Article here. Excerpt:

'I keep getting asked, “What is going on in Illinois?” My answer, “A lot.” But I am sure most people really mean to know what is going on with our Shared Parenting Bill - HB5425. National Parents Organization wrote about it here.

A quick recap, HB5425: (1) recognizes that the involvement of each parent for equal time and not less than 35% of residential parenting time per week is presumptively in the children's best; (2) presumes parents to be fit; (3) requires parents to come up with a parenting plan within 90 days; if not, then the judge has 60 additional days and should award equal time unless it is not in the child’s best interest, then a minimum of 35% parenting time should be awarded to each fit parent; and (4) requires clear and convincing evidence to impose any restriction on parenting time.

Link here. Excerpt:

'A young mother from the US has been found guilty of beating her four-year-old son to death because she thought he was gay.

Zachary Dutro-Boggess died on August 16, 2012 after being beaten so severely his intestines tore.

After finding the toddler collapsed at the homeless shelter where the family had been staying, his mother, Jessica Dutro, 25, rang police.

Little Zachary was rushed to hospital where doctors diagnosed him with blunt-force trauma to the abdomen.

The injuries were so severe that they caused the little boy's bowels to tear.

Two days later he was taken off the ventilator and died.

In a Facebook message to her boyfriend, Brian Canady, 24, Dutro said the boy was going to be gay and it made her angry.

"He walks and talks like it. Ugh," she wrote.
...
Canady, who also participated in the beatings, managed to escape the murder charges by agreeing to testify against Dutro.

Dutro and Canady are still waiting to be sentenced.'

Sad and twisted account here. Excerpt:

'HAMILTON, Ontario - Evidence in the second-degree murder trial of a Fort Erie, Ont., woman accused of murdering her daughter wrapped up Thursday with the continued testimony of a psychologist.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations in early next week in the case against Roseanne Whalen, 25, who is accused of killing two-year-old Marissa on July 29, 2011, in Fort Erie.

Closing addresses by assistant Crown attorney Timothy Hill and Whalen's lawyer, Geoffrey Hadfield, are scheduled for Monday.

Marissa's remains were discovered in the fall of 2011 on Six Nations territory in Ohsweken.

Twenty witnesses testified in the trial, including Rainbow Hill, Whalen's ex-girlfriend who is currently serving time for her role in Marissa's death.

The jury heard the couple was living in Fort Erie when Marissa suffered a fatal injury while in the bathroom with Hill.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Campus Reform's Katherine Timpf attended the National Young Feminist Leadership Conference (NYFLC) — an event which promised to be about “inclusivity” and welcoming everyone — only to be told that "conservative" women were not welcome.

Timpf attempted to ask students’ their opinions on feminism, but conference organizers made an announcement advising participants not to talk to Campus Reform because it was a “conservative” outlet.

The organizers also followed Timpf around the conference to interrupt her conversations with students to tell them the same thing.
...
“You guys aren’t wanted here,” a participant told the reporter after the warning.

Link here. Excerpt:

'LIMPOPO INITIATION SCHOOLS BILL, 2014

In terms of the Standing Rules and Orders of the Limpopo Legislature, the Limpopo Initiation Schools Bill, 2014 is hereby advertised for public comments.

Any person or organization wishing to comment on the said document may do so in writing, on or before 10/04/2014, with:

The Head of Department
Department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional
Affairs

Email: mngomezulup-at-coghsta.limpopo.gov.za

---
Wikipedia on Limpopo here.

Also see: Initiates death toll rises to 33 as six more die in Limpopo

Story here. Excerpt:

'Ana Trujillo is on trial in Texas for the murder of her on and off again Swedish boyfriend, 59-year-old University of Houston Professor Alf Stefan Andersson.

Trujillo is accused of killing her boyfriend by stabbing him at least 25 times in the face with the heel of her stiletto but her lawyers argue that she acted in self-defence.

During the second day of the murder trial on Tuesday, prosecutor John Jordan sat on a mannequin to demonstrate how Trujillo allegedly killed her boyfriend, who witnesses described as a kind man with a drinking problem.

A blood-covered blue stiletto claimed to be the murder weapon was also shown in court.
...
But Trujillo’s lawyer John Carroll said she was defending herself.

He argued that Mr Andersson was a violent drunk who attacked his partner on the night she tried to leave him last June.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'One week before Sexual Assault Awareness Month begins in Nova Scotia, a controversy is brewing over one group’s allegations that Halifax Regional Municipality promotes hatred of men by painting them all as potential rapists in its Don’t Be That Guy poster campaign.

“Halifax is breaking Canadian and international law by discriminating according to gender with its hateful one-sided poster campaign and then threaten (sic) legal actions to silence dissenters,” a posting on the Men’s Rights Halifax website [link added] said Wednesday.
...
Meanwhile, Chief Jean-Michel Blais of Halifax Regional Police confirmed Wednesday that the force has contacted the municipality’s legal department over the unauthorized use of the force’s logo in the men’s rights group’s recent Don’t Be That Girl poster campaign.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A city sessions court has acquitted two youths after it was found that they were wrongly framed in a rape case after the relationship went sour between a college-going girl and her boyfriend. The court observed that false rape allegation can cause distress and humiliation to accused.

