Article here. Excerpt:

'MONTREAL -- Quebec's Liberal government fought off criticism yesterday that it has failed to rein in the province's soaring high-school dropout rate, which is getting worse despite repeated pledges to fix the problem.

Figures show that nearly 30 per cent of Quebec students quit public secondary schools before getting their diplomas in 2007, an increase of three percentage points since 2000.

Boys are dropping out more than girls, and in some school boards in the province, the rate is reaching levels of more than 40 per cent.

The Opposition Parti Québécois says the Charest government needs to cut teacher-student ratios and invest in after-school activities, along with other measures aimed at helping keep teens in school.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The badly misnamed "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" appropriates roughly $150 billion for "education" purposes, more than double the current budget for the Department of Education. But the little-known truth is that the Department of Education's own supervisory body has identified 47 programs that should be eliminated, at a savings of $3.3 billion a year to taxpayers. The Women's Educational Equity, for instance, exists to support "educational equity for girls and women," but even the Department states, "There is no longer a need for a program focused on eliminating the educational gap for girls and women, as women have made educational gains that match or exceed those of their male peers." Still, the program remains. Moreover, the Office of Management of Budget singled out 758 congressional earmarks totaling $330 million in the Department of Education's 2008 budget alone.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'On Sunday, February 8th, I got a series of e-mails alerting me to a blog campaign against a potential candidate to fill the top post at the US Department of Labor's Women's Bureau. Actually, the job wasn't even on my radar. I've been focused on the drama of the stimulus bill.

The candidate in question was the President of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy. I had just heard her speak in Washington D.C. about the imperative need to fund 1.6 million women's jobs. In addition, I was aware of her long history as a lawyer, fighting for a woman's right to fair and equal treatment.
...
My concern is the tone permeating the anti-Gandy rhetoric. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek
pointed out at a 2008 new media conference that writers on the web, emboldened and sheltered by the cloak of anonymity, present invective posing as commentary and insight.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Men in their early 20s are just as likely to be abused by their partners as women, according to the latest government figures seen by Newsbeat.

6.4% of men in England and Wales between the ages of 20 and 24 say they were victims over the last year, compared with 5.4% of women.

The official definition of partner abuse includes non-physical forms like emotional bullying.

It also means more serious behaviour like threats and severe force.

Op-ed here. Excerpt:

'Banks around the world desperately want bailouts of billions of dollars, but they also have another need they’re unaware of: women, women and women.
...
Wall Street is one of the most male-dominated bastions in the business world; senior staff meetings resemble a urologist’s waiting room. Aside from issues of fairness, there’s evidence that the result is second-rate decision-making.
...
“We found that a trader’s morning testosterone level predicts his day’s profitability,” reported the study, published last year in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Higher testosterone meant more risk-taking and, usually, more money.

On its own, that might suggest that men have an advantage on the trading floor. Yet the same study also suggested that elevated testosterone levels could lead to greater assumption of risk; high testosterone levels “may shift risk preferences and even affect a trader’s ability to engage in rational choice.” In other words: when male traders crash ... boy, they crash.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'There is a school of thought that the crisis was the product of overwrought masculinity on trading floors and in bank boardrooms. The mostly male commentary is in a similar vein, couched in language that is dehumanising, aggressive and militaristic.

We can't undo the crisis, but we can change the terms of the analysis so we think and talk about it in a more rounded way; so that we listen to the voices of women; and so that we bring some humanity into economic discourse. The harsh truth is that this clean-up is too important to be left to the men who made the mess.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The probe into the November 26 Mumbai terror attack took an unusual twist with one of the accused, Faheem Ansari, levelling sexual harassment allegations against a woman officer of America's Federal Bureau of Investigation.

An FBI team is conducting an independent probe into the attacks. Faheem has moved the court with his lawyer Ejaz Naqvi filing an application before an Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate alleging that a woman FBI officer, who had interrogated the accused, had "sexually harrassed him all through the night."
...
"According to Indian law, no foreign agency can be allowed to interrogate an Indian suspect and we have sought relief from the court," Naqvi said.
...
Ansari and Sabauddin were arrested last year in connection with the 2007 New Year eve attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur in Uttar Pradesh. The lone terrorist, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, arrested in the November 26 terror strikes is also presently in police custody till February 13.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Brewer Monday pleaded "not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect," and will now be sent to a secure upstate psychiatric facility indefinitely, prosecutors said.
...
Brewer, prosecutors and Berkowitz all agreed to the plea after two independent psychiatric evaluations showed that, at the time she killed the three children, she didn't know that what she was doing was wrong.

"My granddaughter loved her children," said Brewer's grandmother Maebell Mickens, outside the courtroom. "I feel she's getting ready to get the help she needs."

