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A woman has been arrested on suspicion of wilful neglect after a newborn baby was found in a toilet at a Sports Direct warehouse. The baby boy was discovered on New Years' Day and was rushed to hospital where he is in a serious but stable condition. The boy's mother, who is believed to be from Eastern Europe and in her 20s, was also treated in hospital. Paramedics who attended the call at the retailer's UK distribution centre, in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, have passed the incident to police. It is not known who found the baby, who is now being cared...

It’s World Toilet Day today — not as much a celebration of the porcelain throne as a call to action to help the 2.5 billion people worldwide who do not have access to a basic, clean toilet. One in three people around the world do not have access to proper sanitation, according to the United Nations, putting many of them at risk of diseases such as diarrhea, cholera and typhus, and a host of other health problems. About 2 million people — many of them young children — die every year from diarrheal diseases, according to the World Health Organization....

Obviously not the only way to skin this cat, but one of the more accurate ways.h/t iOwnTheWorld for inspiring this post with their post...

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which represents 300 wastewater agencies, says it has been hearing complaints about wipes from sewer systems big and small for about the past four years. That roughly coincides with the ramped-up marketing of the “flushable cleansing cloths” as a cleaner, fresher option than dry toilet paper alone. A trade group says wipes are a $6 billion-a-year industry, with sales of consumer wipes increasing nearly 5 percent a year since 2007 and expected to grow at a rate of 6 percent annually for the next five years. ... Manufacturers insist wipes labeled flushable aren’t...

LOWER SAUCON TWP., Pa. - A routine day took a tragic turn at restaurant in Northampton County when employees found what some described as a fetus in a bathroom. The discovery was made around 10 a.m. Monday at Starters Pub in Lower Saucon Twp., Northampton Co. Starters Pub owner David Rank fought back tears as he talked about the discovery, which was made during a routine cleaning of a bathroom. "Having a problem flushing the toilet," he said. "Inside the [toilet] tank was a fetus." Police processed the scene, removing items from the restaurant, playing close attention to the rear...

Security experts are warning us all over the place. The digital life used to be a cubicle and workstation. Now it's well, life. Everything is connected, and Internet is everywhere. That means criminal intruders along with pranksters can also broaden their reach from computer malware to home connections such as smart appliances and meters. Last week, there was one more proof that this was so: According to a warning by the information security firm Trustwave, a Satis-brand toilet by the Japan-based company Lixil can be controlled remotely by an Android app. According to Daniel Crowley a managing consultant with information...

A luxury toilet controlled by a smartphone app is vulnerable to attack, according to security experts... the Pin code for every model is hardwired to be four zeros (0000), meaning that it cannot be reset... An attacker could ... cause the unit to unexpectedly open/close the lid, activate bidet or air-dry functions, causing discomfort or distress to [the] user."

LOS ANGELES - Kevin Clash, the Elmo puppeteer who resigned amid allegations that he sexually abused underage boys, won three Daytime Emmy Awards for his work on "Sesame Street." Clash won as outstanding performer in a children's series at the creative arts ceremony held Friday night. He shared trophies for outstanding pre-school children's series and directing in a children's series.

On Tuesday night, a central Pennsylvania teenager gave birth in her high school bathroom to a baby who was approximately 27-29 weeks old. She initially tried to flush the baby’s body down the toilet and, when that didn’t work, she placed the baby in the trash can and left. Police say Cherlie LaFleur, a 19-year-old McCaskey East High School student, is responsible. She has been charged with concealing the death of a child. From a local news report on what happened: Officer David Shell after they reviewed school surveillance footage and conducted extensive interviews at the school where the male...

Found this weird photo randomly, and the captions just came out...         

Commode, can, the Oval Office, and the Super Bowl. Throne, pot, loo, John. The royal flush. The toilet, in its illustrious career, has earned a variety of affectionate nicknames. But variety extends well beyond just puns when talking about those porcelain perches: Eco- friendly options, from low-flow to entirely waterless toilets, are an important part of bringing water sustainability into homes. Toilet flushes account for about 30 percent of in-home water usage, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Toilets consume more water in American homes than any other individual type of appliance, such as showers, dishwashers, and washing machines. And...

One in 29 French people don't take a shower even once a WEEK - while 13% do not wash their hands after using the toilet One in 29 people in France only take a shower once a week, according to a new survey. The study into French washing habits also found that one in five do not shower every day. On the other end of the scale, 11.5 per cent of French men and women shower several times daily. Hand washing, too, is ‘not always a priority for the French,’ said pollster BVA, which was commissioned to carry out the...

Turns out it was a crappy idea. The principal of a Hell’s Kitchen HS that used to be among the most violent in the city had students using wooden toilet plungers as hall passes this school year. The half-baked scheme by the second-year principal at the HS of Graphic Communication Arts that placed 2-foot-long plungers in every classroom last month immediately plunged the school into chaos, a source said. “The kids were using the plungers to whack each other, to pop ceiling tiles in the bathroom,” the source said. “They were sticking it in the toilet and then flinging them...

Potty training is often considered an unpleasant task facing parents, but under current social norms, it has to be done. And like most bathroom activities, it’s usually a private event. One mother of twins in Utah, though, took her training public, placing her daughters on potty training toilets — you know, the plastic seats with a little toilet lid — at a public restaurant’s table. KSL-TV reports Kimberly Decker, who was in the restaurant at the time, snapped a photo of this disturbing scene and posted it on Facebook.

Excerpts WashMedia-South Asia — a representative group of journalists from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, focusing on water, sanitation and hygiene issues — has recently highlighted that approximately a fourth of the Pakistani population still defacates in the open. Lack of adequate sanitation also spells bad news for eradicating polio in the country, given that this debilitating disease spreads primarily through the fecal-oral route. It is not surprising to note an evident resurgence of the virus in the slums in Quetta and Karachi.

A new and unusual land speed record has been set in Australia - for the fastest motorised toilet. Canadian stunt woman Jolene Van Vugt recorded a speed of 75km/h (46mph) at in Sydney, beating the previous record by 7km/h. "I flew into Australia yesterday and came out here to jump straight on the toilet," she said. "That was so fun and I'm stoked to get the record." In order to win the title she was timed over 100m (330ft) in both directions.

The US Navy's newest and mightiest nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS George H W Bush*, has been plagued by continual failures in its lavatories, according to reports. Sailors have been forced into increasingly desperate measures to relieve themselves. The Navy Times, following up initial stories of the problems appearing on blogs, quotes members of the 5,000-strong ship's complement as stating that at times there hasn't been a single working head – as lavs are known at sea – anywhere aboard the entire mighty hundred-thousand-ton warship. Reportedly the Bush is fitted with no less than 423 thrones, but it appears...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (CBS Charlotte) – One man made sure a Charlotte motel was going to pay for him running out of toilet paper. Upset about the lack of toilet paper that was available in his room, a man destroyed $2,090 worth of hotel property on Monday, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police report. The identity of the man remains unknown. The incident, which happened at the Charlottetown Manor, happened around 10 a.m. Monday. According to the report, the man grew irate after learning he didn’t have toilet paper and proceeded to walk upstairs to a vacant room that was being renovated....

NEW YORK, - An iPhone app developed in New York aims to use social networking to help people find friendly homeowners with available bathrooms when nature calls. The developers of the "CLOO" app, which is named for the words "community" and "loo," said on their Web site it allows urban dwellers to set up networks of friends and friends of friends to turn "any private bathroom into a public bathroom," the New York Daily News reported Thursday. Bathroom seekers can pay a small fee to the homeowner online for access to the bathroom, the Web site states. The company said...