Article here. Excerpt:

'A YOUNG Russian woman, a devoted collector of horror films and spiders, is on trial for sedating and raping 10 men.

The police were shocked that 32-year-old Valeria K., a quiet good-looking woman from the city of Tambov, was the mysterious rapist who abused 10 local men after poisoning them with clonidine, Life.ru reports.

Valeria, who has already been nicknamed the Black Widow for her love of spiders, would get acquainted with men and invite them to her place.
...
Waking up in hospital with clonidine poisoning and penis trauma, all the victims could remember was a friendly brunette who gave them drinks.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON – Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor resigned Friday from an elite all-women's club after Republicans questioned her participation in it. Sotomayor said she resigned from the Belizean Grove to prevent the issue from becoming a distraction in her confirmation hearings.

In a letter to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the federal appeals court judge said she is convinced that the club does not practice "invidious discrimination" and that her membership in it did not violate judicial ethics.

But she said she didn't want questions about it to "distract anyone from my qualifications and record."

Federal judges are bound by a code that says they shouldn't join any organization that discriminates by race, sex, religion or nationality.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The federal government is spending $423,500 to find out why men don't like to wear condoms, a project government watchdogs say is a nearly-half-a-million-dollar waste of taxpayer money.
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"The project aims to understand the relationship between condom application and loss of erections and decreased sensation, including the role of condom skills and performance anxiety, and to find new ways to improve condom use among those who experience such problems."
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"This government is so out of whack with what the priorities are that this actually makes sense that we'd be wasting money on a condom study rather than the real problems facing the country," said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, which tracks wasteful spending in the federal budget.

For American men -- many of whom have already undergone years of awkward sex ed in the care of gym teachers -- the study might not offer much of a boost, Williams said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A 10-year-old girl conceived from the frozen sperm of a dead man cannot receive his Social Security benefits, a federal appeals court ruled.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court's rejection of child survivor benefits for Brandalynn Vernoff, who was born nearly four years after her father's death in 1995.

The case involved sperm that Bruce Vernoff's widow, Gabriela, had a doctor extract after he died unexpectedly from an allergic reaction. In 1998, she used it for in vitro fertilization and gave birth to Brandalynn in a Los Angeles hospital on March 17, 1999.

Gabriela Vernoff later applied for child survivor benefits from the Social Security Administration but was rejected. A federal judge in Santa Ana also rejected her claims.'

Story here.

'A 23-year-old woman who got a friend to kill her Jack Russell terrier was charged with skinning the puppy to make a belt out of its hide.

Krystal Lynn Lewis and Austin Michael Mullins, 26, were being held Friday in the Muskogee County jail on $25,000 bail each. They were charged with one felony count of cruelty to animals.

A Muskogee County judge ordered a mental competency hearing for Lewis.

Lewis wanted the puppy, named Poplin, killed because it was a gift from a female ex-lover with whom she doesn't get along, said Muskogee County sheriff's deputy George Roberson.'

Roberson said Mullins shot the terrier 10 times with a .22-caliber pistol. Lewis skinned the animal at her apartment and nailed the hide to a board.'

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.
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“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).
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"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.
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"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.