Story here.

'FEDERAL WAY, Wash., May 11 (UPI) -- A 14-year-old Federal Way, Wash., girl allegedly smothered her newborn baby to hide her pregnancy from her family, police records said.

The girl, pregnant by her 20-year-old boyfriend, gave birth at home while her mother was away, The Seattle Times reported Monday.

She then allegedly smothered the baby and called her mother to say she was bleeding heavily, police reports said. A family friend found the dead infant after the girl was taken to a hospital.

The girl, who was arrested April 9, the day the baby was born, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in King County Juvenile Court.

Leonel Guzman-Jacobo, the girl's boyfriend, has been charged with second-degree child rape because the girl is younger than 16, the age of consent in Washington state. Guzman-Jacobo, who allegedly began having sex with the girl when she was 13, was not involved in the baby's death, police said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Police said Thursday that the mother of a 3-year-old boy found buried at a playground told investigators she suffocated him, had second thoughts and resuscitated him, then changed her mind and suffocated him again. Police Chief Ray Schultz said Tiffany Toribio, 23, told officers that she and her son, Tyruss "Ty" Toribio, were in Alvarado Park before dawn on May 13 and that she suffocated him while he was asleep.

She told detectives she had second thoughts and performed CPR on the boy, reviving him, but again reconsidered and placed her hand over his nose and mouth until he suffocated, Schultz said. She said she waited a few minutes before burying him in the playground, the chief said.

Letter here. Excerpt:

'Your Monday editorial "Anti-Dad bias," is the first substantial challenge to the divorce industry by a major newspaper and deserves to be pursued much further. This abuse of power goes far beyond media bias. The child support machinery has been expanded and perverted from a means of providing for abandoned children into a huge federal subsidy of divorce and single-parent homes. It also distorts public policy and criminalizes innocent parents.

Ostensibly created to recover welfare costs, child support enforcement on the federal level has failed and now costs taxpayers more than $3 billion annually. More seriously, it pays mothers to divorce or forgo marriage, thus creating the very problem it is supposed to alleviate.

Article here. As always when the source is "JunkScience.com", take it with a grain of salt. Excerpt:

'The itch to shop has long been known to overwhelm some people, either because of simple materialism or to compensate for emotional problems. Many researchers liken it to addiction, and some think it has been a growing problem in the modern consumerism society.

The problem is likely not confined to women. A 2006 study in the United States found 6 percent of women have it so bad they are labeled compulsive buyers, but so are 5.5 percent of men.
...
Problem is, the splurges don't always have the intended effect.

About 25 percent of the women surveyed said shopping sprees in the week prior to being surveyed left them with feelings of regret, guilt or shame.

Sounds a lot like other addictions, Pine said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'HE hidden plight of battered husbands – often a taboo subject – was the topic of heated discussion at Fife Council on Thursday.

Councillors heard the bizarre tale of one man who had been almost strangled because he wouldn’t take his wife to her favourite nightclub.

Male domestic abuse was raised by Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay Tory councillor Dave Dempsey who was upset by what he heard at a meeting he attended with a local campaign group.

Mr Dempsey emphasised that by highlighting the issue of male victims it did not diminish in any way the major problem of women who are abused.

However, he said he was “angered” after hearing evidence of men who suffered violence and was concerned Fife’s services were not currently designed to help them.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'On 19th May, the Supreme Court of India remarked that husbands ought to "Bow down before your wife's 'diktat'".

A vacation bench of justices Markandeya Katju and Deepak Verma observed, "Bibi joh boltee hai woh sunno (listen to whatever your wife says), as otherwise it could land you in trouble. Because if you do not listen to her, you will suffer the consequences."
...
The bench further said that a husband has to accept the suggestion of a wife irrespective of the fact whether it is sensible or not."

Being a founding member of a prominent men's rights organization observing the way men are treated, these views by the Supreme Court are hardly surprising to me. This attitude has been prevalent in almost all courts since many years and it is for the first time that the Supreme Court has said this formally, even in jest.

Blog here. Unlike the story posted yesterday about the web site the Columbus city government wants to make the landing zone for accusations of rape or other sexual assault, this blog pulls its information from news reports. It looks like it would be a good resource for keeping track of female perpetrators of child abuse.

Story here. Again explain to me how women are more nurturing and less violent than men? Excerpt:

'MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - Memphis police are searching for a shoplifting suspect who used a tiny baby as a weapon against a security guard during an escape attempt Wednesday.

The incident happened early Wednesday afternoon at Wal-Mart on Austin Peay in Raleigh, where police say a woman was caught shoplifting. While attempting to escape, the woman hurled her two-month old nephew at a security guard. The infant, seated in a carrier, fell onto the concrete floor.

The suspect then threw the baby at a good samaritan who tried to tend to the infant.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'OELWEIN - Oelwein High School will be offering a newly-sanctioned boys’ varsity sport following approval granted by the Board of Education at its May meeting Monday night.

The board unanimously approved the local sanctioning of boys’ bowling as a varsity sport beginning with the 2009-2010 school year.

The action by the board comes after the Iowa High School Athletic Association granted approval within the past month to sanction boys’ bowling as an official Iowa high school sport.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'GERMAINE Greer's provocative essay On Rage, which fuelled heated debate about male violence in indigenous communities, was a revelation for Ben Quilty. "Others say that On Rage is less about masculinity and more about indigenous culture," says Quilty, a young, white Australian from a suburban background.
...
"Feminism did happen, and then the whole thing with gender studies and women's studies," he says. "But back at university, I was the only man in a course studying it, even though it made more sense that, post-feminism, men should be studying it.

"That's what should happen after feminism, that men should rediscover themselves, but there's no way men were able to have any input.

Article here. Excerpt:

Story here.

'A 30-year-old Northern California woman has pleaded not guilty to charges that she had sex with three teenage boys.

Deborah Towe faces 11 felony counts, including unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, oral copulation of a person under the age of 16, committing lewd acts upon a child and arranging a meeting with a minor for a lewd purpose.

The boys were 15 and 16 years old.

Police in Anderson, about 150 miles north of Sacramento, began investigating in April after two girls from a local middle school reported that a friend's mother was having sex with boys.

In a 48-page report released this week, Towe told police she was protecting her daughter by diverting the boys' attention to herself.

She denied the charges during an appearance Wednesday in Shasta County Superior Court. Towe remains jailed, with her bond set at $250,000.'

Via Marc A.: Story here. A recent ABA Journal article addresses new research showing it is the choice of pausing career to care for kids, not one's sex, that causes the gender gap in law firms. This coincides with what Warren Farrell's explains in his book, "Why Men Earn More" and what other research confirms about the "pay gap."

If we really want to remove the gap, we need to encourage women to allow men to be primary parents. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK (Reuters) - They may be a small minority in corporate boardrooms, but women directors typically earn more than men, a new U.S. study has found.

Female directors in corporate America earned median compensation of $120,000, based on the most recently available pay data, compared with $104,375 for male board members, research group The Corporate Library said in its annual director pay report on Wednesday.

At the same time, the study said, women in corporate boardrooms are outnumbered eight to one.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, nine-year investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

High Court Justice Sean Ryan on Wednesday unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, which is based on testimony from thousands of former students and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions.
...
"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," the report concluded.

Video here. Caption:

'Welcome to our second installment of "Ask a Feminist," in which our own Dana Goldstein and Ann Friedman address a topic in the news related to gender and feminism. Today's episode features a question from Matt Yglesias: "Is it sexist to say the financial crisis was caused by men?"'