Story here Excerpt:

'EDMONTON -- In a bizarre case before the courts, an Edmonton man has been forbidden from going to his own home while his girlfriend - whom he has told to get out - is still living there.

Todd Shandro, 36, went before a judge yesterday to try to resolve the situation, but he was told there were jurisdictional issues and he has to take the matter to civil court.

"It's very sick what is happening here," said a frustrated Shandro. "I am the sole owner of the house. The mortgage and title are in my name and she is essentially a squatter.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Choking back tears that had been building up for more than four and a half years, a New Jersey father tried to describe the emotions he felt at finally being able to hold and hug his son and tell the boy how much he loved him.

“It was the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since his birth. It was incredible. Amazing. I got to see my son,” David Goldman told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Tuesday by phone from Brazil.

The previous day, accompanied by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, Goldman had finally reached the end of a nightmare that began in June 2004 when his wife, Bruna, left with their son, Sean, for a two-week trip to visit family in her native Brazil. She never came back.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. (AP) - - Central Michigan and its women's basketball coach are being sued by a former player, who claims her heterosexuality was a factor in losing a scholarship after two seasons.

Brooke Heike said she fell out of favor with Sue Guevara immediately after the coach was hired in 2007.

Heike said Guevara told her she wore too much makeup and was not the coach's "type." That meant she wasn't a lesbian, according to a lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Bay City.

The former Romeo High School star lost her scholarship after the 2007-08 season.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'FALMOUTH - Six middle school students could face child porn charges after a boy took a nude photo of his 13-year-old girlfriend and “sexted” it to his pals’ cell phones, cops said.

The six boys, ages 12 to 14, will be summoned to Falmouth District Court for a hearing to determine whether they should be charged with possessing, exhibiting or distributing child porn in the form of a text message photo, according to The Cape Cod Times.

Wendy Murphy, who lectures on sex crimes at the New England School of Law, said “sexting” almost has become an “epidemic.” Murphy said, “I know it seems heavy-handed to bring child porn charges. Law enforcement is using the only tool it has for what has become a huge problem nationwide.”'

There was plenty of coverage on the BBC in the UK today about the scandalous lack of help for male victims of domestic violence. Published just today: 'She'd put cigarettes out on me' Excerpt:

'Men in England and Wales aged between 20 and 24 are just as likely to be abused by their partners as women in the same age group. Campaigners claim not enough is being done by the police, social services and the government to tackle the problem. Read one victim's story.
...
"She would put cigarettes out on me. She'd send the kids into the back garden to play and then she'd corner me in the front room and just attack me.

"She'd be scratching my face, kicking, punching, spitting in my face. That was a regular thing."

Mark says the physical abuse wasn't that hard to deal with, but the psychological manipulation was the worst part because he had no control over it.

"Some nights maybe she'd go out and go missing, turn her phone off, and then come back and say she'd been with another man. All that was going on."'

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: