Essay here. Excerpt:

'The Uganda-born Asian confidence trickster Farah Damji caused a small sensation in England in 2006 when she absconded from prison and seemed at first to be taunting authorities by keeping in touch with them through a web log. As one-time editrix of a London lifestyle magazine, and a journalist with well-known national and regional papers, she had good media contacts. These got the tale of her exploits into the national news.

Article here.

Would we ever see a report where men rate a woman's love making ability? Could you imagine the backlash if German men said women had bad hygiene or British men saying women were too lazy in bed?

Excerpt:

'A poll of 15,000 women found that Germans are considered "too smelly".

English lovers came second because they are so lazy, while men from Sweden were branded "too quick to finish" and came third.

Spanish men topped the table as the best lovers, followed by Brazilians and Italians.

The poll, carried out by global research site www.OnePoll.com, asked women from 20 countries to rate nations on their ability in bed and give reasons for their answers.

Germans were deemed to have bad body odour, Englishmen were accused of letting women do all the work, whilst Swedes were a bit too quick to finish.

Men from Holland were "too rough" between the bed covers and Americans were accused of being "too dominating" in the bedroom.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Again...this is one of many emails I receive from men who are financially unable to meet alimony/child support payments, from second wives whose husbands are in jail for non-payment of ruinously high judgments, from family members pleading for any relief from a patently unjust family court system... There is little I can do to help these victims of "the system." But I can reprint and publicize their voices.

The following email is particularly interesting because, as the author explains, it includes a "list with many reasons why the law needs to be changed and a copy of my personal story." Although I have verified the list, it looks to be a compelling argument in-and-of-itself against Florida's alimony laws. Moreover, the man's story should be widely circulated as a cautionary tale on how the family court system is financially destroying men and women who marry unwisely and, then, are forced to pay for that mistake for the rest of their lives. Their circumstances are a de facto form of slavery.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Had this custody drama played out in the United States, Christopher Savoie might be considered a hero -- snatching his two little children back from an ex-wife who defied the law and ran off with them.

But this story unfolds 7,000 miles away in the Japanese city of Fukuoka, where the U.S. legal system holds no sway.

And here, Savoie sits in jail, charged with the abduction of minors. And his Japanese ex-wife -- a fugitive in the United States for taking his children from Tennessee -- is considered the victim.

After Noriko Savoie took the children to Japan, Savoie filed for and received full custody of the children, Bruno said. And Franklin police issued an arrest warrant for his ex-wife, the television station reported.

"Our court system failed him," said Diane Marshall, a court-appointed parent coordinator who helped Savoie make decisions about the children. "It's just a mess."

Article here. Excerpt:

'The consensus, for once, is right: female circumcision reduces – if not eliminates – sexual pleasure, provides no apparent health benefits, and violates individual autonomy. At its core, female circumcision is a degrading and brutally unfair practice.

All of this is true of male circumcision – the removal of penis foreskin – as well. Yet, as the New York Times recently reported, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an arm of the United States federal government, is now considering a plan to ‘promote [the] routine circumcision’ of infant boys in the US with the aim of reducing the spread of HIV (1). This proposal is as degrading as it is illiberal.

The scientific evidence that the CDC is relying on in considering the new recommendation is laughably weak. Consider, first, the people who were the object of the study: the population group surveyed was from sub-Saharan Africa, where sexual mores and cultural conditions are utterly different from those of the US.'

Perhaps this is a bit of good news about the "college gap". Excerpt:

'Today, women earn far more Bachelor’s and Associate’s degrees as well as slightly more Master’s and Doctoral degrees than men. Fortunately for men like myself, there is a major flaw in how this data is interpreted. When you look at this chart, what is the first thing that comes to mind? In all likelihood, if your thought was similar to mine, it was that more women are going to college and fewer men are than in the past. Or in other words, women are going to college instead of men. However, it is wrong to assume that because men make up a smaller percentage of college students today than they did in the past, that women must be taking spots previously held by men. The pie is not static; it got bigger, a lot bigger. College admission has exploded since 1970: the number of men in college has actually increased substantially and the percentage of men going to college is greater now than it was in 1970.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A 22-year-old woman was arrested Saturday after she apparently shot her boyfriend in the stomach at their Tacoma residence.

Tacoma police said a 23-year-old man called 911 shortly after midnight Saturday to report that he had been shot at his residence in the 800 block of 48th Street South.

When police arrived they found him and his girlfriend. He told police his girlfriend had shot him but it had been an accident.

The man was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center in serious condition. His condition wasn’t available Monday.

A Tacoma police spokesman said both the man and the woman had been drinking alcohol.

The woman was arrested for investigation of domestic violence assault in the first degree. She was booked into the Pierce County Jail and is expected to appear in Superior Court today for arraignment.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'SPRING, Texas—A former Spring High School geography teacher was sentenced to two years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a male student who was 16 years old at the time.

