That is, incidentally, the exact claim in the California case, which was filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The lawsuit claims that, two and a half years ago, a nurse took a picture of an unnamed patient who had tried to commit suicide by stabbing pencils into her eyes. From there, the nurse allegedly shared the photo with a nephew, who shared it with a friend, who posted it to a gore site. The image is still available on the web and has been viewed, per the suit, nearly 200,000 times. While the case doesn’t name the site in question, it’s easy to guess at where it could’ve come from: The web boasts any number of dedicated gore forums, from Goregish to That’s Phucked to Best Gore, the Canadian shock site whose owner was charged with “corrupting morals” last year. Even more generalized forums and social sites have their own sticky, stomach- turning corners: YouTube’s sketchy surgery videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views, and more than 40,000 people subscribe to Reddit’s /r/gore. Ten months ago, one enterprising user even started a forum exclusively for medical gore — “enjoy the bloody mess,” moderators chirp — though the community hasn’t been terribly active since then.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Medical gore is a place for gory pics/videos with some connection to professional medicine,” the forum’s description reads. “From selfies in the ER, to autopsy documentation … We welcome it all.” It’s unclear, however, if _patients_ welcome being filmed in quite the same way. Surgery release forms may, for instance, include permission to record the procedure. But whether that allows recording on a personal cellphone — or republishing online — is iffy. After all, personally identifiable patient photos are considered protected health information under U.S. law, which means they’re governed by a pretty sweeping privacy code called HIPAA.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A great deal of medical gore, however, seems to come from Asia, the Middle East or elsewhere overseas, where privacy laws may not be as stringent. And even in the U.S., there’s only so much the law can do once pictures have already gone up. In a legal labyrinth also faced by victims of revenge porn, you can’t make a Web site take a non-consensual image down, because it’s protected under the Communications Act — and unless you know exactly who took the picture, you can’t have that person get it taken down, either.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico All this makes it easy to see, perhaps, why the California Jane Doe — who is now blind, but studying Braille and receiving psychiatric treatment — fell “back into a depression” when she learned her photo had gone viral. Meanwhile, the forums rejoice over each new upload. “I’m NOT a sociopath,” one woman wrote on Reddit. “I do love a good dose of gore in the morning though.”

‘The saddest photo I have ever taken’: Elderly Canadian couple separated by health-care hurdles

Every other day, Anita Gottschalk’s ritual continues. Her family loads her into the car and then loads her walker, an aid the 81-year-old didn’t need until recently. Her loved ones blame the stress. They stop at Tim Hortons on the way, in search of her husband’s favorite treats — Boston cream doughnuts and mocha coffee — and when they complete their 40-minute drive to his nursing home, Anita hands them over lovingly. But first she cries. He does, too. And two hours later, when it’s time to say goodbye, to wheel away in opposite directions, the tears flow once again. For seven months, their family in Surrey, British Columbia, has watched this ritual helplessly, unable to fix the health-care bureaucracy ripping the Gottschalks apart. But when they got the diagnosis on Tuesday, that Wolfram Gottschalk’s body had been invaded by lymphoma, the couple’s 29-year-old granddaughter became desperate. She found in her phone a photo she’d taken the day before, an emotional image of her grandparents reuniting. They sat face to face, wheels to wheels, wiping tears from their eyes. “This is the saddest photo I have ever taken,” Ashley Bartyik typed. “This is my Omi and my Opi.” Then she posted it to Facebook with an emoticon disclaimer: “feeling fed up.” Her photo accompanied a long caption explaining her grandparents’ situation and calling on friends to spread their story. She hoped at least 100 of her 600 friends would repost it. Perhaps the power of Internet virality would get her grandparents some help. “After 62 years together in marriage they have been separated for 8 months due to backlogs and delays by our health care system,” she wrote. “They cry every time they see each other, and it is heartbreaking.” In January, Wolf, 83, was hospitalized with congestive heart failure, and in February he moved to a transitional nursing facility where he has been since. His dementia makes it hard for him to understand, so Bartyik and her family avoid the topic of home. They don’t tell him he’ll never go back. “He would be devastated,” Bartyik told The Washington Post. “He would die of a broken heart.” After a bout with pneumonia and a C. diff infection that landed him in quarantine, doctors told Anita she didn’t have the strength or resources to care for Wolf properly. He would need to find a long-term nursing home. She thought that would be best for her, too. So two months ago, Anita moved into an assisted-living facility that also offered more intensive care for her husband. It required lots of paperwork and three official signatures, but finally they were promised reunification. They wouldn’t be able to share a room, but they could share a roof. At night, she’d be able to tuck him in. But Wolf has yet to join her. Bartyik blames the inefficiencies of Fraser Health Authority, one of the six publicly funded health-care entities that represents her region of British Columbia. There are too many aging seniors for too few publicly subsidized beds in local nursing homes, she told The Washington Post, and private care facilities are not an option for Canadian families like hers. There, costs can surge as high as $10,000 per month for complex care. The facility where her grandfather has lived for seven months, Yale Road Centre, houses patients in transition. Most are on nursing home waiting lists that prioritize them behind candidates coming straight from home or the hospital, Bartyik said. Her grandfather’s multiple hospitalizations bumped him further down the list.  Now, with Wolf’s cancer diagnosis and fading memory, time is running out. His short-term memories are all but gone and he no longer recognizes friends. He still remembers most of his family, and his eyes light up at the sight of his great-grandchildren. He never forgets Anita. “We are afraid, however, that if they are living apart much longer,” Bartyik wrote in her Facebook post, “his memory of her won’t stay.” Their love over the decades — and unwavering commitment — has been the family’s “pillar of strength.” Wolf and Anita married in Germany in 1954, after knowing each other just three months. They soon moved to Canada to look for work and along the way found a welcoming home. In a small town near Vancouver, the couple built a life and raised a family, organized events for the German multicultural society and earned a reputation for their admirable dancing. They camped with their grandchildren and celebrated anniversaries as a family. Their 60th was a surprise party. “We want justice for my grandparents who after 62 years together deserve to spend their last moments in the same building,” Bartyik wrote in her Facebook post, tagging Fraser Health Authority and pleading with friends to repost. By Friday morning, the post had 4,450 shares. Hundreds of messages flooded Bartyik’s inbox, offering to donate money and help. Several New Yorkers even offered to put her grandparents up in a private home. “We’ve denied all of those,” Bartyik said. “We just want this to be about the families that need the beds. “It’s not going to help other families if we personally take money from other people,” she said.  On Thursday, they got the affirmation they’d been waiting for. After days of coverage from local, then national, and even international media, a woman from Fraser Health finally called, Bartyik said. She told the Gottschalk family that Wolf had been moved to the top of the list. They said they’re working tirelessly but couldn’t offer a concrete timeline.   And they’ll keep dodging the question Wolf asks, in between tears, at the end of every visit. “Can I come home with you?”

Who are the victims of elder abuse? The disabled, cognitively impaired and poor.

In recent years, the United Nations has increased the number of “international days” it observes. Many of these observances have gained global momentum and support, such International Women’s Day (March 8) and World AIDS Day (Dec. 1), which serve both educational and advocacy goals.    Without further action, these problems may be exacerbated in the years to come. The Census Bureau reports that in 2012, the U.S. population age 65 or older was 40.3 million. With the aging baby boomers, this figure is expected to nearly double by 2050. The population age 85 and over is expected to grow from 5.0 million to 18 million in that same time.  Calling attention to abuse and neglect of anyone is a worthy undertaking, particularly when victims are unable to advocate for themselves. The U.N. Mission Statement for World Elder Abuse Awareness Day proposes framing discussion of such abuse in the human rights context and urging nations to “take concrete action,” “develop specific measures,” and “share good practices of legislative initiatives and programmatic interventions.” There are certainly many places in which such initiatives are warranted and seriously overdue. The United States already has a good deal of legislation in place addressing elder abuse on the federal, state and local levels. Mandatory reporting statutes of some form are nearly universal; criminal statutes condemn those activities that would constitute such abuse, and the lengthy intricate regulations of health-care facilities indicate that legal protections already exist. Yet despite this, elder abuse remains a serious problem in the United States. Greater compliance with these statutes, adequate training of those charged with reporting and responding to elder abuse and realistic funding devoted to detecting and pursuing elder abuse cases all remain necessary. It is also unclear whether enforcement is pursued as aggressively for elderly, incapacitated and anonymous victims as it is for younger or more vocal victims. Elder Abuse Awareness Day invites us to ask some difficult questions about how we treat and think about the elderly. We should wonder why so many elderly people live their last years alone and are often socially isolated; why family, friends and caregivers are counted among their abusers; and how to reinvigorate mediating institutions, such as extended families, religious communities, neighborhood organizations and social fraternities, which can be sources of contact and support. We should also consider how our national and private conversations about assisted suicide may be contributing to the belief that a life that is not young, active and strong is a burden, and whether we take a utilitarian view of one another that devalues the importance of those whose lives are no longer as active as they once were. For elderly abuse victims facing suffering and fear in their last days, a compassionate response can’t come soon enough.

Instagram beauty contests worry parents, child privacy advocates

The photo-sharing site Instagram has become wildly popular as a way to trade pictures of pets and friends. But a new trend on the site is making parents cringe: beauty pageants, in which thousands of young girls — many appearing no older than 12 or 13 — submit photographs of themselves for others to judge. In one case, the mug shots of four girls, middle-school-age or younger, have been pitted against each other. One is all dimples, wearing a hair bow and a big, toothy grin. Another is trying out a pensive, sultry look. Any of Instagram’s 100 million users can vote on the appearance of the girls in a comments section of the post. Once a girl’s photo receives a certain number of negative remarks, the pageant host, who can remain anonymous, can update it with a big red X or the word “OUT” scratched across her face. “U.G.L.Y,” wrote one user about a girl, who submitted her photo to one of the pageants identified on Instagram by the keyword “#beautycontest.” The phenomenon has sparked concern among parents and child safety advocates who fear that young girls are making themselves vulnerable to adult strangers and participating in often cruel social interactions at a sensitive period of development. But the contests are the latest example of how technology is pervading the lives of children in ways that parents and teachers struggle to understand or monitor. “What started out as just a photo-sharing site has become something really pernicious for young girls,” said Rachel Simmons, author of “Odd Girl Out” and a speaker on youth and girls. “What happened was, like most social media experiences, girls co-opted it and imposed their social life on it to compete for attention and in a very exaggerated way.” It’s difficult to track when the pageants began and who initially set them up. A keyword search of #beautycontest turned up 8,757 posts, while #rateme had 27,593 photo posts. Experts say those two terms represent only a fraction of the activity. Contests are also appearing on other social media sites, including Tumblr and Snapchat — mobile apps that have grown in popularity among youth. Facebook, which bought Instagram last year, declined to comment. The company has a policy of not allowing anyone under the age of 13 to create an account or share photos on Instagram. But Facebook has been criticized for allowing pre-teens to get around the rule — two years ago, Consumer Reports estimated their presence on Facebook was 7.5 million. (Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald Graham sits on Facebook’s board of directors.) Although users can keep their Instagram accounts private or use pseudonyms, they can expose themselves to the public once they share their photos with others. The girls in the beauty contests often did not take care to keep their identities and locations private. Some dressed in shirts embroidered with their schools’ names, others provided a link to their Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr accounts containing information about who they are and where they live. In December, federal officials strengthened privacy rules for children. But analysts say regulators are not keeping abreast of new technological trends that present fresh questions about the safety of children on the Internet. Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook last year for $1 billion, at first was seen as an easy way for amateur photographers to turn smartphone pictures into a kind of art. But as mobile gadgets have exploded in popularity among pre-teens and teens, youth have used it as their own social network, child online privacy and safety advocates say. “It’s so easy and fun to use, and kids are able to post all the time because they are carrying a smartphone in their pockets all day,” said Stephen Balkam, president of the Family Online Safety Institute. A recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found four out of 10 teens own smartphones and girls tend to be more active users of the Internet through mobile devices than boys. “In the realm of 12- to 13-year-old girls, nothing much is voluntary, and the peer pressure is intense to conform and be part of it,” Balkam said. Maryland PTA president-elect Ray Leone said schools in the region are struggling to keep up with complaints and questions about online safety because children are moving so quickly between the latest social network sites. Counselors and educators have little time to monitor how children are using social media. “It’s hard to even get your head around any of these new sites. It’s overwhelming for everyone I talk to,” said Leone, whose own children, ages 15 and 18, are on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. “Most parents are just throwing their arms up in the air because the new platforms are coming and going so fast, it’s hard to get your head around it.” Middle school girls are particularly sensitive to online interaction. Positive or negative comments contribute to self esteem and the formation of identities, experts say. Racking up followers and “likes” on Instagram is a measurable way of feeling acceptance, said Simmons, the “Odd Girl Out” author. On Instagram, teens often post notes imploring the public to become followers and to “like” their posts. Hollee Actman Becker, a writer and blogger from Philadelphia, last Saturday discovered her 10-year-old daughter was in an Instagram beauty pageant. Horrified, Becker confronted her daughter and realized the girl didn’t fully grasp the risks of the contest. Becker said she didn’t know the minimum age for Instagram users is 13. She will let her daughter maintain her account, she said, but has pushed back against contests on the site. She posted a photo of the words “Beauty is Skin Deep” on the palm of her hand. The photo is beginning to go viral. The photo-sharing site Instagram has become wildly popular as a way to trade pictures of pets and friends. But a new trend on the site is making parents cringe: beauty pageants, in which thousands of young girls — many appearing no older than 12 or 13 — submit photographs of themselves for others to judge. In one case, the mug shots of four girls, middle-school-age or younger, have been pitted against each other. One is all dimples, wearing a hair bow and a big, toothy grin. Another is trying out a pensive, sultry look. Any of Instagram’s 30 million users can vote on the appearance of the girls in a comments section of the post. Once a girl’s photo receives a certain number of negative remarks, the pageant host, who can remain anonymous, can update it with a big red X or the word “OUT” scratched across her face. “U.G.L.Y,” wrote one user about a girl, who submitted her photo to one of the pageants identified on Instagram by the keyword “#beautycontest.” The phenomenon has sparked concern among parents and child safety advocates who fear that young girls are making themselves vulnerable to adult strangers and participating in often cruel social interactions at a sensitive period of development. But the contests are the latest example of how technology is pervading the lives of children in ways that parents and teachers struggle to understand or monitor. “What started out as just a photo-sharing site has become something really pernicious for young girls,” said Rachel Simmons, author of “Odd Girl Out” and a speaker on youth and girls. “What happened was, like most social media experiences, girls co-opted it and imposed their social life on it to compete for attention and in a very exaggerated way.” It’s difficult to track when the pageants began and who initially set them up. A keyword search of #beautycontest turned up 8,757 posts, while #rateme had 27,593 photo posts. Experts say those two terms represent only a fraction of the activity. Contests are also appearing on other social media sites, including Tumblr and Snapchat — mobile apps that have grown in popularity among youth. Facebook, which bought Instagram last year, declined to comment. The company has a policy of not allowing anyone under the age of 13 to create an account or share photos on Instagram. But Facebook has been criticized for allowing pre-teens to get around the rule — two years ago, Consumer Reports estimated their presence on Facebook was 7.5 million. (Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald Graham sits on Facebook’s board of directors.) Although users can keep their Instagram accounts private or use pseudonyms, they can expose themselves to the public once they share their photos with others. The girls in the beauty contests often did not take care to keep their identities and locations private. Some dressed in shirts embroidered with their schools’ names, others provided a link to their Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr accounts containing information about who they are and where they live. In December, federal officials strengthened privacy rules for children. But analysts say regulators are not keeping abreast of new technological trends that present fresh questions about the safety of children on the Internet. Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook last year for $1 billion, at first was seen as an easy way for amateur photographers to turn smartphone pictures into a kind of art. But as mobile gadgets have exploded in popularity among pre-teens and teens, youth have used it as their own social network, child online privacy and safety advocates say. “It’s so easy and fun to use, and kids are able to post all the time because they are carrying a smartphone in their pockets all day,” said Stephen Balkam, president of the Family Online Safety Institute. A recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found four out of 10 teens own smartphones and girls tend to be more active users of the Internet through mobile devices than boys. “In the realm of 12- to 13-year-old girls, nothing much is voluntary, and the peer pressure is intense to conform and be part of it,” Balkam said. Maryland PTA president-elect Ray Leone said schools in the region are struggling to keep up with complaints and questions about online safety because children are moving so quickly between the latest social network sites. Counselors and educators have little time to monitor how children are using social media. “It’s hard to even get your head around any of these new sites. It’s overwhelming for everyone I talk to,” said Leone, whose own children, ages 15 and 18, are on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. “Most parents are just throwing their arms up in the air because the new platforms are coming and going so fast, it’s hard to get your head around it.” Middle school girls are particularly sensitive to online interaction. Positive or negative comments contribute to self esteem and the formation of identities, experts say. Racking up followers and “likes” on Instagram is a measurable way of feeling acceptance, said Simmons, the “Odd Girl Out” author. On Instagram, teens often post notes imploring the public to become followers and to “like” their posts. Hollee Actman Becker, a writer and blogger from Philadelphia, last Saturday discovered her 10-year-old daughter was in an Instagram beauty pageant. Horrified, Becker confronted her daughter and realized the girl didn’t fully grasp the risks of the contest. Becker said she didn’t know the minimum age for Instagram users is 13. She will let her daughter maintain her account, she said, but has pushed back against contests on the site. She posted a photo of the words “Beauty is Skin Deep” on the palm of her hand. The photo is beginning to go viral. _Sign up today to receive#thecircuit, a daily roundup of the latest tech policy news from Washington and how it is shaping business, entertainment and science._

Syria posts first lady Asma al-Assad’s good deeds on Instagram

The Instagram pictures could depict the wife of any mayor, governor, prince or prime minister doing the spousal good-deed drill: Ladling out food at a soup kitchen, praising kids to be their best young selves, visiting a refugee camp or hugging a senior citizen or two. But when those feel-good photos feature Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad — whose husband, President Bashar al-Assad, has allegedly used poison gas on children and adults in his war-torn nation, and whose crackdown on insurgents has claimed thousands of lives in recent years — the world takes notice.  (It remains to be seen whether this same world will retaliate against Syria, in response to the pleas for military action now being made by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry from Capitol Hill to assorted capitals around the globe). Posted on an Instagram account called “Syrian Presidency,” the photos of the Syrian first lady taken in recent weeks have been published worldwide by numerous media outlets with varying degrees of irony, sarcasm and outrage.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Daily Mail, based in Great Britain where Asma al-Assad was born to affluent Sunni Muslim Syrian expats, and where she met her husband when he was an optometry student, called the photos a “sickening propaganda tool.” The paper blasted her as “a stooge in this shameless PR exercise,” a woman who “seems is all too willing to try and mask the horrific atrocities being carried out by her husband’s forces.” Unlike other news sites, which ran the Instagram photos as stand-alone image, the Daily Mail paired each with a picture of Syrian carnage.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Asma Al-Assad, who turned 38 last month, is certainly not the first political wife to project a charitable public face in the service of a strongman husband, says historian Marc Pachter, former acting director of both the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American History. “The beautiful and compassionate first lady linked to dictatorship was prototyped by Eva Peron,” said Pachter, referring to the free-spending, fashionable champion of the poor who married Argentina’s Juan Peron. She later inspired the Broadway musical and movie, “Evita.” Asma al-Assad has more often been likened to the wife of French King Louis XVI, Marie “Let them eat cake” Antoinette, a villainess of the 18th-century Revolution. The al-Assad Instagram photos hardly surprise Andrew Tabler, an Arabic speaker who lived in Syria for seven years, and who wrote “In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria.” “For the Assad regime, it’s not about a matter of truth, it’s a matter of perception, that they are benevolent, they are handing out supplies and humanitarian assistance,” said Tabler, now a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The first lady’s family of Sunnis come from Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, which has been largely destroyed by Assad forces, Tabler said. But because she married into her husband’s ruling Alawite family and is the mother of their three children, “she is not about to break ranks. If she did, that would be great.” The highly educated and famously chic first lady had been keeping a relatively low profile after the 2012 publication by The Guardian newspaper of a cache of private, shop-till-you-drop al-Assad family e-mails. Must-haves ranged from the latest “Harry Potter” books to fine jewelry, antique furniture and a pair of $6,000 Christian Louboutin crystal-studded stilettos. (Yes, this is the same British paper that published national security e-mails leaked by Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Asma al-Asad’s recent re-appearance on Instagram has spawned new interest in a fawning 2011 Vogue profile that called her “A Rose in the Desert.” That story, which Vogue removed from its Web site last year during President Assad’s crackdown on insurgents, described her “central mission” as seeking “to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under 18, encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’ It’s about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it.” Perhaps somewhere in the world, a composer and librettist are working on a musical called “Asma.”

The Israeli-Palestinian politics of a bloodied child’s photo

Wars are often defined by their images, and the renewed fighting between Israel and Gaza-based Hamas has already produced three such photographs in as many days. In the first, displayed on the front page of Thursday's Washington Post, BBC journalist Jihad Misharawi carries the body of his 11-month-old son, killed when a munition landed on his Gaza home. An almost parallel image shows an emergency worker carrying an Israeli infant, bloody but alive, from the scene of a rocket attack that had killed three adults. The third, from Friday, captures Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, in his visit to a Gazan hospital, resting his hand on the head of a boy killed in an airstrike. Each tells a similar story: a child's body, struck by a heartless enemy, held by those who must go on. It's a narrative that speaks to the pain of a grieving people, to the anger at those responsible, and to a determination for the world to bear witness. But the conversations around these photos, and around the stories that they tell, are themselves a microcosm of the distrust and feelings of victimhood that have long plagued the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The old arguments of the Middle East are so entrenched that the photos, for all their emotional power, were almost immediately pressed into the service of one side or another. The photo of Misharawi wailing as he carried his son was attached to tweets accusing the Israel Defense Forces of "infanticide" or worse, feeding into dark stereotypes about Israelis' intentions. Other critics marshaled Misharawi's photo as evidence of senselessly irresponsible airstrikes. Supporters of Israel's airstrikes countered by suggesting that Misharawi's home was bombed by an errant Hamas strike. And they insisted that the photo of the wounded Israeli infant was more relevant, and proof that Hamas's rockets are ultimately to blame for the conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's official Twitter feed posted the photo with the message, "I saw today a picture of a bleeding Israeli baby. #Hamas deliberately targets our children." It's hard to find fault with the not-subtle argument in support of Israel's campaign against the Gaza-based group, which does fire many rockets at civilian neighborhoods, but such pointed use of the harrowing photo to make that case can be jarring. When Kandil and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh arrived at a Gaza hospital just as an ambulance pulled up with the body of a local boy, and a photographer captured the two reaching compassionately for the body, Web discussion quickly turned to two questions: Was it posed? Was it populist showmanship? Though anyone who has spent time covering Egyptian politicians might doubt their ability to elaborately stage a photo op with this degree of precision. The mere fact that we're asking these questions shows the degree to which images of human suffering in Israel-Palestinian violence are treated as necessarily, even primarily, political; as pieces of evidence to bring before the court of global public opinion. The photos are evaluated on their political strengths and weaknesses: Is the Egyptian prime minister leaning unnaturally into the frame? Do we know for sure that the 11-month-old son of a journalist was killed by an Israeli munition? Was Netanyahu's tweet too strong? Implicit in these debates, still raging on social media, is the assumption that the photos and the tragedies they represent are inherently political. You might find yourself wondering who politicized them first -- who is more to blame -- but that question, though natural, is in many ways an extension of the same bickering. The accusations of misusing photos to tar the other side, of faking injuries to generate outside sympathy are all part of a wider, shared assumption that the world would feel differently if only everyone knew how badly "we" suffered, and how much "they" are faking it. In this thinking, each new image is an opportunity to finally show the world the truth, as well as a danger that the "other side" will continue to distort. That mutual emphasis on blame, as well as the deep mistrust behind it, are of course just one small part of the larger and more complicated Israel-Palestine conflict. And that conflict, it seems, even extends to the conversations around photos of children killed in its long and bloody course.

Indian women won’t upload profile pics. Facebook wants to change that.

Scroll through an Indian person's friends list, and you'll see many people using images of sunsets, flowers or Bollywood stars as their profile pictures. The reason, Facebook says, is because many Indian users, especially women, are deeply concerned about safety online. Now, the social media giant is piloting a new tool to help secure uploaded images, measures that could soon be rolled out to other countries. Facebook's new profile picture guard will make it more difficult for others to download your images, prevent unknown users from tagging themselves in your profile photo, and even attempt to prevent people taking images of your profile. A blue border around pictures and a shield sign will signal that safety measures are on.   “In our research with people and safety organizations in India, we’ve heard that some women choose not to share profile pictures that include their faces anywhere on the Internet because they’re concerned about what may happen to their photos.”  Amy Binns, a senior lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, said that there a number of reasons people don't post images of themselves, including not wanting to be judged by appearance. But many have real qualms about online safety, she said. “There have long been cases of celebrities' faces being photoshopped onto pornographic pictures, and as this technology becomes more common and easier to use, this has become more common for ordinary people,” Binns said. In traditional cultures, like India's, Binns said, shaming women is much easier. “A woman may be shamed by a picture of herself simply with her hair uncovered, or in skimpy clothes,” she said. Facebook has 184 million users in India, the second-highest number in the world, after the United States. As India builds its Internet infrastructure through flagship “Digital India” schemes under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's development-focused government, tech giants are racing to connect with the “next billion” online users. Cheap smartphones have made the Internet accessible even in rural parts of the country where basic infrastructure, such as for water and sanitation, are lacking.

