This is quite silly, I mean she let the kids choose the name so it's not totally her fault! They are so over the top (but then again, saying that I guess it could be considered blasphemy too...) It's just the whole situation really:

'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested
A British schoolteacher has been arrested in Sudan accused of insulting Islam's Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, said she made an "innocent mistake" by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name.

Ms Gibbons was arrested after several parents made complaints.

The charge could lead to six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine.

Officials from the British embassy in Khartoum are expected to visit Ms Gibbons in custody.

"We are in contact with the authorities here and they have visited the teacher and she is in a good condition," an embassy spokesman said.

The spokesman said the naming of the teddy happened months ago and was chosen by the children because it is a common name in the country.

"This happened in September and the parents did not have a problem with it," he said.

'Very sensitive'

The school has been closed until January for fear of reprisals.

Fellow teachers at Khartoum's Unity High School told Reuters news agency they feared for Ms Gibbons' safety after receiving reports that men had started gathering outside the police station where she was being held.

The school's director, Robert Boulos, said: "This is a very sensitive issue. We are very worried about her safety.

"This was a completely innocent mistake. Miss Gibbons would have never wanted to insult Islam."

Mr Boulos said Ms Gibbons was following a British national curriculum course designed to teach young pupils about animals and this year's topic was the bear.

Ms Gibbons, who joined the school in August, asked a seven-year-old girl to bring in her teddy bear and asked the class to pick names for it, he said.

"They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad," Mr Boulos said, adding that she then had the children vote on a name.

Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad as their favourite name.

Mr Boulos said each child was then allowed to take the bear home at weekends and told to write a diary about what they did with it.

He said the children's entries were collected in a book with a picture of the bear on the cover and a message which read, "My name is Muhammad."

Book seized

The bear itself was not marked or labelled with the name in any way, he added.

It is seen as an insult to Islam to attempt to make an image of the Prophet Muhammad.

Mr Boulos said Ms Gibbons was arrested on Sunday at her home inside the school premises after a number of parents complained to Sudan's Ministry of Education.

He said police had seized the book and asked to interview the girl who owned the bear.

The country's state-controlled Sudanese Media Centre reported that charges were being prepared "under article 125 of the criminal law" which covers insults against faith and religion.

No-one at the ministries of education or justice was available for comment.

Mr Boulos told the BBC he was confident she would not face a jail sentence.

One Muslim teacher at the independent school for Christian and Muslim children, who has a child in Ms Gibbons' class, said she had not found the project offensive.

"I know Gillian and she would never have meant it as an insult. I was just impressed that she got them to vote," the teacher said.

In Liverpool, a family spokeswoman said Ms Gibbons' grown children, John and Jessica - both believed to be in their 20s - were not commenting on her arrest.

"I have spoken with her children and they do not want to say anything and aggravate the situation over there," she said.

Rick Widdowson the headteacher of Garston Church of England Primary School, where Gillian worked for ten years, added: "We are an Anglican school and I know for a fact that Gillian would not do anything to offend followers of any faith.

"Certainly she is also very worldly wise and she is obviously aware of the sensitivities around Islam."

Cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad printed in several European newspapers sparked violent protests around the world in 2006.

Edited by adele - 27 November 2007 at 10:44

End of line for London Tube announcer after spoofs

The woman known as "the voice of the Tube" on London's underground has been sacked after criticising the network and making spoof announcements including making fun of US tourists, officials said Monday.

Emma Clarke has for the last eight years been famous as the voice warning travellers to "Mind the Gap" between the train and the platform, and to "stand clear of the closing doors."

But the 36-year-old, a professional voice-over artist, annoyed her employers with a series of light-hearted spoof announcements posted on her own website, at www.emmaclarke.com.

In one she says: "We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly."

In another she announces that the passenger pretending to read a paper but actually staring at a woman's chest should stop, since he was "not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert".

In addition Clarke, who lives in Highgate, north London, said she used to use the Tube herself but no longer does so because it is "dreadful."

A London Underground spokesman said the problem was the criticism rather than the spoofs. "Some of the spoof announcements are very funny. But Emma is a bit silly to go round sl*gging off her client's services," he said

"London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Ms Clarke are experiencing severe delays," he added, according to the London Evening Standard.

Clarke told the daily she was surprised by the decision. "I don't feel that I have been sl*gging them off -- that was never my intention. It was just a bit of a laugh," she said.

But said a Tube spokesman: "We won't be providing her with any more work. It's not because of the spoof announcements. It's because she has criticised the Underground system."

Edited by whiteghost - 27 November 2007 at 11:17

Thats a shame ! I used to love her announcements, she was the only person in London to pronounce Harrow, Hainault and Holborn with an aitch, and the T's in Tottenham Court Road, I think we should start a campaign to get her re-instated, she was only 'avin a larf !

Edited by adsdpial - 27 November 2007 at 14:51

I loved those ones!

An American man cut off his own arm with a pocket knife after it got stuck in farm machinery.

Sampson Parker, a construction supervisor in Kershaw County about 25km east of Columbia, told his grisly story on NBC's Today Show, the AP news service reported.

He got caught in a corn harvester last September and after calling for help for 90 minutes, he decided to cut his fingers off when his hand had become numb.

However, to do so, he jammed a rod into the machine which sparked a fire while he was still trapped.

After unsuccessfully trying to put out the blaze with his free hand he then cut off his arm to escape.

"I could feel the nerves as I was cutting my arm off," he told the television show.

"I just told myself, 'I'm not going to die here'.

"I just kept fighting, kept praying. "And then when I did get loose, I jumped up running. "I had blood squirting from my arm, it was pretty scary there for a while."

