Article here. Excerpt:

'The assault on voting rights is a naked attempt to suppress the votes of minorities, students, the elderly, and the poor. But don’t be fooled. This War on Voting is an essential part of the War on Women.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the recent wave of efforts to disenfranchise voters through strict voter identification laws, limits on early voting, and elimination of same-day voter registration across the country. And since the Supreme Court’s vicious undercutting of the Voting Rights Act last June in Shelby County v. Holder, we are facing even more of an onslaught.
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What is not commonly known, however, is that women are among those most affected by voter ID laws. In one survey, 66% of women voters had an ID that reflected their current name, according to the Brennan Center. The other 34% of women would have to present both a birth certificate and proof of marriage, divorce, or name change in order to vote, a task that is particularly onerous for elderly women and costly for poor women who may have to pay to access these records.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But, according to recent reports from CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times, Congress could have gotten things up and running again sooner if women had been calling the shots.
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As Ann Friedman noted recently, there is some data to support the idea that women in leadership positions are less impulsive, less corruptible and more willing to compromise than their male colleagues and counterparts. But researchers suggest that may be because, with so few represented in the seats of power, women in leadership positions feel they have to succeed because they have more to prove. And for all that Collins and Cantwell may have done to facilitate the deal that was eventually reached, there were other women, like Republican House members Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, working just as hard to maintain the deadlock.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Violence isn't always physical.

I've said this recently in a work context, though I can't remember the exact circumstances. My full-time job is in social justice research, and violence comes up frequently. It could be about hate crimes, homicides in under-resourced communities as a byproduct of the economic violence imposed on these communities, or a number of other things.

Article here. Excerpt:

'If women ruled the country, the government wouldn't be on the brink of shutting down or defaulting on its debt, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Murray spoke to a largely female audience on Wednesday, at an event that was part of The Atlantic's Women of Washington series.

She decried Republican legislation that would shut down the government unless Obamacare is defunded. "The rational thing to do," Murray said, "if there were a group of women in charge, is that we would keep the government running for the next several weeks, and we would say [on] the debt ceiling [that] we're going to pay our bills, and now let's do what we need to do, and sit down and solve our budget problems."
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Murray isn't the only female senator who believes Congress may be less dysfunctional if there were more women.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A 31-year-old Florida woman is accused of posing as a teenager in order to have sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Naomi Dixon is charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery involving a sex act with a child, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal. The victim told Volusia County sheriff's investigators that he met Dixon at a party in early September. Dixon allegedly claimed she was 17 years old, and the victim said he was 14.

After the two met, they had sex at her Deltona home eight times and stayed together regularly, the victim said. According to a sheriff's report, the victim had a hard time leaving Dixon's home. On several occasions when he tried to go home, she became upset, locked the door and even choked him.

The victim claimed the woman carved his first initial onto her arm with a pocket knife. He told his parents about the relationship on Sept. 25 after growing tired of the woman trying to keep him at her house.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'SHE provided a shoulder to cry on following a mishap on a school trip. He was a teenager with a crush.

Yet this was no innocent young couple in love.

The 32-year-old married teacher has pleaded guilty over her affair with a 15-year-old boy.

The mother of two had sex with him at her flat after wooing him with gifts, including a copy of the novel Eat, Pray, Love.

She then continued the illicit relationship for more than a month until his parents found out.

Neither of them can be named.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Three out of five young doctors on hospital wards and in GP surgeries are women.

They made up 61 per cent of doctors under 30 last year and 46 per cent of those aged 30 to 50.

Figures show men remain dominant in the oldest age group, with women comprising less than a third of doctors over 50.

But the numbers suggest the medical takeover by women is slowing.

In 2012, 55 per cent of medical students were female, compared with 61 per cent in 2003 and 57 per cent in 2007.

Overall, almost half of GPs are women, or some 46 per cent, according to the General Medical Council.