While exonerating a tuition class teacher, Lokesh Sharma, and his friend Pankaj Chavda, the court noted: "A woman who is subjected to physical exploitation and rape in particular dies a thousand deaths every day. However, here in this case, the victim unfortunately has become a puppet in the hands of her parents and relatives. To separate her from accused No 2 (Chavda), the parents and relatives of the victim rightly could not find a better way out than to level charges so grave."

Video on YouTube here. Absolute must-see. Send it to everyone you know. :)

Article here. Excerpt:

'Data suggesting that circumcision rates in neonates have declined in recent years have prompted a renewed call for universal Medicaid coverage for the procedure and inclusion of circumcision as part of public health policy, according to a report published online in the April 2 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

A review examining trends in U.S. male circumcision rates and the impact of the
2012 American Academy of Pediatrics policy has found that the overall rate of circumcision in the United States declined from 83% in 1960-1969 to 77% by 2010.
...
They concluded that, over the course of a lifetime, around one in two uncircumcised men would require treatment for some medical condition associated with retention of the foreskin.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Fewer infants in the United States are being circumcised than in previous decades, yet the benefits of the procedure far outweighs the risks, an Australian-American study has concluded.

The findings, reported Wednesday in the prestigious Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that while the number of circumcised American men aged 14-59 rose slightly between 2005 and 2010 -- from 79 to 80.5 per cent -- the current rate at which infants are being circumcised has fallen by six per cent over the last four decades.
...
And the decrease has the study’s authors arguing that nowadays people should look at infant circumcision “in the same light as childhood vaccination” -- in large part due to the health benefits they say the procedure offers.

More specifically, the study found that the benefits of circumcision outweighed risks by at least 100 to 1. The authors say that half of uncircumcised males will contract an adverse medical condition in their lifetime caused by their foreskin. Uncircumcised men also have a greater chance at contracting genital ulcer disease, penile cancer and a number of STDs, the study shows.

The U.S.-based Center for Disease Control says that carcinogenic subtypes of human papillomavirus (HPV) -- which are believed to cause cervical cancers, 90 per cent of anal cancers, and 40 per cent of cancers of the penis, vulva, and vagina -- have also been associated with uncircumcised men.
...
The Canadian Paediatric Society, which outlined its position in 1996, says that “the overall evidence of the benefits and harms of circumcision is so evenly balanced that (the CPS) does not support recommending circumcision as a routine procedure for newborns.”

Story here. Excerpt:

'When turning to the United States, she argued that American society "needs to reorient our social expectations and the signals we send" about the value associated with different kinds of degrees.

She said that it is time to "redefine higher education" so that more see the value of non-bachelor's-degree programs. "Just because a job requires certain technical skills and not a bachelor's degree" should not lead to a devaluing of those jobs or the relevant training, she said.
...
As she frequently does in her public appearances, Clinton spoke of the importance of providing full educational opportunities to women all over the world. But while she noted considerable progress in the United States in the availability of educational opportunities for women, she drew attention to inequities. She noted that women make up a majority of undergraduates, but only a small minority of those majoring in computer science.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Casey Neff, the manager of Fado Irish Pub, reportedly "sent an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian, women’s lacrosse coach Karin Brower Corbett and Penn’s Athletic Department, among others, claiming that a group of 50 people under the lacrosse team’s reservation did considerable damage to his business.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The good news, trumpeted in Women’s Work, the latest report from the Pew Economic Mobility Project, is that dramatic increases in women’s labor-force participation have boosted the “financial security and mobility” of millions of families across America since 1970. The bad news is that growing economic opportunities for women have not translated into more family income for poor and working-class families at the lower end of the income ladder. That’s surprising, because up and down the income ladder, women have been bringing home more bacon since the 1970s, as the figure below illustrates.
...
One reason that lower-income families are losing economic ground is that gains in women’s income have been offset by declines in marriage among the poor and working class. As the figure below indicates, more than half of these families are headed by just one parent—typically a single mother. Lacking the income of two parents, or the income of a father, these single-parent families are much less likely to reap the benefits of increases in income that have accrued to today’s working women. This is one reason why single-mother families are much more likely to be struggling to make ends meet. Indeed, one recent estimate found that the median income for married families in 2012 was about $81,000, compared to about $25,000 for single mothers.
...

Is this an April Fools joke? Excerpt:

'A new burial area for lesbians only is being inaugurated this weekend in a two-century-old cemetery in the German capital.

A 400-square-meter (4,300-square-foot) area of the Lutheran Georgen Parochial cemetery, established in 1814 in central Berlin, will be reserved as a graveyard for up to 80 lesbians, said Usah Zachau, a spokeswoman for the Safia association, a national group primarily for elderly lesbians.

The association said it had created a burial area to be inaugurated Sunday, as a space "where life and death connect, distinctive forms of cemetery culture can develop and where the lesbian community can live together in the afterlife.
...
A spokesman for the Berlin Lutheran church said the agreement with the women's group comes as part of the church's efforts to "revitalize its cemetery grounds by cooperating with other groups."