From Intact America:

ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT AND WE STILL NEED SIGNATURES!

You've been hearing a lot about our campaign to stop the researchers at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati from continuing an outrageous circumcision study [link added], and now we're down to the wire. Our peaceful protest outside the hospital is planned for Thursday, which means we have one more day to get as many signatures as we can.

If you haven't yet signed our letter, please sign it right away. If you've already signed it, thank you! Please take the next step and spread the word by emailing your friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors, telling them about our campaign and asking them to sign our letter. You can also help us make an impact in Cincinnati by pledging your financial support for this campaign.

Preview here. The full short film is available at Distrify.com. You can find "Shame" on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ShameMEStudios and on Twitter: @shamemovie

Story here. Excerpt:

'Bonnie Bennett said her son, Jordan, was suspended Friday at Harmony Community School in Osceola County after playing cops and robbers with another student.

“There was nothing in his hand. He used his thumb and index finger,” said Bennett. “It was a game. He made no threatening advances or threats to harm anyone. No words were said.”

Bennett said she would have been satisfied with some form of punishment but is worried now that since he's been suspended, her son will be seen as a violent child.

“They took a child that has never been in trouble before and went to the extreme,” said Bennett. “A child that has no history of violence is now classified as a violent offender.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Two boys playing on a girls’ volleyball team at a New York high school could see their playing time spiked when league officials consider modifying a rule that allows them to play with the fairer sex.

Seniors Andrew Lafortezza and Jason Elbaum both played for the co-ed volleyball club last season at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua. But due to budgetary constraints, the Quakers were unable to field a boys’ team this year, prompting the teens to seek a spot on the girls’ squad, which they earned after receiving approval from league officials in August.
...
“I’m very concerned with the fact that we have two boys playing on a girls’ team,” Zayas said. “I’m concerned there’s a significant adverse effect on other teams.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

Fathers have begun resisting the tactics of private adoption agencies, which broker incentives to women for giving up their children at birth. The rights of birth mothers, wealthy potential adoptive parents, natural fathers, and the profits of the adoption industry are at odds. As members of a democracy, as human beings, it is time for us to understand what is at stake in these on-going heart wrenching dramas.

Story here. With all the news on bad fathers, we should all note this news story. A father sacrifices his life to save his daughter. Excerpt:

'A 13-year-old girl, the lone survivor of a rock slide that killed five people in Colorado, said her father used his body as a shield to protect her when the rocks came crashing down, according to police.
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"I heard a scream next to me. I saw a hand sticking out underneath the boulder," Tolsma said of Gracie. "The true hero is her dad. She said her dad jumped on her to protect her at the last moment when the rocks were coming down. I think he saved her life."

Gracie's father, a high school football coach, her mother and a sister died, sources told ABC News. The other victims and their identities have not been officially released.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Great Recession was disastrous across all worker demographics, but it was especially bad for men in their 20s.
...
"For men, this is kind of a wake up call," says Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown CEW. "The prospects are declining and what prospects there are aren't going to last. It's taking a while for the blue-collar economy to melt down, but it's melting."

In the last decade, the share of men ages 26 to 30 employed full-time fell from 80% in 2000 to 65% in 2012, the study finds. Over the same period, the proportion of women employed full-time in that age bracket also declined, but only from 56% to 50% — a drop of six percentage points as opposed to men's 15:'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Marilyn Edge, 42 (pictured above), of Scottsdale, Arizona was charged Monday with two counts of murder with special circumstances in the deaths of her two children, daughter Faith, 9, and son Jaelen, 13, after she poisoned them in a California hotel room to prevent turning custody over to their father in Georgia, reports the CBS Atlanta.

After a long, contentious custody battle, a Georgia judge awarded Mark Edge custody of the two children (pictured below) and Marilyn Edge was ordered to pay child support.

Instead of taking the children to their father in Cobb County, Georgia, Mrs. Edge allegedly poisoned them in a Santa Ana, California hotel room before crashing her car into an electrical box outside a Home Depot in Costa Mesa, California.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The talk itself was powerful, definitive, supremely logical – and also suitably provocative. Noting, for example, the obsession of feminism with male-on-female violence, Fiamengo pointed out that there are, in fact, “more male than female victims of violence,” that women in lesbian relationships are just about as likely to be the victims of domestic violence as women married to men, and that husbands are physically abused by their wives almost as frequently as wives are physically abused by their husbands. Fiamengo also cannily observed that while “children under the age of twelve are far more likely to be killed by their mothers than by anyone else,” there would surely be a massive feminist outcry “if the media focused relentlessly on mother violence against children” and if there were, say, regularly organized marches and a “ribbon campaign” expressing concern about the innocent victims of such murders.

