Story here. Excerpt:

'CORRESPONDENCE that could support a woman's claims that Labor MP Theo Theophanous raped her may have been falsified, throwing doubt on the allegations against him.

Two former friends of the woman told a committal hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday that conversations attributed to them in letters and emails from the alleged victim never happened.

The alleged victim told police that on September 10, 1998, Theophanous raped her on the couch in his Parliament House office.

She said that later she spoke to three friends about the alleged assault, but yesterday two of these women said the conversations never happened.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'LITTLE ROCK — In a request for commutation of her 12-year sentence, a former Greenwood teacher convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage student admits for the first time that she had sex with the boy.

Deanna Bobo, 41, submitted to the state Parole Board a request for commutation in which she wrote, “I engaged in sexual intercourse with the victim on two separate occasions.”

“This would be first time we’ve heard that admission,” Sebastian County Prosecutor Dan Shue said Monday.

Shue said he would oppose any sort of commutation for Bobo.

Bobo, formerly a special education teacher at Raymond E. Wells Junior High School, was arrested in November 2005 after the parents of a student at the school gave police a series of e-mails, some of them sexually explicit, that apparently were exchanged between Bobo and their son.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Renegades management estimated between 500 and 700 fans filled the ballpark when Tuesday night's game started - there were about another 100 outside - and team officials couldn't have been happier, watching their women-only promotion come to fruition.
...
Billed as a tribute to female fans, the planned event would have kept men out of the ballpark until the game was official, providing male fans numerous diversions - from video games to large-screen television sets on which to watch the game - in a party-like atmosphere just outside the stadium gates.
...
Late last week, however, county officials sent a letter to Renegades management warning them the promotion likely violated the state's human rights laws, if not the U.S. Constitution. The county owns Dutchess Stadium and leases it to the Renegades, the Tampa Bay Rays' short-season, Class A affiliate.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman has been jailed for grooming a schoolgirl for sex, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.

Sarah Wilson, 21, from Camberwell, south London, sent the 15-year-old girl "sexually graphic" messages via mobile phone and the internet for six months.

She was arrested after persuading the "vulnerable" girl to meet her at King's Cross station in January this year.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But ordinarily Ginsburg, a pioneering women's-rights lawyer, doesn't emphasize supposed differences between male and female. Indeed, one of her best known opinions in the one striking down the Virginia Military Institute's all-male admissions policy. In that 1996 case, Ginsburg, writing for the court, noted disapprovingly that a lower court that upheld the all-make policy concluded that coeducation would alter "at least these three aspects of VMI program: physical training, the absence of privacy, and the adversative approach." (Again, my italics.)
...
The notion that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of differences between men and women, or boys and girls, is more usually associated with "difference feminism" than with the notion that equality means treating the sexes exactly the same. Ginsburg is ordinarily associated with the latter, and older, approach to feminism. But wouldn't that view suggest that a 13-year old boy would be just as embarrassed by a strip search as a 13-year-old girl?'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The school holidays might have begun but the work has not stopped for a group of teachers from all around the world who have gathered in Hawke's Bay for an international conference.

They are here to deal with one of New Zealand's education systems most pressing problems, lifting boys' academic achievement.

It comes as new research shows Kiwi boys are further behind girls than any other developed country.

Hundreds of international educators gathered at Lindisfarne College on Tuesday to learn how to best teach boys.'

Related: Teachers Take A Stand For Boys

Story here. Excerpt:

'SAN ANTONIO — A Texas woman will serve at least nine years in prison for drowning her 3-month-old granddaughter in what the defense said was a misguided effort to teach the infant to swim.

Gabriella Sigler must serve half of the 18-year sentence imposed Thursday before being eligible for parole. Sigler had pleaded guilty to a charge of injury to a child in the 2005 death of little Melody Sigler.
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Defense witnesses testified Sigler was suffering from bipolar disorder. But police said Sigler admitted to using drugs the night before and drinking wine the morning Melody died.'

