Story here. Excerpt:

'The mayor of Dallas has unveiled a list of professional athletes and religious leaders who have signed on to help his campaign against domestic violence.

The campaign asks men to report abuse, help people who are being abused and volunteer with organizations that are helping.

The centerpiece of Mayor Mike Rawlings' campaign is the Men Against Abuse rally scheduled for Saturday at Dallas City Hall.
...
"We must stand together and that means, simply, not hitting women -- ever," Rawlings said.'

Meanwhile, Police: Woman kills husband, kids, self near Dallas:

'MESQUITE, TX -- A woman shot and killed her husband and two young adult children before killing herself in their suburban Dallas home, investigators said Thursday.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A privately funded shelter for male victims of domestic abuse — believed to be the only refuge of its kind in the country — has closed.

Men’s rights advocate Earl Silverman said he can’t afford to keep the Men’s Alternative Safe House (MASH) running.

Since it opened out of his house about three years ago, close to 20 men have passed through, he said. Among them was a “father with two children, a one-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy and he was fleeing a violent, alcoholic wife.”

Absent of federal or provincial funding, Mr. Silverman said he just can’t keep up with the grocery, heat and other bills associated with running the shelter. He said he sold his home last week.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Administrators with the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) say it won’t just be “men” standing up against domestic violence at the Dallas Men Against Abuse rally happening this weekend.

According to school district officials, some 1,000 male students will join in the call to ‘man up’ and end domestic violence. A number of DISD students are featured in Dallas public service announcements. “I pledge to hold my male friends accountable for their violent actions,” one teen declared in a video.'

Story here. Excerpt:

Facebook (FB) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has been on a high-profile publicity tour for her new book. She's been interviewed by CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," ABC's "Nightline" and CNN, among others.
...
Did Sandberg and Knopf, publisher of her book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead," request or choose interviewers based on the sex of the interviewer? Maybe Sandberg is hoping to give the female journalists some advancement with a plum interview. Or did news organizations pander to Sandberg and Knopf by suggesting a woman do the interviewing? The assumption is that female journalists would be more sympathetic to Sandberg's message.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Deputy Montfort Tadier said April's referendum is a great opportunity to encourage more women into government.

The referendum sets three questions over how the island's government is made up in future.

He said seats could be allocated as women only if islanders agreed to create larger political districts.

But Deputy Kristina Moore, first elected in 2011, said: "We have the same percentage of women as the UK, and thankfully our male colleagues treat us with much more respect than their counterparts."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Courts will be encouraged to hand more community sentences to women offenders – backed by curfews, tagging and unpaid work – in an attempt to reduce the female prison population.

The move, combined with treatment programmes for women with alcohol and drug problems, is designed to reduce the number of families that are broken up when a mother is jailed.

In an interview with The Independent, the Justice Minister, Helen Grant said: “There are some women who are bad and a risk to the public and society and they need to go to prison. But there are other women who are in the system, low-risk women, who would benefit greatly from punitive, credible punishments in the community.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has ruled that women convicts serving life sentence in Maharashtra jails are required to spend only 14 years unlike male convicts, who have to be behind bars for a period ranging from 14 to 28 years depending on the nature of offence committed by them.

The ruling was delivered on March 15 by Justices Abhay Thipsay and P V Hardas, who were hearing a petition filed by Usha Upadhyay challenging the decision of the state government in respect of benefit of premature release to be given to her on the basis of guidelines framed by the Government.

"In our opinion, category 1 of 2010 guidelines, which is exclusively for women offenders, must cover all cases of women offenders and that they can be fitted only in that category.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Having skills suited for a variety of careers helps explain why few women pursue math and science jobs, new research finds.

A study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan revealed that women may be less likely to want careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) because they have more career choices, not because they have less ability.

"Our study shows that it's not lack of ability or differences in ability that orients females to pursue non-STEM careers, it's the greater likelihood that females with high math ability also have high verbal ability," said Ming-Te Wang, one of the study's co-authors and developmental psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh. "Because they're good at both, they can consider a wide range of occupations."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A former Titans cheerleader is accused of pulling a 12-year-old boys pants off and offering him oral sex. She denies the allegations.

Black Mountain News reports that Elizabeth Leigh Garner, 42, of Nashville was indicted last week on aggravated sexual battery and solicitation of a minor for child rape.

In February, the boy told police he was at his home when he went upstairs to use the bathroom. He said Garner, who had been drinking, followed him upstairs.

"He stated she was asking him if he had ever been with a woman,” Murfreesboro Police Detective Tommy Roberts said in a report obtained by the Black Mountain News.

The boy said Garner then touched him "on the outside of his pants" and made "an attempt to take his shorts off" while offering to "perform oral sex on him."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The family and friends of Travis Alexander said it was difficult to watch Jodi Arias testify for nearly a month and "murder him again" with what they said are lies about Alexander's behavior and character.

"Travis is not on trial. Jodi is on trial and she done everything to put him on trial," Chris Hughes, who was Alexander's best friend, told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

Hughes has been watching the trial mostly from his home in Utah while members of Alexander's family, including at least three of his seven brothers and sisters, have been in the front row of the courtroom almost every day.

Arias, 32, is accused of murdering Alexander by stabbing him 27 times, slitting his throat and shooting him in the head. She could face the death penalty if convicted.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last week, we reported the data gathered by Fathers and Families member Terry Brennan on the number of men and women incarcerated from Massachusetts Probate and Family Courts for incomplete payment of child support. We found that 95% to 98.5% of those incarcerated in Massachusetts for this violation from 2001 through 2011 were men.

I then took Terry’s data and compared it to national data on rates of child support payment. I found that mothers in arrears are incarcerated at lower rates even though they have higher rates of incomplete payment, pay a smaller percentage of their child support order, and have larger arrears than fathers. In fact, mothers with child support arrears in Massachusetts are incarcerated at approximately one-eighth of the rate that would be justified by their numbers if fathers and mothers in arrears were treated equally.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Lawyers with the Utah-based Rocky Mountain Innocence Center say new DNA testing proves the innocence of a man who has served more than 23 years in prison on a Wyoming rape conviction.

Cheyenne lawyer Aaron J. Lyttle filed a request for a new trial for 63-year-old Andrew J. Johnson on Tuesday. Johnson, who has maintained his innocence, is serving a life sentence at the state prison in Rawlins on the 1989 conviction.

Lyttle stated that DNA testing proves Johnson didn't commit the crime. Lyttle says he expects that Johnson will receive a new trial.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON — The decline of two-parent households may be a significant reason for the divergent fortunes of male workers, whose earnings generally declined in recent decades, and female workers, whose earnings generally increased, a prominent labor economist argues in a new survey of existing research.

David H. Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that the difference between men and women, at least in part, may have roots in childhood. Only 63 percent of children lived in a household with two parents in 2010, down from 82 percent in 1970. The single parents raising the rest of those children are predominantly female. And there is growing evidence that sons raised by single mothers “appear to fare particularly poorly,” Professor Autor wrote in an analysis for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.

Prosecutor bias is a serious problem. In January we sent the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) a letter*. We requested that they make their program, the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women (NCPVAW) gender neutral or gender inclusive, consistent with current research.

[*Ed.: I had trouble opening this .pdf using Firefox, but it worked fine for me in Internet Explorer. You may have different results. -- Matt ]

They didn't do it. So last week we asked you to file complaints. You called and emailed; and for that we thank you. Unfortunately, our concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

NDAA has defended the NCPVAW program while reporting that it's almost entirely funded by grant awards given by the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). That almost sounds like an excuse to discriminate, doesn't it? Oh my.

Luckily they also stated, "We train prosecutors all over the country to prosecute ALL cases of domestic violence - on behalf of BOTH MALE AND FEMALE VICTIMS." Good thing, since the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)'s inclusiveness mandate includes the need for prosecutors to charge DV suspects regardless of sex....and to prosecute false accusers.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Many Rabbis are welcoming intact males into the Jewish community, and a growing number of Rabbis feel that surgical circumcision is no longer appropriate in the 21st century. Over 50 Rabbis, mohels and other Jewish leaders perform covenant ceremonies without surgical circumcision, and many more will do so upon request. These include Rabbis in the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and many other branches of Judaism.

Hundreds of thousands of Jewish males around the world remain intact. Most Eastern European and South American Jews remain intact, and many Western European Jews have ceased circumcision, seeing it as a barbaric remnant of pre-civilized times. Both Reform Judaism and Humanistic Judaism welcome intact Jews.'