Story here. Excerpt:

'STOCKHOLM -- Swedish police say they have arrested 23 people in a nationwide raid against a child pornography ring, including 20 women.

Police spokesman Sven-Ake Petters called the raid "unique" and said he has never come across so many female suspects in a child pornography investigation before. He says arrests were made at 12 different locations across Sweden on Wednesday and include women aged between 38 and 60.

Police uncovered the network during the investigation of a man in Dalarna, western Sweden, who was charged last month with breaking child pornography laws.

Petters says there were no immediate clues as to why so many women were involved but that police will now investigate computers and mobile phones that were seized during the raid.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'(Oct. 20) -- A jury has awarded $18.5 million to a New York City man who spent more than 20 years in jail for rape before he was cleared by DNA evidence.

The amount awarded Tuesday to Alan Newton is among the largest given to a wrongfully imprisoned person in New York City, The New York Times reported.

The jury ruled that the city violated the constitutional rights of Newton, 49, who was released from prison about four years ago.
...
A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department said the city was "disappointed" and planned to appeal.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Is it time we addressed the need for affirmative action programs for men?

What’s that you say? Preposterous? Men still tend to out-earn women for the same work. They overwhelmingly outnumber women as CEOs and members of Congress, and have the edge in just about every other prestige career.

True enough. But consider what statistics tell us about trends in male and female educational attainment. It ain’t pretty, boys. For those who are concerned about the future of this country, the red flags are up.

Women earn high school degrees at higher rates than men, and they earn more college and post-graduate degrees as well. That holds true for all races and ethnicities. While women have used the last few decades to advance in educational attainment, men have slipped.'

Would you believe it? For years pre-nups have not been recognised in law in the UK on grounds of public policy. That has now changed with this case and, you've guessed it, this volte-face came about when a man was trying to claim from his ex-wife. Notice how there's also plenty of wiggle room for judges not to enforce pre-nups in future, if they, i.e. when a woman's claiming offf her ex. Looks like a typical piece of backward reasoning, i.e. reach a decision and then construct an argument to justify it.

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'A woman who beat her five-year-old daughter to death while trying to get her to memorise a poem has been spared jail by a court.

Tan Hongying, from Beijing, was sentenced to three years in prison by a court in eastern Zhejiang province on Tuesday — but the sentence was suspended and she was instead given five years probation, the Beijing Morning News reports.

The report did not say why the court in the city of Jiashan handed down such a light sentence.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'With nearly four in 10 marriages expected to end in divorce, a trip down the aisle is a bit of a gamble. A game of chance.

And in keeping with that theme, Ontario’s largest lawyers’ organization is suggesting a novel way to pay for changes to the expensive and time-consuming family justice system.

A provincial lottery.

In a report presented to Attorney General Chris Bentley on Monday night, the Ontario Bar Association — along with two mediators’ associations — is also proposing a “user charge” be added to the cost of marriage licences issued in the province.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rape culture is a term used within women's studies and feminism, describing a culture in which rape and other sexual violence against women is common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media condone, normalize, excuse, or encourage sexualized violence.

That is just one of the definitions for rape culture I found online. It is as good a definition as any for something that does not, and never has, existed. And it has been taking its rightful place alongside a nonexistent gender wage gap, nonexistent employment discrimination, nonexistent media bias and a nonexistent domestic violence crisis that only affects women, continuing the litany of nonexistent feminist outrages.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new study says male elementary teachers live in a steady state of anxiety, with 13 per cent reporting they had been wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with students. Part 2 of a six-part series.

The male elementary teacher is the spotted owl of the education system, the leatherback turtle, the Beluga.

His presence is so endangered that in many public schools his numbers can be counted on a single hand. In some schools, it requires no hands at all.

“It is now possible for a child in Canada to go through elementary school and high school and never see a male at the front of the class,” says Jon Bradley, an associate professor of education at McGill University, where men make up just five per cent of the elementary teachers in training.'

The Globe and Mail is running a week-long series titled "Is 'failing boys' too simplistic a notion?". Friday, Oct 22 at 12 noon (EDT) is a live discussion with Dr. Wayne Martino of UWO (Canada).

