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The US government has banned an electric shock machine that is used to zap children and young adults with special needs in a school outside Boston – the only institution in the world known to practice the controversial punishment “treatment”. Sanders shifts focus to Michigan as Warren drops out – as it happened Read more The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has taken the extremely rare move of imposing a total ban on the production and use of the electric shock machines, known as electrical stimulation devices. It said the ban – only the third such comprehensive prohibition of...

KUWAIT CITY -- Kuwaiti prosecutors have drawn up a list of charges against ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and hundreds of his officials for alleged war crimes committed during Iraq's occupation of the Gulf nation, the prosecutor general said Wednesday. The list will be delivered to the Iraqi court that will try Saddam and other former regime members and the new charges will be added to the existing allegations, prosecutor general Hamed al-Othman said, according to the state-owned Kuwait News Agency. Saddam, who was captured in December 2003, already faces charges in Iraq that include killing rival politicians during his...

Institute uses punishment machine to discipline severely autistic and emotionally disturbed children by giving them electric shocks The founder of a controversial school that treats severely autistic and emotionally disturbed children by shocking them into submission with the use of electrodes has been forced to quit the institution and serve five years' probation. Matthew Israel, a Harvard-trained psychologist, has created a treatment that is unique to the US and possibly the world. The Judge Rotenberg Center, just outside Boston, disciplines its students using a punishment machine that Israel invented called the GED, which gives a two-second electric shock to the...

GREER, S.C. -- Police in South Carolina say a man is recovering in a Georgia burn center after he chased a rabbit into a power station and was shocked with thousands of volts of electricity. Hospital spokeswoman Olena Scarboro said Thursday that Joseph Asher of Greenville is in critical condition at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Ga. Asher had been listed as a missing person before he walked into a Greer hospital nude and covered with burns. He was later transferred to the Georgia center.

School To Continue Electric Shock Officials Give School One Year Extension BOSTON -- State officials are allowing a controversial special education school to use electric shock treatments on students for another year... The decision comes after an August incident in which two emotionally disturbed students were wrongly given dozens of shocks after a prank call from a person posing as a supervisor... ...six staffers at a Stoughton residence run by the Canton-based school had reason to doubt the orders to administer the shocks, but did nothing to stop it... ...the teens, ages 16 and 19, were awakened in the middle...

Court rules out stun-belt use Associated Press April 6, 2002 MIAMI -- Declaring that courtroom security has its limits, a federal appeals court ordered a new trial for a bank-robbery suspect who was forced to wear a stun belt during his trial. The three-judge panel was worried that defendants wearing a device capable of delivering "incapacitating pain" would become so preoccupied with potential electrical shocks that they would be unable to help their lawyers. Amnesty International has criticized use of remote-controlled stun belts in courts and jails as cruel and unusual punishment. Los Angeles paid a $275,000 settlement and restricted...