Article here. Excerpt:

'KENYA:The prevalence of HIV and Aids rose in Nyanza and Central provinces, according to the Kenya Aids Indicative Survey released by the Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia on Tuesday.

But Central’s 3.8 per cent prevalence increase from the previous 3.6 per cent is a mere fraction of Nyanza’s 15.1 per cent up from 2007’s 14.9 per cent.

Nyanza’s prevalence is big enough to double the national average prevalence.

And it has happened in spite of an aggressive campaign to have male circumcision as a strategy to reduce new infections in the region.

According to the KAIS 2012 survey, male circumcision among men aged 15-64 years in Nyanza increased by 18 per cent.

According to Macharia, this represents a new 600,000 males from Nyanza joining the community of the circumcised.

“Circumcision was a taboo in this part of the country then, but today it’s the norm,” said Macharia, who claimed this development has helped reduce new infections.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A 12-year-old boy was suspended from a Rhode Island middle school after a gun keychain — just bigger than the size of a quarter — dropped out of his backpack during class.

Joseph Lyssikatos said a classmate scooped the novelty pistol from the ground and began showing it to other students at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry when a teacher confiscated it on Thursday.
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Lyssikatos was suspended for three days and banned from a class field trip to Salem at the end of the month.'

Story here. Good grief. Excerpt:

'Though the investigation of Friday's shootings continues, authorities said it appears Josephine and Jeffrey Ruckinger planned to murder her family at their rural central Pennsylvania home — but it remains unclear what exactly led to the deadly confrontation.

"They parked at the bottom of a long driveway, and walked up, heavily armed," said Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan.
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Police say Roberta, 64, answered the door, and cried out something like "Oh my God, they have guns!" before her daughter shot her at point-blank range. John Jr. then may have attempted to arm himself with a gun, but Jeffrey Ruckinger shot him multiple times in the chest, killing him, police said.

The elder Frew, 67, grabbed a .22 revolver and came out from the bedroom to find the daughter he didn't initially recognize pointing the shotgun at him. Frew fired once, hitting her in the head, then turned and exchanged fire with Jeffrey Ruckinger, killing him. He then called police.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'"To circumcise a child without medical reasons and without the child's consent, runs contrary... to the child's human rights and the fundamental principles of medical ethics," they write in a debate article in the Dagens Nyheter daily on Saturday.

The ombudsman Fredrik Malmberg, together with representatives from the Swedish Society of Medicine (SLS), the Swedish Society of Health Professionals (Vårdförbundet), the Swedish Paediatric Society (BLF) and the Swedish Association of Pediatric Surgeons (SLF), argues that Swedish law requires that the child's will be taken into account wherever possible.

Circumcision is a procedure which is typically carried out at a very young age and it is this issue of consent which is paramount, they argue.

"We consider circumcision of boys without the child's consent to be in contravention of article 12 of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which gives children the right to have an opinion in matters which concern them."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Police say they arrested a College Station woman Wednesday after she paid someone she thought was a hit man to kill the father of her 7-year-old son, according to CBS affiliate KBTX.

Nicolette Beard, 33, allegedly agreed to pay an undercover officer $4,000 to kill 30-year-old Anthony Drymalla III.

KBTX reports College Station police got a tip about the case when one of Beard's friends told them about the woman's plan.

The motive behind the murder-for-hire plot was a custody battle between the parents, according to police.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'When two half-naked female protesters from the radical anarchist organization "Femen" disrupted Paris Fashion Week on Thursday by invading the catwalk with slogans painted on their bare chests, an 18-year old supermodel punched one of them squarely in the nose.

Hollie-May Saker, an 18-year old supermodel whom many say may be the next Kate Moss, saw the screaming protesters just as she was about to go on stage.

According to the Daily Mail, a woman from the "radical feminist group" grabbed Saker's arm and tried to lift up her skirt, at which point the model punched her on the nose. She then "continued her run" on the catwalk "as if nothing had happened."'