Story here. Excerpt:

'WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A woman who secretly gave birth on a flight from Samoa to New Zealand may face criminal charges after her baby was found alive in the plane's bathroom, police and media reports said Friday.

Police are inquiring into "the alleged ... abandonment of the child by the mother" after the flight landed in New Zealand on Thursday, police communications manager Ana-Mari Gates-Bowey said. "A likelihood of this investigation is a criminal prosecution."

Media reports said the mother left the baby in a bathroom waste bin on the Pacific Blue plane carrying 150 passengers; others said she was spotted with bloodied clothes in an immigration line. Police have declined comment on the reports.

Gates-Bowey said late Thursday the woman had undergone surgery at Auckland's Middlemore Hospital and was later reunited with her baby. Its gender has not been disclosed.'

Article here. The author debates the pros and cons of shared parenting with a child that has been with his mother for 9 of 11 years. Excerpt:

'Post-divorce child custody arrangements fall commonly into two models. There is the primary residence model, wherein children sleep, eat and live primarily in one house with one parent. For reasons of prejudice, the primary residence most often belongs to the mother. Then there is the two-residence model, wherein the children split time in what are essentially two lives, two homes and possibly two neighborhoods.

Both models make deals with the devil as it were.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Kenley Collins, the catty, batty finalist on "Project Runway," really let the fur fly when she assaulted her now ex-fiancé with their pet feline in their Williamsburg apartment, authorities said yesterday.

The fashion designer, 26, was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon the weapon being the cat itself for her crazed attack on Zak Penley, 28, prosecutors said.

"It was a miscommunication," Kenley told The Post after getting released without bail from Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday morning. "Fights happen, and that's that.

According to sources, the fur began to fly at 7 a.m. when Collins cocked her arm and threw one of the couple's two cats Arlo or Sandra at Penley, who was sleeping at the time.

She then threw her laptop as he fell and crawled on the floor, cops said. She also allegedly slammed a door on his head.

As Penley dialed 911, Collins threw three apples at him and doused him with water, cops said.

Story here. Excerpt:

'IRONDEQUOIT — Police have arrested a woman who tutored children at Bishop Kearney High School on charges of having inappropriate sexual contact with three students.

Lisa K. Marshall, 37, of Lakebreeze Park, Irondequoit, was charged Wednesday with three counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count of third-degree sexual abuse. She was later arraigned in Irondequoit Town Court, police said.

Marshall was employed by Monroe County Board of Cooperative Educational Services District 1 and was assigned to work with students at Kearney during the school day, according to BOCES spokesman John Walker.

Police said Marshall propositioned a 15-year-old male student at her home in February, requesting that the teen have sex with her. Marshall had picked the student up at his home and brought him to her home, ostensibly to have him help her create a MySpace page.'

Ron Lasorsa, operator of http://www.restrainingorder911.com/, claims he was banned from Facebook for "offensive material". His blog video report here. Content warning: some graphic language but nothing to get too worked up about. I'd rate it as PG-13 based on today's standards, but use headphones if you are at work or some place where there are younger kids nearby.

Story here. Excerpt:

'HARTFORD, Conn. - A 36-year-old Swedish countess divorcing a former CEO says she cannot live on $43 million.

Marie Douglas-David, a former investment banker, says she has no income and needs her 67-year-old husband, George David, to pay her more than $53,000 a week — more than most U.S. households make in a year — to cover her expenses.

David stepped down last year as chief executive at Hartford-based United Technologies Corp. but is still chairman of the board and has an estimated net worth of $329 million. He and his wife accuse each other of extramarital affairs. Their divorce trial started Wednesday.
...
Douglas-David has filed court papers showing she has more than $53,800 in weekly expenses, including for maintaining a Park Avenue apartment and three residences in Sweden. Her weekly expenses also include $700 for limousine service, $4,500 for clothes, $1,000 for hair and skin treatments, $1,500 for restaurants and entertainment, and $8,000 for travel.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The pair belong to an offshoot of Fathers 4 Justice, a spokesman for the campaign group said.

BAA confirmed two people were held after attempting to gain "unlawful access" at Heathrow shortly after 10am.

They were "quickly apprehended and arrested and are now in police custody", the airport operator said.
...
"This was a misguided and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to disrupt the travel plans of thousands of Heathrow's passengers, and we condemn the actions of those involved unreservedly."

The founder of Fathers 4 Justice suggested there could be further protests in coming months as fathers sought to "take the mantle back" from anti-airport expansion activists Plane Stupid.

Matt O'Connor said: "We suspended direct action campaigning in September last year, but we obviously understand that there are many frustrated fathers out there who want to engage in direct action.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Unless there's been a monstrous misunderstanding, the man is muddled, malevolent, or both.

Barack Obama has just signed "an Executive
Order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. The mission of the Council will be to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families."