A ‘sick, juvenile’ game: Florida paramedics snapped selfies with unconscious patients for fun, police say

To Kayla Renee Dubois, 24, and Christopher Wimmer, 33, the selfies they allegedly took were an amusing workplace rivalry. From September 2015 to April of this year, police said, the pair would snap photos while on the job. It escalated into something of a friendly competition. Texts between the two paramedics egged each other on to “step up” their game, according to the sheriff’s office in Okaloosa County, Fla.  The two had launched what the police describe as a “selfie war,” photographing patients as they lay in the backs of ambulances — often unconscious, intubated or anesthetized.

Obama’s White House photographer trolls the Trumps’ hand-holding failures on Instagram

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then Pete Souza posted 1,002 on his Instagram account Tuesday. “Holding hands,” wrote Souza, the former official White House photographer under President Barack Obama. Above it was an image of Obama clasping the left hand of former first lady Michelle Obama, as the two listened to a speech in Selma. But the succinct caption belied what many of the more than 1.3 million followers of Souza's Instagram feed have surmised over the last several months: That the post must have been a reference to something President Trump had just done. Or not done. Sure enough, Souza's throwback photo followed a pair of viral video clips in which first lady Melania Trump appeared to swat away her husband's hand — or at least show no interest in holding it — during their trip to the Middle East.  A day later, a second video clip showed Melania Trump appearing to avoid her husband's hand again, this time shortly after they landed in Rome.   “Master of classy shade,” one Instagram user commented on Souza's post. “You troll terrifically,” another wrote.   The doctored photo showed a tiny President Obama appearing to take a picture from the inside of a microwave. In a few cases, Souza has addressed the Trump administration and its policies more directly. On March 12, Souza posted a picture of the day the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010 with an uncharacteristically long caption. “Wonder why some are pushing a repeal/replace law that will cause 15 million people to lose coverage, increase costs for lower income and elderly people, and give billions of tax benefits to the wealthiest?” he wrote, alluding to the upcoming congressional vote on the Republicans' American Health Care Act, which sought to do away with “Obamacare.”  As if taking subtle digs at the current president using photos of a past president weren't enough, Souza this week escaped into a parallel life by spending a day photographing the actor Kevin Spacey, who plays the President of the United States in "House of Cards," around Washington. It's unclear if any of those, too, were meant to troll Trump. In a photo Monday of "President Underwood" standing in front of the real-life White House, Souza simply wrote: "The people's president."  Read more:

In getting Twitter abuse, Zelda Williams is hardly alone

In 2009, Jennifer Pozner was dealing with a big problem on Twitter. The executive director of the women’s advocacy group Women in Media and News, Pozner was used to fielding insults and criticism online. But this one was special: a man who made new Twitter accounts everyday to harass her. “He would sometimes put my name in his new Twitter handle,” Pozner said. “The worst one was he put my name in his Twitter handle — ‘JennPoznerFan’ — and he would steal my pictures from Flickr, or [on his feed], there would be my face photoshopped onto porn images of women being humiliated.” Other times, she said, her harasser would send out messages saying “vicious, horrible things” — all on a Twitter handle associated with her name. Eventually Pozner and her abuser both moved on. But, she said, she felt that Twitter had left her twisting in the wind with very little support to deal with the situation. Hate mail, of course, is nothing new. Neither is cyberbullying. But the advent of social media has made it easier than ever for malcontents to find and harass targets. And the pace of Twitter, combined with its highly personal yet very public nature, has made it a hotbed for hate speech. Twitter said in a statement Wednesday that it is looking to change its harassment policies after two users sent a barrage of offensive messages to Zelda Williams, daughter of the late comedian Robin Williams, that prompted the actress, 25, to abandon several of her social media accounts, including her Twitter feed. But Williams’s experience is just a small sample of the abuse that many Twitter users, such as Pozner, have experienced for years. “Zelda has become this poster child, but what that overlooks is that Twitter, in particular, has become a place for abuse, and for women and people of color in particular. The company knows it and has done precious little” about it, Pozner said. In her own research into these issues, she said, she’s become accustomed to seeing rape threats, threats against people’s families and racial slurs leveled against Twitter users — particularly women and people of color. Women who are also minorities, she said, have it the worst. All social media networks face some of these issues. Facebook last year faced pressure from activists and advertisers that prompted it to review its community pages for graphic content before placing ads on those pages. Twitter, activists say, hasn’t moved as quickly to address these problems. Technologists and activists say they have offered Twitter some simple ideas that would make the social network feel safer. For example, “Block Together,” a program created by Jacob Hoffman-Andrews — a former Twitter employee and technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation — lets users block new Twitter accounts or Twitter users with fewer than a certain number of followers. Twitter does have policies for reporting abuse on its network; the company reviews reported threats and often removes offending accounts or even informs law enforcement. “Our Trust and Safety team works hard to keep Twitter safe for all users, while respecting basic principles of free expression,” Twitter said in a statement. “When content is reported to us that violates our rules, which include a ban on targeted abuse and direct violent threats, we will suspend those accounts.” But those measures don’t always work. Imani Gandy, a journalist who documented her own problems in getting Twitter to address abusive comments leveled at her on the site, said she’s also heard of an instance where a message containing a rape threat was deemed to not violate Twitter’s policies — although the company does consider threats of violence to be in violation of its policies. Take Back the Tech, a global campaign to raise awareness about violence against women, gave the company an “F” on a report card assessing its policies. But there are reasons that some of these tech companies are hesitant about filtering any content on their sites. Social networks, particularly Twitter, have drawn a clear line in the sand when it comes to protecting free expression. The importance of social networks like Facebook and Twitter came into sharp focus during the Arab Spring protests of 2010 and 2011; even more recently, Twitter has played a role in the protests in Ferguson, Mo. All of that leads these firms — and Twitter in particular — to tread lightly when setting policies that limit speech. “We evaluate and refine our policies and safety precautions based on input from users and technical limitations, while working with outside organizations to ensure that we have industry best practices in place,” the company said in a statement. When Facebook was under pressure last year, it also pointed to the difficulty of filtering speech on its network. Evaluating controversial material “requires us to make difficult decisions and balance concerns about free expression and community respect,” Facebook said in a blog post. “We prohibit content deemed to be directly harmful, but allow content that is offensive or controversial.” Legally, services that rely on user-generated content — the videos, photos and the short posts that make up the bulk of the stuff on social networks — aren’t held liable if people post pirated content or hate speech using their tools. What’s less clear is how much responsibility they should take themselves for the good of their users. Williams, for instance, stopped using Twitter after being hounded with messages that blamed her for her father’s suicide by hanging — and users sent her pictures of her father altered to show bruises around his neck. “I’m sorry,” Williams wrote in a Twitter message Tuesday. “I should’ve risen above. Deleting this from my devices for a good long time, maybe forever. Time will tell. Goodbye.” Too often, activists say, the everyday people who face this kind of abuse also fade away — with far less fanfare, for fear of sharing their own stories. “That’s what happens when these platforms ignore or reject reports,” said Sara Baker, campaign coordinator for Take Back the Tech. “People feel defeated and think there is no point in reporting to, or sharing their story with, anyone.” _Follow The Post’s tech blog,The Switch, where technology and policy connect._

Authorities posted a photo of this man’s tearful arrest. Some think they went too far.

On Friday, the Pasco County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office posted a picture to social media accounts. The photo showed a black man being held by his dreadlocks as he was taken into custody. The man was sitting on the grass, in shorts and a tank top. He appeared upset. “Sad Criminal of the Day: Ran Dep. off road, initiated pursuit in car, fled on foot, tracked by K9 Shep, found with 9.5g of meth … he cried,” read the tweet that accompanied the picture.   And some were not happy with what they saw. “I understand posting pics of criminals to raise awareness about dangerous people, but this is just about humiliating and dehumanizing someone,” one Facebook user wrote. “On the ground crying, with cops holding handfuls of your hair for God knows what reason? I don’t care who you are, you don’t deserve to be broadcast to the world at your lowest point for social media bigots to make fun of you.” “I’ve never in my life been more embarrassed for a department than I have felt now,” wrote another. You are “shaming him and just asking to be called racist. It’s like if I started fat shaming the majority of officers there. Grow up.” Not every comment was negative, though. (“I’m still laughing at the people defending a criminal,” one person wrote. “He broke the law and got caught, that’s why he’s crying.”) And the sheriff’s office later defended the photo to the Tampa Bay Times.  The department again posted about the photo on social media Monday, insisting that it was similar to other items that the agency had shared online.    The brief video, the department said in its Facebook post, showed “our deputies offering the same man a blanket and water immediately after the scene was secure.”  Kevin Doll, the department’s community relations director, said in an email to The Washington Post that the photo was posted to “illustrate to our citizens the change that often occurs when the handcuffs are put on criminals after they have committed serious crimes.” “He tried to ram one of our deputy’s vehicle with his vehicle, was in possession of several drugs including meth, and gave a false name after being arrested,” Doll wrote. In the department’s view, Doll wrote, the decision to post the picture was no different than agencies who post photos of ” ‘dumb’ criminal posts in light of suspects’ actions.” Doll also said that the agency posts pictures of many other arrests, including those that have involved its own deputies. “Some people had an issue with the holding of his hair in the photo,” Doll wrote. “This was to better show his face and was not a case of his hair being pulled as a form of punishment. Our framing it as the sad criminal of the day I think was unique, as we had not posted something of this nature before. Most suspects are defiant in their photos, not crying.” Not everyone who saw the photo took issue with it, and in fact, Doll said the department received more positive feedback than negative. “Again, we were showing the criminal at the scene of his arrest, as we do with a lot of our cases. The deputies on scene were compassionate, in our opinion, by offering him water and a blanket when he asked for those items,” he wrote. “As far as the post itself, we realize that most of our posts have differing opinions from our citizens, which is the nature of public opinion.”

His selfie went viral for all the wrong reasons. Now this refugee is suing Facebook.

BERLIN — On a September day in 2015, Syrian refugee Anas Modamani took one of Germany’s most emblematic selfies. Snapping himself alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to his Berlin shelter, he captured an image that became a symbol of her momentous decision to allow more than 1 million asylum seekers into Germany. It also turned Modamani into the target of far-right conspiracies. Fake stories and doctored photographs first linked him to the March 2016 terrorist attacks in Brussels, then to the Berlin Christmas market attack in December. Another image even falsely claimed that he was a suspect in a recent assault on a homeless man. So now he is taking aim at the messenger: Facebook. A lawsuit, which goes to court Monday, is seeking to compel Facebook to act faster — even preemptively — to remove such material and thereby concede that the social network is also a media company and therefore liable for the content it publishes. The suit marks the latest attempt to hold Facebook more accountable for an upsurge in fake news. Germany, Europe’s most populous nation, with cherished notions of personal privacy and a low tolerance for propaganda, has emerged as a particularly fierce battleground for the outlet. “Facebook only deletes those URLs that are pointed out to them in written form,” said Modamani’s attorney, Chan-jo Jun. “We are fighting for all reposts to be deleted.” As Facebook has come under fire for allowing the spread of fake news, the company has promised to take steps to combat the problem while maintaining that it is merely a platform for sharing information, not generating it. Europeans have been particularly aggressive. In May, the European Commission agreed on a new code of conduct with Facebook and other social-media platforms under which the sites would respond to reports of questionable content within 24 hours. But nowhere in Europe has the pressure been stronger than in Germany — a country where the memory of Nazi propaganda and Cold War-era machinations have created a culture strongly averse to hate speech and false reports. Proliferating far-right and pro-Russian websites also have trained their sights on Merkel, who has put the issue of fake news front and center in the public debate as she campaigns for reelection in a vote set for September. In response to calls for change, Facebook last month announced the start of a new effort in Germany in partnership with the nonprofit journalism network Correctiv. With the help of professional journalists, the social-media site would label as potentially suspect or false reports that users share that are identified as fake. Yet Germany may push Facebook to go even further. The country’s Justice Ministry is monitoring how quickly Facebook, Twitter and YouTube delete potentially libelous fake news, reports inciting hate and other content considered illegal under domestic law. The German government has threatened that if the results show that Facebook has not made progress since a similar test in September, the country will force the company to comply. “We’re considering concrete legislative measures,” said Justice Ministry spokesman Philip Scholz. He added, “We’re also considering fines as a final option.” Modamani’s attorney has sought to sway German prosecutors to build a case against Facebook for years. Although prosecutors in Hamburg and Munich took a look at his claims that the network was allowing the spread of incendiary and hateful material, they have thus far declined to take action. In the Modamani case, the suit is seeking to force Facebook not only to delete specific false or illegal posts reported by users, but also to adopt special filters that search the network and remove all other references to that content. Jun said that although Facebook claims to have deleted fake posts attacking his client, he found reposts of the images as recently as last week. The claims largely center on three widely spread images that Jun claims could still be circulating on Facebook. One shows the selfie of Modamani and Merkel next to an image of security footage of a group of young men suspected of trying to set a homeless man on fire at a Berlin subway station on Christmas Eve. The face of one of the suspects is circled and falsely identified as Modamani. “Merkel made selfie with one of the offenders in 2015!” it reads. In another post that circulated on Facebook, a photo collage puts Modamani and Merkel against the backdrop of a Berlin Christmas market following the December attack there. The caption reads, “They are Merkel’s dead.” An earlier claim falsely linked Modamani to last year’s Brussels attacks, alleging that Merkel “took a selfie with a terrorist.” The image was initially posted by a user called “Anonymous” and, according to Jun, was reposted at least 1,000 times. Many times more users saw it. “I love Facebook — I found an apartment through the network,” Modamani told Spiegel Online last month. “But I also hate Facebook, because this Photoshop stuff simply never ceases.” In a statement, Facebook said it had “already quickly disabled access to content” that Modamani’s legal representatives had reported. “So we do not believe that legal action here is necessary or that it is the most effective way to resolve the situation.”

Man accused of photographing Sen. Thad Cochran’s bedridden wife

A Mississippi man was arrested Friday in connection with allegations that he entered a nursing home to photograph the bedridden wife of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and posted an image of her online. The Madison, Miss., Police Department said in a statement that Clayton Thomas Kelly, 28, of Pearl, Miss., was arrested because he “illegally and improperly obtained an image of a vulnerable adult resident without their consent for his own benefit.” His bond has been set at $100,000. The police department declined to say whom Kelly allegedly targeted. But Cochran’s attorney said the arrest was the result of an investigation prompted by concerns about an unauthorized photo of Cochran’s wife that was posted online. “Recently, an unauthorized picture of Senator Cochran’s wife was posted on the Internet as part of a video,” said the attorney, Donald Clark Jr. “The picture was taken inside of Mrs. Cochran’s room near her bedside. Senator Cochran asked our firm to represent him in this matter. We believed a crime may have been committed and we immediately notified the City of Madison Police Department since St. Catherine’s Nursing Home is located in the City of Madison. The police conducted an investigation, still in progress, resulting in the arrest last night. As you can imagine, Senator Cochran’s first concern was that of the safety of his wife as well as the invasion of her privacy and dignity.” Kelly is a blogger who has posted items opposing Cochran, 76, and supporting his Republican primary challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newspaper reported. In a statement, McDaniel condemned Kelly’s alleged actions. McDaniel’s campaign said it has neither an official nor a volunteer relationship with Kelly. “I’ve reached out to Senator Cochran directly to express my abhorrence for the reprehensible actions of this individual,” McDaniel said. “This criminal act is deeply offensive and my team and I categorically reject such appalling behavior. My thoughts and prayers are with Senator Cochran and his family.” Cochran’s wife, Rose Cochran, has been a resident of the nursing home since 2000 and suffers from dementia, the Clarion-Ledger reported.

He hugged his family and said, ‘I’ll see you next time,’ before being gunned down on Facebook video

On Sunday morning, before he gained unwanted fame on Facebook as a homicide victim, Robert Godwin, 74, visited his son, Robert Godwin Jr.  The elder Godwin, a retired foundry worker with nine children and 13 grandchildren, was out looking for aluminum cans, which he collected. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A man, whom police later identified as Steve Stephens, approached him. Just before fatally shooting Godwin in a video uploaded to Facebook, Stephens asked him, “Can you do me a favor? Can you say ‘Joy Lane’?” “Joy Lane?” Godwin responded, appearing confused. “Yeah,” Stephens said. “She’s the reason why this is about to happen to you.” He raised a gun and pulled the trigger. The camera spun around. When the picture came back into frame, Godwin’s body was on the pavement, an enormous streak of blood beside him. The shooter zoomed in with his camera on Godwin’s bloodied face. “I haven’t watched the video,” Godwin’s son told Cleveland.com. “I haven’t even looked at my cellphone or the news, I don’t really want to see it,” he said. Killed for nothing. The shooter didn’t even know him, police say. “That motherf‑‑‑er dead ’cause of you, Joy,” the shooter said before he walked back to his car.  It’s just the latest example of a growing horror. The sudden popularity of live-streaming video services such as Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope — along with the ability to upload previously shot videos to the platforms — has increasingly been accompanied by the sharing of violent acts such as slayings, rapes, suicides and even torture. The videos are posted by people seeking attention, even feelings of empowerment. Now, experts worry about copycat offenders and, worse, people seeking to “one-up” the gruesomeness of the last viral video. As Cleveland police and the FBI launched a manhunt Sunday, Facebook officials removed the original video of the slaying from its platform. “This is a horrific crime and we do not allow this kind of content on Facebook,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. “We work hard to keep a safe environment on Facebook, and are in touch with law enforcement in emergencies when there are direct threats to physical safety.” But removing a video from the Internet is nearly impossible. In mythology, soldiers battling the multi-headed Hydra faced a problem: For each head they sliced off, two more grew in its place. Authorities attempting to scrub the Internet of certain videos face much the same problem. Copies of a deleted video still multiply and spread at lightning speed.  “People who engage in this behavior, particular those posting it to social media, characterized by feeling disempowered,” James Ogloff, the director at the center for Forensic Behavioral Science at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, told The Washington Post. In the latest case, Stephens clearly hoped a specific person — identified by him as Joy Lane, which some outlets have reported was a former romantic partner — would watch him kill an elderly man. Stephens directly addressed Joy in the video. Ogloff said that Stephens addressing Joy, “presumably someone he was angry with,” suggested he was seeking a feeling of empowerment. He committed a murder and “wanted her to pay for it” through the guilt she might feel. Before online streaming services, though, Ogloff said, someone like Stephens might have merely stopped at fantasizing about hurting someone. Instead, he seemed to have planned a murder. “Just thinking of what you can do to someone you’re angry with is pretty empowering,” he said. But social media adds a new layer: a captive audience.  With each new viral video, the idea that showing heinous acts leads to attention is reinforced. “The largest asset online, that everyone is fighting for, is other people’s attention,” Vincent Hendricks, the director of the Center for Information and Bubble Studies at the University of Copenhagen, told The Washington Post. “Attention is a natural currency for human beings. We like attention; we like to be recognized.” “One thing we know that grabs other people’s attention is anger or fear,” Hendricks added. “There’s an easy stock exchange on this — how many likes are you going to get out of it?” Hendricks said.  As more people watch, meanwhile, the more normalized such violent videos become. Ogloff said he has worked with many young people who are “very desensitized to violence by exposure to the Internet.”  It could get worse. Both Hendricks and Ogloff mentioned the idea of violent offenders not just committing copycat crimes but potentially attempting to “one-up” each other. Or, as Ogloff put it, “trying to make your perverted behavior more shocking than the last.” Since “horrific things tend to spread online,” Hendricks said, the more horrific a video is, the largest audience it will likely garner. “It becomes a race to the bottom,” he said. “There will be a small but core group that will watch this and sympathize with this guy,” Ogloff said of Sunday’s slaying, adding that the group will likely be young people who “love being in the media. They love being in the newspaper, or being online. That can perpetuate the cycle.” Stopping the cycle might prove difficult. Ogloff noted that although Stephens’s life, if he is caught and found guilty, will likely only get worse, “essentially no one will care what happens to him.” “The problem is this guy will now be immortalized in that video,” Ogloff said.

How the heart-wrenching photo of Syria’s surrendering child came to be

She was clearly a child of war. Against a backdrop of broken cement bricks and the dirt ground, the 4-year-old clenched her tiny hands above her head, pursed her lips and trained her eyes —a seemingly bottomless well of sadness and innocence — at the man pointing a large camera at her face. In that moment, in late 2014 at a Syrian refugee camp, she was immortalized as a symbol of the human toll that endless war and strife have taken on Syria's displaced millions. The photo of Hudea was published in January by the Turkish newspaper Türkiye, according to the BBC, and in the non-English language social media world, it went viral.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The photo recently began circulating on social media again, this time among English-language users. Some believed that the child was a boy (she is a girl whose tawny brown hair had been cut short), and others speculated that the photo was taken in 2012.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico When it was tweeted out by Gaza-based photographer Nadia Abu Shaban — who herself didn't know where it came from or who had taken it, according to the BBC — it was retweeted more than 16,000 times. Many who commented or shared the photo characterized the child's gesture as a form of "surrender." The photographer, Osman Sağırlı, spoke to the BBC about what prompted Hudea's heart-wrenching gesture — and about the photo's subsequent impact. "I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon," Sağırlı said. "I realized she was terrified after I took it, and looked at the picture, because she bit her lips and raised her hands. Normally kids run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera." Sağırlı added: "You know there are displaced people in the camps. It makes more sense to see what they have suffered not through adults, but through children. It is the children who reflect the feelings with their innocence."

‘You should never hurt a dog’: Abuse cases rile China’s growing animal rights movement

At first, the dog in the video appears cheerful, panting heavily with its tongue out. But then the camera pans — to the moving car pulling the dog by a string, to the dog's paws red with blood and its skin chafed near to the bone. The SUV was spotted dragging the dog down a street in China's Shandong province Monday, and alarmed passersby stopped the driver.  On WeChat and Weibo, China's social media networks, the video went viral. The same day, reports surfaced of a man in Guandong province sharing photos of a dog splattered with blood and boasting on a messaging app that he had tortured and "killed around 50 dogs." Upon seeing the screenshots of his messages online, a woman who volunteers at a local dog shelter arrived at the man's house with police and fellow volunteers. She told Shenzhen News that the man, Wang Moping, had previously inquired about adopting a dog from them. At his house, they found a bleeding German shepherd with missing teeth and rushed it to a veterinarian. The screenshots of Wang's messages, and photos of the subsequent rescue, were shared thousands of times. Netizens widely condemned the people behind both acts of abuse. "He should be the one tied to a car and dragged," one Weibo user said of the Shandong driver, whose photograph, license plate number and phone number were shared online. "Death to the driver, death to his whole family," wrote another.  These responses point to China's growing animal rights movement, which has become increasingly mainstream in recent years even as other forms of activism are being suppressed.  "In many ways, animal welfare movements fall in line with China's goal to modernize, both economically and culturally," he wrote. Like the activists that called on the Chinese government to change farming practices, netizens are now asking for laws that would punish alleged animal abusers such as Wang.

Scenes from militarized America: Brookline, Mass., and the Michigan State Police

Yesterday, the same day the ACLU released its report on creeping police militarization, the Brookline, Mass., Police Department posted these photos to Twitter:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Brookline has a population of about 60,000, and as of 2012 hadn’t seen a murder in six years.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Last month, I wrote about a similar photo posted to Twitter by the Michigan State Police, which was then re-tweeted by the official Twitter account of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Within a few hours of my post, the Michigan State Police removed the photo from Twitter. Here is that photo:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday  Michigan criminal defense attorney William Maze sent the Michigan State Police an open-records request for any communication related to the decision to take the photo down. You can read read it in full here. But here are a few excerpts from the e-mail exchanges he got back:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   I obviously don’t encourage hateful comments against police agencies, in social media or elsewhere. And anything bordering on a threat is not only deplorable, but also not particularly intelligent, given that it isn’t difficult for them to identify the source of the threat. Polite criticism is more productive. But the notable (but not particularly surprising) thing here is that the complete lack of consideration for the possibility that the people who were bothered by the photo might have a point about the appropriateness of the photo. Instead, the lesson learned here seems to be to cease posting such photos on social media.

Former Playmate sentenced for Snapchat body-shaming of naked woman at gym

In the world of nude modeling, Dani Mathers has quite a track record. She was dubbed Playboy’s “CyberGirl of the Month” in January 2013 and “Playmate of the Month” in May of the following year, then went on to win the coveted “Playmate of the Year” in 2015. But the picture she took of another woman naked brought her more attention than any of those poses. Last July, Mathers, 30, surreptitiously photographed a naked 71-year-old in the locker room of an LA Fitness gym and posted the image to Snapchat with the caption: “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.” It showed a picture of the woman’s backside, along with a selfie of Mathers, clad in workout gloves and a white Nike tank top, covering her mouth in feigned disgust. On Wednesday, Mathers pleaded no contest to misdemeanor invasion of privacy in connection with the Snapchat post, which drew widespread condemnation on social media and led to criminal charges against her last fall. As punishment, a judge in Los Angeles County Superior Court ordered her to spend 30 days scrubbing graffiti around the city. She was also sentenced to three years’ probation.  Mathers had faced up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. She initially pleaded not guilty.   When LA Fitness caught wind of the post, it banned Mathers from all 800 of its gyms, then told police that Mathers had photographed a fellow gym-goer in the locker room. Mathers apologized, saying she intended to send the picture privately to a friend. She then deleted her social media accounts for several months. “I know that body-shaming is wrong,” she said. “That is not the type of person I am.” Detectives from the LAPD’s sexual assault section investigated after receiving a report of “illegal distribution” of the image. California law makes it a misdemeanor to use a camera in places such as locker rooms “with the intent to invade the privacy of a person.” The law also bars distribution of images of a person’s “intimate body part or parts” without consent. The woman in the photograph was never publicly identified. But prosecutors, who did manage to track her down, said the woman was mortified when she learned about Mathers’s post.

