Article here. Excerpt:

'Britain is suffering from an epidemic of family breakdowns affecting all levels of society from the Royal family downwards, one of the country's most senior judges will say today.

Mr Justice Coleridge, who presided over the preliminary divorce hearings of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, will accuse Gordon Brown of prioritising the abolition of plastic bags over support for families, and say the Government is "fiddling while Rome burns".
...
Mr Justice Coleridge, 58, who is married with a daughter and two sons, is expected to say that the family justice system - comprising social workers, local authorities, mental health specialists and legal experts - is all that stands between the present dire situation and "social anarchy".

It is understood he will call for laws relating to unmarried couples to be modernised, giving cohabitees legal rights on separation, enforceable pre-nuptial agreements, and for reform of divorce law to remove the "fault" element and blame from the process.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A first grader was suspended for three days after school officials said he sexually harassed a girl in his class by allegedly putting two fingers inside the girl's waistband while she sat on the floor in front of him.

The boy's mother, Berthena Dorinvil, said she "screamed" about last week's suspension from Downey Elementary School, and added her son doesn't know what sexual harassment is.
...
The principal told Dorinvil the girl complained to the teacher after her son touched the girl's waistband, hitting her skin, in a room full of children.

Dorinvil said her son told her he touched the girl's shirt, not her skin, after the girl touched him.'

Story here. Excerpt:

"A row has broken out over the translation of a best-selling novel by the British author Mark Haddon after a "feminist" attempted to make some of the characters female...

..."As we corrected her text, we realised that she was systematically translating neutral words into feminine ones, and masculine words into feminine or neutral forms," said Moisés Barcia, the editor at Rinoceronte. "She chose to make the narrator's pet rat a female, even though its name was Toby," he said. In another instance she changed "men" to "xente", meaning people.

Article here. Excerpt:

"Sometime during the overexposure of Debra Lafave - the Barbie-like teacher turned sexual predator - people started to think differently about female teachers having sex with students.

And that, we would argue, helps explain the number of female teachers being arrested for sexual misconduct - a string of trysts that has kept Tampa in the national headlines.

At Freedom High, a fellow instructor turned in English teacher Mary Jo Spack and at Martinez Middle School, a colleague who heard rumors of an affair involving math teacher Stephanie Ragusa blew the whistle. In Pasco County, the father of the boy who was allegedly having an affair with Mitchell High School substitute teacher Lisa Marinelli alerted authorities after spotting his son getting out of the teacher's car."

Story here. Excerpt:

'A mother accused of murdering her infant son was arraigned in court today. Savannah-Chatham police said she drowned her baby and drove around with him in a trash bag.

A judge arraigned 21-year-old Virkisha Warren Friday in a Chatham County courtroom. Investigators said she drowned her 3-month-old son Brandon Warren Thursday morning. At first she claimed she just found the baby not breathing.
...
Police said it was intentional and that's why the baby's mother is now charged with murder. Detectives said Warren drowned the infant boy at her home on Mistletoe Court, put him in a black trash bag and drove around with him in her lap for almost an hour. Police said she passed hospitals, not once asking anyone for help. She then 'drove to the baby's father's house.'

Story here. Excerpt:

"A 3-month child was racked with seizures caused by the illicit drug methamphetamine when it arrived at The Children's Hospital, and the infant's mother is facing serious child abuse charges today, according to Denver Police.
...
The baby's mother, Katreice Trujillo, 27, was arrested Wednesday on charges of child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury.

Trujillo has a Child Abuse lengthy criminal record in six counties, including arrests for assault, failure to appear and traffic offenses, but no drug-related offenses, according to public records."

Here is the story. Men create more housework for women??? Men are doing MORE around the house PLUS we do the outside work and home improvements!

How often does a wife want a new washer installed? How often does a wife want a new kitchen faucet installed? How about snow removal? How about a car that needs to be worked on? How about a room that needs painting? I can go on and on. http://www.move-off.org/

Excerpt:

'Having a husband creates an extra seven hours of housework each week for women, according to a new study. For men, tying the knot saves an hour of weekly chores.

"It's a well-known pattern," said lead researcher Frank Stafford, an economist at University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. "Men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Darke County jury has acquitted a Dayton man accused of raping a woman while making a service call to turn off the power to her home.

