Article here. Excerpt:

'President Barack Obama will kick off a national conversation today about fatherhood, family, and mentoring with a series of events around DC and a gathering of young men for a discussion at the White House.

Obama, whose father abandoned him when he was two years old, also penned an essay for Parade magazine about his experiences as a dad. In that essay he talks about seeing fatherhood through his father's absence—he saw his father for the last time when he was 10 and only got to know him through letters and family lore.
...
“We need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one,” he writes.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet-based communications as part of a contentious government bill, to be announced today, which Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said is needed to modernize surveillance laws crafted during "the era of the rotary phone."

The proposed legislation would force Internet service providers to allow law enforcement to tap into their systems to obtain information about users and their digital conversations.

Police have lobbied for a new law for almost 10 years, saying that they need to access "Internet safe havens" for gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists.
...

"This is really not about the warrantless tracking of Canadians' Internet use," said Clayton Pecknold, of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Story here. Excerpt:

'BANGALORE: Many Bangalore men who are separated from their wives but pine for their children are set to mark Father's Day (June 21) by taking out a rally here. Kids should get the love of both parents, they stress.

Saturday's rally will see these men asserting their right to be in touch with their children.

It is the brainchild of Children's Rights Initiative For Shared Parenting (CRISP), a city-based NGO fighting for shared parenting rights, in association with Save the Indian Family Foundation (SIFF).
...
"On the occasion of Father's Day, CRISP members will have a rally in the morning -- near Mahatma Gandhi statue at MG Road -- to create awareness on the importance of the father in the life of a child," added Kumar.

He himself has been battling for the custody of his daughter for almost a decade.'

Story here.

'ROCKVILLE, Maryland — A Maryland woman has been indicted on charges of killing two adopted daughters and storing their bodies in her freezer.

State's Attorney John McCarthy says 43-year-old Renee Bowman will face murder and child abuse charges in the deaths of the two girls and abuse of her surviving daughter.

The case began in September 2008 when Bowman's 7-year-old daughter jumped out a window and was found in their Calvert County neighborhood.

The family lived in Montgomery County between 2005 and 2007. Investigators believe that's where Bowman killed the girls and that's where a grand jury indicted her on those charges.

The girls were adopted in the District of Columbia. Bowman continued collecting payments from a D.C. agency after their deaths.'

Article here. Excerpt:

"The questions being asked in Mumbai, in Bollywood, are not whether actor Shiney Ahuja did, as was reported, rape his 18-year-old domestic maid or had, as is suspected, consensual sex with her. The questions being asked are what happens to the man in such a case?

Story here. Her mother allowed her boyfriend to move in with them, the father made REPEATED calls to Social Services about it, and was ignored. He finally gets custody, and finds out she's pregnant. Wow. Mothers are the best custodial parents, are they? Excerpt:

'NEW SOUTH WALES, Australia - A preteen who was allowed to live with her 15-year-old boyfriend despite her father's calls to authorities is now pregnant with the teen's child.

The girl was living with her mother and was only 11 when her boyfriend moved in. Her father, who was living elsewhere, repeatedly called the Department of Community Services, Australia's version of CPS.

However, no one responded. Police said they couldn't intervene because both children were underage, according to the Daily Telegraph.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women workers are faring better than men in the current economic downturn, for a variety of reasons. So much so that they may soon pass men and become the majority gender in the American workplace.

By November of last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women had already become just more than 49 percent of the non-farm labor force. And the New York Times reports that in the current economic turndown, men have suffered 82 percent of the job losses. That's true, in part, because struggling industries like automaking and homebuilding employ an overwhelmingly male workforce.

But there are other reasons why job prospects for women are brighter right now than they are for men. Women make less money than men in many comparable jobs. That infuriates women's-rights advocates, but it makes women more attractive to employers who are cutting costs to weather the recession. Many industries have culled their executive and veteran workforce - men, by and large - by paying older workers to retire.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Googling desperately, I came upon an informational tidbit that proved excellent (and only slightly ribald) fodder for debate laughs, but also seems an apt take-off point for my yearly Fatherless Day column, namely: Most sperm banks will not accept donations from men who stand under 5’ 11” in height.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A father's rights have remained a largely hidden issue, tucked away beneath America's fiery and passionate opinions on abortion. In many ways, the parental rights of expectant fathers are blatantly ignored, and fathers are, in a court of law, unable to voice their opinion in regard to childbirth.
...
"Men's rights are trampled on all the time when it comes to reproductive rights," said Dianna Thompson, executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. It is time to fight back, to force our government to re-evaluate the logic of treating men as little more than fertilizers.