After getting free, Parker ran to his truck and encountered a firefighter who came to his aid.

Parker said he is doing fine now and has tried to put the ordeal behind him.

"It really wasn't the corn picker's fault. It was my fault. It was just a mistake I made," he said.

A project  to foster empathy in children and reduce bullying by putting newborn babies in classrooms is to be introduced in Wellington next year.

The Roots of Empathy programme - derived from Canada and being tested in Auckland - will begin at 10 Wellington primary schools in March.

Murray Bootten, principal of Naenae School, one of eight schools whose participation has been confirmed, said it was looking for a woman due to give birth who was willing to take part.

In the programme, aimed at pupils aged nine or 10, a mother takes her baby to one class every three weeks, under a teacher's guidance.

Children learn to interact with the infant through the year, build a relationship and watch it develop and grow.

Mr Bootten said the idea was to foster a sense of responsibility for the baby's care and develop respect for others.

"Once it's introduced to the classroom and they see it grow and eventually crawl, I think that will be quite a success.

"I would think they would become quite protective of their little baby."

The $1 million three-year trial is being partly funded by the education, health and social development ministries, and is supported by the children's commissioner. It was brought to New Zealand by the Peace Foundation.

International research has shown it reduces aggression and bullying while encouraging empathy and pro-social behaviour in participating children.

At play yesterday with three-month-old Jerome Campbell, year 4 pupil Tauroa Hodgson, 8, said he liked babies "because they're cute" and hoped to take part in next year's class.

"They're funny sometimes, when they smile at you. My cousin's got one. It makes me laugh."

Other Wellington schools to take part are Holy Cross in Miramar, Karori West, Churton Park, Johnsonville, Koraunui in Stokes Valley, Rangikura in Ascot Park and Belmont.

The Peace Foundation hopes the project will eventually run at all New Zealand primary schools.

Edited by Da' King - 27 November 2007 at 17:52

I thought they were....I was saving up for a little boy!  Just think, in a few years I'll have a free cleaner.

Oh, and before anyone decides to slam me down...I AM JOKING.

and to carry on from Adele's story

British Teacher May Go Free
28 November 2007

It's hoped that a British teacher at the centre of a big row in Sudan over naming a teddy bear may be freed soon.

Gillian Gibbons, from Liverpool, was arrested after letting her pupils name the bear Muhammad, which is the name of the founder of Islam.

It's seen as an insult to the religion of Islam to try to make an image of the Prophet Muhammad.

Sudanese officials have said she may be freed soon. People who work with the teacher say it was an innocent mistake.

A Sudanese official said: "I am pretty certain that this minute incident will be clarified very quickly and this teacher who has been helping us with the teaching of children will be safe and will be cleared."

If Ms Gibbons were to face charges for insulting Islam's Prophet, she could be punished by being sent to jail for several months, getting 40 lashes of a whip or a fine.

She was arrested after some parents of her six and seven-year-old pupils complained the teddy's name was insulting to the Islamic prophet.

Ms Gibbons had asked her class to pick names for the bear as part of a school project.

They then voted for their favourite from a list of eight names, with 20 out of the class of 23 choosing Muhammad.

Each pupil then took the bear home at weekends and wrote a diary about what they did with it.

The diary had a picture of the bear on the cover and a message which read, "My name is Muhammad", but the school said the bear was not marked with the name in any way.

I hope that she ends up al right

A passenger was forced off a Ryanair flight from Rome to Milan because she refused to move her metre-long plush crocodile which was blocking an emergency exit, airport sources have said.

The flight, delayed by the squabble between the airline flight attendant and the passenger, finally took off after she got off the plane, along with her inanimate crocodile.

Ryanair said in a statement the passenger was asked to leave for refusing repeated requests to handle her hand luggage as required under flight safety rules.

and this story reminds me of Jinn the otter (I'l post story later)

Officials in Ukraine have recaptured a crocodile which had escaped from a travelling circus six months previously and repeatedly eluded search teams.

The reptile was found basking in a pool at a thermal power station in the east of the country, where the water was warmer than the nearby sea.

"We caught the crocodile alive today," Oleksander Soldatov, a spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry said by telephone. "We are now contacting the owner so that he can come and fetch it."

The crocodile escaped from the circus in late May and was spotted several times lurking around industrial sites near the city of Mariupol, on the coast of the Sea of Azov.

Edit- Okay, to Jin the Otter, Jin is an otter that escaped from Auckland zoo (the zoo with the Sumatran Tiger STT).  She was probably the most exciting thing on the news at that time!  She escaped when a nest box was repaired, and digged under 2 walls, then ran around Auckland for about a month, while the Zoo, Police, DoC (Department of Conservation), Navy, Journalists and members of Public chased her around!
All a great luagh

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/423466/761185
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/423466/779575
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Auckland_Zoo_otter_Jin_has_been_found_alive








Edited by Da' King - 29 November 2007 at 07:29

That british Teacher has actually been sent to prison!!!!!!!! What a load of...

Mmm, It's a bit over the top really. I mean I can see where they are coming from about it maybe having been a bit thoughtless naming a bear after their major prophet and she should probably have known better, but the fact is that it was the kids who actually named the bear after a child in the class! You don't see the police/authorities jumping to punish the little boy or his parents for naming him Mohammed or the fact that he chose the name do you?!

It's a tad ridiculous really! If the parents of the children were upset they should have mentioned it to the head teacher and then it could have been quietly mentioned to the British teacher but NO, they jump straight to the police!


Edited by adele - 30 November 2007 at 15:01

Apparently it's "ok to call a child Mohammed" but nothing else, otherwise, like this case, it could be considered making an "idol" of him and this is a serious offence in Islam...