Jessica Lynne Kelley, 25, pleaded guilty Monday to improper relations with a student.

Prosecutors dropped two felony counts of sexual assault of a child in exchange for the plea.

Court documents say Kelley and the boy had sex three times in July of 2008 at the teacher’s home.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'SPRING VALLEY - A 42-year-old Nanuet woman has been charged with falsely accusing a village man of raping her and holding her captive, authorities said Monday.

Miriam Chambers' June accusations led Abraham Wilson to spend several months in the county jail as an accused parole violator, authorities said.

Chambers, who lived in Normandy Village, accused Wilson of approaching her on June 20 in Spring Valley and threatening to harm her unless she went with him to his Rose Avenue home, Spring Valley police said. She accused Wilson of beating her, breaking her hand and raping her, police said.

About a week later, however, Chambers recanted her accusations in a letter to Wilson's lawyer - at the Rockland Public Defender's Office.'

David Heleniak, a Morristown, NJ attorney, has filed a motion on behalf of his client, John Paulsen, to vacate a final restraining order (FRO) on the ground that it violates Paulsen's constitutional rights.

Heleniak gained recognition on the issue of domestic violence restraining orders with his 2005 law review article "The New Star Chamber: The New Jersey Family Court and the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act" (.pdf file). More recently, in Crespo vs. Crespo, Heleniak won a landmark decision in which the Honorable Francis Schultz of Hudson County ruled that the criteria for a FRO must be "clear and convincing evidence" rather than a "preponderance of the evidence." That verdict made Crespo vs. Crespo a glimmering hope to anyone who was ever hit with a frivolous restraining order – until it was recently overturned by the New Jersey Court of Appeals.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Domestic violence and the DV policies of family courts and law enforcement is a multi-faceted issue that has an enormous impact on American families.

During the 1970s, feminist organizations fought hard to make domestic violence a public issue, as opposed to a private one, and to gain governmental and societal support for policies aimed at protecting abused women. Current policies have largely been shaped and influenced by the DV establishment which arose from that movement.

However, today those policies are coming under increasing attack from dissident domestic violence experts, as well as civil libertarians and fathers' advocates.

Fathers & Families is hosting a debate between two of North America's leading domestic violence authorities, feminist DV expert Professor Evan Stark, Ph.D, MSW, and dissident DV expert Dr. Donald G. Dutton.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON – First lady Michelle Obama says women should do what makes them happy, a lesson she says she learned after realizing her two children, her husband and her physical health feed off of her good moods.

In an interview appearing in the November issue of Prevention magazine, Mrs. Obama discusses the meaning of good health, aging and her exercise, diet and beauty routines. She sat for the interview at the White House in late July.
...
"She'd say being a good mother isn't all about sacrificing. It's really investing and putting yourself higher on your priority list," Mrs. Obama said. She said Robinson put her own two children first, sometimes to the detriment of herself.

Story here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK (CNN) -- Police in Connecticut say they have arrested a woman suspected of robbing at least six banks in the past week.

Detectives from the Major Crimes division of the Connecticut State Police took Heather Brown into custody at about 3:15 p.m. The 34-year-old resident of Norwich, Connecticut, will be formally charged with robbery in the first degree, police said.

Investigators believe Brown robbed the banks, often while claiming to have a bomb.

"When she goes into the banks, she gives the teller information through a note or verbally that she has a bomb," said Sgt. Jim Keeney of the Connecticut State Police. "However, there haven't been any reports of an actual bomb."

Article here. Excerpt:

'Many women gain access to their health insurance through their husbands. That means that male job losses as well as the possibility of divorce leave them vulnerable. A recent report by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress estimates that about 1.7 million women have lost health insurance benefits as a result of job losses since December 2007 — 71 percent of these as a result of their spouses’ job loss.

Although fewer adult women than men lack health insurance, they seem to be more affected by insurance-related problems, including inadequate coverage. A Commonwealth Fund study released last May found that about 52 percent of working-age women, compared to 39 percent of working-age men, reported in 2007 that they had to forgo filling a prescription, seeing a specialist, obtaining a recommended medical test or seeing a doctor at all as a result of medical costs.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman who has maintained that she killed her husband out of self-defense is now suing his former employer for survivor's benefits through his retirement plan.

56-year-old Fayette Nale, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2007 stabbing death of her husband, is serving a 3-15 year prison sentence. Nale had testified that she suffered months of physical and sexual abuse before a fight when she accidentally stabbed him.

Now Nale, who suffers from lupus and uses a wheelchair after injuries from a 1988 car accident, is suing Ford Motor Co. for her late husband's pension.

Nale has filed federal suit, claiming that her conviction "is not considered an intentional causing of death such that she should be denied survivor benefits," Courthouse News Service reports. She was acquitted of homicide when her original charge of second-degree murder was reduced to voluntary manslaughter.'