Brewer, 28, is accused of drowning her three children in February 2008, and she later said she feared that her children were under a voodoo curse. Killed were Jewell Ward, 6, Michael Demesyeux, 5, and Innocent Demesyeux, 18 months.
...
The father of the youngest children, Innocent Demesyeux, said in a statement issued by his attorney last week that he was "shocked" that prosecutors would let Brewer plead insanity.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Australian Institute of Criminology has recently corrected an error in its National Homicide Monitoring Program 2006-07 Annual Report (see email below).

The original report stated that 7 homicides involved a mother and 15 involved male family members.

The corrected report states that 11 homicides involved a mother and 11 homicides involved a male family member. When the category of 'male family member' is broken down, we see that only 5 perpetrators were fathers, while another 5 five were de-facto partners of the mother who lived with the child (one father murdered two children). Importantly, no child victims were killed by a complete stranger in 200607.'

The Economic Stimulus plan currently being considered by the Senate allocates 400 million dollars to fund ineffective domestic violence programs?¹.

Last week, we asked you to call three key Senators on the stimulus bill, Senators Ben Nelson, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter regarding the proposed funding. This week, we ask you to contact those Senators again and two additional Senators, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe and Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Because of the importance of the stimulus package, you may be unable to get through on the Senators' main numbers in D.C. If you cannot get through, we ask you to either fax them or contact their district offices. The web pages with their district office contact information is included below:

'About' page here. Excerpt:

'That chart you see above is one reason why this issue is so intriguing: What happened in that time interval to motivate so many more girls than boys to aspire to higher education? That’s a puzzle, but there are reasons beyond that puzzle to conclude this is an issue that will rise in importance. Regardless of why boys are relative slackers, the momentum of this social change appears unstoppable, at least in the near future. Women will increasingly dominate higher education. Within about ten years, the average U.S. campus will have two females for every male.

Given that both the College Board and U.S. Department of Education agree there are no economic reasons for these imbalances (men and women get equal income boosts from earning bachelor’s degrees), something here is amiss. My own theory is that as the world has become more verbal, schools have allowed boys to slip behind in literacy skills.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Marijuana use may increase the risk of developing testicular cancer, in particular a more aggressive form of the disease, according to a U.S. study published on Monday.

The study of 369 Seattle-area men ages 18 to 44 with testicular cancer and 979 men in the same age bracket without the disease found that current marijuana users were 70 percent more likely to develop it compared to nonusers.

The risk appeared to be highest among men who had reported smoking marijuana for at least 10 years, used it more than once a week or started using it before age 18, the researchers wrote in the journal Cancer.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON, February 6 - Some groups worry that the $400 million in bill for abuse-reduction efforts will do little to stimulate the economy, and are calling on lawmakers to remove the funds until domestic violence programs show proof of effectiveness. The call comes from RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting), a victim advocacy organization, as well as from other partner organizations.
...
Groups such as African-Americans for VAWA Reform believe the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) relies too heavily on law enforcement and ignores the needs of male abuse victims. Other problems include a rise in false accusations of domestic violence which lead to families unnecessarily being torn apart, and victims revictimized by abuse shelter staff, and immigration loopholes that grant permanent status to foreign nationals based on a simple allegation of abuse. In addition, statistics show that VAWA has not been effective in reducing domestic violence.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'While I agreed with Dr. Sax's main ideas when I heard him speak on the radio program, I wasn't sure what was behind his assertion that the American culture was in trouble unless we reverse this trend. After reading this book (in one day, I might add - I couldn't put it down), I'm sold. We cannot afford to have nearly one-fourth of our young men living at home, not working or contributing to society, avoiding responsibility and believing that this approach to life is just fine - but that's the way American society is headed. Something is wrong, and Dr. Sax believes he knows why American boys and young men can't find their way toward a purpose-filled life.

Article here. Excerpt:

'JERUSALEM, Feb 9 (Reuters) - With Israeli pollsters predicting a close national election on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is wooing female swing voters whose support could help her clinch victory.

Campaign ads for Livni's centrist Kadima party splashed over billboards and across websites promise a "different kind of prime minister" and urge Israelis to elect the country's first woman prime minister in three decades.
...
"I make decisions, not coffee," Livni told an audience in Tel Aviv of her role in the assault on Gaza, countering critics who have said she lacks high-level experience.

"This can also be a country in which women decide their future," she told a rally in Jerusalem to women wearing pink T-shirts saying: "The time has come for women to be first".
...
"It is sexist to say Livni lacks experience. Here the (male) generals think they are God," Shulamit Aloni, a retired dovish lawmaker, told Reuters of Livni, Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians and a senior cabinet minister through two wars.'