Go ahead, get grandma out of your feed

_Rebecca S. Fahrlander is an adjunct professor of sociology and psychology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha._ It started with my cousin’s Facebook friend request. I accepted, and then I friended other cousins, nieces and nephews. It would be a great way to stay in touch, I figured. Instead, my Facebook feed became a bad family reunion, but without the hot dogs, hamburgers and ugly T-shirts. My cousin (we’re both baby boomers) constantly posted on my page images of dead family members, which also arrived in my e-mail. It was like getting a huge box of family photos in the mail each week. When I asked her to remove me from her list for these photos, she said she was “speechless.” Instead of bringing us together, social media created a rift between us. My younger relatives posed different problems on Facebook. I knew very little about these family members, but I generally thought of them as nice college kids or recent graduates. So when I saw them posting tasteless photos and sharing links to offensive Web sites that used profanity, I was quite surprised. At least one of the posts was insensitive toward cancer survivors like me: a cartoon about “mammo-grahams” (picture “breasts” made of frosting between two graham crackers) during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In an earlier era, I never would have known these odd bits of unflattering information, and now I viewed those relatives less favorably. After a while, I unfriended a few relatives. One unfriended me after I commented negatively on one of her posts. If I was unfriending my family members, what was happening in other families? I put the question to my university students and found that they, too, have odd or uncomfortable relationships with their relatives on social media. There were photos of parties and events they weren’t invited to — and way too much information about their siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. My students unfollowed relatives who constantly posted about their political and religious views. Some complained that older relatives didn’t understand the norms that discourage posting about matters, such as religion, that they would not discuss face to face with most family members. One of my students also hesitated to add Grandma as a Facebook friend because she could see some unconventional or deviant content, such as profane rap lyrics — and, more shockingly, she could click “like.” Who would have guessed that Grandma would enjoy this stuff? Social media is supposed to unite people by fostering regular communication across generations and distance. But it can also divide families by making relatives more aware of differences and stirring up fights, as when several relatives argue over another’s stream of postings from a politician’s Web site, asking for support. Then there was the student’s ex-husband and his new girlfriend, whom the former wife did not want to know anything about but was forced to see regularly on Facebook. Even when she unfriended her ex, other family members remained friends with him, so the photos and postings were still a constant irritant. Social media can also blur relatives’ roles. For example, a grandmother’s role in a family member’s life is different from that of a friend, but that distinction gets lost on social media. Suddenly, we’re hanging out together, all the time. Having Grandma on Facebook is sort of like taking Grandma to your fraternity party. In the real world, for example, a grandmother and grandson might talk about certain topics, such as school, but not others, like those profane lyrics. The grandson would carefully edit, for an audience of one, what he shares with his grandmother. But on Facebook, the grandson shares the same things with Grandma that he shares with his 795 other friends. This broadcast-style approach changes the way family members see each other and, therefore, changes their relationships. One of my students, for example, said that now, every time he sees his uncle in real life, he thinks of all the uncle’s political postings on Facebook, and he views him in a more negative light. There may be such a thing as too much contact with and information about our distant relatives. Before social media, we saw our extended family members infrequently: at reunions, weddings, holidays. We might receive an occasional written letter, deliberate and carefully crafted in its tone and content. A phone call might reveal unusual interests and activities, but it served to bond family members together — not so much through what was said as through the human contact, the warm, familiar voice, the shared problems. People knew that they had to be sensitive to each other’s feelings. Most communication was fairly upbeat and cordial, and rarely risked sharing too much information. Uncles’ or cousins’ political and religious affiliations, as well as health conditions, may have been known in a general way — such as who was a Democrat or a Republican, and who had been in the hospital recently. But unless I happened to visit a relative during election season and saw a candidate’s sign in his yard, I would not have known whom he was voting for. Knowing a little bit of filtered information about our distant relatives, we were able to maintain an ideal in our minds of who they were as individuals and in relation to us. There was a secretive quality to some aunts and cousins, but we knew enough about them for our relationships to flourish. The boundaries of social roles were maintained. These boundaries and social roles are an important part of how we define ourselves. We reveal different things to our grandparents than to our best friends and certainly to our new acquaintances. But I see many people sharing personal information on Facebook that, in an earlier era, they would not have disclosed in a phone conversation or at a family get-together. And the sheer volume of material is much greater: Compare the length of the annual family holiday letter, for example, with a printout of a person’s Facebook postings over a whole year. One of my young relatives recently referred to me as the “mysterious aunt” because she rarely saw me, but heard about how I had a PhD and had traveled to all seven continents, destinations such as Timbuktu, Marrakesh and Tahiti. To be mysterious, information must be edited and withheld. On social media, the oversharing removes the mystery — and some of the family harmony, as well. **outlook@washpost.com ** Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Domestic violence restraining order based partly on “‘scary’ clown” picture, Walking Dead doll, and head of hair with horns

Kyle Rainer and Brandy Buchanon had a 6-year-old child, B.L.G.R. The child “lived with Mother, but visited with Father on Sundays.” In early 2014, though, mother filed a petition in court alleging domestic violence on father’s part. Part of the allegations were that he had angrily yelled at her, scaring her and the daughter. Part was that he had “head-butted” the daughter. But the mother also introduced evidence about The family court had earlier entered a stay-away domestic violence order, and “prior to allowing introduction of the Facebook images, the family court indicated that it was going to partially grant Father’s motion and amend the DVO down from ‘no contact’ to ‘no violent contact.'” But “[a]fter considering the Facebook posts,” the court changed its mind on the amendment, and kept the order as it was. The court of appeals disagreed, and reversed the restraining order altogether ( _Rainer v. Buchanon_ (Ky. Ct. App. Mar. 13, 2015), or go here and search for “clown”):    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The court also concluded that the yelling incident wasn’t enough to justify the order: “At most, Mother alleged that Father evoked fear in her when he ‘yelled’ outside her home and that he seemed ‘angry’ and ‘mean.’ Certainly, yelling during the course of a disagreement is not to be condoned nor is repeatedly initiating unwanted contact. Without some implicit or explicit threat of harm, however, we do not believe that such conduct, at least as it transpired in this case, constitutes an act of domestic violence.” And the court concluded that the headbutting was just “an inappropriate, physically rough game,” but there was no “evidence in the record to suggest that the headbutting actually caused a physical injury to Child or was undertaken with the intent to do so” (plus one that was unlikely to happen again).

Twitter updates its rules to specifically ban ‘revenge porn’

Starting Wednesday, Twitter will change its rules to prohibit users from posting of "revenge porn" -- intimate, and possibly explicit, images or video posted publicly without consent -- to its social network. "You may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject's consent," says a new line in the company's list of community rules. Twitter has also updated its abuse policy to specifically mention "intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject's consent," alongside its prohibitions against making threats due to a person's race, gender or age. The San Francisco firm has been slow to respond to growing criticism that it has not done enough to prevent bad behavior on its site, but has recently rolled out several policy changes.The firm announced in August that it would take steps to improve user safety and combat harassment. It released smaller updates to its rules in December and February.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It's also become clear that addressing these concerns is a priority at the highest levels of the company. In a recently leaked memo, chief executive Dick Costolo acknowledged that Twitter is very bad "at dealing with abuse."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This latest move comes just a few weeks after reddit announced it would change its own policies to crack down on those who post unauthorized nude and explicit photos on its site. Several states, including California, have also considered or passed bills to directly address non-consensual pornography.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Under the new rules, Twitter users who see such photos of themselves posted online will be able to report the authorized material to the company. Only the subject of the photo -- or their legal representative -- is allowed to request that Twitter review and remove the pictures. Those who post the photos are allowed to appeal a takedown decision, if they feel it was unwarranted. Unlike reddit policies, if Twitter employees determine a photo does violate the new rules, the firm will not only hide the post from public view, but also lock the account of the person who posted it. "[Those] users will be required to delete the content in question before being able to return to the platform," the company said. Those who post content intending to harass others could be suspended from Twitter altogether. If the photos become the subject of a legal investigation, the company said that it will follow its existing rules if asked to turn over personal information on the person who posts the pictures. But there are exceptions. For example, the company said: "Photos or video that do not appear to violate the policy -- such as content that an individual has previously indicated was made publicly available with permission -- will not be actioned." Those who advocate on behalf of victims of abuse and domestic violence said that Twitter's new rules are a step in the right direction, and continue to help build momentum in fighting a peculiarly 21st century tactic of the long-standing problem of abuse. "There’s a little bit of a tipping point," said Cindy Southworth of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. Having big corporations say they won't tolerate this kind of behavior helps, Southworth said, especially since the conventional wisdom has been that those who face abuse online should simply stay offline altogether. "It is not okay to say the only way to be safe is to become socially isolated," she said. "Domestic violence is about isolation, and it's so important [for victims] to be able to reconnect with friends and family." According to a recent survey of domestic abuse victims conducted by the NNEDV, 55 percent of programs that provide support for domestic violence victims reported that revenge porn was used to perpetuate abuse against those in their programs. The same survey found that 27 percent of the programs surveyed reported that abusers had used Twitter. (Nearly all, 99 percent, reported that Facebook, as the world's largest social network, had been used as a platform for abuse.) Having the problem directly addressed by major technology firms is an enormous help for victims who often have a lot of trouble getting these pictures removed, said Christina Gagnier, an attorney specializing in privacy issues and board member of the non-profit privacy group Without My Consent. "Though this might seem like just a couple of additional options to report abuse, it will have a big impact for victims," she said. Yet while companies can provide immediate steps for online abuse victims, Gagnier said, they're only part of a lasting solution. Laws must also change to address the problem. "We have been using really old laws that don’t address what’s happening," she said. "That makes it hard for judges and law enforcement" to address the issue.

Hungarians are making these creepy scarecrows to stop migrants

In one place, at least, security forces have resorted to a new tactic: putting up makeshift scarecrows. The photos, tweeted by Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Panyi, were uploaded onto the Facebook page of a group that supports Hungary's police and troops, especially those patrolling the border. In a note to WorldViews, Panyi suggested that the pictures were probably taken by security personnel themselves, because ordinary Hungarians aren't normally allowed in the vicinity of the boundary fences. The account posting the images said that the masks were made in part out of carved sugar beet root and that no migrants had reportedly crossed in the areas where the scarecrows had been put up in the past month.

Florida police face backlash after publishing photos of unconscious women

One woman lies on a hardwood floor. Her eyes are closed. Her shoulders are bare. Her blonde hair forms a tangled halo. She could be the victim of a crime.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Windermere Police Department in central Florida published her image Monday on Facebook, along with the faces of nine other apparently unconscious women. They asked people to share the snapshots across social media. By Tuesday, the investigation -- and the photos -- trended nationally on Facebook.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Police revealed little about the images, but they came seven months after the department announced the name of a suspected serial rapist in the quiet Florida town of 2,462 residents. The accused attacker, they said, video- recorded his assaults on incapacitated women.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Police did not connect the photos to that case. But Ogden told a local news station Monday, "We are not sure if they are harmed. We’re not sure if they’re safe. We’re not sure if they’re even alive, to be honest with you.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It's unusual for a police department to publicly ID possible victims of sexual assault without permission, a move strongly discouraged by federal law enforcement guidelines. Commenters on Ogden’s Facebook page raised concerns about the women’s privacy: “Unfortunately, These photos will be shared forever because people in Social Media just share things without checking them out. Once posted, you can not take them back.” “Who's bright idea was it to post victim's images on the internet???” “Hopefully somebody thought about the implications of posting these photos BEFORE they did it.” Tim Maher, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and former police officer, said the Windermere police have veered into uncharted waters. Never has he seen a department post photos of possible sexual assault victims on social media — an action that may humiliate survivors. Public guidelines from the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime backs up that sentiment, especially in cases that may involve sexual assault: “All information about the victim, stated or inferred, belongs to the victim. With few exceptions, the victim owns the sole right to share this information. Identifying information, options discussed, written notes and materials, and the fact that a victim has sought or received services are confidential.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico On Tuesday, less than a day after the unconscious women first appeared on Facebook, Ogden asked followers to take the photos down: "Those women are safe at this time. Out of courtesy for the women identified we ask that you remove those photos and bulletins from your social networking sites that we provided you yesterday and refer to this page for updated accurate information."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The photos remained visible on the Windermere police department's own Facebook page. The department did not return The Post's calls for comment. Though publishing the women's photos conflicts with standard law enforcement practice, Maher said the Windermere police may have had a compelling reason. “They might have weighed the potential harm they’d cause against the harm they’re trying to avoid," he said. "They may have thought the women were still in danger.” Kristen Houser, spokesperson for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said she can’t say whether the police made the right call. Publishing the photos, she acknowledged, may have been a last-resort measure to save a life. “That being said, sexual violence is a pervasive problem and yet one of the most underreported crimes,” Houser said. “That’s because for many people there are feelings of shame, fear and stigma attached. It could absolutely be retraumatizing if a victim finds out something terrible has happened to her from a photo in the news.”

A German photographer used an image of a naked woman to make a compelling point about racism

The photo shows a topless woman wearing nothing but underwear. She’s standing behind a chair where a man sits fully clothed holding a sign that translates to: “Don’t Buy From Kanaken” (a racist slur for Middle Eastern immigrants)—a nod to a sign from Nazi-era Germany about Jewish shops. The image included this caption: “One of these people is violating Facebook’s policy” with the hashtag, #nippelstatthetze, which translates to, “nipples instead of hate speech.” And sure enough, when German photographer Olli Waldhauer, 41, posted it last week on Facebook, the social media site asked him to take it down because it violated its nudity policy. Knowing this was coming, he posted the same photo to another file-sharing site and encouraged people to upload it and post it on Facebook themselves. The response, he says, was incredible. “Come on, if I can choose, I would take boobs and nipples over hate speech,” Waldhauer told The Washington Post in an interview Tuesday. He said if Facebook wants to be the morality police, then it needs to not just be moral on its own terms. The influx of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees streaming into Germany has given rise to racism in the country. Syrians are targets of violence and hate speech. It’s been so bad that the German Justice Minister wrote to Facebook in August asking the company to remove xenophobic posts. He argued there should not be any tolerance for people who seek to incite hate.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Waldhauer spent the last year traveling and documenting refugees escaping Syria through the Balkans. He said the media only sees the suffering and the potential challenges of accepting these refugees. “There’s not just problems coming, there is hope coming,” he said. “Hope for the future.” The far-right wing extremists are spreading fear, he said. Just this weekend, they are believed to be behind several brutal attacks on Syrian asylum seekers, in one instance beating them with baseball bats. In another, setting refugee shelters on fire. “Even if you are inside against racism, it’s time to stand up and do something,” he said. “As an artist what is your weapon? Art is your weapon. Art is my resistance.” After the German minister wrote to Facebook, the company told Bloomberg in a statement through PR firm APCO Worldwide, “Facebook is no place for racism. Such content clearly violates our community standards and we would urge people not to try and use our platform to distribute hate speech.” But Waldhauser’s experiment showed that it’s nudity, not racist speech that sends up Facebook’s moral red flag. **Want more inspiring news and ideas to improve your life? Sign up for the SaturdayInspired Life newsletter.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **If you liked this story onInspired Life, you may also enjoy:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Radio host about lonely 95-year-old caller: ‘We’ve all got a Bill in our lives.’_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Mind over meal: Study reveals a weight loss strategy you may never have considered._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _This veteran lost his house to the bank after losing his wife to Alzheimer’s. Then something amazing happened._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Slain teen’s social media life becomes cautionary tale for peers

The photo of the shirtless teenage boy appeared on Nicole Lovell’s Instagram account around the beginning of December. Next to it, a message was posted under the 13-year-old’s username: “I love this baby he’s so hot. HES MINE.” On Facebook, Nicole posted a selfie with her lips pursed and hair swept to one side. A man from India posted a reply that read, “I love you.” Less than a month later, prosecutors said, Nicole was killed by 18-year-old Virginia Tech student David Eisenhauer, whom she met online. Like many teens, the small ups and downs of young adulthood played out across Nicole’s Facebook, Kik and Instagram pages, but her online life also highlighted some of the dangers of social media for teens — a world many parents know little about. Friends said, and her social media accounts show, that she corresponded with more than one man online and she hung out in an explicit teen dating forum. Now, the high-profile case has some parents and young people alike reconsidering how they use social media. Marissa Cook, 17, is a high school junior whose younger sister Kari attended middle school with Nicole. She said Nicole’s death has frightened some girls into getting offline altogether, wiping Snapchat and Kik from their phones. “I think it’s really opened some eyes,” Cook said. Both Cook and her sister said they were on Kik but deleted it after getting lewd photos from strangers. Tammy Weeks, Nicole’s mother, said her daughter was bullied in school and often cried, asking to stay home. She seemed to seek solace online. Nicole posted typical photos of herself posing with stuffed pandas, her siblings and hugging her father, but she also poured her heart out. In many social-media posts, Nicole projected a girl who was heartbroken, suicidal and deeply vulnerable. She posted a self-portrait to Instagram eight weeks ago, her face covered by her hand save one blue eye. “Forget about me please I don’t need no help or friends they will just stab me in the back anyway,” she wrote. With another forlorn-looking self-portrait, she posted, “I want him back so bad,” though it’s unclear whom she is referring to. And 12 weeks ago, she posted to Instagram an image of the text “I’m going to kill myself” and crying emojis. Nicole seemed unafraid to put herself out there; as one friend put it, she “wanted to be wanted a lot.” In January, Nicole posted a short message to a Facebook group called “Teen Dating and Flirting.” It featured a close-up selfie and the message: “Cute or nah.” The message received hundreds of replies. Many were ugly, and the messages were likely little different from the bullying she encountered at school. “You’re very round,” one person wrote. “Teen Dating and Flirting” had more than 18,000 members before Facebook shut it down after Nicole’s death and complaints from child advocates. Members had openly solicited sex and asked for nude pictures, and the page was littered with spam for “Sugar Daddy” sites. In a post on Instagram, Nicole made a plea to a teen who appeared older than she: “You are the first guy I have ever cared about please just come back to me.” Kari Cook, 13, has said that several weeks ago she alerted a school resource officer at Blacksburg Middle School after Nicole posted on Facebook a photo of an older teen she seemed to be dating. Cook said the man did not appear to be Eisenhauer. Blacksburg police said they never received such a complaint. A second friend said he also became alarmed at Nicole’s interactions with men on social media. “In heaven don’t hang out with random guys,” a friend wrote in a memorial to Nicole on Instagram. “I gave you this advice when you were standing and sitting right in front of me but you never listened.” Nicole disappeared from her home on Jan. 27. A neighbor told the Associated Press that earlier that day Nicole told the neighbor’s daughters that she had a boyfriend named “David” and showed messages between the two on the instant-messaging app Kik. Nicole’s body was discovered in a remote stretch along the Virginia-North Carolina border last weekend. A prosecutor said at a bond hearing Thursday that Eisenhauer, of Columbia, Md., and another Virginia Tech freshman, Natalie Keepers, 19, of Laurel, Md., conspired to kill Nicole over the month of January, buying a shovel and picking a remote spot to slit her throat. The prosecutor did not offer a motive for the killing, but two law enforcement officials have told The Post that Eisenhauer had sexual contact with Nicole and that he used their relationship to lure her out of her home. Nicole’s death has heightened scrutiny around certain social-media apps, where adults with inappropriate intentions can have ready access to children online. Terri Lovell, Nicole’s stepmother, created a GoFundMe page to raise money for funeral expenses and for “promoting online safety for our children.” One 14-year-old girl at Blacksburg Middle School did not know Nicole well but said she and her friends have been leery of social media ever since a stranger messaged her friend on Instagram asking for nude pictures. She said that some middle-schoolers invent online personas making themselves appear older than they really are. “They want to date older boys, I guess, so they pretend to be older,” the girl said. Tiffany Moeltner’s two daughters attended Blacksburg Middle School with Nicole. For many reasons, she restricts their access to social media, even reviewing their followers on Instagram and limiting their phone time to 30 minutes on weeknights. One reason, though, is the prospect that strangers could reach out to her daughters on social media. “The social dangers of people phishing and connecting with the kids is bad enough,” Moeltner said. “It’s really scary.”

The Islamic State routinely shares gruesome images of those it kills. But governments do it, too.

The Islamic State has shown time and time again that it is willing to both document its acts of extreme violence and then share these acts on social media. This tactic appears to serve a dual purpose: While these gruesome images anger and disgust much of the world, they also excite and entice the extremist group's online "fanboys" to action. However, the Islamic State does not have a monopoly on using social media to share scenes of violence. Right now, there's plenty of violence going on in the world, and anyone with a) a smart phone or camera, b) Internet access and c) a social media account can share it. That extends to government forces too. On Thursday, a day after a major Islamic State assault in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula that left as many as 70 dead, the Egyptian military took to Facebook to rally support. On the page of the Army spokesperson, the military shared images of what it said were fallen militants, describing them as “despicable terrorists.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico You can click to see the images below, but please bear in mind they are very graphic. Egypt isn't an isolated example of government forces sharing violent images in the fight against extremists online. In Nigeria, for example, many thousands of miles away from Egypt, the military has shared incredibly horrific images of dead and mutilated bodies that it said belonged to fighters with Boko Haram. However, following online criticism, Nigeria backed off this policy this year. The Nigerian military "will no longer show dead bodies henceforth," Gen. Chris Olukolade tweeted in January, while at the same time sharing incredibly graphic images of blown- apart bodies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Things get more complicated in Iraq, where pro-government Shiite militias have been sharing a variety of violent images for some time. Philip Smyth, a researcher with the University of Maryland who tracks these militias online, says that some of these groups have shared images that rival the brutality of the Islamic State on social media, including images of a man being roasted alive over a fire and beheading groups. In an e-mail, Smyth says that while the Iraqi government doesn't share these images itself, it is less clear whether Iraqi soldiers have been involved in the violence shared by militias. "It's often easier to ID militia groups doing it than regular Iraqi government forces," Smyth writes. "Why? Well, anyone can buy Iraq gov. patches/gear. Many militias operate alongside Iraq gov. forces too." So far, in the battle for hearts and minds against the Islamic State, the U.S. has avoided showing off dead bodies of fallen militants. In fact, Washington has balked at even showing violence _committed_ by the Islamic State, with one notorious video showing Islamic State atrocities – “Welcome to ISIS Land” – seen as getting far too close to emulating the extremist organization's own gratuitous tactics.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Such concerns are legitimate, and there's a good argument that resorting to violent propaganda images will help erode the moral superiority real states have over the so-called Islamic State. However, it seems in the short term that these extremely violent images work to rally support in the face of an extremely violent enemy: At the time of writing, the Egyptian army's gruesome photos have been liked more than 68,000 times and shared more than 20,000 times.

The most bizarre stories from in and around D.C.

Prince George’s County police issued refunds last month for nearly 1,500 speed-camera tickets, each $40, because the camera’s location had not been advertised in a local newspaper as required by law, The Associated Press reported. The camera went up in November 2012. Officers say an ad was submitted, but the location was somehow removed before press time. — A Capitol Hill woman whose iPhone was stolen last month describes one of her attackers to WJLA. The teen used her phone to take a selfie, which automatically uploaded to the victim’s icloud account. The guy in the photo turned himself in after it went public. A Maryland student tried to make his own snow day last month when he altered his Twitter feed to resemble that of Anne Arundel County Public Schools and announced the system would close the next day, Edgewater Path reported. The tweet earned nearly 200 retweets. Although the schools closed anyway, “We didn’t think it was funny,” an AACPS spokesman said. *** _Want to see your Big Pic in print? Submit your best shot by joining our Flickr pool at flickr.com/groups/wapoexpress. Share a photo from the Washington region, and it could appear here._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Ask Amy: Photo of deceased friend lives on, on Facebook

_**Dear Amy:** My dearest friend suddenly passed away from a heart attack. His funeral was yesterday._ _His younger cousin took pictures of my friend lying in the casket and posted them on my friend’s Facebook page._ _I was upset to see these pictures. I find them disturbing. I choose to remember my friend a different way and not in a casket._ _I would like to ask this cousin (whom I have never met) to take these pictures down, but I’m not sure how to word the request. I don’t want offend or upset anyone._ _I do not want to look at his Facebook page years from now and see those pictures. I know I can report pictures to Facebook, but feel this should be a last resort. Obviously, I would private message the cousin._ _What is the consensus on taking pictures of the deceased in a casket and posting them on Facebook? How does one politely ask that they be taken down?_ **Grieving Friend** **Grieving Friend:** My deepest sympathies. Losing friends is a heartbreak, and social media can make it harder, especially when people violate known social and ethical norms and then broadcast their violation to the world. In another era, it was relatively common to take photographs of dead people. In my own family, there are photos of several spectral ancestors, dead to the world, but living on in photos. Today, however, it is the final violation of someone’s privacy to photograph his body and post the photo for all to see. Facebook has come to serve an important function for the family and friends of the dearly departed, as an individual’s personal FB page transitions to a memorial page, celebrating the person’s life. Anyone viewing a post has the freedom to respond and react honestly. There is no reason for you to stay quiet about this. Send this cousin a private message, saying, “I am deeply offended by your choice to post photographs of my dearest friend in his casket. I consider it a violation of his privacy. It is very upsetting to me, and perhaps others. I think these photos should be removed.” In the meantime, use Facebook’s “hide” function so that you will not see the photos, and can preserve the memory of your friend the way that you would like. _**Dear Amy:** Six years ago, my daughter and son-in-law moved in with me temporarily while they sold their home._ _All these years later, their kids (my grandkids, who I love more than life itself) have grown to love the house and neighborhood._ _The issue now is that I am getting ready to retire. My daughter and son-in- law want me to move out and sell them my house for half its value._ _They keep pressuring me. If I don’t do this, they say, I will never be able to see my grandkids again._ _I am willing to help them, but I have four adult children._ _I know I cannot give into this pressure, but I’m not sure how to handle this situation, since I have never seen behavior like this before._ _I feel if I don’t do this, I will lose contact with my two grandkids. This would destroy me. Any thoughts of what I should do? I’m in a really bad spot here._ **Destroyed** **Destroyed:** Your daughter is using her own children as a way to emotionally blackmail and bully you. One distinct possibility is that no matter what you do, she may still choose to separate you from the children. You need to prepare for this. Has the family ever paid rent? If not, surely they have saved up enough in six years to rent or purchase another home in the area. Your passivity has enabled your daughter to dominate and intimidate you. I can’t imagine why you would be willing to continue to live with someone who would behave this way. When you give up your own autonomy, you have nothing left to give to your grandchildren; do you see this? You have your future to consider, as well as three other grown children, who I’m sure have an opinion regarding the sale of this house. What about your relationship with them? A professional and impartial counselor may be able to inspire you to buck up instead of buckle. **Dear Readers:** Sometimes people who dispense advice run out of answers. If you’ve ever been curious about the life behind my advice, read my new book, “Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home” (2017, Hachette). © 2017 by Amy Dickinson distributed by Tribune Content Agency

School poster that insulted obese students, up for 5 minutes, goes viral

A hand-drawn poster that encouraged bullying of obese students at a Maryland high school has stirred a social-media buzz that has gone on for days, prompting school officials to issue a statement on the district’s Facebook page. The poster, hung in a classroom at Northern High School in Calvert County, Md., showed an overweight boy seeming to fall after having been pushed by a fit boy. “Obese children clog hallways,” it read. “Be aware!! Shove them out of the way.” Calvert County school officials say the student-created poster was up for five minutes or less on Friday, Sept. 11, before school staff removed it. But it was photographed by a student, posted on Facebook and has since gone viral, said Cathy Page, a Calvert County schools spokeswoman. Calvert school officials declined to give details about who made the poster and how it came to be displayed, and did not say whether disciplinary actions may have been taken. Student discipline and employee personnel matters are confidential by law, Page said. Superintendent Daniel Curry responded to the incident on Facebook this week. “The school administration handled it when it happened and through social media it became a much larger issue,” Page said. In his statement, Curry wrote that the district was aware that a photo was circulating of the poster, which makes “a mean and inappropriate reference” to obese students. “That poster was not approved by any teacher or staff member and was up no longer than five minutes,” he said. “The matter is being appropriately handled by the administration.” “This is a good example to all of how a 5 minute bad idea can live forever on social media and be distributed with inaccurate references to good people,” he continued. “Rather than having a lifespan of 5 minutes, this poster (with the help of many well-meaning people) was effectively copied and posted in every hallway, classroom, and home. You can help put an end to the unfair reference to NHS staff and the continued distribution of this inappropriate message by deleting or, at the very least, refusing to pass it along.” Curry’s statement on Facebook received more than 175 “likes.” Many of the comments posted were critical or voiced concern. One person asked whether Curry had talked to the students personally and what had been done to ensure it would not happen again. “This is a huge form of bullying and why should any child be subjected to that and then to have the situation downplayed by the superintendent of the schools by saying it was “only up 5 min” so basically saying get over it because it’s not that big of a deal!” another wrote.