Ali Drew Warner, who was working for a DP&L contractor at the time, had been indicted in November on a felony count of rape and a felony count of aggravated burglary.
...
She asked how to avoid having the power disconnected, according to the document. Warner told her she could have sex with him. When she refused, he allegedly raped her. Her 2-year-old daughter was home at the time.

Warner, 27, was released Thursday, March 27, after nearly five months in jail. The jury deliberated about 90 minutes Thursday before finding him not guilty on both counts.

Warner's attorney, Mia Wortham Spells, said the case came down to credibility, noting the alleged victim owed DP&L thousands of dollars and had used bad checks.'

Today's 'Hot Topic' on MSN is how some men are getting alimony from their higher-earning ex-wives (*gasp*!), and how this can be avoided. No sooner it seems do certain women gain economic superiority than they search for ways to avoid the responsibilities that most men have been shouldering without attempt to shirk it for millenia. Story here. Since this is an oft-changed web page, the unusual step of citing the whole piece is shown below:

'Who's making alimony news? Men, and not just K-Fed. Former "Young and the Restless" star John Castellanos gets $9,000 a month. As The Wall Street Journal points out, alimony-receiving men just want R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

A professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has the following slide presentation (.ppt file) that falsely says 95% of domestic violence victims are women (see slide 9 in the file), a figure that is so outrageously old and false that I haven't even seen it in a long time.

She also cites other myths that ignore and downplay male victims and female violence. Please email her at asisley-at-umm.edu.

For quick stats to use see http://www.ncfmla.org/dv_data.html.

----

Story here. Excerpt:

'White boys from sink estates are the new poor in Labour's Britain, an official report said yesterday.
...
Among the losers are families with stay-at-home mothers, who were found to make up a growing number of the poor.
...
A study for Tory leader David Cameron by senior party MP Iain Duncan Smith identified in 2006 the growing failure among white boys.

It said family breakdown, family indifference, drink and drug abuse by parents and peer pressure was holding them back.'

Story here. Excerpt:

"Too many women doctors working fewer hours than men will ultimately result in a major shortage of GPs, a leading specialist warns today.

Growing numbers of female graduates threaten to put men in a minority in the profession, with serious consequences for patients, according to Brian McKinstry, senior research fellow at Edinburgh University.

The unwillingness of women GPs to work unsocial hours played a part in the ending of out-of-hours care by the vast majority of family doctors, he argues.

But part-time working, maternity leave and plans by many women doctors to retire early will have even more "negative consequences" in future, writes Dr McKinstry in the British Medical Journal.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Foul-tempered supermodel Naomi Campbell has been released on bail pending further inquiries after being arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer on a British Airways flight.

Police were called, and witnesses claim she was "virtually dragged" out of the First Class cabin and off the plane in handcuffs.
...

A witness said: "She was screaming and shouting, effing and blinding and complaining that she did not have her clothes for her television appearance.

"I've never seen anything like it."

Another said: "She attacked a male police officer and spat at him."

Miss Campbell, who is known for her fiery temper, was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer and taken to Heathrow police station.

She re-emerged late last night. So far no charges have been brought.'

Story here. 35-year old mother, good looking, hard luck story, supportive husband, she didn't pull the trigger and she is still sentenced to 99 years for masterminding a murder. Even tears and appeals to psychological "experts" didn't help. She won't be eligible for parole for 33 years.

Looks as if the default assumption of "Man-Bad/Woman-Good" is beginning to fray around the edges.

A remark from the presiding judge is worth noting:
"In my mind I can find no principled distinction between the puppet who pulls the trigger and the puppeteer who pulls the strings," Volland said of Linehan's role. "And in my judgment, Ms. Linehan was the puppeteer who pulled the strings."

Some interesting stuff in the comments section, too.

The Fatherhood Project will be represented at Prime Minister Rudd's Australia 2020 Summit on 19 and 20 April by one of our newly elected board members Margot Cairns, a brilliant mind. She will be on the economics committee and we need to show the economists and financiers why and how fatherhood has a massive impact on our economy.

I am compiling a dossier to aid her presentation on what economic benefits accrue from supporting actively engaged fathers and fatherhood organisations.

If you have any hard evidence about...

1. The real costs to government of fathers being separated from their children

2. The real costs to the corporate world of fathers being separated from their children

3. The economic impact of fathers staying connected with their children

4. The economic benefits to the nation both corporate and government of programmes for fathers, support for fathers in all its myriad forms and how that economically impacts on family

5. Any other aspects of this discourse that will assist those working with fathers to be funded