Article here. Excerpt:

'Despite a worldwide campaign for circumcision to slow the spread of AIDS, the rate of circumcision among American baby boys appears to be declining.

A little-noted presentation by a federal health researcher last month at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna suggested that the rate had fallen precipitously — to fewer than half of all boys born in conventional hospitals from 2006 to 2009, from about two-thirds through the 1980s and ’90s.

Last week, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned that the figures in the presentation were not definitive. But they are already stirring a sharp debate on the Internet.

The numbers were presented to the AIDS conference by a C.D.C. researcher, Charbel E. El Bcheraoui. The presentation was not covered by any mainstream news outlets, but a report by the news service Elsevier Global Medical News, along with a photograph of a slide from the presentation, quickly made the rounds of the blogosphere.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Click here to find out more!

Just when we thought President Obama had reached the ultimate in seizing extravagant power by appointing a Health Care Czar (Donald Berwick) to exercise life-and-death surveillance over Medicare and Medicaid, Congress is now trying to give him a czar with global powers. It would be a czar over worldwide women's issues.

Based in the State Department, her statutory title will be "Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues." Her task will be to assure a "gender integration" perspective in all State Department policies and programs.

The breath-taking reach of her powers is openly stated in the bill's first section: "The Ambassador shall coordinate and advise, and where relevant lead -- (1) State Department activities and policies, including as they affect programs and funding relating to prevention and response, including gender integration and women's development internationally as relates to prevention and response."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'(Aug. 12) -- The former girlfriend of a famous French chef has confessed to punching him to death and then hiding his body in a freezer for the past two years, prosecutors say.

The police raided the apartment the two used to share in Lyon, southwest France, after Guylene Collober, 51, confessed to her daughter on Tuesday that "something unfortunate" had happened to the 71-year-old Jean-Francois Poinard in 2008, The Globe and Mail reported today.

The daughter told police. When they arrived at the apartment, Collober collapsed in tears saying, "I think you'll find what you're looking for."
Jean-Francois Poinard - his body found stuffed in freezer.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Tonight in New South Wales, more than 700 women will spend the night behind bars, and some will have their children in custody with them.

The mothers and children's program at the Emu Plains Correctional Centre in western Sydney has been operating since the late 1990s.

The minimum security complex has now started a program to help women maintain a link with their children on the outside.

Nearly two years ago, Cindy MacDonald was convicted of firearms offences, and since then she has been held inside the Emu Plains Correctional Centre.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Thirteen-month-old twins Kimora and Kamari Roberson were underweight and overheated when they died in their Far South Side home, officials said on Friday.

The sisters, who each weighed only about 13 pounds, died of hyperthermia, environmental exposure and failure to thrive due to maternal neglect, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The deaths were ruled homicides, and the babies' mother, Regina Lofton, 21, was charged on Friday with felony child endangerment resulting in the death of a child.'

Article here. Excerpt:

The Picture for Men: Superhero or Slacker: Recent scholarship and popular journalism both suggest an unappealing future for American boys: You’re screwed.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Short version: At Fathers and Families we receive many letters from divorced or separated military servicemembers with painful but preventable family law problems. California AB 2416 will help protect the loving bonds that servicemembers share with their children—to write a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger asking him to sign AB 2416, click here.

MorenoPlease send your letter whether you are a California resident or not. Your letter will be hand-delivered to the Governor’s office by our Sacramento legislative representative. You may use our form letter or write your own.

Full version: At Fathers and Families we receive many letters from divorced or separated military servicemembers with painful but preventable family law problems.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A communications professor at Creighton University in Nebraska, Shuler decided to take a sabbatical to study what academics are starting to call "princess culture" -- young girls inundated by films, books, toys, clothes and enabled by friends and family who encourage them to see themselves as bona fide blue-bloods.

Little girls have always swanned around in mom's castoff party frocks while pretending to boss the staff. But observers are concerned about what princess culture is doing to little girls. And what will happen when little princesses grow up to be insufferable adolescents and adults who demand constant adulation and access to a bottomless pot of spending money.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The city is one of the 10 worst-performing large school districts in the nation when it comes to African-American boys.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education study looked at graduation rates, performance on national tests and participation in gifted and Advanced Placement classes - and the picture is devastating.