Previous reports have found hospitals are facing staff shortages as a result of junior doctors becoming pregnant as soon as they receive their first secure job.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Self-described "dissident feminist" Camille Paglia recently took feminists and women's studies programs to task for failing to acknowledge biological gender differences. She also criticized the American education system for failing to recognize the unique needs of boys and girls, and suggested there could be a conservative backlash against the cultural message that gender is socially, rather than biologically, constructed.
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In her opening remarks, available here, Paglia accuses women's studies programs at universities of being too insular and closed-minded, and feminists of being ignorant of gender differences and hostile to stay-at-home mothering and the educational needs of boys.

Link here. Excerpt:

Story here. Excerpt:

'The mother of one of the two girls facing charges over the suicide of a bullied 12-year-old Florida girl was jailed Friday on child abuse charges in a case authorities say is unrelated to the felony case against her daughter.

Vivian Lee Vosburg, 30, of Lakeland was being held without bond in the Polk County Jail on two counts of child abuse with bodily harm and four counts of child neglect, the sheriff's office said.
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According to the affidavit, Vosburg told investigators Thursday that she was the woman in the video and acknowledged punching one of the boys in the face and the other in the back of the head and shoulders. She said she knew she shouldn't have hit them, according to the affidavit.
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"This clearly indicates to us that this appears to be a normal way of life," Judd said at a news conference. "They're laughing and cussing and throwing the F-bomb around, then they're posting that conduct for all to see."

Story here. Excerpt:

'MIAMI (WSVN) -- A South Florida teacher has been fired after she is accused of providing students with alcohol and condoms.

The Miami-Dade School Board terminated Isabel Diaz Almaraz on Wednesday for acting inappropriately with students. "On behalf of the Superintendent, I am requesting that the board enter final order terminating Isabel Diaz Almaraz' employment with the school board," said assistant school board attorney Heather Ward.

Almaraz was a full-time dance teacher at South Miami High School. The district first began to investigate Almaraz because of several complaints from parents.

In the spring of 2012, the district said Almaraz provided students with a hotel suite for an after-prom party. The hotel suite was $1,000 and was paid for with her PayPal account.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Calaveras County sheriff’s detectives have arrested a Burson woman after a shooting Wednesday night left her husband dead and her granddaughter critically wounded. A 5-month-old baby found at the scene was unhurt.

Charity Ford, 56, faces charges of murder, attempted murder and child cruelty, authorities said in a news release. Deputies identified the granddaughter as Britney McGhee, 20. They did not identify the male victim by name, pending notification of his biological relatives, authorities said. But they said the 52-year-old was Charity Ford’s husband, and McGhee’s stepgrandfather.
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Deputies also found a 5-month-old boy in the house. Authorities said the baby is McGhee’s son. All four shared the home.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'An autistic boy at Hillcrest Middle School in Greenville, S.C. was suspended for drawing a cartoonish bomb and showing his friends, reports MSN Now on Oct. 16. Rhett Parham, much like other young boys, enjoys the classic video game Bomber Man and drew a picture of an old style kettle bomb with a fuse. His innocent drawing ignited some real controversy however after older boys at the school blew him in.
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“They actually reiterated to me they knew he was non-violent,” said Parham. “They knew he was not actually having a bomb, creating or making a bomb. But that they could not go without making an example of him and without having some type of action because they were worried about their perception. Perception is actually the word he used. He, a school official, said ‘Perception is reality, Rhett, and the parents will perceive maybe you have a bomb or you’re violent.’”'

Letter here. Excerpt:

'Tanya Gold articulates well the existence of contemporary antisemitism (A ban on male circumcision would be antisemitic. How could it not be?, 12 October). But I think she's wrong in describing the Council of Europe as antisemitic for including ritual male circumcision in its examples of violations of children's rights.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A team of researchers has identified a novel mutation in the hepatitis B virus (HBV) in Korea that appears only in men and could help explain why HBV-infected men are roughly five times more likely than HBV-infected women to develop liver cancer. Although some women do progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer, the mutation is absent in HBV in women. The research is published ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.