Story here. Excerpt:

'LOS ANGELES – A judge ordered a woman to stand trial on a charge of slashing Leonardo DiCaprio's face with glass during a 2005 party.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Edmund Willcox Clarke ordered Aretha Wilson to face one count of assault with a deadly weapon. The charge includes an allegation that Wilson, 40, caused great bodily injury.

The details and extent of DiCaprio's injuries were not made public, although the judge, who has reviewed photos of the injuries to the actor's ear and neck, said Thursday that "this would not be an injury that would be called trivial or moderate, in my view."'

Story here.

'A man recognised with one of the nation's highest honours for his work with divorced and separated fathers is now living on the street.

Tony Miller, the founder of Dads in Distress, will accept his Order of Australia medal in Sydney today.

He says he has been sleeping in his car on the New South Wales mid-north coast because he lost his housing and is unable to work due to stress.

Mr Miller says there an urgent need nationally for refuges for homeless men.

"It's not about me," he said.

"The reality is there's a lot of blokes out there, a lot of people out there that are homeless and I'm asking the government to look at that situation.

"Where are the men's shelters in this country? There's women's shelters all over the country and rightly so, but there are no men's shelters in this country. Where does a bloke go when it all hits the roof?"'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Retail giant Wal-Mart on Wednesday asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling allowing more than 1.5 million women employees of the company to join together in what would become the largest class-action employment lawsuit in history.

The lawsuit filed by six women in 2001 charges that Wal-Mart engaged in gender discrimination by paying female employees less than men, and in passing women over for promotions that went to men. It seeks billions of dollars in damages.

Gender discrimination lawsuits are usually litigated one employee at a time. But courts may allow plaintiffs who were harmed under similar circumstances by the same person or company to join together in a common class of litigants to pursue their lawsuit.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'DARMSTADT, Germany — A German girl band singer broke down in tears Thursday as a court found her guilty of causing bodily harm to her ex-boyfriend by having unprotected sex with him despite knowing she was infected with HIV. She was not sentenced to jail time.

Nadja Benaissa, a member of No Angels, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and 300 hours community service after she was convicted in a Darmstadt administrative court. She faced a possible ten years behind bars.

The court ruled that the 28-year-old had infected a former boyfriend with the virus that causes AIDS by having unprotected sex with him.

"We have to remember that she was a lot younger than she is now, she had a turbulent life, and the acts were committed a long time ago," he told Associated Press Television News. "I think a suspended sentence is justified."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Research from the Center for Work-Life Policy shows mid-level, professional women need powerful, senior executives to help promote them to the next level of management.

The problem is this: More often than not, superiors are males who are married.

Enter, sex.

In that same CWLP study, 34% of executive women claim they know a female colleague who has had an affair with a boss. Furthermore, 15% of women at the director level or above admitted to having affairs themselves.

And worse, 37% claim the action was rewarded: they said that women involved in affairs received a career boost as a result.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Boston jury on Feb. 16 convicted a woman for setting a fire that killed her girlfriend’s two young daughters nearly two years ago.

The Suffolk County jury convicted Nicole Chuminski on two counts of second-degree murder in connection with Acia and Sophia Johnson’s deaths. The panel also convicted her of arson for setting the blaze and two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (smoke and flames) for injuries the girls’ mother and brother sustained.

A judge will sentence Chuminski on Feb. 18. She faces a mandatory life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years on each murder conviction.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Massachusetts murder has once again focused attention on LGBT domestic violence.

A Brockton woman walked into that city’s police station on Aug. 9 and allegedly confessed to killing her ex-girlfriend’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor because the woman allegedly had come between the couple.

Eunice Field, 54, told police she killed Lorraine Wachsman, 62, at Wachsman’s Bridgewater condo, according to Assistant District Attorney Thomas Flanagan.

Field left a note for her ex-girlfriend, Renee Williams, in the Brockton apartment they shared stating that she killed Wachsman, a retired school teacher, "for taking away the love of her life", Flanagan said at Field’s Aug. 10 arraignment. The prosecutor said Field stabbed Wachsman three or four times in the back and neck with a serrated knife.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A strange turn of events saw the Crown stay a sexual assault charge following four days of trial and after the accused man had waited 26 months in custody for a judge and jury to hear his case.

James Ferris, 36, walked out of Superior Court a free man yesterday when the prosecutor told Justice Kim Carpenter-Gunn the Crown had re-evaluated its case in light of new developments and no longer believed there was a reasonable prospect of obtaining a conviction.