President Trump locks heads with news media in a social-media first

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Trump, who has reveled in his confrontational style with the news media, sparked fierce debate Sunday over whether he is inciting violence against journalists by posting a doctored video clip showing him bashing the head of a figure representing CNN. Trump’s latest provocation in his war with the media brought denunciations from Democrats, and some Republicans, who warned that the president’s conduct could endanger reporters as he seeks to undermine public trust in reporting about his administration. “Violence & violent imagery to bully the press must be rejected,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote in one of the many comments from elected officials posted on Twitter. Presidential historians suggested that Trump’s social media attacks are lowering the bar on what constitutes appropriate presidential conduct in fighting perceived media enemies. H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas, said Republican President Richard Nixon also felt mistreated, but “Nixon didn’t air his grievances as publicly as Trump does. We’ve never seen anything quite like the ongoing performance of President Trump.” Meanwhile, White House aides and supporters defended the president’s Twitter post as a pointed but harmless barb at what he sees as a hostile press corps. Some said the reaction demonstrated the inflated self-regard of reporters and their inability to take a joke. Trump, from his Bedminster golf resort in northern New Jersey, defended his use of social media, saying it befitted a “modern day” president. The latest salvo from Trump came as questions about the political climate for journalists, and their safety, have swirled amid incidents in which politicians have assaulted reporters or had them arrested. During the campaign, some reporters assigned to cover Trump, including ones from CNN, were cursed and threatened by his supporters, who echoed him with chants of “fake news.” In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists said that targeting media outlets “creates a chilling effect and fosters an environment where further harassment or even physical attack is deemed acceptable.” The organization, which tallies deaths of journalists across the globe, added that the White House’s “charged rhetoric online” makes reporting “more dangerous” and “emboldens autocratic leaders around the world.” Trump had been combative with the news media throughout his campaign and in the first months of his presidency. But his anger and frustration have mounted in recent weeks amid intensive coverage of an FBI investigation into his campaign’s alleged contact with Russian operatives, who U.S. intelligence agencies determined meddled in the presidential election in hopes of aiding Trump. White House aides have fretted that the president’s focus on the investigation has distracted him from building political support for his policy agenda, including a legislative rollback of the Affordable Care Act that is now pending in the Senate. And some of his public statements have embroiled him more deeply in legal questions over his conduct in the probe. At the same time, the president and his aides believe that his feud with the media, which has included limiting the number of on-camera briefings, has played well with his conservative base. Late Saturday, Trump used a portion of a speech at “Celebrate Freedom” event at the Kennedy Center, in honor of military veterans and religious groups, to taunt the press. “The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them. The people know the truth,” Trump said. “The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, but I’m president and they’re not.” He drew a standing ovation from the crowd, which waved miniature American flags. On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted a video clip of the moment on Twitter. Aides defended his tweet of the WWE video on Saturday, arguing that Trump has a right to fight what they say is unfair coverage. They suggested that reporters were overreacting to a video first posted several days ago on the popular social media message board Reddit. “No one would perceive that as a threat; I hope they don’t,” homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week.” Bossert praised Trump’s ability to “genuinely” communicate with the public, and he echoed a line of defense that other Trump surrogates have employed: that when Trump’s policies are attacked in the media, he has a right to counterpunch. “He’s beaten up, in a way, on the cable platforms,” Bossert said. “He has a right to respond.” The video clip was taken from a WWE appearance in 2007 during which Trump body-slammed WWE Chairman Vince McMahon as part of the “Battle of the Billionaires.” Trump, a New York real estate developer and promoter, has had a long association with the WWE and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2013. At the ceremony, McMahon referred to Trump as “a Wrestlemania institution” and recalled this episode, which culminated with Trump participating in shaving McMahon’s head in the ring. Trump has appointed McMahon’s wife, Linda, who donated $6 million to a pro- Trump super PAC, as the head of the federal Small Business Administration. On Reddit, users on a pro-Trump message board where the wrestling video meme first appeared celebrated their achievement in getting the president to endorse their work. Some Trump supporters emphasized on social media that the violence in professional wrestling is simulated and that the president was making a symbolic point about “fake news” coverage of him. But Trump’s critics pointed to Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.), who body-slammed Ben Jacobs, a reporter for the Guardian, in May — one day before a special election, which he won. Gianforte, who initially denied Jacobs’ account, later apologized to him and was sentenced in court to 40 hours of community service and 20 hours of anger-management classes. Within seven hours, Trump’s post of the wrestling video had been “liked” 317,000 times and “retweeted” 198,000 by Trump’s 33 million Twitter followers — one of his most viral tweets in months. The president also posted the clip to his official White House account. In recent days, Trump has leveled deeply personal attacks at morning show hosts from MSNBC who have criticized him. On Saturday, he called CNN “fake news” that produces “garbage journalism.” The president and his aides have lambasted the network in the wake of a retracted story that linked a former Trump transition aide to a Russian bank executive. Three CNN employees resigned over the story, which the network said did not go through proper vetting. In a statement Sunday, CNN called it “a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters.” The network cited Trump’s “juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office.” Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer who argued for the publication of the Pentagon Papers before the Supreme Court, described the president’s tweet Sunday as “merely abhorrent,” but fully protected by the constitution. “I think it is foul. It is repulsive. But it is not illegal,” Abrams said. “The president has First Amendment rights, too. While he may abuse them sometimes, it takes more than he has done so far to move into the area of illegality.” David Schulz, another free-speech lawyer, recalled Trump’s suggestion during the campaign that “Second Amendment people” might be able to stop Democratic rival Hillary Clinton — a declaration some interpreted as an allusion to gun violence. That was “a lot closer to the line than this childish screenplay,” Schulz said. Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University, cited the false “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that last year prompted a North Carolina man to “self-investigate” social media claims that a child-sex ring was being run out of Comet Ping Pong, a restaurant in Northwest Washington, by Hillary Clinton. The man fired a gun inside the restaurant; no one was physically hurt but the man was sentenced to four years in prison. “No president has publicized his hatred for the media in the way Donald Trump has,” Naftali said. “It’s not a fake fear. People can be radicalized by things like this.” Wagner and Gregg reported from Washington. Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.

‘Racially offensive’ Snapchat image sparks outrage at Kansas State

A photo of a former Kansas State University student ignited racial tensions on campus and beyond, the latest sign of how quickly offensive comments can be exposed and spread on social media, and how raw these issues are at many colleges. The photo, which shows two white women with darkened faces making hand gestures, was captioned “Feels good to finally be a [racial slur]” and was apparently posted on Snapchat by one of them, Paige Shoemaker, who had been a student at Kansas State. It was quickly shared on social media by people horrified by the image — some shocked, and some saying it was a sign that racism was common on campus. The photo showed her and her friend with their faces blackened and the comment “Feels good to finally be a [racial slur].” “Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised,” said Muenfua Lewis, a senior majoring in finance who is a former president of the Black Student Union. “I think really it just brought to light a lot of the issues underlying at this university and at most universities and things students of color deal with.” It’s hardly unique to Kansas State, he said, referring to protests over racial issues at campuses nationally, from the University of Missouri to Yale: “I think it’s just ongoing in higher education, with a lot of systemic issues that inhibit historically underrepresented students from being the best they could possibly be on campus.” He said many students are angry, but they are also eager to make real changes at the university. His group has been requesting the creation of a multicultural center, mandating classes on diversity for all students, putting an anti-racism policy in writing and ensuring need-based scholarships are available. Pat Bosco, the vice president for student life and dean of students, issued a statement Thursday which read, in part:  Wiley praised multicultural groups on campus for raising awareness, saying, “This racially offensive photo with a derogatory message has upset the K-State family and is not in concert with our principles of community. Such messages on social media are harmful to all.”  Taj Brimmer, a senior and vice president of the Black Student Union said Bosco had come to meet with students, talking with them for an hour on Thursday and that they appreciated the administration reaching out to students whom she described as “a little disheartened, a little disgusted,” and ensuring they felt supported. Some students also talked Thursday night, in person and via social media, about the issues. “We’re still shocked about the ignorance of others that are in our community,” Brimmer said. “But we’re just using this as a platform to discuss why the multicultural center is important and why diversity is important. … We have students from small rural white towns who have never seen an African American student before, or even a student of color. Being able to break those barriers, have those awkward conversations — it’s like baking a cake. We have all these ingredients. We have to raise the heat to have it be sweet.” Jessica Van Ranken, the student body president, said Friday evening in a text message that, “We have seen a great deal of anger and frustration that racist behavior of this nature still exists and is present in the K-State community. Students have also expressed a desire for systemic issues which perpetuate hateful and divisive culture to be addressed. Organizations like the Black Student Union have taken strong stances and made it clear that there is still work to be done in order for our university to move forward in the area of inclusivity and the celebration of diversity.”

A Playboy Playmate photographed a senior citizen naked at the gym. Now she’s facing jail time.

Dani Mathers apologized months ago for posting a photo on social media of a nude 70-year-old woman in the shower area of a Los Angeles fitness center. The 2015 Playboy Playmate of the Year was also banned from LA Fitness gyms, suspended indefinitely from her gig on a popular Los Angeles radio station and excoriated online, forcing her to go into social media hibernation. Now it looks as if the 29-year-old’s punishment won’t end there.  If convicted, Mathers faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Her arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court. “Body shaming is humiliating, with often painful, long-term consequences,” Feuer said. “It mocks and stigmatizes its victims, tearing down self-respect and perpetuating the harmful idea that our unique physical appearances should be compared to air-brushed notions of ‘perfect.’ “What really matters is our character and humanity. While body-shaming, in itself, is not a crime, there are circumstances in which invading one’s privacy to accomplish it can be. And we shouldn’t tolerate that.” Prosecutors accuse Mathers of surreptitiously taking the photo in the gym’s shower area. They claim the lewd photograph of the naked 70-year-old was uploaded to Mathers’s Snapchat account, where it ended up on her story. The caption: “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.”  Mathers’s act was illegal under California law.   “You are not permitted in California to take photos in specific rooms where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy — they’re bathrooms, dressing rooms, changing rooms, tanning booths and rooms like that,” Klieman added. The 70-year-old woman photographed by Mathers is prepared to testify, CBS reported.  “Her behavior is appalling and puts every member at risk of losing their privacy,” said Jill Greuling, the company’s executive vice president of operations. “Our written rules are very clear: Cellphone usage and photography are prohibited in the locker rooms,” Greuling added. “This is not only our rule, but common decency.” Los Angeles Police Capt. Andrew Neiman said the department received a report of “illegal distribution” of the image from the international gym chain. Detectives from the sexual assault section of LAPD’s west division investigated.  Before she did, she recorded a Snapchat video in which she admitted she’d erred. “I know that body-shaming is wrong and that’s not what I’m about,” Mathers said in the video, according to CBS. “That photo was supposed to be part of a personal conversation with a girlfriend and because I am new to Snapchat I really didn’t realize I had posted it and that’s a huge mistake.” Klieman told CBS that Mathers’ excuse may not hold up in court. “For heaven’s sake, this elderly woman, we should be applauding her,” the legal analyst said. “She’s at the gym trying to make herself better. You can rest assured that this is a case that is really going to cause deterrence for not only the person who took the picture but also for others.”

Facebook is testing ways to stop people from stealing profile pictures

Your Facebook profile picture is intensely personal. So how would you feel if you saw your face on another profile? It's a commonly reported problem on the social network, and the firm is addressing the issue — trying out new protections first in India. Starting Wednesday, Facebook is introducing new privacy tools to users there, where the social network has an estimated 166 million users. The tools will add further protection to a user's profile pictures, as women in that country have reported that others have repurposed their image without their permission. "People copy that photo and upload it in a different place as their photo or on their timeline," said Aarati Soman, a product manager at Facebook who concentrates on safety for women in emerging markets. The problem of online impersonation is a big one — ask anyone who's ever been "catfished," or found that their face was being used to trick others into becoming "friends," or forming an online relationship with an impersonator.Profile pictures are public by default for all Facebook users, meaning that they are the most vulnerable to being reused without permission — often on other sites, at which point it becomes very difficult to take them down. Facebook is not the only social media network to face this issue, and impersonations violate many networks' terms of service. But others have not taken technical steps to prevent it. Online privacy experts said there is no central database recording how often online impersonation cases are reported in the United States. Facebook declined to give specific numbers on how many reports of impersonations it receives. The general problem of fake accounts, however, is widespread. Facebook said in 2012 it reported that 83 million of its accounts were fake, though it's not clear how many of those were impersonations. The company continues to delete tens of thousands of fake accounts worldwide. In India, the shock of finding one's face attributed to another person's account or a fake version has prevented many users — particularly women — from uploading profile pictures that include their image at all, Somon said. So Facebook is taking steps to make it a little harder to steal someone else's profile picture in India, through an additional privacy option. Using this option will put a blue border and shield around someone's picture. On the technical side, Facebook is making it impossible for someone to use right-click (or long-press, on a mobile phone) to copy a protected profile picture. In addition, the company is making it impossible to take a screenshot of someone's profile picture if they've opted into the protection — just on the Android platform, for now. Users may also not tag anyone in someone else's profile picture, which previously allowed it to be shared without permission.To discourage other ways that impersonators may try and steal a profile picture — such as taking a picture of a picture — Facebook is introducing a way to overlay your profile picture with a pattern. In tests, this deterred 75 percent of would-be impersonators from grabbing a picture. Indian users can choose from a handful of patterns, inspired by local textiles.   Making it more difficult to appropriate someone's Facebook profile picture without permission is a good step, said Mary Anne Franks,  a law professor at the University of Miami and anti-harassment advocate. Facebook could go further and use its photo recognition technology, she said, to flag instances where this has happened. The new protections should roll out to all users in India by June 27.

Study: ‘Sexy’ pictures on social media make women less competent, attractive to their peers

There is, it seems, no shortage of career advice for professional ladies trying to get ahead at work. Lean in, we’re told. Don’t apologize, they say. Now a psychologist at Oregon State University has a new maxim for working women: Quit it with the sexy selfies already. They make you look way less competent — at least to your female peers.   Ruled Daniels, the psychologist, “We really need to help youth understand this is a very public forum.”  These days, if 20-somethings post questionable material to Facebook, it’s less likely that they think Facebook is a private space — and more likely they think their posts are A-OK, at least among their peers. In fact, it’s not unusual for millennials (ugh, “millennials”) to dismiss concerns over what they post as intergenerational misunderstanding; maybe the olds don’t get your duck-faced party photos — but everyone else on Instagram has them! Right?!  Maybe you never heeded your mother when she asked you to plz take those beach pics down — but if you want to be taken seriously, at least consider listening to your peers.

White House photographer debuts Instagram account

Since 2009, photographer Pete Souza has methodically documented Obama's time in the White House. From campaign-ready grins to kid-approved fist bumps, Obama is always placed at the right angle, in the right light in Oval Office meetings, on Air Force One, at state funerals and ceremonial dinners. The bulk of Souza's work is on White House's Flickr account, but Wednesday, Souza unveiled his personal Instagram account. At only five photos, Souza already has 3,611 followers. He is following five accounts, three of which are other photographers. So far, the Instagram shots have the same feel of his official White House photographs.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But even Souza has succumbed to the social media trend of Instagramming his brunch. The Obama administration has been very intentional about its use of new media, broadcasting video chats with the president, AMAs on Reddit, and now growing a presence on Instagram. The White House opened its own account last month before Obama's three-country tour of Africa.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Michelle Obama also has her own account. While it's still used to publicize the first lady's comings and goings, one of her recent photos participated in Throwback Thursday (#TBT) a popular social media trend of reposting old photos. More:

Selfies and shaming — two things the Internet does best

Just when we thought humanity could sink no lower than duck-faced self portraits at funerals and concentration camp sites, the New York Post has devoted its entire Wednesday cover to what some are calling the “world’s worst selfie”: A woman posing, smartphone in hand, in front of the Brooklyn Bridge as a man prepares to jump off.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “SELFIE-ISH!” Screams the Post’s headline, which then goes on to decry a “new low” in America’s “selfie obsession.” They definitely got the “new low” bit right. But is it a new low for selfies — or for selfie shaming? The New York Post, after all, just joined the dubiously proud viral tradition of Selfies at Funerals, Selfies at Serious Places and a host of other less buzzy Tumblrs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds dedicated to the public humiliation of other people’s self-portraits. Nothing revs the Internet outrage machine quite like young people doing viscerally stupid or ignorant things online, as Selfies at Funerals has proved — the blog just ranked among Tumblr’s most viral of the year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It helps that selfies are pretty easy to mock by their very nature, even when they aren’t utterly tone deaf. There’s a certain pained self-consciousness involved in taking a photo of oneself, particularly when said photo involves a mirror or a set of desperate, attention-seeking hashtags.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But shaming selfies, or any other personal bit of personal Internet output, is an ethically sticky undertaking — even when people really deserve it. Consider the disproportionate outcomes of other public shaming projects of the past three years: lawsuits, lifetimes of incriminating Google results, social media trolling, school expulsions, firings. After the 2012 presidential elections, for instance, Jezebel republished the names and high schools of teens who sent racist tweets, prompting most of them to close their accounts. (“How much public ridicule or online condemnation is too much, and when does it cross over into outright bullying?” asked Mathew Ingram at Gigaom.) Not long after, a tech consultant famously complained on Twitter about two apparently sexist guys at a conference — provoking an onslaught of trolling that eventually got both her and one of the guys fired.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “Shaming, it seems, has become a core competency of the Internet, and it’s one that can destroy both lives and livelihoods,” Wired’s Laura Hudson wrote at the time. “But the question of who’s responsible for the destruction — the person engaging in the behavior or the person revealing it — depends on whom you ask.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University So it goes with the New York Post’s unwitting cover girl, whose identity we still don’t know. The photographer who took her picture got neither her name nor any confirmation that she even knew a man was preparing to jump off the bridge behind her. Paul Martinka would later tell the Daily Mail he’s sure only that she was a tourist — in other words, someone with a perfectly legitimate reason to take a picture at a major New York landmark.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Does that sound like the death knells of human decency, or a bit of destructive, low-hanging click bait meant to outrage and amuse us? In either case, it’s pretty “selfie-ish” — just maybe not the way that the New York Post’s headline-writers meant.

Kathleen Parker: Steubenville, social media and the bystander effect

The recent rape conviction of two teenagers, one of whom also distributed a photo and sent cruel text messages about their victim, has captured the “bystander effect” in graphic and nauseating detail. The bystander effect is the psychological term coined after Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered outside her New York apartment building in 1964. As the story unfolded, neighbors ignored her screams during three attacks over a 30-minute period. This rendition of events was later disputed. Apparently, the configuration of apartments was such that no one could see the entire series of events. Despite different accounts, at least some of the people in her building were aware that a woman was being attacked and none came to her rescue. The horror of the crime was magnified by this apparent lack of interest, leading to studies that produced the bystander effect theory. Researchers discovered that the more people who witness something, the less likely any are to respond. When several witnesses are present, people tend to assume that someone else will jump in — or make the call — or they think that, since no one else is taking action, there really isn’t a problem. In the recent rape case, where two Ohio high school football players were convicted of assaulting a 16-year-old girl from West Virginia while she was too drunk to give consent (one of her attackers described her in a text message as “like a dead body”), not only were there witnesses but dozens of other teens were also privy to what happened through postings to social media. In no time, a 16-year-old’s humiliation went viral. Once again, the horror of what happened to a victim has been magnified by the apparent lack of empathy among her peers. The girl has been physically violated, while the psychological effects of her public exposure are unimaginable and likely will be enduring. Much has been said about how social media helped solve this crime. Through texts, videos, photographs and posts on Twitter and Facebook, police were able to piece together a timeline and document what happened. This history is posited as one of the marvels of social media. What hasn’t been addressed is the factor of social media in the events themselves. If the bystander effect prevented people in 1964 from coming to the aid of Kitty Genovese, what might we expect from this and future generations, technologically equipped with devices that, by definition, place one in the role of dispassionate observer? With a cellphone in every pocket, it has become second nature for most people to snap a picture or tap the video button at the slightest provocation — a baby’s giggle, a fallen tree or, just possibly, a drunk girl stripped naked by boys who don’t think twice. Over time, might the marginalizing effect of bystander detachment impede any impulse to empathize ? Endowed with miraculous gadgetry and fingertip technology that allow reflex to triumph over reason, millions of young people today have the power to parlay information without the commensurate responsibility that comes with age, experience and, inevitably, pain. The ease of cellphone photography and videography promotes a certain removal from circumstances, driving all into the bystander mode that leads to a massive shirking of responsibility and perhaps even a lack of cognitive awareness of one’s own part in the moment. One of the most famous photographs of all time, by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, showed Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting Viet Cong operative Nguyen Van Lem in the head. Adams grieved for what he called his own killing of Loan, who was known throughout the world for that photo and little else. Adams caught an essential moment with that Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, but not, according to him, a whole truth. For the rest of his life, Adams regretted his role in Loan’s subsequent demonization. Though both Adams and Loan are dead, the image endures forever. The same can be said of the poor West Virginia girl whose image was captured and distributed by one of her abusers. The difference is that Adams understood the power of the photograph, which he once called “the most powerful weapon in the world.” Never mind the power of an instant publishing mechanism in every urchin’s hands. In the 21st century, it isn’t possible to keep such weapons out of the hands of children. At the very least, the young should be taught to treat the artillery of social media with the same fear and loathing we demand for all deadly weapons. Otherwise, we risk becoming bystanders to our own dystopia. _Read more fromKathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook._ **Read more on this issue:** Erik Wemple: CNN is getting hammered for Steubenville coverage Melinda Henneberger: Steubenville, the media and ‘rape, essentially’ Alexandra Petri: The bystander effect and Joe Paterno Jenna Johnson: The Lululemon murder and the pain of bystanders’ inaction

Miss Manners: Vacation photos on social media can be safely ignored

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I think it is lovely that people can go on vacations to wonderful and exotic places, but is it appropriate for them to share photos on social media of their luxurious trips? One or two is fine, but when I see photo after photo of a vacation, I start to get uncomfortable. I was taught that it is not polite to share vacation photos in this way, in the same way that it is improper to talk about an expensive gift. While the photo-posters may have the best intentions, I cannot help but feel that they are bragging about their ability to take such trips and should consider the feelings of those less fortunate. GENTLE READER: Well, of course they are bragging. What do you think is the purpose of social media? However, that need not be the only motivation for posting vacation pictures. People have always thought that others would be as interested in their travels as they are. They are wrong, of course. Miss Manners considers the new method to be vastly superior to the previous one, in which the travelers would issue an apparently innocent social invitation and then bring out their home movies. The saving grace of social media is that one is not trapped with the perpetrators of boredom, but may safely skip exposure. DEAR MISS MANNERS: A “friend” of 25 years informed me over lunch in a restaurant that my husband of 39 years has been having a long-term affair with his assistant. When I politely told her that this was laughable, she really persisted, smirked, shook her head and called me naive. There is absolutely no truth to what she said. Do friends say things like this to friends? She says she was only trying to protect me. Do you believe this, and should I believe it? Her husband of 30 years asked for a divorce four years ago, and since then she has been very bitter. She’s lucky to have some friends who took her under their wings and made excuses for her irrational behavior, but she doesn’t seem to be moving on, and the friends are starting to worry about her. GENTLE READER: If you are asking whether it is an act of friendship to attempt poisoning a friend’s marriage, the answer is no. Not even if the would-be poisoner is miserable and wants company. But Miss Manners gathers that you are not giving up on the friendship, tedious as it has apparently been for the last four years. You only want to squelch the accusation. In that case, you should not be arguing. As you have already discovered, that sets you up for the trap of being “in denial.” Either way, you lose. It is therefore time to be high-handed instead. “I’m sorry,” you must say coldly, “but I cannot allow you to insult my husband.” Repeat as often as necessary. New Miss Manners columns are posted Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays on www.washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to  Miss Manners at her Web site, www.missmanners.com. 2014, by Judith Martin

