Story here. Excerpt:

'SARGODA, Pakistan (CNN) -- Mohammed Iqbal said he has been told by his landlord to pay up on debts and is left with a choice facing others in this impoverished corner of Pakistan: Sell your children or a kidney.

For the 50-year-old Iqbal, there is only one option. Despite a law passed in late 2007 banning transplants for money, he has decided to sell his kidney and has already been for pre-operation tests. The sale will net him between $1,100 and $1,600.

"What's incredible here is the law that bans the operation he's going to go through came into place in 2007," said CNN's Nic Robertson. "He's still able to go to a doctor, the doctors given him advice, that's what he has to do under law... He's going to make money out of it 100,000-150,000 rupees, and that is absolutely illegal. Yet, in just a few days, he's expecting to sell his kidney."

Story here. Excerpt:

'Frank Hatley has languished in a South Georgia jail for more than a year.

The reason? He failed to reimburse the state for all the public assistance his “son” received over the past two decades.

The problem? Hatley is not the biological father -- and a special assistant state attorney general and a judge knew it but jailed Hatley anyway.

“I feel bad for the man,” Cook County Sheriff Johnny Daughtrey said Tuesday. “Put yourself in that man’s shoes: If it wasn’t your child, would you want to be paying child support for him?”

Daughtrey said he hopes a hearing Wednesday will resolve the matter. Hatley has been held at the county jail in Adel since June 25, 2008, costing the county an estimated $35 to $40 a day.

Even after learning he was not the father, Hatley paid thousands of dollars the state said he owed for support. After losing his job and becoming homeless, he still made payments out of his unemployment benefits.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health (subscription required), the study comes from a survey of about 2,000 students who sought treatment at health clinics at five universities in Wisconsin, Seattle and Vancouver in 2006-7. Similar rates of young men and women -- 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively -- reported experiencing violence within the previous six months. While men were more likely to report physical abuse, women reported a high rate of emotional abuse, which was defined as acts like "repeated ridicule, threatening statements, destroying belongings and unreasonable jealousy" and considered separate from physical violence.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sotomayor apparently told Republican Senators in private meetings that those words were "inadvertent" and "inartful," -- implying that her statement was an accident. President Obama himself tried to explain this statement as just a one-time utterance that she would have worded differently if she had the chance to do it all over again.

But after these private meetings with Senators it was revealed that Sotomayor had used the equivalent phrases during at least seven different speeches over a period of a decade. It is one thing for Obama to explain this as an accidental, single occurrence; it is something quite different for Sotomayor, especially now that we know that she repeatedly made such statements.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'LYNN Rosenthal, a veteran of the battered women’s advocacy movement, was named to the new post of White House counsel on violence against women on June 26. On the same day, a conference opened in Los Angeles disputing the basic tenets of the movement Rosenthal represents - such as the view that domestic violence is overwhelmingly a male crime against women rooted in patriarchal power. Speakers argued for new policies based on a fuller understanding of the problem. Is there a way to bridge the gaps between these competeing paradigms?

Challenges to feminist orthodoxy on domestic violence are often seen as anti-feminist backlash from angry men. But this conference, “From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic Violence Research and Intervention’’ (sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children), could not be so easily dismissed. The speakers included scholars, social workers, and counselors; about half were women.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The good news is that Congress has already made a commitment to do something about this. The bad news is that it hasn't put its money where its mouth is. While having previously recommended $175 million for emergency shelter in the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, Congress budgeted only $127.7 million for these services last year. Likewise, the much-lauded Violence Against Women Act (VAWA -- a flagship piece of legislation for Vice President Biden when he was a senator) has never been fully funded.

This could dramatically change on Friday. The House Appropriations Committee is set to decide how much money to provide for a number of critical domestic violence services, including emergency shelter. Members would do well to remember Michelle, and the millions of American women like her who are forced to flee violent relationships. They should remember the duty of protection the government owes them and the pledge of assistance it has made. And they should be aware of the repercussions if that pledge is not kept. '

Story here. Excerpt:

'Police recently concluded that former Baltimore Ravens star Steve McNair was shot dead in his sleep by girlfriend Sahel Kazemi in a murder-suicide. Yet while there are more than 10,000 media entries on Google News for "Steve McNair," only a few of them mention the phrase "domestic violence."

