Article here. Excerpt:

'2. Pepper your everyday speech with references to flatulence, diarrhea, sex acts, vomit and menstruation. If you can work them all into a sentence used in the presence of your mom or, better yet, your best friend’s mom, all the better. Extra points if you can spread this frosting on the cake of an expensive college education. The “Adventureland” twentysomethings toss around Nikolai Gogol and Virgil as often as they do bags of weed.
...
5. Use so much convoluted, idiomatic slang-intensive speech that even you don’t understand. Rather than leaving it behind in the hermetically sealed teenage world, the New Dude carries it well into adulthood and trades it for credibility with other men. “I Love You, Man” takes a daring approach to this rule by mocking the practice (See the ad campaign’s “Pop a squiznot” posters) but it will most likely endure anyway.'

Story here.

'OXFORD TWP. – A 23-year-old College Corner woman now faces a misdemeanor charge after police said she concocted a story about being kidnapped and raped earlier this week.

Jacqulyn Harrison could spend up to six months in jail if she is convicted on a charge of making a false alarm.

On Wednesday, Harrison reported to police that she was forced into a black vehicle earlier in the day while walking along U.S. 27 near College Corner around 1:30 a.m.

She said a man took her to a field where she was repeatedly raped and forced to take drugs. She told police the suspect stole her money and then dropped her off back near U.S. 27.

Harrison gave police a detailed description of a suspect and his vehicle, right down to his white “Air Force” brand tennis shoes.

The incident never occurred, Oxford Township police said today.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'After a 17-year-old boy had sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend, he was charged with a felony for statutory rape. When a 17-year-old girl in the same town commited the same crime, she was charged with far less. Was the boy the victim of gender bias?

Alan Jepsen was playing videogames at his home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, when the cops came knocking on his door. He was handcuffed in front of his sister and thrown in jail. In the words of his attorney, Jeffrey Purnell, “This child, this 17-year-old high-school kid, had to spend a week in jail—they locked him up and they put him in jail with grown-ups.”

His crime: Having sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend. And, perhaps, being a boy.'

Listen to the interview here. Clicking this link launches your Media Player and the show streams. I tried saving the link file down and running it from my hard drive but that doesn't work.

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.'