A reminder that your Instagram photos aren’t really yours: Someone else can sell them for $90,000

The Internet is the place where nothing goes to die. Those embarrassing photos of your high school dance you marked “private” on Facebook? The drunk Instagram posts? The NSFW snapchats? If you use social media, you’ve probably heard a warning akin to “don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your employer (or future employer) to see.” We agree, and are adding this caveat: Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want hanging in an art gallery. This month, painter and photographer Richard Prince reminded us that what you post is public, and given the flexibility of copyright laws, can be shared — and sold — for anyone to see. As a part of the Frieze Art Fair in New York, Prince displayed giant screenshots of other people’s Instagram photos without warning or permission. The collection, “New Portraits,” is primarily made up of pictures of women, many in sexually charged poses. They are not paintings, but screenshots that have been enlarged to 6-foot-tall inkjet prints. According to Vulture, nearly every piece sold for $90,000 each.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico How is this okay? First you should know that Richard Prince has been “re-photographing” since the 1970s. He takes pictures of photos in magazines, advertisements, books or actors’ headshots, then alters them to varying degrees. Often, they look nearly identical to the originals. This has of course, led to legal trouble. In 2008, French photographer Patrick Cariou sued Prince after he re-photographed Cariou’s images of Jamaica’s Rastafarian community. Although Cariou won at first, on appeal, the court ruled that Prince had not committed copyright infringement because his works were “transformative.” In other words, Prince could make slight adjustments to the photos and call them his own. This is what he did with the Instagram photos. Although he did not alter the usernames or the photos themselves, he removed captions. He then added odd comments on each photo, such as “DVD workshops. Button down. I fit in one leg now. Will it work? Leap of faith” from the account “richardprince1234.”  The account currently has 10,200 followers but not a single picture — perhaps so you can’t steal his images in return? “New Portraits” first debuted last year at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue, the same location where the artist displayed the Rastafarian images he was sued for. If someone wanted to argue that this collection is not “transformative” enough to be legal, they would have to file a lawsuit on their own. Upon seeing this story, a spokesman from Instagram said: “People in the Instagram community own their photos, period. On the platform, if someone feels that their copyright has been violated, they can report it to us and we will take appropriate action. Off the platform, content owners can enforce their legal rights.” Basically, if someone copies your Instagram to an account of their own, the company can do something about it. If they copy your work to somewhere outside of the social network, like a fancy New York gallery, you’re on your own. Prince appears to be enjoying the controversial attention. He has been re- tweeting and re-posting his many critics.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Read more:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico If you could print out the whole Internet, how many pages would it be?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico How to see everything you’ve ever Googled (if you’re so brave)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The conclusive, expert guide to saving Twitter from its trolls    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

The powerful propaganda being spread online by women in the Islamic State

The Islamic State's online reach is notorious. One study estimated that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were supporting the militant group in 2014. And while much of the content created by the Islamic State showcases the brutality of the group, a lot actually shows a (relatively) softer side.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Case in point: Last week, an image of a group of women in head-to-toe Islamic coverings sitting on a BMW and waving automatic rifles spread online. The account that first posted the photograph has been linked to an Australian citizen who joined the group. The photograph is just one example of the propaganda images being shared by women living in Islamic State-controlled territory, many more of which have been compiled by Ellie Hall of Buzzfeed. And although some of the images are clearly bravado, others paint a more benign, even pleasant view of life for women under the Islamic State. Often the photographs show kids, food or simply female companionship.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico J.M. Berger, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, says there's nothing new about tweets showing women in the Islamic State-controlled areas, though there may have been a slight increase in their number recently as several Islamic State media accounts have returned after an extended absence. "The civil society angle is a key part of their marketing any time," Berger writes in an e-mail. Indeed, evidence collected by Vocativ suggests that in the areas the group controls, propaganda messages shared on social media often have a positive theme, showing the benefits and normality of day-to-day life within the Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate. Western advocates of the Islamic State, such as Anjem Choudary, often emphasize the group's social welfare aspects over its violence.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[Read: In Britain, Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary proves elusive]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The logic of promoting this side to life under the Islamic State is clear: The group aspires to establish a state. To do so, it needs women and children as well as men. Plus, reporting from The Post's Liz Sly and others has shown that these aspirations do not appear to be materializing. Images of women enjoying a normal life under the Islamic State may be an attempt to undercut that perception.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Of course, the images shared on social media may not always show the reality. While some women who joined the Islamic State were given positions in the al-Khansaa brigade, a group that functions as morality police, most women, in fact, are expected to assume a docile role. Last year, a report by the United Nations found that there were severe restrictions on women living in Islamic State-controlled territory, with women "confined to their houses, excised from public life." A document attributed to the Islamic State that was released this year said there was “a fundamental necessity for women to have a sedentary lifestyle.” And, of course, there have been numerous reports of violence against women perpetrated by the Islamic State's fighters.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Mia Bloom, a professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, says that images shared by women living under the Islamic State may be designed to entice foreign women to join the group, giving them an unrealistic impression of life for females in the "caliphate." But the images may also be designed to entice another audience: men. "Recruiting women, aside from potentially doubling the resource base, has the effect of goading men into participating," Bloom explains. For men, the message is obvious, she says: "You're not coming here, so the women have to pick up the guns." **Read more:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Secret video shows what life is like inside the heartland of the Islamic State    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Islamic State appears to be fraying from within    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Arrest in Lebanon lifts veil on life of Islamic State leader’s ex-wife    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

‘Revenge porn’ distributors are finally seeing legal ramifications. This Web site owner will go to prison for 18 years.

A Web site owner who encouraged users to post sexually explicit images of other people without their permission has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. Kevin Bollaert, 28, allowed 10,170 photos (mostly of women) to be posted to his now-defunct revenge porn Web site, UGotPosted.com. The San Diego man had users include identifying information with the photos, such as names, addresses and links to Facebook profiles. He then e-mailed the victims, telling them their photos could be removed for up to $350 through his second site, ChangeMyReputation.com. At his trial in February, 21 victims testified to the damage Bollaert’s site had wrought on their lives. He was then charged with 21 counts of identity theft and six counts of extortion. “Sitting behind a computer, committing what is essentially a cowardly and criminal act, will not shield predators from the law or jail,” California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement. In the months since Bollaert’s site was shut down in December 2013, the fight against revenge porn has made significant strides, legally and socially. To start, it’s not as easy to get private photos off the Internet as you might expect. Web site owners are not legally responsible for content posted on their sites by users because of a law called the Communications Decency Act. It’s what allows Twitter to let people post freely or why this story can have a comments section. But it also means that Web site owners such as Bollaert don’t necessarily have to take down a nude photograph of a woman because she (or her attorney) asked him to do so. But that’s changing. Bollaert was operating from California, one of 17 states that now has a law aimed at punishing “revenge porn.” Bollaert was arrested two months after the law was put into effect, although he was eventually charged with identity theft and extortion. California’s law, like other anti-revenge porn laws working their way through state legislatures, makes it a criminal act to distribute sexually explicit images without permission to cause emotional distress, even if the subject of the picture agreed to be photographed.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A similar fate met Hunter Moore, who was arrested by the FBI this year for his infamous site IsAnyoneUp.com. He plead guilty and faces up to seven years in prison and fines of half a million dollars. Prominent anti-revenge porn activist Charlotte Laws is gathering women whose photos were posted on Moore’s site to speak at his sentencing, in hopes that he will receive the full seven years. In an interview Sunday, she said the punishment Bollaert now faces (a minimum of 10 years before he is eligible for parole) is more appropriate for the severity of the crime. “This serves as a deterrent to other people thinking of operating revenge porn Web sites,” Laws said. “It sends the message that there are consequences when you exploit victims and engage in illegal activity of this sort.” On the federal level, the battle against revenge porn has found a place in the world of copyright and business practices. First, if the explicit photo was taken by its subject (a.k.a., a selfie) the photographer owns the rights to that photo, and its existence on the Internet without permission is a violation of copyright. Of course, people such as Moore and Bollaert, who are making money off these photos, are likely to ignore requests to take the photos down, even if the requests are legally backed.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Court documents showed one woman writing to Bollaert saying the photos of her on his site were taken when she was a minor and, therefore, constituted child pornography. “I have gone to the police, I’ve had a restraining order put in place because of this site,” she told him. “My phone has been going off EVERY 2 MINUTES with strange men sending inappropriate things to me.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This is where the federal government seems to be stepping in. Revenge porn Web sites are technically businesses, which means they fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC can then punish them for “unfair business practices.” In January, authorities used this tactic to take down another revenge porn kingpin, Craig Brittain.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Meanwhile, Web sites that exist for other purposes are taking a stand against revenge porn without being legally required to. Twitter and Reddit enacted policies to ban and remove involuntary pornography last month. Facebook also clarified its “community standards” (which already banned most nudity), saying it will remove “images shared in revenge or without permissions from the people in the images.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Unfortunately, updated policies and copyright battles can’t repair the damage caused by sites such as Bollaert’s. As one of the victims said at his trial, “You should have seen me. I was a wreck. I was bawling my eyes out. That’s me, that’s my personal nakedness, and everyone can see it now.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **More about the fight against revenge porn:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The revenge pornographers at Penn State    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Man who made thousands posting women’s stolen nudes goes after news sites that posted pictures of him    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico California’s revenge porn law, which notoriously didn’t include selfies, now will    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

‘Total victory’: Blac Chyna granted restraining order after Rob Kardashian posted explicit photos

The drama between reality TV personalities Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna has made its way to the court system. A week after the reality TV family member’s stunning social media meltdown — Kardashian posted nude photos of his ex-fiancee, accused her of drug use and published a video of her kissing another man — Blac Chyna was granted a temporary restraining order against him in a California court. Revenge porn, or “nonconsensual pornography,” has been illegal in the state since 2014. It’s defined as intentionally distributing photos or videos that were meant to be private and with the knowledge that sharing the images would cause “serious emotional distress.”  Chyna appeared outside of a courthouse Monday, where a judge had issued an order that prohibits Kardashian from “coming near her and restraining him from cyber bullying,” including posting anything about her online of “a personal nature,” according to her attorney Lisa Bloom. “We had a complete and total victory. The judge gave us everything we asked for, which is a set of very strong and enforceable restraining orders against Rob Kardashian,” Bloom said outside the courthouse. “Revenge porn is a form of domestic abuse, it is also a crime in California and 38 other states, and it is a civil wrong.”  Kardashian and Chyna have an 8-month-old daughter. A representative for the famed Kardashian family referred inquires to Rob Kardashian’s attorney, Robert Shapiro. The famed lawyer (who was on the O.J. Simpson trial “Dream Team” along with Kardashian’s late father) told reporters Monday that they agreed to a temporary restraining order. “Our primary interest going forward for Mr. Kardashian is the health and welfare of the baby, and both parents are going to work toward that goal,” he said outside the courthouse, adding that the baby is with Kardashian. Shapiro also offered an apology on behalf of Kardashian, who reportedly did not appear in court. “[We] offered our regrets for what has taken place in the past couple of days.”  On ABC News, Chyna said they broke up in December but that Kardashian kept bothering her and she thought, “Maybe if I send this video [of her with another man] to him, then he’ll just leave me alone.” Kardashian posted not only that video, but also explicit images and accusations that soon led to Instagram suspending his account. He also wrote that Chyna used him and his family for fame and that she conceived a child with him to get back at ex-boyfriend Tyga. The rapper, who has a son with Chyna, went on to date Kardashian’s half-sister Kylie Jenner. “I was already Blac Chyna before the Kardashians,” Chyna said on ABC News, later adding that she once loved Kardashian. “Nobody was out to make a baby out of spite.”   “The main point of it is that even if Chyna sent him nude photos, if she didn’t want them posted publicly, the law protects her,” Bloom told The Post. Chyna, a model, business executive and former stripper, also responded to criticism that she posts provocative photos of herself: “I am Angela White, I’m Blac Chyna. I can do whatever I want. It’s my body.” Bloom added that “any explicit photos that she may have chosen to post in the past, that’s her choice.” “I’m not asking victims to change their behavior. I’m asking perpetrators not to commit crimes,” she told ABC News. “It is a crime to post pictures like this. And if you do it, I hope that the full impact of the law rains down upon you.” Chyna said she hopes her actions will inspire women in similar situations. “You know, you’re not the only one that’s probably going through something,” she told ABC News. “If one person speaks up, maybe it, hopefully, it will be a domino effect.”

The unlikely faces of same-sex marriage

When you think of gay marriage and the folks who are eager to get gay married, Larry Duncan and Randy Shepherd would never come to mind. They defy every commonly held stereotype of gay men. In fact, upon seeing their photo, a colleague said, “They look like a couple of old coots.” They also look marvelous. Duncan and Shepherd were among the throng of same-sex couples getting a marriage license in Washington state on the first day that they could do so. And their photo has been posted on Facebook, Twitter and a slew of websites. “I’ve been at this for 22 years and have never had a photo go viral,” Seattle- based photographer Meryl Schenker told me in an e-mail. She captured Duncan’s and Shepherd’s solemn faces in the wee hours of Dec. 6 and put them on her Web site. Schenker wrote in the caption to her photo: According to Schenker, Duncan is a retired psychology nurse and Shepherd is a a computer programmer. They moved to Washington from Texas seven years ago, Schenker said, “because it’s more gay friendly.” As marriage equality continues its advance from novelty to normalcy, the faces of the same-sex couples coming forward to declare their love for each other should challenge and expand everyone’s notion of what love is or what it ought to be. Duncan and Shepherd might strike some as an unlikely couple. But that’s what made their photo so touching and powerful.

The other side of the infamous “Auschwitz selfie”

On June 20, a newly minted high school graduate from eastern Alabama walked into the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, paused in front of a barracks … and took a picture of herself. The despicable nature of all of this is self-evident, right? Smiling teen with one earbud in. Blushing emoji, as if she realizes she should be ashamed — but isn’t. And then there are her follow-up tweets, dozens and dozens of threats and defenses and angry replies, all of them simmering down to one blood-boiling theme: Sorry, but I’m not sorry. No wonder she has, in the past 24 hours, gotten more than 6,000 hateful tweets directed at her. And yet, the funny thing about viral images is how endlessly easy it is to misunderstand them. The selfie is already a politically and socially fraught form of expression, as many sociologists and social media theorists have written before; while self-portraits are understood by many to be little more than a flagrant show of narcissism or a plea for attention, they may mean something different to the taker herself. It’s less a matter of self-glorification than self-documentation — “I was here.” “This is who I was that day.” “This happened.” “Self captured images allow young adults and teens to express their mood states and share important experiences,” the clinical psychologist Andrea Letamendi told Time last September. In other words — to paraphrase Jennifer Outllette, who recently published a book on “the science of self” — selfies aren’t merely a “look-at-me!” attention-grab. They’re an attempt to place oneself in a context, to understand how we fit into a bigger picture.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday But in the case of the so-called Auschwitz selfie, the issues aren’t merely theoretical. The young woman, Breanna — whose last name we aren’t using, out of respect for her Google results — has said that her father died on June 20, 2013, exactly a year before her selfie was taken. (An obituary from the local paper confirms.) Per a string of tweets by Breanna (who has recently made her Twitter account private) and her mother, the two had spent a lot of time studying history together, and the Holocaust was the last thing they covered before his death. Breanna had, according to her mother, even met with and spoken to a Holocaust survivor.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday So when Breanna found herself at a Holocaust landmark on the last day of her European tour — and the first anniversary of her father’s death — she took a picture. This could very well be one of those instance of self-documentation — I was here; this is who I was that day; this happened. That doesn’t make it “okay,” to borrow an un-nuanced, Web-ready phrase. In truth, it’s hard to think of anything less sensitive, less appropriate or less self-aware than a “selfie in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp” — _smiley_ — as if the suffering of millions of people was somehow subsumed by Breanna’s own personal narrative. She was there, sure, but so were tens of thousands of others, and her willful minimization of that fact is, frankly, pretty gross.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday And yet there’s plenty of grossness to go around, it would seem. Within the past three hours as of this writing, six users have posted selfies or glamour shots to Instagram with the hashtag #auschwitz. Just six days before Breanna posted her own selfie, the New Yorker documented the phenomenon in an article titled “Should Auschwitz be a Site for Selfies?” And yet this specific image — already a month old, and buried deep in Breanna’s Twitter feed — is the only one that “went viral,” because it’s the only one Business Insider (and Buzzfeed and Gawker and the Daily Mail and all the other usual mainstays of the Internet outrage machine) _chose_ to boost. There are pageviews to be had, and money to be made, in shaming dumb kids with Twitter accounts … regardless of how dated and unexceptional the tweet, or how complicating their back stories.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Maybe it would have been more productive to discuss the fact that many, many people take selfies in self-evidently inappropriate places, and why they do that, and what it means. Maybe it would have been more accurate to point out that this isn’t an isolated incident, but a greater sociological phenomenon — and one that deserves real consideration. Maybe, just maybe, it would have been more rational to realize there are other responses to things we don’t like online besides dumb outrage, and that even the Internet’s most obvious villains might have reasons for their mistakes. But consideration and nuance aren’t clicky — and Internet outrage has no place for humanizing details. As Breanna’s mother and boyfriend and friends have tweeted, defiantly, to her Twitter haters — refusing to give into the outrage and apologize — even the most self-evidently despicable actions can have alternative explanations. Maybe an Auschwitz selfie can also be a sincere — if misguided — kind of tribute. “If people don’t understand it’s ‘look Dad, I made it’ vs ‘Haha concentration camp!’, they don’t understand love, loss & memories,” one woman tweeted.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Maybe that indictment goes both ways.

Reports of lewd posts on Fairfax County fire official’s Facebook page prompt probe

Fairfax County officials, the fire chief and the leader of the local firefighters’ union vowed Wednesday to get to the bottom of a series of incidents involving possible sexual and racial harassment of firefighters from within the department. The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday took the unusual step of pledging to hire an outside consultant to assess the working environment in the agency, days after the official in charge of professional standards was put on leave in response to complaints about lewd images and language posted on his private Facebook page. That official, Guy Morgan, said in a brief telephone interview that he is prohibited from discussing the situation because he is under internal investigation. The posts on his Facebook page were first reported by WUSA (Channel 9), which showed screen shots of photos of scantily clad women, some posing in front of a firetruck. The television report said that some of the photos on Morgan’s page were “so inappropriate, we couldn’t show them on TV.” The posts appeared to have been taken down by Wednesday. Fire chief Richard Bowers said that he will not stand for harassment or bullying in the department, adding that he has no indication that any problems extend beyond “some bad apples” in the nearly 2,000-employee department. John Niemiec, president of the firefighters and paramedics union, said the union “doesn’t condone any bad behavior. . . . If there are wrong-doings, let’s correct them.” Niemiec said the union had previously alerted the fire chief to two complaints from members who alleged that Morgan conducted “unprofessional, demeaning interviews” with employees being investigated by internal affairs. Bowers said he reviewed video recordings of the interviews and found nothing to substantiate the complaints. The outside examination of the department follows the April suicide of Fairfax firefighter Nicole Mittendorff. After her death, the department launched an investigation into lewd, degrading comments allegedly written about her online by her co-workers. “I am very concerned, whether it’s one or more complaints,” Bowers said. “I want someone from the outside to look into this, tell me if there is a problem, and if there is, I will fix it.” Bowers said he has also set up an internal task force to address 11 initiatives, including suicide prevention and stronger policies against harassment and bullying. While Bowers said he does not see harassment as a “day-to-day” problem in county firehouses, an attorney who has sued the department on behalf of some female firefighters disagreed. “I talk to so many women in the fire department — not just those who have retained me as legal counsel — who say harassment is continuing,” said attorney Ellen Renaud, who has won one discrimination lawsuit against the agency, settled several others and just filed one on behalf of a female firefighter. “They’re afraid of retaliation.” A small group of female fire department employees denied Renaud’s characterization at a news conference Wednesday, telling reporters that “black sheep do not represent who we are as a whole,” according to WTOP radio. State police, who are looking into Mittendorff’s suicide, have not identified a connection between her death and the posts that appeared on the website Fairfax Underground, Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova (D-At Large) said Tuesday. “But we need to address the fact that people who appeared to be posting things of a bullying and harassing nature appear to be firefighters,” Bulova said. “Actual harassment, bullying, all those things are not acceptable.” Bulova said Morgan, a civilian employee who heads the fire department’s office of internal affairs and professional standards, “needs to be held to a higher standard” because of his position. Other supervisors interviewed Wednesday agreed that the outside consultant was the best way for the county to proceed. “Lots of rumors are going around, and we want to make sure no stone is left unturned on behalf of the workforce,” said Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason), who is head of the board’s personnel committee. The images on Morgan’s Facebook page were bad enough, she said, but the fact that he is head of professional standards “was the last straw for me.” Supervisor John C. Cook (R-Braddock), an attorney who practices employment law and heads the board’s public safety committee, said that it is not unusual for lawsuits alleging misbehavior to be filed against an agency as large as the Fairfax fire department. While a rank-and-file firefighter, posting as a private person and not using county equipment, might have a claim to privacy, a high-ranking manager like Morgan, who deals with harassment and bullying complaints, does not have that latitude, Cook said. “I want anybody in the fire department to have confidence that the person investigating their complaint is neutral and able to do the job,” Cook said. At the same time, he warned county residents not to leap to conclusions: “We want to be careful and get the correct information rather than rush to judgment.” It is not the first time Fairfax has hired outside contractors to examine an agency, officials said. The police department started consulting with the Police Executive Research Forum in 2013, for example, and hired the organization to address its use-of-force policies later that year, after the fatal shooting by an officer of unarmed civilian John B. Geer.

‘I’m never reenlisting’: Marine Corps rocked by nude-photo scandal

The Marine Corps is looking into allegations that an unknown number of potential Marines, as well as current and former service members, shared naked and compromising photos of their colleagues on social media, Marine officials said Sunday.  The War Horse’s report focuses on one Facebook group with more than 30,000 members called Marines United. In January, a link to a shared hard drive containing photos of numerous female Marines in various states of undress was posted to the group, according to the War Horse’s report. The hard drive contained images, as well as the names and units of the women pictured. Many of the photos were accompanied by derogatory and harassing comments. The shared drive has since been taken offline and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating “incidents related to the Marines United group,” said Capt. Ryan Alvis, a Marine Corps spokesman. The person who posted the drive was a former Marine working for a defense contractor, said a Marine official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about the photos. The contractor has since been relieved of his duties. Photos of Marine Lance Cpl. Marisa Woytek were taken from her Instagram account and posted to Marines United multiple times in the past six months without her consent. “Even if I could, I’m never reenlisting,” Woytek said. “Being sexually harassed online ruined the Marine Corps for me, and the experience.” Woytek said she was alerted to the hijacked photos by others on social media and were shown the comments that accompanied them. She said that many of the comments included allusions to sexual assault and rape. Many of her female colleagues have experienced similar incidents, she said, and added that they have been reluctant to speak out for fear of retaliation from the group’s thousands of members. With the War Horse’s report Saturday, Woytek said that she and others “have a voice now.” On Sunday, the Marine Corps’ highest-ranking officer, commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller, did not directly address the investigation of Marines United.

