Link to article here. Excerpt:

'A West Australian woman has been banned from ever owning a pet after she pleaded guilty to killing a puppy by repeatedly throwing it against a wall.

Tracie Marie Beal was sentenced in Mandurah Magistrates Court on Thursday for ill treating an animal.

The 28-year-old Mandurah woman had admitted that on the night of January 19 she was given a small, six-week old puppy by a friend.

Beal then took the puppy home and after a short time she became upset and repeatedly threw it against a wall, killing the animal.'

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'An Adelaide woman killed her two-year-old son by standing on his mouth and chest because she believed he had been taken over by an evil spirit, a court has heard.

Rachael Cherie Hadley, 23, was found not guilty in the South Australian Supreme Court on Friday of murdering the boy, with Justice Kevin Duggan finding her mentally incompetent at the time.

Duke Hadley died from asphyxiation with Justice Duggan saying his mother believed she was saving him, rather than hurting him.
...
"She believed she was expelling an evil spirit from him and that she expected him to recover," the judge said in summarising two medical reports.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'While men alone are certainly not the solution, this change cannot come without large numbers of men and women working together. We can "pave to the way" to gaining the support of larger numbers by removing barriers that traditionally keep men from engaging in a topic which touches us all.

This conference will broaden the ways our movement seeks to engage those who identify as male in ways that do not continue to marginalize across gender, sexual orientation, race and class, while challenging us all to explore the intersections of oppression and violence.

We will explore ways to include those beyond the "choir" across the professional experience in the field, connecting the secular movement with work faith communities are doing, and by hearing about the work and experiences of young people becoming the new generation of leaders.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yesterday my students and I discussed Mary Daly, the Boston College professor, feminist theologian, and professional provocateur who died earlier this year. Judging by our discussion, feminist theology has died too, and feminism with it.

Article here. Excerpt:

'While it's thrilling that there is also a movement of young men all who want to tear down the patriarchy right alongside women, it's dangerous that they don't have a clear picture of what they want to build in its place. At the conference, one young man spoke up against the notion of a new "feminist masculinity," explaining that he feared it would be one more box that young men felt they had to fit into. There's a lot of validity to his argument, but I fear that the old adage is true: We can't be what we can't see. Models help us try on various identities and find one that is truly authentic. The more publicly feminist-aligned men we have, the more opportunities the next generation has to find a positive, masculine gender identity that actually fits.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Paycheck Fairness Act is poised to see action, following the re-introduction of the bill (S. 3772) in September by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). The bill is scheduled for a lame-duck (post-election) vote in the Senate on November 17, 2010. The Senate will vote on whether to debate the bill. This is known as a cloture vote and 60 votes are needed to move the bill forward. With the balance of power in the Senate teetering, the election on November 2 of three new Senators (from West Virginia, Illinois and Delaware), who may be seated for the lame-duck session, could affect the cloture vote.

If passed, the Act would expose employers to far greater liability than now exists. Employers must act now to make sure their concerns are heard.
...

The proposal would fundamentally change the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA). The EPA prohibits employers from paying women less than men for performing the same or “substantially equal” work in the same “establishment,” except for specific reasons.

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'A mother who gave her five-year-old alcohol cheered as he downed shots of home-brewed liquor, a Victorian court has heard.

Kylie Eastwood, 34, is accused of giving her son several shots of home-made grappa, which tests later found had a 44 percent alcohol content, the Herald Sun reported.

The father of the five-year-old said he confiscated the bottle when he found his son drinking from it with a shot glass at their home in the town of Moe, east of Melbourne.'

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'The KwaZulu-Natal government will soon start circumcising prisoners to reduce HIV infections among inmates, says health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo.

“We will soon start circumcising prisoners in our campaign to reduce infections,” he said.

A total of 10, 229 male circumcisions had been done since the provincial government started the male medical circumcision programme in April this year.

Dhlomo said the department had a target of 2.5 million circumcisions by June 2014. Previously circumcisions among Zulus were conducted traditionally. With the permission from King Goodwill Zwelithini, government would be conducting them medically.
...
Dhlomo said they would also circumcise priests.

“We believe that if we circumcise them, they will encourage members of their congregations to test.” '

Via email:

Are you aware of a growing number of conservative and liberal groups that are saying our nation’s laws are over-criminalizing America? Groups like the Heritage Foundation, ABA, ACLU, Cato Institute, National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and others are saying we have gone way overboard in criminalizing everyday conduct, like whether you can arrest an 8-year-old boy for playing ‘cops and robbers’ at school.