The rape trial went off the rails earlier yesterday when Ferris's lawyer, Peter Boushy, told the judge what he'd learned from a colleague in the legal community about the 27-year-old female complainant.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'BRENTWOOD – Kristin Ruggiero will spend 7 to 14 years in state prison for what police say was part of a years-long ploy to use the criminal justice system against her ex-husband, who was thrown in jail and nearly lost his career during a bitter divorce.

Judge Kenneth McHugh said Ruggiero's attempt to set up her ex-husband and use the legal system as a weapon was unlike any other case he has seen.

"There's a lot of people, usually women, who have been subjected to abuse by their significant others," McHugh said, during Ruggiero's sentencing yesterday. "As a result of her actions, their cases, their safety, their security has been damaged. The web for this is much greater than what has just happened to Mr. Ruggiero."
...
While Jeffrey Ruggiero was being investigated, his ex-wife called him at all hours and taunted him over the phone, according to court testimony.

Article here. Excerpt:

'CA Legislature Passes F & F's SB 1482 to Protect Alimony Obligors from Abuses

Many alimony obligors assert that their exes are voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, or are artificially lowering their earning capacity because they'd rather keep collecting large amounts of tax-free alimony.

Senator Rod Wright's (D-Los Angeles) SB 1482, which recently passed the full California legislature and is now on Governor Schwarzenegger's desk for signature, helps solve this problem. The bill allows obligors to request vocational examinations for the recipients of alimony payments, and requires judges to follow the examiner's estimate of the recipient's earning ability when calculating alimony.'

NPR has a tendency to subtly favor women over men. I remember a story they ran about the current recession -- which has affected men more heavily than women -- where they still tied it into a woman's story somehow.

Today, I saw a piece they ran on autism here. It's a decent piece overall, and autism unquestionably affects women. However, autism affects males at least 4 to 5 times more often than females. Yet, NPR chose to put a female face on autism.

Also, in this piece it's clear NPR spoke with researcher Simon Baron-Cohen. However, NPR never mentioned one of his main theories regarding autism -- that it can be viewed as a sort of "excessive maleness" in the brain. Baron-Cohen even theorizes that a possible cause of autism may be excessive testosterone exposure while in the womb.

There is no mention of any of this in this story. There is no indication that autism is a profoundly male problem.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Chelsea, who until recently honed her pitching arm in Plant City, Florida's Little League program, told CNN Sunday that she feels "really honored and blessed" to be recognized on a national level at such an early age.

In addition to her Hall of Fame achievement, Chelsea was also recently featured on ESPN's "E:60" series.

Chelsea, who says she has been pitching since she was 7 years old, boasts a fastball in the mid-60s (miles per hour) and a baffling knuckleball that has been known to make her male opponents shed a tear.

"Yeah, when I strike them out with the knuckleball, sometimes they'll throw their helmets and start crying," she laughs. "It's just really funny to watch."

Reporter giggles happily at around 1:20.

A study discussed here, while the study link is here (.pdf file). Excerpt:

'Over the last twenty-five years, leading sociologists have repeatedly found that men and women commit violence at similar rates.
...
...the literature consistently suggests that only men commit domestic violence. Either explicitly, or more often implicitly, through the failure to address the subject in any objective manner, female violence is denied, defended and minimized.

I assert in Part III that today’s refusal to react is a product of the feminist control over the issue of domestic violence. Female violence presents both a threat to feminist theory as well as to the practice of domestic violence law. Notwithstanding such concerns, today’s myopic understanding of domestic violence has serious implications.'

From Jeremy S.:

Domestic Violence- An Introduction

Part 1 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO5kLprp3Qg

Part 2 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu7z_v2NNPI

Part 3 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNf4hmWBtrk

These are must-see clips.

Story here. They died for her right to piss on their graves and then have sex in public nearby? Not so sure about that. Excerpt:

'A hunt was on Sunday for the woman branded "Britain's most disgusting person" for urinating on a war memorial after she fled court following a public shaming by elderly veterans.

An arrest warrant is out for Wendy Lewis, 32, who was given a "guard of dishonour" by angry veterans when she appeared at Blackpool Magistrates Court.

She was caught on security cameras relieving herself on the seaside town's Cenotaph, before performing a sex act on a man nearby.

Lewis was found guilty of outraging public decency and was due to be sentenced Friday.

But after turning up 40 minutes late at court, she vanished before her case began.

Veterans wearing smart uniforms and campaign medals lined up outside to give her a slow handclap. They shouted "Disgusting!" at she went inside.