Elder abuse experts: Expect more cases like this one in Bethesda

To Montgomery County detectives, the care that James Kirkland provided to his 87-year-old mother — who had pressure ulcers so severe that her spine was exposed — amounted to felony abuse of a vulnerable adult. To Kirkland, the situation is more nuanced and complicated. And to those who work with the nation’s rapidly aging population, the case may be a demonstration of the kind of misfortune they expect to become more common. “We don’t have systems in place for abuse and neglect not to happen,” said Mary Twomey, until recently co-director of the National Center on Elder Abuse. “As a country, we haven’t woken up to the fact that this is not sustainable.” Twomey said there is a range of people who get caught up in such cases — from the cruel and uncaring to the saintly and overwhelmed. There are many factors that can come into play: mental health, financial means, trying to think through what the older person wants. The caregivers are often family members and are more apt to be guilty of neglect than more overt forms of abuse, she said. “The sins of omission are more common than the sins of commission,” Twomey said. Kirkland, the suspect, puts it this way: “End of life issues are tough for all families. I did the best I could.” His mother remains hospitalized in very serious condition, a Montgomery County police spokesman said Friday. Meanwhile, the home on Beech Avenue in Bethesda where she and her son lived has been condemned as a result of the case, Montgomery officials said Friday. Housing code inspectors cited excessive clutter, hoarding conditions, non-working toilets, mold, an absence of working smoke detectors and overall “extreme” fire hazards. No one will be allowed to live in the home until repairs are made, officials said. Kirkland has been charged with two criminal counts: Abuse resulting in serious injury to a vulnerable adult, and abuse to a vulnerable adult under his care. He posted a $10,000 bond and awaits a May 29 court date. He has described himself in the past as a part-time yard worker. According to arrest records, Kirkland’s mother arrived by ambulance at Suburban Hospital on Friday. She was found to have large pressure ulcers on her back and legs. Social workers and detectives were summoned. “Hospital staff stated these wounds were packed with newspaper and a powdery substance,” police wrote in charging documents. “When the staff removed the newspaper from the area, the victim’s spine could be seen. Furthermore, on both of [the victim’s] feet were compression socks that were on her for such a long period of time that they were fused to her feet. Both socks had to be removed surgically.” Detectives spoke to the victim at her bedside in the hospital. She said her son had been at the hospital earlier but had left. Several officers went to the Beech Avenue home and found Kirkland there. They asked him to step outside while they went in to search. “The home was extremely messy and very hard to navigate,” detectives said. They spoke further with Kirkland. He told them that he was his mother’s primary caregiver and that she had seen a doctor for wound care several months earlier. He told detectives that “he feeds his mother soup on wheat bread, tuna fish or they split a can of fruit,” according to court records. Kirkland said he was responsible for changing his mother’s diapers. Kirkland has been in the news before. Last year, he ran for the Montgomery County Council. In a video statement that he provided to myMCMedia, he said he was running “to support truck owners, car enthusiasts, single people, millennials and the nightlife community — the kind of people who have been given the short shrift by the Democrat monopoly on the County Council.” During the campaign, an anti-Semitic e-mail he had written surfaced; in it, he blamed a Jewish couple in his neighborhood for filing an anonymous complaint about his roof and said that Jews were responsible for half the county’s property code complaints. Along Beech Drive, his home, with its heavy foliage obscuring the front door, stands out because of what it doesn’t have: Well-maintained shrubbery and a lush and open front lawn. Five old cars are parked in the driveway or along the street outside his home. Kirkland said he summoned the paramedics to get his mother. “I did call because I thought it was time to call. She did not want to go,” he said. He denied at least part of the police case against him. “I dispute some of the allegations in the charging documents,” Kirkland said. Shortly before he called the paramedics, he said, he had trouble putting on his mother’s diapers. He also had grown concerned about the compression socks on his mother’s legs and how she would have reacted to him changing them. “It would have been very painful to take them off and put them back on,” he said. Twomey, the elder abuse expert, said that government systems in place tend to be reactive rather than preventative. One example: There are few places where caregivers can take an older person for a week so the caregivers can have a respite.

What Rob Kardashian did to Blac Chyna could be ‘revenge porn,’ lawyers say, and illegal

Rob Kardashian started his Wednesday morning with a sharp-tongued social media attack directed at Blac Chyna, his model ex-fiancee, the mother of his baby and a regular punching bag for his reality TV star family. In a series of posts on Instagram and Twitter, Kardashian accused Chyna of infidelity and drug use and claimed she was exploiting him financially. He called her a cheater, a fraud and a “crazy person” and posted a video of Chyna kissing another man that Kardashian claimed she sent him on Independence Day. Then came the act that turned Kardashian’s petty rant into something more serious: photos, first on Instagram and later Twitter, of a nude Chyna blasted to his nearly 10 million followers — seemingly without her permission. In all 50 U.S. states, that move is cruel. In California, where the two celebrities live, it’s also illegal. Since 2014, California’s penal code has defined “revenge porn,” or “nonconsensual pornography,” as the intentional distribution of intimate photos or videos of another “identifiable person” that were intended to remain private and, when shared, caused “serious emotional distress.” The offense carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. Before revenge porn became a crime, judges would tell victims, who are often women, that they had no legal redress because they had consented to sending the original image. But, activists argued, consenting to their naked body being seen by an intimate partner alone is not the same as consenting to it being seen by the Internet. The issue gained little traction with lawmakers until 2014, when a trove of hundreds of private celebrity photos — mostly of women and many with nudity — were leaked onto 4chan and spread across other social networks.  Revenge porn is “an assertion of control and dominance,” celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom, who often represents victims of sexual mistreatment, told The Post. Bloom said the mindset of the distributor, often an aggrieved ex-lover, is this: “I’m going to get back at you by humiliating you.” And it’s done, she said, “in the way that we always humiliate women: about their bodies.” “It’s disgusting,” Bloom said. “It’s a very modern way of being misogynistic.” In that way, she believes California’s revenge porn law “clearly applies” to Kardashian’s behavior toward Chyna. “The main point of it is that even if Chyna sent him nude photos, if she didn’t want them posted publicly, the law protects her,” Bloom told The Post. Both she and Carrie Goldberg, a New York-based lawyer who founded a firm dedicated to fighting sexual exploitation, argued that the invective Kardashian employed shows what he was thinking, that the reality star meant to insult and harm Chyna with slut-shaming jabs. “With the accompanying words, there can be no misgivings about his intent,” Goldberg said. Kardashian accused his estranged lover of sleeping with another man “in the same bed Chyna and I made our baby in.” The couple’s child, Dream Kardashian, was born in November 2016 amid her parents’ on-again, off-again relationship. They began dating in January of that year and were engaged by April. The two starred in an E! reality TV show about their relationship and split up a month later, reported the Associated Press. Chyna is a former stripper who has been unapologetic about her sexuality. Kardashian designs socks for a living but is best known as the brother of his more famous sisters, Kim, Kourtney and Khloe — who were once friends with Chyna until their half-sister, Kylie Jenner, began dating rapper Tyga. Tyga, it turns out, had previously dated Chyna and fathered her first child. This, Kardashian claimed in one of his Wednesday morning rants, is the only reason Chyna wanted to have a child with him — to get back at Tyga. There’s a reason these people have a reality TV show. But Kardashian’s name and celebrity makes what he did Wednesday morning unlike any other revenge porn case Goldberg has seen. “It’s completely unprecedented for somebody with such an enormous social media following to be the perpetrator here,” she said. That Kardashian distributed the photos so widely could actually help Chyna in a civil courtroom, if she decides to take that legal route. California is one of a dozen states that allows victims of revenge porn to seek damages, Goldberg said, and the potential damages “would be significant because of his social media influence.” Even though Instagram quickly shut down his account, Kardashian managed to move the rant and nude photos temporarily to Twitter, before that social platform also blocked the revealing photos. But just within the few minutes the pictures were online, they got thousands of retweets and were likely screenshot just as many times, Goldberg said. “If she has the desire to contain the images, that’s a huge undertaking,” she said. “That then translates into dollars she would have to spend.” Bloom said a third path Chyna could choose to take is one that recently worked for one of her celebrity clients, actress Mischa Barton. Barton, best known for her role in “The O.C.,” successfully used a restraining order against some ex-boyfriends who were threatening to sell private images of the actress. A judge ruled that the act constituted a form of domestic violence. “Note to Rob Kardashian: revenge porn is a crime,” Bloom tweeted Wednesday. “Knock it off.” When The Post asked if she had plans to represent Chyna in this case, Bloom declined to comment. She did say that she hopes that “Chyna stands up for herself.” “We have the right to say no to the release of explicit images,” Bloom said. “It doesn’t matter what images may already be out there.”

Decades later, baby scarred by severe burns finds nurse who lovingly cared for her

Large bright eyes peered out from under the white gauze that covered Amanda Scarpinati’s tiny head. A nurse held her tight, tucking the three-month-old infant’s burned and bandaged head beneath her chin. The photo of Scarpinati being swaddled by an unknown nurse at Albany Medical Center was published in the hospital’s annual report in 1977. Decades had passed since Scarpinati was photographed in the hospital after a terrible accident involving a hot-steam humidifier. The woman in the nearly 40-year-old photo remained a mystery. The horrific accident that brought Scarpinati to the hospital happened at home. At three months old, she was sick and lying on the couch, salved with a mentholated ointment. She was left unattended and rolled off the couch and onto a steam vaporizer that was blowing on the floor, Scarpinati recalled on Facebook. The steam scalded her skin and melted a mentholated ointment, according to the Associated Press.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico After years of surgeries, Scarpinati saw the image of the nurse as a reminder of the soothing care she received as an infant. “Growing up as a child, disfigured by the burns, I was bullied and picked on, tormented,” Scarpinati, now 38, told the AP. “I’d look at those pictures and talk to her, even though I didn’t know who she was. I took comfort looking at this woman who seemed so sincere caring for me.” _[Holocaust survivors reunite with the woman who cared for them after the war]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Nearly 20 years later, Scarpinati made her first attempt to find the unknown woman, but had no luck. Decades went by. Scarpinati decided to try again– this time using Facebook. She posted a short message earlier this month with a simple plea: “I would love to know her name and possibly get a chance to talk to her and meet her,” Scarpinati wrote. “Please share as you never know who it could reach.” More than 1,ooo people shared the message on Facebook and finally someone responded with a lead. _[A firefighter’s touching gesture to comfort a child hurt in a grim car crash]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Angela Leary, another nurse at the Albany hospital, recognized the woman holding the baby. Leary hadn’t spoken to Susan Berger in 35 years, but she immediately identified her from the photos. “She was as sweet and caring as she looks in this picture,” Leary wrote in her message to Scarpinati. “She loved her job and caring for children and adults alike.” Leary passed on Berger’s information to a local news station, which tracked her down. Days later, Scarpinati spoke to Berger on the phone. “In a million years I would have never guessed this would grow to be as big as it is or that I would in fact be able to put a name to the face that I looked at for all these years,” Scarpinati wrote on Facebook. “She’s just as sweet and caring as I could have imagined her to be.” Back in 1977, Berger was 21, a recent college graduate who had just arrived at the pediatric recovery room at the Albany Medical Center. “I remember her,” Berger told the AP. “She was very peaceful. Usually when babies come out of surgery they’re sleeping or crying. She was just so calm and trusting. It was amazing.” _[Augusta Chiwy, ‘forgotten’ African nurse of Battle of the Bulge, dies at 94]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The reunion all these year later was a pleasant surprise for Berger, who is now the Executive Vice President of Cazenovia College in New York. According to Scarpinati, Berger told her that she too had carried around the image for years — never knowing what had happened to the little girl.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “I don’t know how many nurses would be lucky enough to have something like this happen, to have someone remember you all that time,” Berger told the AP. “I feel privileged to be the one to represent all the nurses who cared for her over the years.” The two were reunited in person on Tuesday.

Even without the warrant, Manassas ‘sexting’ case is outrageous

NOW THAT a potentially illegal warrant to photograph a teenager’s erect penis won’t be served, we should return to the equally outrageous “sexting” case itself. In January, the 17-year-old Prince William County resident allegedly sent a pornographic cellphone video of himself to his 15-year-old girlfriend, who had initiated the sexting. The mother saw the video on her phone — which her daughter was using — and confronted the boy. But he continued, police allege, and the mother filed a complaint, leading law enforcement to charge him with “manufacturing and distributing child pornography.” In order to ensure the video featured the teen, the police obtained a warrant two weeks ago to inject him with a drug to induce an erection and photograph it, but then backed down in the face of public resistance. They also decided not to use explicit photos that had been taken earlier. The teenager’s lawyer last week rightly criticized the warrant as “traumatizing.” But more traumatizing for the boy is the prospect of facing almost four years in prison and a lifetime on the state sex-offender registry — for an alleged video of himself. Child pornography laws are designed to protect children from exploitation. They’re to be used against adult predators or minors in specific situations, such as when a large age gap exists or pictures are coerced or mass-distributed against a minor’s will. Technology’s rapid development makes exploitation easier, raising new challenges for law enforcement. The 17-year-old’s sexts were clearly not welcome. Even if the girl had consented, her mother shouldn’t have been subjected to the videos. Even so, punishments must be proportional to crimes. There’s no Virginia sexting law, and these videos should not automatically fall under criminal child pornography laws. The teenager’s behavior puts him in the company of nearly 30 percent of his peers, according to one academic study. Yet according to the law, if convicted he would belong on a list featuring child molesters, rapists and sex predators — effectively derailing his employment and housing prospects and subjecting him to lifelong social stigmatization. The typical remedy to such disproportionality is sound judgment by prosecutors and police. None was demonstrated in this case. A more thoughtful response from Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert and Manassas Police Chief Douglas W. Keen would have been to talk to the children, alert their guardians and perhaps encourage their suspension from school. Only if the 17-year-old continued and developed malicious intent should filing charges have been considered. Courts usually sentence teenagers in sexting cases to supervised probation, not jail time, but that does not alleviate the gravity of a felony charge. This case demonstrates the need for a bill that specifically addresses sexting between minors. Some states have classified consensual sexting between minors as a misdemeanor, an innovation that Virginia briefly considered and killed in House subcommittee this year. Constructing a foolproof bill is difficult because of potential loopholes, but a new law is nonetheless overdue. **Read more on the topic:** The Post’s View: Congress needs to act to allow victims of child sex abuse to recover restitution Kathleen Parker: Anthony Weiner and defining deviancy down Arjun Sethi: Child pornography: Who should pay?

Afghan women say hackers and threats have made them afraid of Facebook

KABUL — By the time the distraught young woman arrived at the Sunshine Internet Cafe in western Kabul, she was in a state of panic, tears streaming down her face. Someone, she claimed, had hacked into her Facebook page and stolen her personal photos. The thief used those images to create a fake profile, one littered with offensive posts boasting of drug use and illicit behavior. In Afghanistan, that can get a woman killed. A week later, Farid Ahmadi, the cafe’s owner — a friendly 29-year-old who is known around town as a go-to guy for IT problems — was still mulling over the woman’s situation, hoping for a solution. “She said, ‘Farid, do something!’ ” he recalled, shaking his head. “ ‘My brother saw those photos, and now he is telling me not to go outside or he will beat me.’ I told her, ‘I cannot do anything. I will report it to Facebook, but I cannot be sure if they will block it or not.’ ” The woman’s plight would be less frustrating, Ahmadi said, if he hadn’t encountered so many just like her in recent months. At least three or four times a week, he estimated, young women show up at his Internet cafe desperate for help. Their complaints are always the same: fake Facebook profiles using their photos, hacked personal information, inboxes deluged with pornography, and violent threats from aggressive suitors and alleged militants. Respectable reputations are demolished with a few keystrokes. Ahmadi said that he has reported fake profiles to Facebook on behalf of women more than 50 times but that it rarely matters. He suspects that the threats are so culturally specific — a profile photo showing a woman’s face or a beer Photoshopped into a photo of a female gathering, for example — that they often go unnoticed by Facebook administrators reviewing flagged accounts. What may look like an innocent account in the United States can be full of menacing innuendo to Afghan eyes. “Most of the time, Facebook is saying, ‘No, you’re wrong, thanks for reporting, but this is not a fake account,’ ” he said. “I don’t think they understand the culture of Muslim countries.” Outside the Muslim world, a fake account is often little more than an easily remedied irritant. But in Afghanistan, where women are expected to abide by a strict code of personal conduct that equates purity with family honor, a scandalous Facebook page can bring shame to the victim and her loved ones, resulting in thwarted marriage prospects, family violence and even death. The question on many Afghans’ minds is whether Facebook understands this unique cultural dynamic and its consequences. Many women say they have sworn off Facebook altogether. Others, like Masoma Akrami, a 21-year-old journalist, have gone into virtual hiding, removing their profile photos, blocking all friend requests, and limiting interaction to a small group of trusted female friends and family members. “Now I am scared every time I hear the name ‘Facebook,’ ” she said. Monika Bickert, head of global product policy at Facebook, said the company has “zero tolerance” for behavior that endangers users. Noting that fake profiles are not specific to one country, she said threats that emanate from violent or unstable regions are assumed to be credible. Bickert said Facebook is able to identify fake accounts when the impostor begins making friend requests. “At the time someone receives a friend request, our systems are designed to check whether the recipient already has a friend with the same name, along with a variety of other factors that help us determine if an interaction is legitimate,” she said. She added: “Claiming to be another person or having a fake profile violates our community standards, and these types of profiles will be removed if they are reported to us.” But Afghan women tell a very different story. Nasrin Johini, 24, a prominent television journalist, has given up trying to convince Facebook that her professional page, which has nearly 9,000 “likes,” is no longer her own. Her account was hacked last month. Days later, two more pages sprang up using her name and likeness. Then, posts began to appear with photos of alcohol and cigarettes and references to licentious behavior. “Feeling thankful,” one post with a photo of several Turkish beers reads. “Thank you to the friends who brought this alcohol for me.” Johini was mortified, especially when family and friends began asking questions. Unable to persuade Facebook to take down the profiles, she feels as though her personal life and professional reputation are under assault. “I have lost my credibility,” she said. “I am a famous journalist, and I think I will never be able to work in the streets of Kabul again. It’s too dangerous now.” It is a problem that seems to be worsening as traditional values collide with a youthful population hungry for online interaction. Almost 65 percent of Afghans are younger than 25, and although 7.7 percent of the country’s 31 million citizens have Internet access, of those, 74 percent use social media, said Javid Hamdard, author of a survey of Internet use in Afghanistan. Mohammad Yasin Samim, a spokesman for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology who thinks those numbers understate actual use, said, “Cybersecurity is an increasing problem in Afghanistan, especially for females.” At this point, there is little that Afghan authorities can do to stop harassment. If a complaint is deemed credible, Samim said, the ministry can “only help police and courts to find the location of cybercriminals.” It lacks the authority to “block their accounts.” For women such as Akrami, the 21-year-old journalist, there is little solace. She reported her harassers to police but was laughed off and told to go home, she said. “They said I just wanted to file a report so I could seek asylum in another country.” Akrami said she has given up on having a virtual identity, one that would allow her to report the news, connect with an audience and build her career. Her breaking point, she said, was not the sexual videos that filled her inbox. Nor was it the messages from strange men that started by saying “I love you” and “go on a date with me” only to become filled with curse words and vile epithets when she didn’t respond. Instead, it was screen shots of herself on television, the ones that began arriving in her inbox earlier this year. They came from men claiming to be members of the Taliban and included a warning that would ultimately prove effective: “Get off Facebook or we will kill you and your family.” “Men in Afghanistan want women to cover their face in the streets,” Akrami said. “And now they have succeeded in forcing us to hide ourselves online.” ****

No judgment attached to ‘elderly’

Martha Lewis [Free For All, Feb. 9] objected to the description of a 68-year- old murder victim as “elderly,” stating, “I hardly consider it apt.” As someone who works daily with the elderly, I can assure Lewis that the National Institute of Health terms a person older than 60 to be elderly; the World Health Organization deems people older than 65 to be elderly, and, of course, AARP invites your membership when you turn 50. What’s wrong with being “elderly”? Our society will forgo our fetish with youth only when we learn to embrace our age and the many descriptions of it, including “mature,” “well-seasoned” and “elderly.” ****Pamela Harms** , Dumfries**

Pentagon condemns photos of U.S. troops posing with dead Afghan insurgents

The U.S. military on Wednesday once again condemned the actions of some of its troops in Afghanistan after photographs surfaced of smiling soldiers posing with dead insurgents in the latest battlefield scandal. The photographs, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, show soldiers posing next to Afghan corpses, including the mangled body of a suicide bomber hoisted by his ankles. In another shot, which the newspaper described but did not publish, two soldiers hold up a dead man’s hand, extending his middle finger. The 18 photographs were taken in 2010 in Zabul province by soldiers from the 82nd Airborne’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, the newspaper reported. Although the pictures were two years old, the fresh disclosure of misconduct extends a string of recent incidents in which U.S. troops have disrespected the dead, allegedly killed Afghan civilians and desecrated the Koran. U.S. officials, concerned that the cumulative effect will be the further alienation of an Afghan public weary of foreign military occupation, disavowed the actions depicted in the photographs and said they had started investigations. In Brussels, where NATO ministers were meeting to discuss the war’s progress, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta apologized. He said he “strongly condemned” the soldiers’ actions but portrayed them as immature reactions to battlefield stress. “This is war, and I know war is ugly and is violent,” Panetta said. “I know young people sometimes caught up in the moment make some very foolish decisions.” “I am not excusing that behavior,” he added. Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the problems underscored the need to transfer responsibility for security to Afghan forces as quickly as possible. “Our presence by its very nature creates tension between us and the local population,” Smith said in an interview Wednesday. “Past a certain point, a foreign presence is as destabilizing as it is stabilizing, and that’s what these incidents are pointing out.” The photographs mark the latest public relations setback for the U.S. military as it seeks to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan. In January, an Internet video showed Marines laughing as they urinated on the corpses of three insurgent fighters. In February, riots erupted after U.S. service members incinerated copies of the Koran in what NATO officials deemed an accident. In March, an Army staff sergeant was charged with killing 17 Afghan villagers, mostly women and children, in Kandahar province. Meanwhile, distrust is building between U.S. forces and their Afghan allies. The number of treacherous, lethal attacks by uniformed Afghan soldiers and police officers against NATO troops and trainers has risen substantially this year. In addition to condemning the actions depicted in the latest batch of battlefield photographs, the Pentagon also criticized the Los Angeles Times for publishing them. Panetta said defense officials had urged the Times to suppress the pictures. George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, suggested that the newspaper’s decision could put U.S. troops at risk. “The danger is that this material could be used by the enemy to incite violence against U.S. and Afghan service members,” he said in a statement. The criticism was a departure for the Pentagon, which did not object publicly after news organizations posted the Marine urination video, nor when they published photographs of soldiers from another Army unit posing with corpses in 2010. In the latest incident, the Times said it was given the graphic photographs by a soldier from the 82nd Airborne who wanted to expose “a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.” Times editor Davan Maharaj said he decided to publish two of the images as “a small but representative selection of the photos” to inform readers about important aspects of the military’s performance in Afghanistan. George B. Wright Jr., an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the Army opened an investigation into the photographs in early March. He said the unit returned to the United States in 2010 and has since redeployed to Afghanistan. It was not clear how many of the soldiers posing in the photographs are still with the unit, which the Times identified as the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. U.S. commanders said they are investigating whether poor unit leadership by noncommissioned officers could have played a role in the recent cases of misconduct, amid concerns that troops have become desensitized or worn out after multiple deployments. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former Army paratrooper who is on the Armed Services Committee, said one possible factor is a lack of direct supervision. Under the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, many small units are dispersed across rural parts of Afghanistan, often without their platoon leaders or company commanders. “They aren’t always there, so they physically can’t exercise the leadership,” he said in an interview Wednesday. Reed said the instances of misconduct are obscuring the military’s good deeds and effort to win the support of the Afghan people. “This is one of the difficulties of this kind of operation, with counterinsurgency,” he said. “It is as much a political battle as a tactical one.” Andrew M. Exum, a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he doubted that the photos would cause a big stir among Afghans. “Speaking bluntly, most Afghans are probably not going to be terribly offended by the body of a suicide bomber being treated in less-than-respectful ways,” said Exum, who is an analyst at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. Public reaction to the Marine urination video was relatively muted, he noted. U.S. commanders pledged to disclose the results of their investigations of the Marine video, the Koran burning and the Kandahar massacre. So far, however, they have kept a tight lid on the probes and released few details. In the United States, support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week showed that only 30 percent of respondents say the war has been worth fighting. Staff writer Greg Jaffe in Brussels and correspondent Kevin Sieff in Kabul contributed to this report. **More national security coverage:** \- Other nations trying to penetrate U.S. cyber-networks, ex-FBI official says \- Panetta says he regrets cost to taxpayers for his weekend trips \- U.N. Security Council condemns N. Korea rocket launch \- Read more national security news

The few, the proud, the sharing of nude photos of fellow Marines

An old Marine told me that Marines guard Marines from the other side. And when one of their brothers is being threatened, the Devil Dogs (a.k.a. Marines) will “go wild on them” for eternity. Yes, but what about the sisters? Do the Devil Dogs protect them, too? What about the female Marines whose nude photos were posted to a Facebook group where comments ranged from raunchy to suggestions of violence? Do female Marines count in the Devil Dogs lore? The questions arise as the Defense Department begins an investigation into recent revelations about the Facebook group Marines United, which the Associated Press reports was composed of active-duty and retired male Marines along with some Navy Corpsmen and Royal British Marines. Some of the nude shots were grabbed from Instagram, which mostly prohibits nudity. Others were shot surreptitiously. Most were passed along a testosterone-rich grapevine. More than two dozen active-duty women in the photographs were identified by their rank, full name and location. Needless to say, the women were horrified to learn that they had been sexually objectified by their peers. One said the scandal had ruined her Marine experience and that she wouldn’t reenlist. One active corpsman said he’d seen the photos on the Facebook page, which also provides news and support, but wasn’t interested and skipped over them. He didn’t find the collection surprising, however, likely given his generation’s comfort with nudity in all its forms. The young women who knowingly had their photos taken apparently thought that viewers would be of the women’s own choosing. One can imagine, however, that a libidinous corpsman (pardon the redundancy) who discovers a picture of a semi-nude or nude female Marine might be inspired to share it. Isn’t “sharing” the operative term in today’s narcissistic, show-and-tell-all culture? The difference and the distinction, however, is that the Marines United boys club basically stole the images and used them without the subjects’ consent. Marines being Marines? Or are they guilty of something more sinister, potentially deserving court-martial? To the civilian mind, the answer is rather simple: The Pentagon, now fully infiltrated and indoctrinated by modern feminists, has decided to put women in combat (thank you, President Barack Obama). Therefore, women must be treated as men. But what about the vice versa? Must men be treated as women? That is, should they be trained to be more “sensitive”? If so, can you simultaneously create sensitivity in the desensitizing, killing culture that breaks down an 18-year-old’s humanity and instills in him an instinct for extreme brutality? Put another way, how stupid are we? There’s a reason we say in times of great peril, “Send in the Marines,” and it’s not because of the few brave, committed women among them. But try to find someone in today’s military willing to say so. Older vets with nothing to lose will sometimes open up. Two of my regular Marine correspondents, “Jack” and “Russ,” both of them Vietnam vets, explained the culture that creates killers and how this environment isn’t conducive to civilian norms. Jack, who told me the afterlife story, is my brother. Russ is a retired Methodist minister who counsels veterans navigating post-traumatic stress disorder. Neither they nor I intend to justify the Facebook group but rather aim to illuminate the mind-set that might have led to it and the misunderstandings that create havoc. “Hollywood makes this s--- up,” says Jack in his best “French.” “I never saw a Marine shed a tear for lost buddies. Now in the Middle East, these guys have f------ breakdowns and unit ceremonies and all that s---. In Vietnam, your buddies put you in a body bag, a chopper flew your dead a-- to Da Nang, and off you went on a jet back home. “It ain’t Hollywood. It is stinky, bloody, sweat-soaked, soil-your-britches killing and being killed. You push that cr-- down so far in your guts that it comes out 50 years after the job is done. That’s PTSD.” Russ explains the culture in somewhat more polished terms. “Marines embrace the warrior archetype more than other branches. The shadow of this is patriarchy, misogyny and brutality. We are trained to be killing machines, deadening all emotion except anger. We’re told we don’t have the luxury of sensitivity, so we objectify everything, including women.” Still, he’s optimistic, saying that we need to return to “the embodiment of the hero archetype in the medieval knight. Aggressiveness can be coupled with honor, nobility and compassion.” Maybe so. But knights typically didn’t joust with women, which may be the most salient inference. That said, chivalry has a place here. An apology to the women who exposed themselves to the few, not the proud, would be appropriate — both as gesture and punishment. _Read more fromKathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook._ **Read more about this topic:** Kate Hendricks Thomas and Paula Broadwell: The Marines’ naked-photo scandal shows military culture is still sexist