Article here. I've lived in Korea for almost 10 years, and here is one reason why. Thank goodness there are still some countries where common sense still applies. Excerpt:

'Nearly 90 percent of Korean elementary and secondary school teachers in a selective survey said schools should establish a quota for male teachers to correct the gender imbalance. The Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations (KFTA) surveyed a total of 549 teachers; 433 males and 116 females across the nation between July 3 and 6. Most of the respondents replied that they face some problems in teaching and counseling students due to the lack of male teachers.
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A total of 89.3 percent said schools need to set up a quota for male teachers to keep the ratio of female teachers from exceeding more than 70 percent. It marks a sharp increase from 62.8 percent in 2007 survey.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The teenager said the athletic director went on to tell him that he was concerned about the safety of the girls if boys were allowed to play, and that Levine might take away playing time from the girls, which would make parents jealous.

"He brought up Title IX and said that Title IX does not entitle boys to the same rights it gives girls," Levine said of the conversation. "He said if it was a girl wanting to play football he'd have to let her, but because I'm a boy wanting to play field hockey, he's not gonna let me."

Title IX is a law enacted in 1972 that states, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
...
Levine's mother, Scheryl, told CBS 21 News that her son is a victim of "blatant sexual discrimination."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The June 30 story "Ball State in some Title IX trouble?" states that Title IX "prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and applies to any education program or activity operated by a recipient of federal financial assistance." In fact, the application of Title IX allows discrimination so long as women are the beneficiaries.

Check out the Ball State Web site. The school has a women's studies program, offering a major and a minor, and one of whose goals is to have students develop an "appreciation of diversity." There is no men's studies program. So much for diversity.

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'There's a new book out called "Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream -- And How They Are Paying For It," by Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake.

Forget for a moment that they annoyingly refer to grown women as "girls" in their title and check out their thesis: because, for a variety of reasons, men earn more money than women, it's a wise move to marry someone who can provide for you and your family.

I haven't read the book, so I have no idea if it is filled with sexist swill or not. But just reading Newsweek's article about the book, it sounds like pretty sensible advice to me.

Article here. Excerpt:

'When the Online School for Girls flickers to life this fall on computer screens across the country, students will take part in an unusual experiment that joins two trends: girls-only schooling and online teaching.

A consortium that includes the 108-year-old Holton-Arms School in Bethesda is driving the project, in the belief that girls can benefit from an Internet curriculum tailored just to them.

"There's been a lot of research done on how girls learn differently with technology than boys," said Brad Rathgeber, Holton-Arms's director of technology. "Part of this is a little bit of theory that we're trying to put in practice to see if it really does play out."
...
Backers of girls' schools say there are benefits to having no boys in the classroom: Girls prosper when teaching methods are designed just for them, they can pursue interests free from gender stereotyping and their hands shoot up more often when boys aren't around.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'(WOMENSENEWS)--This year, at least five women's commissions--in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and California--are facing closure threats.

"State-local budgets are tight and women are the first to go," said Bonnie Coffey, president of the National Association of Women's Commissions, also known as NACW, based in Rockville, Md.
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Coffey urges voters to contact local legislators to protest any defundings that they know about in their states.

"What appears to be the most help is for people in individual states to be aware of the need for women's commission and to raise a ruckus when they're threatened with de-funding or dissolution," she said.
...
"Women are not being put into the lifeboat first, they're being thrown overboard," he said. "How shortsighted and stupid do we have to collectively be to stop funding women's commissions, the only access, voice and power in government for girls and women, when issues of gender inequality still require far more federal government attention?"'

Story here. Excerpt:

'On Monday, a relative of Kazemi claimed police have told him they are almost sure McNair's 20-year-old girlfriend was the shooter.

According to Farzin Abdi, the nephew of Kazemi, Nashville police also told him that Kazemi recently purchased a gun.
...
Police labeled his death homicide Sunday, revealing McNair had been shot four times - twice in the head, twice in the chest when found in a rented condominium he shared with a longtime friend, Wayne Neeley. Police found a semiautomatic pistol under Kazemi's body.

But police spokesman Don Aaron said they were reviewing every possibility, interviewing friends of both and an ex-boyfriend before labeling Kazemi's death.'