In support of next week’s campaign to “Protect Victims: Stop Mandatory Arrest,” SAVE has just released a new Policy Briefing that summarizes the issue: http://www.saveservices.org/how-do-dv-laws-contribute-to-over-criminalization/. (Also see http://www.saveservices.org/how-do-we-know-that-our-approach-to-domestic-violence-has-become-over-criminalized/)

Feel free to share with lawmakers and others.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A 16-year-old disabled boy doing Grade Four at a primary school in the Manzini region, has become a sex slave to one of the female teachers who also acts as his benefactor, it has been revealed.

This situation is now stressing the boy’s mother, who had never suspected the teacher’s intentions when she offered to help the child with fees and other needs.

As a result, she is said to be looking for a way to save the teenager from further damage, especially because he has already suffered from venereal diseases. The other problem is that the boy’s peers think of him as very successful because he is able to share gifts with them.

Sources within the area say the young man stays with the mother in the village nearby, but friends always help him out in the evenings to spend quality time with the teacher.

The boy is presently complaining of sharp pains in the spinal cord, a suspicion that this could be a development from his previous encounters with venereal diseases.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Kate Woodhead made her claim against Paul Joseph after he told her their 18-month relationship was over, Guildford Crown Court was told.

The 31-year-old, from Ripley, told police Mr Joseph had drugged her before attacking her.

She then stole belongings of his worth about £25,000.

Judge Neil Stewart said he had no option but to send her to prison.
...

The court heard Woodhead, who ran livery stables in Surrey, went to police with a friend in April 2009 and made the false allegation.

She then stole property including an expensive stereo and art prints, and transferred ownership of her ex-boyfriend's sports car and motorcycle to her own name.

Mr Joseph was arrested and questioned by police but the rape allegation was dropped when officers became suspicious that Woodhead had made it up.

Judge Stewart said the offences were part of a "deliberate and vindictive" campaign waged against Mr Joseph.

He added: "These offences therefore must be seen as devious and manipulative and you are wholly unrepentant."'

Link to article here. In full:

'A South Australian schoolboy has reportedly been hung from a pole by his neck in an apparent incident of bullying.

The Adelaide Advertiser says the education department is looking into the event at Para Hills High School in Adelaide's north which took place in September when the 13-year-old was tethered to a pole by three other students by a velcro strap around his neck.

The boy's mother's told the paper that the school didn't tell her about the incident which caused her son to lose his voice for two weeks.'

Follow-up article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'When historians write about the great recession of 2007–08, they may very well have a new name for it: the Mancession. It’s a term already being bandied about in the popular media as business writers chronicle the sad tales of the main victims of the recession: men. They were disproportionately represented in the industries hit hardest during the downturn, including financial services, manufacturing, and construction, and their higher salaries often put them first in the line of fire. Men are the victims of two thirds of the 11 million jobs lost since the recession began in 2007; in August 2009, when U.S. male unemployment stood at 11 percent (versus 8.3 for women), it was the largest unemployment gender gap in the postwar era. Those numbers have improved, a bit—new unemployment figures show men at 9.9 percent and women at 7.8—but not enough to stop Larry Summers, the president’s top economic adviser, from speculating recently, that “when the economy recovers, five years from now, one in six men who are 25 to 54 will not be working.”

Story here. Excerpt:

'Renee Szablewski is a good, churchgoing Catholic. She wants her 4-year-old son, Jack, to grow up to be one, too.

That’s why Szablewski was so upset last month with St. Dominic, a parochial school in Brick, N.J. The principal at the school barred Jack from his pre-kindergarten class because his hair was too long.

“That’s Christian? That’s Catholic?” Szablewski fumed during a telephone interview with TODAYshow.com Monday.

Jack’s early lesson in how tough life can be actually began when at the tender age of 16 months, his grandfather died of lung cancer. Renee Szablewski decided to honor her father by letting her son’s hair grow out so that he could donate his locks to be used in wigs for children who lose their own hair to cancer radiation treatment.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, President Barack Obama introduced his administration’s new “government-wide” domestic violence initiative this week.

Missing from his words about a renewed focus on victims, however, was half of the population: men.

When looking at violence within intimate relationships, men are often viewed primarily as perpetrators, yet this is not always the case. Martin S. Feibert, psychology professor at the University of California, Long Beach, has highlighted more than 270 scholarly investigations, empirical studies and reviews, “which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”

Equity feminist and Reason magazine contributing editor Cathy Young told The Daily Caller that while the cause was a good one, she was disappointed to see male victims excluded from the president’s equation, for just that reason.'