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."'

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'(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.'

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'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.

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'Bengaluru: In a shocking incident, a young man of 21 years age was almost crushed between the hydraulic doors of a Marco Polo bus in Bangalore on Sunday evening, the 1st August 2010.

Prannoy David Roy, a resident of Kaggadasapura, Bengaluru was returning after attending a mass at Indiranagar when the incident happened. Rao boarded the bus numbered 314 E bearing registration number KA 01 F 4550 at around 7:30 PM.

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'Official government statistics reveal the staffrooms of 68 primary schools and nurseries in the region are populated solely by women.

They show the classrooms of some 17 primaries and one nursery school in the Telford and Wrekin area have no male teachers.

In the rest of the county, the children at a total of 51 primary schools are only taught by female staff.

Nationally, 4,226 schools in England – 3,340 primaries and 386 nurseries – have no male staff, according to the latest data for 2009.

This is despite a long-running government campaign to encourage men back into what is now seen as a female profession.

Men also tend to shun working with younger children over fears they will be accused of paedophilia.

It means many children have no regular contact with an adult man until they go to secondary school aged 11.

But experts say it is vital for boys – particularly those who may not have a father at home – to have positive role models as they grow up.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'As President Barack Obama closes in on picking a new federal consumer protection chief, critics’ arguments against liberal favorite Elizabeth Warren are getting louder.
...
But some of Warren’s supporters see a deeper problem at work against her — in their view, the Treasury Department is a stodgy old boys club poised to blackball Warren from getting the post, in part, because she's a woman.

Now, they’re trying to turn that argument on its head. The National Organization for Women, liberal activists and some lawmakers are trying to pressure Obama into choosing Warren, by arguing that Warren would provide much-needed balance to an economics team that they say is too male-dominated, like Wall Street itself.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The 42-year-old Livermore mother accused of sexually assaulting two teenage boys first made an advance at one of them when he was 14 and was dating her daughter of the same age, authorities said.

After the incident in December 2008, authorities said, Christine Hubbs sent sexual text messages to the boy and gave him cash, expensive gifts and cellular telephones to maintain contact with her.

The allegations, contained in a police affidavit, were revealed Monday as Hubbs appeared in an Alameda County courtroom in Pleasanton to face charges that have stunned her suburban city.

The mother of three was arraigned on 67 felony counts, including unlawful sex with a minor and exhibition of lewd material to a minor.

Wearing a jail-issue jumpsuit, she flashed a quick smile at her husband - who waved at her from the second row - but cried as the hearing wore on and a judge ordered her bail set at $4.3 million. She did not enter a plea.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In the next 10 days getting on for half a million boys across the country will receive, from the school office or by text or in the traditional brown envelope, their GCSE or A-level results. In our secular culture it is about as close as most of them will get to a public rite of passage. The facts of the grades will invariably come accompanied by a sentence that many of the boys may well have spent much of their lives up to this point trying quite hard to avoid. The sentence, or a variant of it, will be delivered by a parent, or a teacher, or by a sly voice in their head: "So, son, what are you thinking of doing with the rest of your life?" Twenty-five years on, that question still can bring a cold sweat to the back of my neck, a rush of unfocused and competing possibilities, and the echo of a reflexive response: "Christ, I dunno. Don't ask me…"

Article here. Excerpt:

'It’s against important medical ethics and is unnecessary. There’s no medical reason for having it done, it’s painful for some days afterwards, and there’s a possibility of complications,” he tells The Foreigner.

Male circumcision is a Jewish and Muslim religious tradition that goes back thousands of years. He takes issue with the some of the physical beliefs surrounding it.

“The old tradition doesn’t use an anaesthetic. It’s argued the infant’s nerve system hasn’t developed by the time it’s performed on the eighth day, so it couldn’t feel pain. But this has been shown to be wrong. Infants do feel pain, they just can’t express it.”

Markestad, a specialist in children’s diseases, doesn’t believe banning the procedure is the answer, however. He claims this will lead to the practise disappearing underground, leading to boys suffering even more.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Unhappy New York couples who want to get divorced fast will no longer have to persuade a court that they have been abused, abandoned or cuckolded to be released from their bonds.

Gov. David Paterson announced Sunday that he has signed a bill making New York the last state to enact some version of no-fault divorce, meaning that people trying to leave a marriage will be spared the painful task of attacking their estranged spouse in court.

Previously, under a system the governor called "outdated," New York judges could only grant a divorce quickly on grounds of cruelty, adultery, abandonment or imprisonment. In other words, somebody had to be blamed for the breakup.
...

The new measure requires only that one spouse swear under oath that a relationship has broken down for at least six months.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new study presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association reveals that men who had positive relationships with their fathers are better equipped to deal with the stress of everyday life than men who did not remember their dads fondly.

"A big take-home message is that if there is a father present in a child’s life, he needs to know how important it is to be involved," said Melanie Mallers of California State University, Fullerton.

Researchers interviewed 912 men and women during an eight-day period about their psychological and emotional state that day. Participants also had to answer questions about their relationships with their mothers and fathers growing up, and how much attention their parents gave them.

The major finding of the study is that men who said they had bad relationships with their fathers in childhood were more likely to be distressed by the stressful incidents of daily life.