‘I can’t fathom the cruelty’: Terrified elderly woman moved out while squatter lived in her home, family says

Fran Breslauer said she and her husband built their dream home themselves. They lived in the three-bedroom home near the San Diego State University campus for nearly six decades. Their two daughters were raised there. But the 90-year-old was moved out in the spring, shortly after her husband’s death, while a caretaker squatted in the house for several months and rented out rooms against Breslauer’s will, according to court documents and interviews. The caretaker, 71-year-old Cheryl Sherrell, was arrested Monday on charges of theft, theft against an elder, elder abuse and criminal trespass. Sherrell was arraigned Tuesday. Over the weekend, several neighbors held a rally outside the house, chalking the word “parasite” on the sidewalk and calling for Sherrell to move out.  “GET OUT OF FRAN’S HOME, CHERYL,” one post read. “GET OUT OF SAN DIEGO, WHILE YOU’RE AT IT. NOBODY WANTS YOU LIVING IN THIS COUNTY SO KICK ROCKS, YOU LOW-LIFE, ELDER ABUSING LIAR.” Breslauer hired Sherrell about a year ago to care for her dying husband, Alan. They had a written agreement allowing Sherrell to live in a studio outside the main house while she worked as a caregiver. But after only a few months, Alan Breslauer complained that Sherrell had done something inappropriate, so she was fired and told to leave, Fran Breslauer told The Washington Post. Sherrell, however, refused to do so despite receiving a handwritten 30-day notice of termination and remained on the property even after Alan Breslauer died last January, according to a lawsuit filed against her. Sherrell became violent in February, according to the complaint, which says she forcefully threw Breslauer’s car keys, hitting the elderly woman’s wrist. That same month, Sherrell turned up the water heater to its hottest setting, the complaint states. Breslauer suffered severe burns to her skin after she unknowingly put her hands under scalding hot water. Sherrell left in March after a judge issued a temporary restraining order and directed law enforcement to remove her from the house. Fran Breslauer also moved out to live with one of her daughters out of state. “She didn’t want to be there and put herself at risk,” Breslauer’s attorney, Jason Burris, said in an interview. “She’d already been physically, verbally and emotionally abused by Cheryl. She didn’t move back in.” At the time, Breslauer was preparing to put the house up for sale, and her real estate agent hired a cleaner to ready the property for showing. Sherrell, knowing that Breslauer was gone, moved back in the following month, after the restraining order expired. According to the complaint, Sherrell told the cleaner that she was “either the owner or the tenant.” She remained in the house until she was arrested Monday, four months after the civil lawsuit was filed. Burris said Sherrell never had a right to stay in the main house. Breslauer’s daughter, Jan, who is also an attorney, said Sherrell was never a tenant, and that she only lived in the studio outside the house as a condition of her employment. “If you are a squatter or a former employee or a former tenant, and you do a little bit of research on the Internet, you can delay these cases for months,” the attorney said. “This is how the system is designed in California. The defendant has to be given a full and fair opportunity to defend themselves. If a defendant has defenses whether they’re bogus or not, then they still get their day in court.” Sherrell’s attorney, Lawrence Mudgett III, disagreed with the accusations, saying Fran Breslauer was never forced out of her own home and that she left the state voluntarily. He added that Sherrell was a legal tenant, not a squatter. “California law is crystal clear. If you employ somebody and as a compensation for their employment, you provide room and board, landlord-tenant law applies,” Mudgett said, adding that even after the 30-day notice of termination had expired, Sherrell continued providing services for Breslauer, including cooking, cleaning and picking up her husband’s ashes from the mortuary. Mudgett said the handwritten 30-day notice isn’t enforceable because it had the wrong date and did not follow the format required by law. Sherrell did not return a call on Monday morning, before her arrest. She had successfully sought her own no-harassment order against Breslauer. Mudgett cited a police report on an incident in which Breslauer allegedly assaulted Sherrell. While living in the house, Sherrell rented rooms to unwitting tenants who responded to ads she’d placed on Craigslist, Jan Breslauer said. One woman, Connie Follis, told Breslauer’s attorney that Sherrell had been renting rooms to college students. Follis also said that when she went to the house recently, after Sherrell asked for help moving some of her belongings, she saw the garage full of old refrigerators, freezers and appliances, documents say.  Burris, the attorney, said that pieces of junk have piled up outside the house. Since Sherrell moved in, Burris said, she has locked and chained the property’s gate. This isn’t the first time Sherrell is alleged to have victimized the elderly. Cheri Gittins said in a statement to Breslauer’s attorney that she hired Sherrell about 15 years ago to take care of her ailing grandmother. Things went from bad to worse in less than a month, Gittins said; at one point, Gittins noticed that Sherrell wasn’t properly feeding her grandmother. Sherrell also had a boyfriend stay at the house, according to Gittins. When she was fired and told to leave, Sherrell refused to do so. Breslauer said she has sat awake on many nights, worrying about her home. “I wonder what she’s doing to my beautiful house that I designed and built,” Breslauer said. “After this experience, I can’t tolerate that. I usually am very trusting. I was quite shocked by this.” Said her daughter, Jan: “I’m outraged that someone could do this and would do this to my mother — to any 90-year-old. I can’t fathom the cruelty that was involved.”

Millions of teens are using a new app to post anonymous thoughts, and most parents have no idea

Millions of teenagers in high schools nationwide are using a smartphone app to anonymously share their deepest anxieties, secret crushes, vulgar assessments of their classmates and even violent threats, all without adults being able to look in. The After School app has exploded in popularity this school year and is now on more than 22,300 high school campuses, according to its creators. Because it is designed to be accessible only to teenagers, many parents and administrators have not known anything about it. Envisioned as a safe space for high schoolers to discuss sensitive issues without having to reveal their names, After School has in some cases become a vehicle for bullying, crude observations and alleged criminal activity, all under a cloak of secrecy. Similar to Yik Yak — an open app that has become popular on college campuses — After School allows teens to post comments and images on message boards associated with individual high school campuses but carries nothing identifying the students who post there. “At first it was people saying nice things and complimenting others, and then it turned into bullying,” said Mya Bianchi, a 15-year-old who attends Ionia High School in central Michigan. Mya said a user posted her phone number along with instructions to contact her for photos, a message that was punctuated by a winking smiley face and icons of a camera and a bikini. After receiving harassing messages, she had to change her number. Her mother, Carrie Bunting, said Mya was “freaked out” to be getting messages from unknown numbers. It also irked Bunting. “They’re underage children,” Bunting said. “I don’t feel like there should be something that excludes parents.” Cyberbullying has been around nearly as long as the Internet, and teens have taken conflicts and taunts to social media on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as via text messages. The real-life people behind those digital missives are usually known; on After School, users are anonymous, and some say that has enabled and even encouraged cruelty and threatening behavior. After School limits its audience to teens by requiring users to verify that they attend high school through their Facebook pages and by creating restricted message boards for each high school campus. Parents and others who want to access the app would have to lie to do so, saying on Facebook that they attend the high school. Even then, parents could be stopped by an algorithm that aims to block people from posing as high school students. The app’s creators declined to say exactly how many students use After School, but they indicated that there are somewhere between 2 million and 10 million users. There are approximately 55 million K-12 students in U.S. public and private schools nationwide, with about 15 million in public school grades 9 through 12, according to the Education Department. The app is extremely popular at high school campuses across the Washington area; at the private Sidwell Friends School in the District, which President Obama’s children attend, 119 students were signed up as of Friday. Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va., had 700 students who use the app; at Walter Johnson High in Bethesda, Md., 245 students are on it. Cory Levy, 24, one of the app’s founders, said After School gives teens a chance to “express themselves without worrying about any backlash or any repercussions.” He said the app is a new way for teens to ask difficult, uncomfortable questions anonymously and to more directly address issues such as depression, how to come out as gay to one’s parents or how to navigate the daily challenges of teen life. Levy said the product creates a much-needed alternative to Facebook and Instagram, where teens have grown up carefully curating digital identities that might not reflect their true struggles and anxieties. After School allows them to be themselves without worrying so much about what other people will think, he said. “There’s a need for people to be able to communicate in a place where they wouldn’t be judged, where they could speak freely,” said Michael Callahan, 32, who created the app with Levy. He sees it has having “therapeutic” potential. Students say that most comments are benign, and Callahan said problematic posts are a tiny sample of the millions of messages that appear on the app’s boards. But there have been complaints about cyberbullying and anonymous threats on the app since shortly after it first appeared in November 2014. A month after its debut, a 17-year-old at Brandon High School in Ortonville, Mich., threatened an attack in a series of After School posts, including one that read, “Id rather take my AR 15 to school and practice on my classmates than to the gun range,” said his attorney, Deanna Kelley. He pleaded guilty to making a terrorist threat and using a computer in a crime and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Kelley said the teenager made the threats because he was upset about bullying on the app, which included racial slurs. Students started online petitions asking Apple to remove After School from its App Store, with one saying: “with the shield of anonymity, users have zero accountability for their posts, and can openly spread rumors, call classmates hurtful names, send threats, or even tell someone to kill themselves — and all of these things are happening.” Apple pulled the app from its store that same month, and a new version was released in April, promoting a long list of enhanced safety features, including a fast-response system that contacts authorities if a threat is detected. While After School has no information on the identity of users, it does keep cellphone data that can help police trace a post to a particular device. The app is now equipped with a warning system so that a teen who posts a worrisome message about being depressed or distraught will be sent a message asking if they would like to text with a counselor. More than 50,000 users have had text conversations with trained crisis counselors, according to the app’s creators. “We wanted the users to feel very safe on After School,” Levy said. “We want them to feel like if there’s something that they’re curious about but they don’t want their identity associated with, they can ask it.” Levy said that an algorithm automatically blocks posts with certain verbiage — like those that urge other students to harm themselves. And he said other posts are reviewed by dozens of moderators who screen for cyberbullying and harassment around the clock; users also can report individual posts to have them removed. Callahan said the bar is very low for what is banned: Even a comment such as “Michael is a slow runner” would be blocked. If they are aware their child is using the app, parents can now set filters to block certain content. Recent posts to the app indicate that some inappropriate messages still get through, and students at several high schools said that bullying and harassment are frequent. Students — who shared screen shots from the app with The Washington Post — said they have seen taunts against others for being gay, people’s bodies being scrutinized, boys declaring which sex acts they would like to perform on specific girls. One anonymous poster at Florida’s Yulee High School called a student out by name and then wrote: “I’d like to corrupt her.” “I just think it’s kind of insulting, and they don’t respect people like they should,” said a 15-year-old girl who attends Yulee. Last month, a user posted a photo of a gun on After School with an accompanying threat about something “going down” at Robert E. Lee High in Springfield, Va., leading to a police investigation. Lucy Caldwell, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman, said a student saw the post and reported it to school authorities, who notified police. Investigators never determined who posted the threat. “Unfortunately, these kinds of apps are often used to create fear and disruption,” Deirdre Lavery, principal of Lee High, wrote in a note home to parents. “We thank you for working with us to discourage our students from using these apps to cause concern for our students and our families.” Police in Warren, Mass., on Monday charged an 18-year-old senior with making a threat via After School, saying the teenager admitted to posting a message that read: “For all those who enjoy living . . . don’t go to school tomorrow ;),” according to Officer Jeffrey Von Dauber. Quaboag Regional Middle High School was then put on high alert, and just about 20 percent of the school’s students showed up for class the next day as police worked closely with After School to trace the threat to the student using cellphone data, police said. **** Nicole Deaton is a senior at Brandon High School in Michigan, where memories of the day when students were too scared to show up at school because of the threat posted by their classmate are still fresh. Deaton said the app remains popular — more than 725 students at her school are signed up — and many of the posts reflect tortured teenage romantics and secret admirers. “Most of it is not bad at all,” Deaton said. Levy and Callahan said that the rare threats they have seen are against the terms of their app’s user agreement, meaning that anyone posting a threat on After School is violating those rules and possibly committing a crime. They said they are dedicated to school safety and see their app as a venue for important discussion; they have helped authorities when posts have crossed the line, using cellphone data to track users in cases of alleged crimes. “We all need to work together to end school violence,” Callahan said. “We are all on the same team, the parents, the school and us. We are all trying to make positive impacts on the lives of teens.” Mark Sale, principal at Swain County High School in rural North Carolina, said After School arrived on his campus sometime last month, and administrators immediately scheduled an assembly to warn students of its potential dangers. His hands already are tied when it comes to social media, because he can only discipline a student for conduct online while at school or in a school activity. After School poses a new challenge because Sale doesn’t know which student is saying what. Just last week, an anonymous poster made cruel remarks about a student’s appearance, prompting a call from the girl’s distraught mother. Sale wants to protect his students, but he said he can’t track the app’s use, can’t stop students from using it and said he has one perplexing question: “What can I do about this?”

Why a racially insensitive photo of Southern Baptist seminary professors matters

A Southern Baptist seminary professor on Tuesday posted a jaw-dropping photo on Twitter that has resurfaced questions for white evangelicals and their attitudes about race. The picture, posted by Barry McCarty, a professor of preaching and rhetoric at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas, appears to show five white professors dressed in hoodies, gold chains, bandannas and caps. Several of them are pictured posing with fingers pointed like guns and McCarty appears to be holding a gun in his hand. The words “Notorious S.O.P.” (School Of Preaching) are scrawled across the top.   It’s odd for a preaching professor to suggest “context is immaterial,” because seminary professors usually teach their students that context is everything. The SWBTS “Mission, Vision, & Values” page states that their global “strategy includes the training of persons from every national, ethnic and cultural background for a variety of ministries.” But when it comes to understanding this particular photo, understanding a larger Southern Baptist and evangelical context is key.  Whatever their intentions, the photo is problematic for at least three main reasons. First, as a comparison, consider why blackface is so offensive. Starting in the early 19th century, white actors would apply black makeup to their faces and exaggerate their lips in a caricature of African American looks. Then they performed racist tropes on stage for laughs. Blackface denigrates people of African descent. It says that skin color can make someone intellectually and culturally inferior, so it’s not a problem to imitate their appearance for the sake of amusement. In a similar way, putting on clothes typically associated with racial and ethnic minorities communicates that a person’s culture has value only as entertainment. That’s why you can’t dismiss this photo as “just a joke.” It harks back to a history of dehumanization. Another problem with the picture includes how it appears the photo was carefully staged. Consider what probably happened before a camera even came out. These men took time to pick out certain clothes and put them on. They found a place with suitable background and lighting to take a picture. They chose poses. One of them even grabbed a gun. Then someone posted it on social media. This picture wasn’t randomly snapped in moment of poor judgment. These seminary professors had ample opportunity to consider potential offense. At no point in this elaborate set up did anyone veto the idea.  Unfortunately, racial homogeneity is a shortcoming within white evangelicalism as a whole. Looking across evangelical denominations and nondenominational networks, leaders tend to come from similar backgrounds. They are predominantly educated, middle-class white men. Racial uniformity in the leadership means blunders like this photo will probably keep taking place.   Patterson goes on to say, “Southwestern cannot make a moment of bad judgment disappear. But we can and will redouble our efforts to put an end to any form of racism on this campus and to return to a focus that is our priority — namely, getting the Gospel to every man and woman on the earth.” His apology sounds biblical; For Christians, evangelism is certainly a critical priority. But he treats racism like a distraction from sharing the Gospel. When will white evangelicals realize, addressing racism is inherently a Gospel issue? Patterson also doesn’t provide any specific actions that would address the seminary’s deeper issues of racial awareness and diversity. Fixing this problem isn’t a matter of restating good intentions, it requires a restructuring of historic patterns of racism embedded in evangelical institutions.  White evangelicals have a long and complicated history with race. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, white Baptists tried to sidestep the issue of whether their members could own slaves. In her article “Meddling with Emancipation,” historian Monica Najar explains that the 1793 Baptist General Committee voted that slavery was an issue for the state to decide, not churches. In 1845, Baptists split over whether missionaries could own slaves. Southerners insisted that slave owning did not disqualify people for missionary service, and they separated from their northern counterparts to form the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1995, the 150th anniversary of the denomination, leaders passed the “Resolution on Racial Reconciliation” which acknowledged their failings on slavery and civil rights. But the photo circulated this week reminds us that resolutions do not accomplish racial reconciliation. As an African American, I look at that picture and wonder what these men are teaching in class. How are they compensating for the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among the faculty and staff? Are they responsive to the particular needs and concerns of minorities in their midst? How might their assumptions slip into their lectures, advising and preaching? Where can the seminary go from here? In response to Allen’s apology tweet, Grammy Award-winning rapper Lecrae Moore, asked, “How do you all plan to grow from this?” Southwestern could certainly use this opportunity to dialogue about race and diversity, but I hope the seminary goes further. I hope it will commit to hiring professors and staff members from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The professors could conduct an audit of their curriculum to see if they are assigning works by scholars of color. The seminary could review the places it goes to recruit students. The leadership could visit other seminaries with more diversity to learn how they could change their own campuses. Sit down with minority students and ask them if they are willing to speak honestly about their experiences at the seminary.  But diversity initiatives and attempts to talk about race haven’t resulted in broad, systemic change. The homogenous environment of predominantly white churches and organizations means people who have all the same cultural blind spots will still marginalize minorities. People are more than offended by pictures like these. They are in pain. In 2 Corinthians 7, the Apostle Paul rejoices that the church received his words of correction even though they were hard to hear. He writes, “As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.” While we don’t need to focus on embarrassing anyone in particular, something like this stirs a sense of godly grief. Let this photo and the consternation it caused lead to the kind of sorrow that produces lasting change.

Does the First Amendment protect ‘liking’ a racist Instagram post? Some Calif. students say it does.

Four California high school students who were suspended for “liking” and commenting on racist Instagram posts have filed a federal lawsuit alleging administrators paraded them through the school and allowed their classmates to berate them as part of a “healing” exercise.  The posts surfaced in March, after some of the students’ classmates took screen shots of them and reported them to administrators at the public high school. The student who created the images — not named in the lawsuit — was suspended. A complaint filed this week accuses the Albany Unified School District of going too far in suspending the other students. The lawsuit — which names the school district, the school and several administrators — alleges the four plaintiffs were punished in violation of their First Amendment and due process rights. “This action arises out of a private online discussion between friends that the Albany School system has pried into without authority,” the lawsuit said. “All conduct at issue in this matter occurred off school property, were conducted off school hours, and were otherwise completely unrelated to school activity.” Albany Unified School District Superintendent Valerie Williams said in a statement Wednesday that the district was reviewing the case. “The district takes great care to ensure that our students feel safe at school, and we are committed to providing an inclusive and respectful learning environment for all of our students,” Williams said, as reported by the Mercury News. “The district intends to defend this commitment and its conduct within the court system.” The lawsuit alleged that the plaintiffs, all juniors, were wrongfully suspended by the school in late March after some of their classmates took screen shots of the Instagram posts and reported them to administrators. When the students returned on March 30, the lawsuit said, administrators forced them to march through the school while their peers tormented them. “School administrators allowed the student body to hurl obscenities, scream profanities, and jeer at the Plaintiffs and the other suspended students, who were all not allowed to leave what the school considered an act of ‘atonement’ but was rather a thinly veiled form of public shaming,” the lawsuit said. Eventually, a parent stepped in and convinced administrators to stop the event, which was described in the complaint as a “healing” exercise. Later the same day, they attended a “voluntary restorative justice session” organized by a community group. A few hundred students and parents gathered outside to protest. When the session came to a close, the demonstration grew tense, prompting the plaintiffs’ parents to ask for a police escort out, according to the complaint. As two of the plaintiffs were leaving, an incensed demonstrator struck both of them in the head, leaving one of them with a broken nose and the other with cuts and bruises, the lawsuit alleged. “Plaintiffs have all have suffered emotional distress due to these incidents,” the complaint read, “including anxiety, fear, insomnia and other distress.” The students want the school to wipe their disciplinary records clean, refrain from any further punishment and allow them to make up the work they missed. Some of the students on the receiving end of the racist posts told local media they felt threatened. The uncle and guardian of a teenage girl shown in one of the images told the Mercury News his niece’s grades suffered after the incident. “Free speech is a fundamental right,” said the uncle, who asked not to be named, “but it can’t be at the expense of hurting someone.” A woman who said she was the mother of a sophomore at the school told the Mercury News: “This is bullying. This is racist. This is sexist. They were attacking kids.”

To some in the Middle East, the Islamic State is a joke

The Islamic State's intense social media presence, its slogans and black attire, and its brutal tactics have caught the world's attention. And the Middle East is no different, with the militant group sparking deep anger and disgust among large swaths of the population. It also has been the butt of many, many jokes in the region. The increasing hostility toward the group is clear from parodies of the Islamic State that have gone viral in places such as the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. This Palestinian parody is a pointed critique of the Islamic State's strategy — the YouTube clip shows fighters killing Muslims and Christians but letting Jews go unharmed. It's telling that Palestinians see the militants as more of a danger to those belonging to their own faith. In Beirut, a band called al-Rahel al-Kabir performs songs ridiculing the militants. In a song mocking the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a line goes: "And because we need to reduce traffic, we will blow up human beings.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Another video posted by a user, whose location is hidden, criticizes the use of Toyota pickup trucks by the Islamic State and other terror groups. Earlier this year, Public Radio International published a piece asking why Toyota’s trucks were so popular among insurgent and terrorist groups and mainly referred to their adaptability. Now the trucks themselves have become a focal point of the Islamic State's grandiose propaganda, as this parody shows:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The idea of parodying the Islamic State has also reached Twitter. Several accounts make jokes about what some experts consider the group’s regressive attitude. Among these tweets are Photoshopped images of fashion magazines advising Islamic State militants how to “choose the right hair-band” and featuring “8 reasons why moustaches are out.” Another user mocks the Islamic State leader’s watch, which was visible in his most famous video message. While some of the parody videos have gone viral, the majority of ironic Twitter accounts seem to contain graphic pictures and vulgar language. Nearly all of the profiles hide their creators' real locations, but the language used indicates that at least some of them are likely to be native English speakers. The technology company Recorded Future recently found that the Islamic State had been mentioned favorably on Twitter 27,000 times from Aug. 18 to Sept. 3, which would indicate a strong support base on the social network. It is hard to say who is winning the propaganda war on Twitter and other platforms, but parody accounts certainly play a role in this war of words and pictures. Twitter has recently cracked down on Islamic State-affiliated profiles, which is why many users explicitly state that their posts are meant to be satirical.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico One of the weirdest Islamic State Twitter profiles – showing militant fighters embracing cats — is not even a fake or a parody, according to Britain's Independent and Telegraph newspapers.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Melania Trump usually stays out of the fray. But she unloaded on Kathy Griffin.

It is rare for Melania Trump to issue a statement of any sort. The first lady, who has sometimes seemed reluctant about her new role, prefers privacy and restraint. Yet she chose to speak up forcefully Wednesday, nearly a full day after a gruesome photo of comedian Kathy Griffin holding a prop made to resemble the bloody, decapitated head of President Trump was posted online. On Tuesday, the photo was condemned by a bipartisan chorus of politicians and pundits as soon as it went public; hours later, Griffin apologized in a video statement. The Trumps did not seem to accept the apology, with the president tweeting the next morning that his children, “especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!” But the first lady issued a longer statement midday Wednesday: “As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.” While the president often blasts his opponents on Twitter, it is rarer for his wife to join him. She refrained from using social media during the first weeks of his presidency and generally stayed out of the political fray during his campaign. However, her decision to weigh in is in line with her burgeoning approach to public life. She pushes back hard in defense of her reputation and her family. In November, she threatened to sue a YouTuber who posted video speculating that her son had autism. The video was removed. She also filed a lawsuit against a Maryland blogger and British newspaper that published articles falsely alleging she had worked as an escort. The articles were retracted and the lawsuit settled in her favor. One of Mrs. Trump’s first tweets on her @FLOTUS account was to send a thank-you tweet to fashion model Emily Ratajkowski, who had complained that a New York Times reporter was spreading the escort allegation in private conversations. “Applause to all women around the world who speak up, stand up and support other women! @emrata #PowerOfEveryWoman #PowerOfTheFirstLady,” Mrs. Trump wrote. It often falls to first ladies to guard their family’s private lives. Michelle Obama’s press secretary sternly warned the Ty company when it produced Beanie Babies in the likeness of her daughters. Laura Bush defended her daughters, who made news when they were caught drinking underage. “They just want to do like every other teenager does,” Bush often said. Hillary Clinton was said to be upset by a SNL “Wayne’s World” sketch that poked fun at preteen Chelsea Clinton, who wore braces. Mrs. Clinton did not issue a public statement on the segment, but word got back to the show that the first lady did not like it. Similarly, a friend called Mrs. Trump a “fierce wife and mother” and she has said her priority is protecting her son. A report in TMZ, that was corroborated by the president’s tweet, said that Barron Trump was shaken by the photo of Griffin, which he saw while watching television at home with his mother. “This is a first lady we rarely hear from on anything … so possibly she was thinking of her son,” said Katherine Jellison, a history professor at Ohio University who has studied first ladies. “All the [modern] first ladies who had younger children were really concerned with protecting the kids from the slings and arrows of life in the White House.”