Under the rubric of this Council, feral, (mostly) female bureaucrats will "ensure that agencies across the federal government, not just a few offices, take into account the particular needs and concerns of women and girls. The Council will begin its work by asking each agency to analyze their current status and ensure that they are focused internally and externally on women."

Barack, however, has it backward: It is boys, not girls, who lag behind – and have for decades.'

Story here. Excerpt:

In light of rise in number of widowed women following Operation Cast Lead, Hamas decides to give $3000 to men willing to wed and provide for widows and their children
...
Hamas initiated the move in an attempt to lower the number of widowed women in the Gaza Strip who lost the spouses who provided for them and their children, and in order to ease their emotional grief and financial difficulties.
...
Hamas hopes that by encouraging men to wed these women, it will be providing them with stability and a better life.

According to the report, Hamas has set a number of terms that the grooms must meet in order to receive the money: The men must be able to provide for two women or more, be religiously devout and ethical.

They are also required to allocate sufficient space in their house for the new wife, help care for her children and treat them as if they were their own.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Israeli, female and looking to dodge the draft? Don't get caught kissing.

With more 18-year-old women claiming religious modesty as grounds for exemption from male-dominated military life, the Israeli Army is hiring investigators to spy on suspected draft evaders, catching them doing decidedly unreligious things.
...
All men are expected to serve three years and all women two year, and secular resentment over exemptions on religious grounds runs high.
...
In 1991, 21 percent of women avoided service on religious grounds, according to army figures; last year the figure was 36 percent, even though overall only around 20 percent of Israelis classify themselves as religious.

The numbers for men claiming religious grounds are running high too ... largely because the Orthodox are Israel's fastest-growing Jewish population group.
...
The declining numbers have prompted the military to cancel plans from earlier this decade to shorten army service for men by four months.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'PRIVILEGE is no bar to the commanding heights of the Labour Party. Neither are women always squashed under its industrial machismo. There is even a place for lifelong Londoners in a movement whose heartlands are northern and Celtic. So much is obvious from a glance at the cabinet, with its expensively-schooled chancellor, female home secretary and Primrose Hill’s own Miliband brothers.

But no modern Labour figure embodies all three forms of otherness like Harriet Harman, the deputy leader whom many suspect of manoeuvring to replace Gordon Brown after the general election he seems doomed to lose next year. Recent weeks have seen this feminist of vaguely aristocratic provenance, not only a native of the capital but an MP for one of its constituencies, side with the left of the party on such wedge issues as bankers’ pay and the planned part-privatisation of the Post Office. Bookmakers have her the favourite to take over from Mr Brown and, having beaten five others to the deputy leadership in 2007, she is a proven winner.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In the wake of intense speculation about her leadership hopes, it's fitting that Harriet Harman will be taking Prime Minister's Questions tomorrow while ­Gordon Brown is in Washington.

It's not the first time she has stepped into the ring as his substitute but tomorrow, the scrutiny will be all the fiercer.

Article here. Excerpt:

'JW: You claim that in a Penn State Women’s Studies class, “students have no option to take different or dissenting views.”(96) Where is your evidence for this claim? Did you talk to any students in this class?

DH: The course is billed by the instructor as an “introductory feminist survey course,” in other words not a dispassionate analytical course about feminism, but an indoctrination in feminism. The instructor declares that her intention is to “examine (and challenge) the nature of power and privilege in our lives and institutions.” The course agenda is to “challenge” power and privilege, not to examine whether power and privilege may have useful and beneficial functions, as well as negative ones. Since the course is set up to provide only radical feminist answers to the questions it poses – that is to deny legitimacy to alternative views, the answer to your question should be self-evident.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'What's better than the lazy, lump-on-a-log dad stereotype? Well, the whiney, nagging wife stereotype of course. Thanks to Melissa Kossler Dutton at Patagraph.com we got a decent dose of both. In her March 9th article, "Moms mad at dad: A touch of rage on the homefront" Dutton aims blame squarely on dads as she assesses, "Men still don't pull their weight."

Story here. Excerpt:

'CANTON — A woman charged with killing her boyfriend in his sleep has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and her attorneys may argue that she’s a battered woman who acted in self-defense.

Stark County Common Pleas Judge Lee Sinclair is expected to order psychological testing for Andrea M. Carr later this week.
...
Authorities say she admitted to shooting Polen in the head with a .357-caliber revolver and slashing his neck while he slept during the early morning hours of Dec. 9.
...
Defense attorney Samuel Ferruccio said he couldn’t discuss the exact reasons for the insanity plea, but he and co-counsel Richard D. Reinbold Jr. feel it is appropriate at this point.

Whether Carr is found not guilty by reason of insanity will depend greatly on the results of the psychological evaluations.

In court filings, Ferruccio and Reinbold also put county prosecutors on notice that they anticipate using a battered-woman defense.'