This case raises serious questions about a father's say in the life of his own child, as well as the extent of the government's duty to help project human rights and encourage the family unit. Sadly, these profound questions fall by the wayside in a society that worships at the golden calf of individual choice, and relegates the voice of fathers and unborn babies to the margin.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Like most Americans, I look at the news about the economy, the need for health care reform and our growing national debt, and I worry about how we're going to escape the recession.

But as someone who has spent his career working to save an endangered species men I have another worry on my mind: What are we going to do about the Great He-cession?

This troubling trend has been going on for several years, but it really picked up speed at the end of 2008. Of the 5.2 million people who've lost their jobs since last summer, four out of five were men. Some experts predict that this year, for the first time, more American women will have jobs than men. And that's just furthering the decline of the endangered male.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Maine East High School teacher and former soccer coach charged with having sex with a 16-year-old former student known to be a gang member now has been fired by District 207.

That means Jennifer Espinosa, 38, will not get any retirement benefits. She had been a tenured teacher with 15 years at the district.

Espinosa, of Park Ridge, was charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse as a result of an eight-month relationship with a former student, according to a Cook County Sheriff's office release.

Espinosa told police she "loves" the 16-year-old boy, who was expelled from Maine East in September and is a known gang member, the release said.'

The Daily Herald reports that the Maine Township High School District 207 school board voted unanimously earlier this month to terminate Espinosa's contract.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'FARMINGTON, Utah (AP) - A former Bountiful Junior High School teacher has reached a plea deal in a case that accused her of having sex with an underage boy.

Linda Nef, 46, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in 2nd District Court to attempted aggravated sex abuse of a child, a first-degree felony.

She had been charged with rape of a child and sodomy on a child, both first-degree felonies.
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A second teacher, Valynne Bowers, 40, has pleaded not guilty to rape and forcible sodomy in a case involving the same boy when he was 14. She is due in court on June 29.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Here's a piece on the Second Conference on College Men that took place at the University of Pennsylvania back in May (Inside Higher Education, 5/22/09). The article discusses a couple of studies done by Frank Harris and Keith Edwards into "the gendered experiences and identities of men in college." Overall, the people presenting the papers seem fairly sympathetic to men on campus, so you might ask why they open with statements like this:

"When we think about acts of violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment on college campuses, overwhelmingly the perpetrators of those acts on our campuses are men."

Now, there are several studies, like this one from the University of Florida, that contradict those claims. That showed that 32% of UF women surveyed said they were perpetrators of dating violence, versus only 24% of men. Another survey showed that 58% of UF stalkers were women.
...

Tellingly the article goes on to say,

Article here. Excerpt:

'AUSTIN — Today's fathers may well take parenting as seriously as their mates, but unlike many moms, dads don't view it as a competitive sport. Instead, the new attitude of 21st-century fatherhood is hands-on and involved, but with a hint of playfulness.

"All of these social expectations have developed over decades about what moms are supposed to do. We don't have a new picture of what involved dads are supposed to look like," says Will Courtenay, a psychotherapist in Berkeley, Calif., who is on the advisory board of The Center for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Those who study fatherhood say today's dads are forging a new identity, as working women press for a more egalitarian home life, and telecommuting and workplace flexibility make it possible for dads to have more time with the kids. Also, dads today are no longer the stuffy or clueless fathers portrayed on TV.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A judge this morning found that some of the claims raised in a civil lawsuit by a man who was wrongfully incarcerated for 19 years for rape can move forward, though two others cannot.

Thomas Doswell filed a federal lawsuit against Detective Herman Wolf, his supervisors and the city of Pittsburgh, in June 2007, alleging among other things that he was the subject of a malicious prosecution.

Today, Chief U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose threw out both Mr. Doswell's state and federal claims of malicious prosecution, finding that at the time of his arrest, the state did establish probable cause.

Mr. Doswell was convicted of rape and sentenced to 13 to 26 years in prison stemming from the March 13, 1986, attack of a woman who worked at Forbes Hospital. However, the conviction was vacated in August 2005 when DNA testing of seminal fluid in the case showed conclusively that Mr. Doswell was not her attacker.'