Why #TwitterisblockedinTurkey is trending on Twitter in Turkey

Some critics have noted that if the ban is aimed at preventing the spread of images of Kiraz being held hostage, it may simply have come too late. Even if the photos showing him at gunpoint are upsetting, they first began circulating on March 31. Now, seven days later, it seems unlikely that anyone who wants to see them hasn't already.

Maryland school officials investigate blackface photo involving 11th-grader

School district officials in suburban Maryland are investigating an incident involving a white student who posted a photo of herself in blackface on social media, with a caption that used a racial epithet. The principal of Atholton High School, in Columbia, Md., said in an email home to families Thursday that administrators became aware of the photo as school dismissed Thursday afternoon. The letter, signed by Principal JoAnn Hutchens, described the image as a “racially offensive and hurtful post” to social media and said school officials were in contact with the student’s parents and would take appropriate action. “I am committed to ensuring a safe and inclusive environment for all students at Atholton High School,” she wrote. “I encourage all students to ‘Think Before You Post.’ ” Howard County school officials said Friday that students who saw the image brought it to the attention of the principal and that soon afterward the teenager’s parents also contacted Hutchens. They said the image appeared to have been posted to an app such as Snapchat, and then shared again on other platforms. The caption on the blackface photo said: “im finally a n-----.” Howard school spokesman John White said the student, an 11th-grader whom district officials did not identify, was “very apologetic” about what she had done. White said the district is working with the family as it investigates and would follow its student code of conduct in applying consequences. Under the conduct code, disciplinary action may be taken for off-campus incidents that could have an adverse effect on schools, with possible consequences, including detention and suspension. Last school year, a video went viral in Howard County showing a white teenager disparaging the Black Lives Matter movement with inflammatory racist pronouncements. In the video, the student — who attended Mount Hebron High School, in Ellicott City — said that “who the [expletive] cares about some black man who dies?” The student went on to say that black lives do not matter because “they are an inferior race, okay?” District officials said Friday the most recent incident reinforces the need for a community meeting — already planned for Monday night — to discuss the responsible use of technology and social media and supporting an inclusive community. The meeting is for both students and parents, and it is being done with police and the county library system. “Too many young people and adults post things without thinking about what happens next,” White said. “We want to make sure parents know about the latest technology and that students know there could be ramifications for a bad decision.”

Parents should stop Fakebooking and show the reality of life with kids instead

Let’s be real.  All of those pictures on social media showing perfectly coifed and smiling children are cute, but their connection to real life with kids is tenuous at best. Chances are most of those photos were made possible thanks to a bribe involving candy, or the promise that the kids could take off their “nice” clothes once Mom or Dad got a share-worthy shot.  Whitten and Lewis photograph life with kids in the course of a non-staged day. They have no expectation of getting a perfect, smiling shot in exchange for candy. Both proudly share their images, unashamed to show that real life isn’t perfect. Rather, it is often difficult, and is more fun and more beautiful than anything a photographer could stage. Many parents appreciate the real-life moments that Whitten and Lewis capture because nearly everyone with kids in their lives can relate to the messiness and chaos that come through in the images. Lewis is known for her humorous photos of children testing limits when unsupervised by their parents, such as one of a three-year-old boy urinating in his house, making as high an arc as he could while his 10-month-old brothers lounged in the background. Whitten’s most well-known image shows her husband, Thomas, comforting their son Fox in the shower during a bout with salmonella when Fox was a year old. But, as popular and as real as Whitten’s and Lewis’s photographs are, both have also come under fire from those who say they are sexualizing kids, or oversharing.  Whitten’s image of her husband and son was criticized, as well. An anonymous viewer reported it to the Arizona Department of Child Safety, and Whitten was charged with child neglect for posting this and other photos of her kids. Although the charges against Whitten were found to be unsubstantiated, the experience has made her hesitant to share many family photos online. She has made her Instagram account private. It’s unfortunate. Images such as the one of the boy urinating can make parents of misbehaving children feel less alone and alleviate some of the pressure to be perfect parents with perfect children. Photos such as the sick boy being comforted by his father in the shower show all of us that parenthood can be really difficult and that fathers can, and should, play a strong role in their children’s lives. Even though she posts fewer photos of her own family these days, Whitten still thinks that parents should actively share their real and imperfect lives. If more people honestly posted both struggles and successes, more parents could be content with their real lives, instead of always feeling like they are falling short compared with the perfect, carefully edited lives they see on social media. Being honest would allow parents to support one another, and would show that we all have dishes in the sink, and children who prefer to wear mismatched clothing (or no clothing at all). Lewis continues to share honest photos of life with her one-year-old daughter, Byrdie, as well as photos of clients who are comfortable with her doing so. Those images include nursing in public without a cover, and going out with her daughter at 11 p.m. during a trip to Spain for work. Although she has received backlash for some of her images, she doesn’t let it define her parenting choices.  “I would never make a decision that I feel would put my daughter’s life in jeopardy,” she says. “I would never share photos that I felt sexualized her innocence. No one will ever love and protect my daughter more than I do and others need to acknowledge that.”

Ask Amy: Facebook pictures make friend want to block

DEAR AMY: Three of my Facebook friends are over-the-top animal lovers. They find the worst cases of animal abuse and post pictures of them. I find them shocking (at best). On numerous occasions these photos show tortured animals. These are truly terrible. I get it. I know that some animals are abused. I don’t need to see the pictures to be convinced. Can you suggest how I might encourage these Facebook friends to help these animals without posting pictures? I would appreciate your help. -- Visually Assaulted DEAR ASSAULTED: One great thing about Facebook is that you can roll up your trouser legs and publicly wade into any debate — or you can quietly “hide” posts from people who share objectionable content. If you want to challenge these friends to do more than post snuff pictures, you can comment beneath a photo: “It would be great to find out what you are actually doing about this, aside from sharing this horrific photo . . .” I wouldn’t recommend this course of action because, well, people get crazy. I have a Facebook friend who is also an animal advocate. I notice that she periodically warns Facebook friends, “If you post horrific photos of animal abuse, I will ‘block’ you,” and then, presumably, she does. DEAR AMY: I am a junior in high school and have a friendship problem. For the past two years I have been part of a group of girls I really like. We all get along and have a great time together. This past year I’ve also become friendly with another girl. The problem is that she hates two of my friends, which makes things awkward. If they try to make small talk with her, she either ignores or belittles them. She’s really nice to me but she can be so mean to people I care about. I can tell it really hurts my friends’ feelings. I brought it up to her one time and she said it is because they are boring. They are quiet, but they aren’t boring. I feel stuck and I don’t know what to do. Do you have any ideas? -- A Friend in Need DEAR FRIEND: First, you should stick up for friends when they are being mistreated. Then you should distance yourself from the person who is mistreating your friends. I’ve always thought that people who trash other people as “boring” are being boring themselves. Boring people don’t listen and engage with others. Boring people throw up their hands and say, “What EVER,” when confronted with opportunities to self-correct toward kindness. Would it be possible for you to integrate your newer friend into the group? Is she being harsh because she is nervous or unsure of herself, and are there ways you can pierce her defensiveness? I’m not in the best position to judge — you are — but in my opinion your new friend doesn’t sound like much of a friend, so far. I’d take “boring” over “mean” any day, and maybe you should too. DEAR AMY: Your advice to “Disapproving” is disgusting. Sure, tell people they should participate in celebrating the decades-long adultery relationship that can now be legitimized by the death of the wife. Gross. Do you have any idea how devastating adultery is to families? To children? To the scorned and abandoned partner? And if the marriage ends in divorce, the carnage left behind? I’m appalled by your advice that no one should worry about how those two (inconsiderate, selfish) consenting adults arrived at their current relationship. I guess now that the victimized wife is dead, and they are free to marry and carry on in public, this justifies everything! -- Old-fashioned DEAR OLD-FASHIONED: I have intimate knowledge of how devastating adultery is. But family members have choices to make all along the way, and I do believe that forgiveness -- even accompanied by disapproval -- is a legitimate choice. Amy’s column appears seven days a week at www.washingtonpost.com/advice. Write to  Amy Dickinson  at askamy@tribune.com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.

‘Nuclear football’ photo taken at Trump’s golf resort puts the Pentagon in an awkward position

It’s unlikely that an Army officer posing for a photograph with a patron at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort while apparently carrying the “nuclear football” broke any Defense Department regulations, but doing so has put the Pentagon in an awkward situation, defense officials said. The image was one of several posted over the weekend by Richard DeAgazio, a retired investor, as the president took phone calls publicly over dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after North Korea conducted a ballistic missile test Saturday night. The photographs have prompted questions among some national security professionals because it appears Trump and his staff handled a sensitive — and potentially classified — security situation in public. One of the images shows the officer — identified by DeAgazio as “Rick the Man” — smiling and putting his arm around the retired investor for a photograph. The officer wears an ornamental braided cord known as an aiguillette that, when worn on the right shoulder, denotes status as an aide-de-camp to the president or first family. Defense officials declined Monday afternoon to discuss the photos on the record. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, they described reaction to the incident as exaggerated. The White House, which typically employs a handful of officers as aides-de-camp for the president, did not respond to requests for comment. The “football” is actually an aluminum briefcase wrapped in leather and known formally as the Presidential Emergency Satchel. It carries material needed to launch nuclear weapons. Numerous news photographs show officers wearing name tags while carrying the satchel, including recently with Trump and last year with then-President Barack Obama: Analysts familiar with nuclear policy said it was unusual for an aide to agree to be photographed with a civilian, although it was not clear he knew the image would be circulated on social media. Stephen Schwartz, the author of “Atomic Audit: The Cost and Consequences of Nuclear Weapons Since 1940,” tweeted Monday that he isn’t outraged by the photo with the aide — “it’s just tacky and inappropriate DeAgazio boasted about it on Facebook.” Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., agreed with Schwartz but noted sarcastically that posing for a photo with DeAgazio was “innovative.”

Popular blood thinner causing deaths, injuries in nursing homes

When Loren Peters arrived in the emergency room in October 2013, bruises covered his frail body and blood oozed from his gums. The 85-year-old had not been in a fight or fallen down. Instead, he had been given too much of a popular, decades-old blood thinner that, unmonitored, can turn from a lifesaver into a killer. “My goodness, I’ve never seen anything like it,” recalled Lorna Finch, Peters’s daughter, of the ugly purple bruise that sprawled from the middle of her father’s stomach to his hip. “It was just awful.” Peters took Coumadin at his Marshalltown, Iowa, nursing home because he had an abnormal heart rhythm, which increases the risk of stroke. It’s a common precaution, but the drug must be carefully calibrated: too much, and you can bleed uncontrollably; too little, and you can develop life-threatening clots. When nursing homes fail to maintain this delicate balance, it puts patients in danger. From 2011 to 2014, at least 165 nursing home residents were hospitalized or died after errors involving Coumadin or its generic version, warfarin, a ProPublica analysis of government inspection reports shows. Studies suggest there are thousands more injuries every year that are never investigated by the government. “It’s an insidious problem,” said Rod Baird, president of Geriatric Practice Management, a firm that creates electronic health records for physicians working in long-term care facilities. Because it’s so easy to get wrong, “Coumadin is the most dangerous drug in America.” Nursing homes around the country are routinely cited for lapses that imperil residents, from letting those with dementia wander off to not stopping elders from choking on their food. For years, advocates, researchers and government officials have worried about the overuse of antipsychotic medications that can put elderly patients into a stupor and increase their risk of life-threatening falls. A national initiative helped reduce the use of such drugs among long-term nursing home residents by 20 percent between the end of 2011 and the end of 2014. But the dangers of the widely used Coumadin have drawn relatively little scrutiny, perhaps because the drug has clear benefits. Still, improper use has caused some patients incalculable suffering and, in some cases, greatly hastened deaths. Dolores Huss, an 89-year-old grandmother of eight, died from internal bleeding after a San Diego facility gave her an antibiotic that multiplies the effects of Coumadin and then didn’t alert her physician that she needed additional blood tests to measure how long it was taking her blood to clot. Shirley Reim, recovering from hip surgery, was hospitalized with blood clots in her legs after a Minnesota nursing home failed to give her Coumadin for 50 days in a row and also didn’t perform the blood test ordered by her doctor. She suffered permanent damage. Details of the cases come from government inspection reports and lawsuits filed by the patients’ families, which were settled confidentially. Periodic inspections document hundreds of additional errors that were caught early enough to prevent serious harm, but the real toll is likely much higher, experts say. A 2007 peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Medicine estimated that nursing home residents suffer 34,000 fatal, life-threatening or serious events related to the drug each year. North Carolina data shows more medication errors in nursing homes involving Coumadin than any other drug. Despite such evidence, Coumadin deaths and hospitalizations have drawn only limited attention from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that regulates nursing homes. Federal officials haven’t tallied Coumadin cases to see the full extent of the damage or identify common problems involving the use of the drug. Neither has the American Health Care Association, the trade group for nursing homes. The government investigates incidents like the one involving Peters that trigger complaints or surface in routine inspections. Sometimes, the CMS slaps homes with “immediate jeopardy” citations, fining them and threatening to cut off federal funding if quick action isn’t taken. Villa del Sol, where Peters lived, received such a citation related to his care and was fined $33,345. More commonly, though, homes are not fined and are simply asked to correct the problems and put policies in place to keep them from happening again, ProPublica’s analysis shows. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services identified Coumadin and other anticoagulants as one of the drug categories most frequently implicated in “adverse drug events,” calling on government agencies to work on solutions. In a statement, the CMS, which is part of HHS, said it is raising awareness of such events, training its inspectors to do a better job at identifying them and working with nursing homes to prevent them. In Peters’s case, no one at the nursing home conducted the blood test needed to see the effect Coumadin was having, even as bruises spread across his body over a two-week period, government inspectors later found. Peters never recovered, dying a few days after he was brought to the hospital. Villa del Sol recently changed its name to Hawkeye Care Center Marshalltown. Doug Johnson, president of the home’s parent company, Hawkeye Care Centers, said by e-mail, “We adhere to privacy rules and practices and do not comment on litigated matters.” Coumadin’s roots go back to the 1940s, when scientists at a nonprofit affiliated with the University of Wisconsin at Madison — the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation — came up with a rat-and-mouse killer called warfarin, a play off the nonprofit’s initials. It was derived from a chemical in spoiled sweet clover that had caused cattle to bleed to death after dehorning, castration and other procedures. The substance disrupted the clotting process, so that animals hemorrhaged internally and died. In the 1950s, drugmaker Endo Laboratories began selling warfarin for human use under the brand name Coumadin. It is in a category of drugs known as anticoagulants. An early user was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was prescribed the medication after having a heart attack. Coumadin was a breakthrough for patients with an array of heart troubles associated with blood clots. These include abnormal heart rhythms, along with pulmonary embolisms and deep-vein thrombosis. But the drug interacts badly with certain foods and medications, particularly antibiotics, and it requires regular blood tests to ensure it’s working as intended. The test measures the time it takes for blood plasma to clot. In Medicare’s prescription drug program, known as Part D, 2.4 million seniors and disabled people filled at least one prescription for warfarin, the generic of Coumadin, in 2013, making it one of the most-used drugs. About 280,000 were prescribed brand-name versions, Coumadin and Jantoven. Many people, including health inspectors, continue to call the generic versions Coumadin because it is so well known. About 1 in 6 of the nation’s 1.3 million nursing home residents take an anticoagulant, according to federal data from earlier this year; the majority are believed to be on Coumadin or its generic. Newer anticoagulants, including Eliquis, Pradaxa and Xarelto, have entered the market in recent years and, in some ways, are easier to use than Coumadin. Patients taking these drugs don’t need regular blood tests and don’t have to avoid certain foods. But unlike Coumadin, the effects of which can be reversed with vitamin K, there currently is no antidote if patients taking the newer drugs begin bleeding uncontrollably. Some doctors also are reluctant to use the new drugs on seniors, particularly those with multiple health problems, because they carry their own risks, including gastrointestinal bleeding. Coumadin is tricky to manage even for otherwise healthy patients who don’t live in nursing homes. A study published last year by the lab company Quest Diagnostics found that patients taking Coumadin or its generic had lab results showing that the drugs had the desired effect only 54 percent of the time. A 2011 report in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the drug accounted for some 33,000 emergency hospitalizations among the elderly from 2007 to 2009, more than twice as many as the next-highest drug, insulin. The study did not look exclusively at nursing home residents. Given Coumadin’s challenges — and the coordination required among doctors, nurses, pharmacists and laboratories — nursing homes are the “perfect setup for bad things happening,” said  Jerry Gurwitz, chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Since the 1990s, when he first wrote about the problems of Coumadin in nursing homes, “very little, unfortunately, has changed,” he said. Federal inspection reports repeatedly cite the same types of problems: patients not getting the drug as ordered, or given the wrong doses, or given without a doctor’s order. A Texas nursing home resident received Coumadin for 34 days “without a physician order or adequate monitoring.” Blood was pooling in his mouth when he was sent to the hospital. A patient at a Minnesota home needed three surgeries for a blood clot in the left leg after not receiving 17 doses of the medication. Failure to monitor the drug can lead to dangerous side effects. At a North Carolina home, a patient on Coumadin wound up in the hospital after no clotting tests were done for a month. An internal review found that a nurse “mistakenly put the February labs on the wrong month.” Sometimes, the tests were done, but nursing homes didn’t alert doctors when the results were abnormal. At a Maine nursing home, a doctor wasn’t told when lab results showed a resident’s blood took too long to clot. Days later, when staff assisted the resident to the bathroom, the resident passed out and had no heartbeat. It is unclear if the resident survived. In several cases, patients taking Coumadin fell, and nursing homes were cited for not doing enough afterward to ensure their safety. In Arkansas, a resident on the drug fell and hit his head during exercise class. A nurse said she didn’t call his doctor because the doctor “didn’t like to be called at night unless it was an emergency.” The resident died from the consequences of massive bleeding in the brain. Most patients who are taking Coumadin need it, experts agree. But problems with monitoring occur even at facilities trying to be vigilant. A report published last year in The Consultant Pharmacist journal found that 12 New York nursing homes given tools to improve how they handled patients on Coumadin — including staff education programs — largely failed to improve their management of the drug. “Improvements were not seen despite active intervention,” the report’s authors wrote. “If long-term care facilities are unable to voluntarily implement necessary improvements, then regulatory changes may be necessary to assure patient safety regarding anticoagulant use.” David Gifford, senior vice president of quality and regulatory affairs at the American Health Care Association, said Coumadin errors can’t be viewed in isolation. “Those that approach one area at a time, they’re chasing their tail and they’re not going to see improvements,” he said. “This week, the soup du jour is Coumadin errors . . . then next week, it’s insulin errors.” The association recently announced a quality initiative aimed at, among other things, reducing “unintended health care outcomes” — a broad category that covers various types of errors, including those involving medication. Some long-term care associations say it would be better for CMS to work with the nursing home industry to change its practices rather than to take each incident in isolation, using citations and other sanctions to bring homes in line. Another concern is not to discourage doctors from prescribing Coumadin. “It may be distorting a little bit to look at the immediate jeopardy outcomes [cited by regulators] without looking at the overall population that’s on it and needs to be on it,” said Cheryl Phillips, senior vice president of public policy and advocacy at LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit senior service organizations. “In fact, to not put people on blood thinners is a huge risk and in many cases malpractice.” Peters, a retired factory worker, moved into Villa del Sol in 2011 with his wife of more than 60 years, Arleta, who had fallen and could no longer walk on her own. In September 2013, during a week-long hospital stay, Peters was diagnosed with a variety of abnormal heart rhythms and sent back to the nursing home on Coumadin, the government’s inspection report said. Both the hospital and Peters’s doctor left instructions for the nursing home to give him a particular test to assess his clotting rate. But it was never done. Instead, the staff gave him a different test intended for patients taking heparin, another blood thinner. One nurse told inspectors that “it never occurred to her to look to see if the blood work was for what the physician ordered.” Another said “it never occurred to her that this resident was on Coumadin” and needed his blood monitored, according to the government report. In the first two weeks of October, staff members made several notes in Peters’s chart about bruises on his body. Several entries mentioned scattered bruising; one noted a large bruise on the right abdomen that was purple in the center, green and yellow on the outside. The nurses decided among themselves that the bruises must have been from the lift they used to transfer him, the inspection report said. Peters was taken to the emergency room after midnight on Oct. 15, 2013, because of the bleeding from his gums. There, a quick test showed that his blood took so long to clot that he might never stop bleeding on his own — a result his doctor told inspectors she’d never seen before. The doctor later told an inspector that Peters’s bruises were so “horrible” she asked the hospital to take pictures of them. (Photos were taken, said Jeffrey Pitman, an attorney for Peters’s family.) “They had to have noticed the bruises, and why didn’t they do something about it?” said Finch, Peters’s daughter. At the hospital, doctors gave Peters vitamin K to try to counteract the Coumadin. He grew confused, agitated, almost belligerent. He had trouble breathing. “It just got to a point where things didn’t get any better,” said Finch, 59. “I asked his doctor: ‘What really is going on here? Do we have any hope of getting Dad back?’ [The doctor] said, ‘You know he’s pretty weak.’ ” As hopes for Peters faded, his wife, too, became ill and was taken to the same hospital. Peters’s family decided to move him to his wife’s room so they could be together in his final hours. When Peters was wheeled into the room, he was “pretty much unresponsive,” inspectors wrote. “However, when they put [his] spouse’s hands in [his], the resident woke up and was able to talk.” He died the next morning; Arleta, three weeks later. “When Dad passed away, she quit,” Finch said. “She just broke down and she screamed, ‘I am so mad at him, he didn’t take me with him.’ ” Ornstein is a senior reporter at ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization in New York. Nursing home records can be found on ProPublica’s Web site at projects.propublica.org/nursing-homes.

Mother blasts photo of officer smiling, giving thumbs-up next to her son’s dead body

The photograph, published last week by a television station, immediately drew a firestorm of criticisms on social media. “As a momma, this breaks my heart. I cannot imagine seeing this from the people that are PAID to protect and serve,” one Facebook user wrote. Another called it “sickening,” while others pointed at some racial undertones. The photo shows a white police officer smiling as he bends over beside a black man’s dead body. Wearing latex gloves, he gives a thumbs-up with his right hand and holds the man’s limp arm in the other. The name of the officer from the North County Police Cooperative in Missouri has not been released. The deceased man is 28-year-old Omar Rahman, who was found dead last August in a home in St. Louis County. The photo has prompted an internal investigation by police officials and a likely lawsuit from Rahman’s mother, Kimberly Stanton. She found out about the picture after a reporter, who was tipped off about the photo shortly after Rahman’s death, showed it to her. Stanton said the officer in the photo, the person holding the camera and anyone else who may have been in that room should be held accountable for their actions. “I want them punished for what they’d done,” Stanton told The Washington Post. “Because my child, he couldn’t do anything. He was helpless. He was gone.” Police Chief Timothy Swope told The Post that the officer was positioning Rahman’s body “to do proper crime scene investigation” and to check for any signs of trauma. “That’s exactly what we were doing,” Swope said. “There’s no malice there.” He acknowledged that the officer “may have used very poor judgment” for making a thumbs- up, saying the officer “should be more thoughtful of how that represents.” “We don’t condone that,” Swope said. He declined to comment about the internal investigation, saying he cannot discuss disciplinary matters. Stanton’s attorney, Antonio Romanucci, said he plans to file a lawsuit alleging negligent infliction of emotional distress within the next two weeks. “Clearly, this is a blatant example of disregard for human life,” Romanucci said. “When you take a photograph like that, the expectation is it will be seen by other individuals. They knew this photograph could’ve been seen by his mother. . . . The smile that is on that officer’s face as he’s handling this human body is disturbing. I’m disgusted by it.” Romanucci said he is seeking several records from the police officials, including memory cards used with the camera and who has used it within the past two to four years. He said that he does not think the photograph is an isolated incident and that there could be similar photos taken in the past. He also said he believes the incident was racially motivated. Swope said that was not the case, adding that the police department reflects the demographics of the communities it patrols. About 60 percent of the police force are African Americans, he said. So are nine of 12 supervisors, including the assistant police chief.   The story has since prompted a simmering legal dispute between the TV station and the police department.  “If KMOV is unwilling to cooperate with the NCPC, it may have no choice but to pursue other enforcement remedies available to it,” Lynette Petruska wrote. Petruska didn’t return a call and answer an email from The Post.  “I urge you do some further research before you continue threatening KMOV-TV,” the attorney wrote.  She also said that the photograph is part of a criminal investigation and is, therefore, considered private under Missouri’s open records law. She reiterated that the picture was stolen and said the police department has to investigate the theft. The picture has prompted several questions on social media about the officer’s actions. “Can we as humans be that insensitive?” wrote one Facebook user. Some drew comparisons to the controversial photos at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Some photos from the prison showed soldiers posing over a detainee’s body, smiling with their thumbs up.