Video here. Caption: "WNYW: One candidate for state office in New Jersey is showing her entrepreneurial spirit hosting sex toy parties. Fifth District Republican Assembly candidate Stepfanie Velez-Gentry is the owner of Nookie Parties LLC and makes a living by organizing adult parties for women and couples."

Less the subject but her last sentence is very telling: "If I was a man and I did this for a living, it would be a completely different story." Note she invokes the Bible on this topic, too. I don't recall anything from the Bible saying that it's OK for anyone to host sex toy parties. I wonder where she gets this idea from?

Article here. Excerpt:

'The wages of the typical woman who had a job during the worst recession in decades rose faster than those of the typical man, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.

Over the past two years, the wages of the median woman -- at the statistical middle -- rose 3.2% when adjusted for inflation. Wages of the median man rose 2%. Minority men were particularly hard hit, while minority women and highly educated women of all races did better.

The typical full-time female worker earned $657 a week in the third quarter, the BLS said. The typical man earned $812 a week. Men are more likely to be unemployed, though: The male jobless rate is 11%; for women, it's 8.4%

Economists cautioned that the wage numbers and the increases don't reflect the large numbers of workers who aren't working at all.

Story here. Excerpt:

'CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Seven people pleaded guilty for their part in abusing Megan Williams -- but now Williams says that abuse never happened.

She will hold a press conference Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio, to recant her claims of abuse, attorney Byron L. Potts, who represents Williams, told The Charleston Gazette on Tuesday night.

"She has decided she has been living this lie for approximately two years and she has decided to tell the truth," Potts said. "She fabricated the story and she did this in retaliation because she was having a relationship with one of them."

But former Logan County prosecutor Brian Abraham, who was in charge of the case, said no one ever went to jail because of Williams' statements.
...

According to the admissions of those eventually convicted, Williams was physically and sexually abused. She was beaten repeatedly, held against her will, burned with hot wax, stabbed in the leg, and forced to perform oral sex on at least two defendants.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The government will need at least two more years before it will sign an international treaty designed to settle child custodial disputes arising from failed international marriages, according to government sources.

In the wake of an increasing number of such cases, the government intends to speed efforts to sign the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. However, relevant legislative measures are unlikely to be submitted to the Diet until 2011 at the earliest, according to the sources.

The treaty stipulates that if a parent takes a child to his or her home country without the other parent's consent after their international marriage has failed, the dispute needs to be settled after the child has been returned to his or her habitual country of residence. The treaty aims to preserve the child custody arrangement that existed before an alleged wrongful removal.

Article here. Excerpt:

'(CNN) -- The girlfriend of former NFL quarterback Steve McNair had grown frustrated with their relationship and was struggling with financial difficulties in the days before she killed him and herself in July.

Details of their relationship were revealed in a case summary released by Nashville police Monday.

McNair, 36, and Sahel Kazemi, 20, were found fatally shot in a condominium in downtown Nashville on July 4. Police have since ruled their deaths a murder-suicide.

"My life is just s--- and I should end it," Kazemi said the night before the couple were found dead, according to Sonya New, her shift manager at a Dave & Busters restaurant. New also said Kazemi was not her usual self and seemed down.

Though McNair was a married father of four, he was seeing Kazemi and at least one other woman, Leah Ignagni, according to Nashville police. McNair had spent the night at Ignagni's apartment on July 2, two nights before he was killed, Ignagni told police.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In comparing FGM with infant male circumcision, Epstein is seeking to establish a moral equivalency between the two. FGM is not just, as he writes, ‘an article of faith for international development agencies’; it’s also a moral absolute he want to cash in on, even to the point of referring to it by the outmoded term ‘female circumcision’ so that it sounds comparable to male circumcision. If FGM is seen as a violation of the human rights of women and girls and male circumcision is, as Epstein would have it, just the same, then anyone who circumcises their son is violating his human rights.
...
By counterpoising the ‘personal autonomy’ of an infant to the judgment of his parents, Epstein and others who campaign against circumcision reduce the relationship between parents and their sons to one moment; a moment that forever defines the child as victim and the parent as victimiser regardless even of what the boy himself thinks about it later in his life. Once a victim, always a victim.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'If Richard Heene has become the star of his own reality show centered on what is now believed to be a hoax involving his 6-year-old son and a runaway helium balloon, his wife, Mayumi Heene, has clearly taken the supporting role.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A SCHOOLBOY was forced by police to give a DNA sample - for chucking McDonald's ketchup.

Zach Cameron, 15 - a twice-weekly bible student - lobbed the tiny pot of sauce at a girl diner for making "nasty" comments when he took the daughter of his pastor for a burger.

His 14-year-old "victim" complained to cops that it got in her hair - and days later Zach was summoned to a police station where he was also fingerprinted.

Shocked Zach said yesterday: "It was crazy. I know I should not have thrown the sauce but it was only a tiny bit." His outraged mum Dawn, 42, said: "This all started when Zach was defending the daughter of his church pastor who was being abused by this girl.