Article here. Excerpt:

Story here. Excerpt:

'Women athletes have far more opportunities than men to earn scholarships and to participate in many college sports, according to a study by an organization which advocates Title IX reform.

The College Sports Council largely limited its analysis to 19 sports in which both men and women compete, such as basketball, volleyball and tennis. The study released Wednesday determined male high-school athletes in those gender-symmetric sports face longer odds and fewer total opportunities to land college scholarships.

"We are trying to shine the light on a problem that exists where football frequently clouds the issue," CSC chairman Eric Pearson said. "We're not trying to tear down the women's numbers. We just want it to be even and fair. We support both men and women playing sports. We want more sports. We want more athletes to play, both men and women, and the NCAA's rules make that difficult."'

Article here. I wonder if immigrant men who suffer domestic violence at the hands of women would also qualify for asylum? That's actually a rhetorical question because I suspect they wouldn't. I wonder how many women will lie about abuse just to gain asylum? Excerpt:

'The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States. The action reverses a Bush administration stance in a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.
...
The administration laid out its position in an immigration appeals court filing in the case of a woman from Mexico who requested asylum, saying she feared she would be murdered by her common-law husband there. According to court documents filed in San Francisco, the man repeatedly raped her at gunpoint, held her captive, stole from her and at one point tried to burn her alive when he learned she was pregnant.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The legislation focuses primarily on programs to benefit low income fathers and contains a number of positive provisions. For instance, low income fathers will be able to get a break on child support arrearages under certain circumstances. The entire bill is over 100 pages, here's a copy for those who enjoy this type of reading.

We believe the bill can go much further in addressing the issues faced by fathers in general, particularly providing relief for parents who have been separated from their children by the family courts.

There are a half dozen provisions that would improve the legislation and we need your help to get them implemented.'

Story here. I can hear it now: "Girls don't do this kind of thing! Her boyfriend must be behind it all!" Ugh... Excerpt:

'A heartless kitty killer hissed angrily at animal rights activists Wednesday, grinning widely as she took credit for stuffing the helpless pet into a 500-degree oven.

"It's dead, bitch!" snapped an unrepentant Cheyenne Cherry, sticking her tongue out after a plea bargain that will put her behind bars for a year in the May 6 killing of tiny Tiger Lily.

Cherry, 17, was confronted after her guilty plea in Bronx Supreme Court to charges of animal cruelty and attempted burglary in the May 6 killing at her former roommate's apartment.

Tiger Lily was left to die inside the blistering oven after Cherry and a 14-year-old friend trashed the apartment of Valerie Hernandez, destroying furniture before stealing DVDs and food.
...
Cherry is not new to animal crimes.

This time in Adel, Georgia. Story here. Excerpt:

'ADEL, Ga. – A Georgia man spent more than a year behind bars for failing to pay child support for a child that wasn't his, but he was released after DNA tests showed he wasn't the father.

Frank Hatley, 50, had been jailed since June 2008 for not making payments, but two separate DNA tests in the last nine years showed he was not the father of the boy, who is now 21.

Southern Center for Human Rights attorney Sarah Geraghty won Hatley's release at a hearing Wednesday in Superior Court. A court order has also relieved him of his financial obligation to the Georgia Department of Human Resources.

"State child support officials have shown extraordinarily poor judgment in Mr. Hatley's case," Geraghty said.'

Tonight during Jimmy Kimmel Live a Six Flags commercial was run featuring a boy hitting his father in the testicles with a baseball. This was intended to lure more customers into the Six Flags parks by comparing how much 'more fun' it is to ride a roller-coaster vs. hitting your father in the testicles with a baseball.

Six Flags, and all corporations who use sexual violence and degradation of men as an advertising gimmick, need to hear from us. Their website contact page is here (scroll to the bottom for an email form).

Like most corporations who use misandrist sexual violence in their ads, Six Flags doesn't really want to hear from you, but they must.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Many men aren't proactive when it comes to their personal health care needs. A Men's Health magazine and CNN survey found one-third of men would not go to the doctor, even if they were experiencing major health problems, such as severe chest pains or shortness of breath -- both of which are signs for heart disease.

But it's imperative that men receive regular medical exams because they can be life saving. "GMA" medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard explains the five tests men must get and why they're important.'