Knowing the ideological nature of UWO academics, I did a bit of further research on Dr. Martino.

His course curriculum in the UWO education department include discussion topics such as white male power and feminist, queer and critical pedagogies.

Quoting from Dr. Martino's paper "What About the Boys, Issues of Masculinity in Schools"

"In this sense feminist educators and theories also inform the perspectives on boys and schooling elaborated in this book. Such perspectives have contributed significantly to producing valuable insights into the links between gender and power"

The petition is linked from ustoo.org, and found on this page. Excerpt:

'I am asking the Us TOO network of survivors, family members and support group chapters to raise your voices in support of Medicare reimbursement for FDA approved cancer drugs.

On April 29, 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Provenge for the treatment of men with asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic metastatic, castrate resistant (hormone refractory) prostate cancer.

We celebrated the new treatment option for men with advanced disease. But now there is a problem.

Dr. Mark Moyad has brought to our attention that the agency that oversees Medicare coverage, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), wants to review the appropriateness of covering this new prostate cancer treatment.

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'A woman who was handcuffed to a bed, drugged and forced to give up her newborn baby for adoption says an official apology has helped her regain her "selfhood".

The West Australian government on Tuesday issued a public apology to women who had their babies taken from them by authorities from the 1940s to the 1980s because they were unwed.

WA is the first state or territory to issue such an apology.
...

Dr Hames said the apology was not about compensation for the mothers or a criticism of parents who adopted the children.

"What they (the mothers) say to me is not that they want compensation. It is that they want to have somebody recognise that what happened to them was wrong and, hopefully, will never ever happen again," he said.

Premier Colin Barnett was to move a motion in parliament on Tuesday acknowledging that previous government policies were unsupportive of pregnant, unmarried women and failed to help them.'

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'Victorian Children's Minister Lisa Neville admits not knowing how many times her department has checked on three children - one of whom accidentally took an ecstasy tablet - since they were reunited with their mother.

The children's grandmother, who cannot be identified, told ABC Television on Monday her three grand-daughters, all aged under eight, have been exposed to violence, criminal activity, drug use and sexual abuse in their mother's care.

The woman says her daughter is not capable of looking after the children, who were placed in care of the Department of Human Services (DHS) - when the youngest child accidentally took ecstasy - but were returned to their mother in March.

She said the girls at times went for days without food.

The woman said that in April, a Victorian DHS officer told her that the department had "forgotten" to apply to court for a new protection order allowing its workers access to the children.'

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'A mother-of-two has been jailed for prostituting her teenage daughter in a case a judge says involved "an extreme breach of trust".

The girl says she was subjected to physical and mental abuse and forced to take illicit drugs when known by the name 'Layla' and working at Sydney's Liaisons escort agency between November 2008 and December 2009.

She was aged 16 and 17 at the time. The girl's mother has admitted changing a birth certificate so the child could work for the agency as an 18-year-old.

At Wollongong District Court on Tuesday, the 43-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced to serve at least 18 months' jail after pleading guilty to charges of obtaining a benefit from child prostitution and causing a child to participate in prostitution.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK: The Foundation for Male Studies will focus on the research and programs needed to reverse the downward spiral now effecting virtually all aspects of the lives of men and boys, at the Second Annual International Conference on Male Studies - Looking Forward to Solutions, April 6, 2011.

Edward M. Stephens, MD, FMS’ Founder and Chair says that in addition to the conference's solution-geared presentations by leading authorities, the Foundation is calling for papers from academics on how to best deal with increasing levels of male unemployment, depression, suicides, high school and college dropout rates and related problems.

Article here. How's this for a father-son project? A great dad and his young son worked together on a project to send an iPhone into outer space, carried there by a weather balloon. The entire journey was filmed by the iPhone, including the descent following the explosion of the balloon in space. They used the iPhone's GPS capability to retrieve it, and uploaded the entire video of both the ascent and descent here:

http://vimeo.com/15091562

Now THAT'S a great dad!

I am astounded that even in space, the proximity to the earth's atmosphere was still close enough to carry sounds. You can actually hear the sounds of the iPhone jostling around, you can hear the wind on the ascent and descent, and you can even hear the sound of the weather balloon when it pops, initiating the descent.