"He realises now it was a silly thing to do but it wasn't the crime of the century."

She blasted police for doing nothing when SHE was victim of a road rage attack, or when husband James, 43, was assaulted in a pub.'

Call for abstracts: closes 30 November 2009

When: 15 - 16 July 2010
Where: University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW

It is over 10 years since boys education became an important public issue. Despite large, well-funded programs and enormous effort, there has been little change in the overall rates of literacy attainment, school engagement and school retention that are at the centre of concerns about boys. There are also major social issues that differently effect boys and girls well-being, experiences and behaviour, such as binge drinking and bullying including cyber-bullying. Exactly why these issues seem so intractable, who they most effect and how to deal with them effectively are hot and controversial topics. Its time to tackle the controversy head on. Lets talk it out and see if we can come up with some solutions that draw on the enormous and diverse strengths of boys, teachers, schools and their communities.

It's time to tackle the controversy head-on.

Conference Themes:
Boys' motivation and engagement
Literacy
Family-School and Community Partnerships
School Planning Policy implications for boys' education

Story here. Excerpt:

'The UK's biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country.

The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media.

Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all.
...
Those figures credited Pentameter with "arresting 528 criminals associated with one of the worst crimes threatening our society". But an internal police analysis of Pentameter, obtained by the Guardian after a lengthy legal struggle, paints a very different picture.

The analysis, produced by the police Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield and marked "restricted", suggests there was a striking shortage of sex traffickers to be found in spite of six months of effort by all 55 police forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland together with the UK Border Agency, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the Foreign Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the Scottish government, the Crown Prosecution Service and various NGOs in what was trumpeted as "the largest ever police crackdown on human trafficking".

Story here. Excerpt:

'(AP) Each pink taxi comes with a beauty kit, a GPS system and an alarm button.

The new fleet of 35 cabs in Mexico's colonial city of Puebla are driven exclusively by women and don't stop for men. The cabs cater especially to those tired of leering male drivers.

"Some of the woman who have been on board tell us how male taxi drivers cross the line and try to flirt with them and make inappropriate propositions," said taxi driver Aida Santos, who drives one of the compact, four-door taxis with a tracking device and an alarm button that notifies emergency services. "In the Pink Taxi they won't have that feeling of insecurity, and they feel more relaxed."

Women's rights activists are aghast at the cars' sugary presentation and said the service does not address the root of the harassment problem.

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Leaders of Intact America (www.intactamerica.org) today issued a call to conscience to doctors at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, urging them to say no to neonatal male circumcision.

Medical ethics requires informed consent of the patient before any surgical procedure or invasive treatment is carried out. Parental consent on behalf of a child is generally accepted only if the surgery is necessary to save the life or the health of the child. Because circumcision removes healthy, functional tissue and is not medically necessary, parental consent is inadequate. Intact America placed an ad in today's Washington Post urging pediatricians to say no to circumcision because "the baby, not the parent, is your patient."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Circumcision is still, as it has been for decades, one of the most routinely performed surgical procedures in the United States—a million of the operations are performed every year. Yet more Americans are beginning to ask themselves the same question the Moreas did: Why, exactly, are we doing this? Having peaked at a staggering 85 percent in the sixties and seventies, the U.S. newborn-circumcision rate dropped to 65 percent in 1999 and to 56 percent in 2006. Give or take a hiccup here and there, the trend is remarkably clear: Over the past 30 years, the circumcision rate has fallen 30 percent. All evidence suggests that we are nearing the moment (2014?) when the year’s crop of circumcised newborns will be in the minority.

Article here. Excerpt:

'WORTHINGTON — Nearly a third of American women report physical and sexual abuse by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives, according to the Violence Against Women Act of 2005.

Though historically the struggle against sexual and domestic violence has been primarily a women’s issue, men in Minnesota have the opportunity to take a stand, promoting safe relationships, healthy sexuality and respectful practices and public policies, as part of the Minnesota Men’s Action Network.
...
The group found that women wanted men to be involved in helping to stop domestic violence and sexual abuse, but they also found that some efforts to involve men had ended badly. People working with victims were also concerned because the majority of that type of violence was committed by men.

The group needed to find a way to bring men in as good allies, “because I think pretty generally, everybody felt like it would be great to have good-hearted men that we could trust as part of this,” Jewell said.'

Press release here. Excerpt:

'"Women have broken through many barriers in the last 45 years, but there is still much to be done to adequately respond to women's-and men's-changing roles. We only need to look at the stark reality for working women who are simultaneously caring for children or parents to know this is true," said Lisa Maatz, AAUW director of public policy and government relations. "Even though there are laws on the books to promote equity in education and income, it does not necessarily mean that those laws are enforced and that women are being given a fair chance. CAP's timely report and AAUW's policy recommendations help bring those subjects to the forefront as women move forward in true, equal partnership with men."