National tests showed 9% of New York's black male eighth-graders were reading at grade level in 2009, compared with 10% in 2003.

In 2008, only 28% of male blacks graduated high school in the city, the same rate as in Philadelphia and Jefferson Parish in New Orleans. White male graduation rates in New York were 50% that year. The city graduation rates were based on the rigorous Regents diploma.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'GARY Keanu Patterson knows why men are important in his life.

"The father or father figure will try to keep you out of trouble," the 14-year-old freshman at West Side Freshman Academy said. "He will lead you away from drugs, alcohol and having a child before it's time."

Patterson joined elected officials, school representatives and local leaders at Gary's Boys & Girls Club on Monday to promote the Million Father March. The event, which begins on the first day of school, calls on men to walk children to school and continue their involvement in and out of the classroom throughout the school year.

In Gary, students return to school Wednesday.

"Statistics show when a father is involved in a child's life, they fare better in school," said Bennie Muhammad, executive director of the Gary Commission on the Social Status of Black Males, which is organizing the city's participation in the event. "Women make women and men make men. We're asking men to be a part of their child's life."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'(CNN) -- Unemployed, single and apparently fed up with criticism from her mother, a 29-year-old Orangeburg, South Carolina, woman suffocated her two toddlers with her bare hands before strapping them into car seats and submerging her car in a river, authorities said Tuesday.

Shaquan Duley is facing two counts of murder in the deaths of her sons, ages 1 and 2, said Orangeburg County Sheriff Larry Williams. She is set to appear in court Wednesday.

"She was a mother that was unemployed. She had no means of taking care of her children," Williams told reporters. "She lives with her mother and her mother was a very, I guess, firm individual. ... She often talked with her daughter about, I guess, maybe being more of a mother or being more reliable."

Mother and daughter argued the night before the children's bodies were found early Monday in Duley's Chrysler sedan, submerged in the Edisto River, he said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Nadja Benaissa, 28, was appearing at a court in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt.

The former girl band singer is accused of having unprotected sex on five occasions without letting her lovers know she was infected with the virus, which causes AIDS.

One of her partners was subsequently confirmed as being HIV positive.

Benaissa is facing between six months and ten years in prison.

The ex-member of all-female pop group No Angels, was arrested last April and charged in February this year with causing bodily harm.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Well-paid wives beware - men who are financially dependent on their other halves are more likely to be unfaithful, research shows.

And the greater the earning gap, the more likely the man is to cheat, the study suggests.

It found that house husbands whose wives work all day were five times more likely to have an affair than those who contribute an equal amount of money to the partnership.

It is unclear why but it may be that their male pride is wounded by their wife or live-in girlfriend being more successful than them - and having an affair is a way of reasserting their masculinity.

Some house husbands may find the temptation of being surrounded by 'yummy mummies' on school runs just too much to bear.

With recent British research revealing that nearly at third of women are earning more than their men, the finding could raise suspicion in millions of homes.'

I have nothing to say. This is just too awful for words. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK (CBS/AP) It's a sign of the times if ever there was one.

A New York woman who's moving to Florida has been ordered to use the Skype computer program so her children can have long-distance, on-line visitation with their father.

State Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo made the ruling after Debra Baker of Coram, N.Y., told the court she is moving to Venice, Fla. The unemployed bookkeeper explained her house is in foreclosure.

Garguilo ordered the Bakers' children, ages 6 and 9, to communicate three times a week with their father on Long Island using the video-conferencing program.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Adoptive parents often don't worry much about challenges from an alleged birth father who wasn't married to the mother.

If the man didn't meet the 30-day deadline for signing the state's putative-father registry, offer support during the pregnancy or establish paternity before the adoption was filed, he might have little chance to halt the placement.

But two recent Ohio Supreme Court rulings in favor of birth fathers are putting putative-father laws on shaky ground, some observers say.

"I don't think it's hit people yet just how pervasive this might be," said Susan Eisenman, an Upper Arlington adoption lawyer. "If the guy doesn't want the adoption to go forward, all he has to do is file a paternity suit. Even if he's done nothing for the child, he can stop it."
...

In the two cases the court decided by 4-3 rulings last month, neither father had paternity legally determined before the adoption proceedings began, according to Ohio Supreme Court documents.