Story here. This is actually really quite a sad story. I hesitated to post it. But it's these marginal cases that really challenge thinking and standards (or possible double-standards). What do you all think, would she be getting the same soft-glove handling if she were a he? Or would it be all the same given her health problems/loss of her mate, which may well have contributed to her behavior. Both extreme grief and brain tumors can be causes of manic behavior, but are men less likely to be shown mercy with these as factors vs. women? What do you all think? Excerpt:

'LOS ANGELES — A former mayor of San Diego spent the last decade wagering more than a billion dollars at casinos across the country, eventually liquidating her savings, auctioning her belongings, selling off real estate, borrowing from friends and taking more than $2 million from a charity set up by her late husband, a fast-food tycoon.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON / February 13, 2013 – Following yesterday’s Senate approval of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), advocates for prompt passage of the bill in the House of Representatives have launched a high-pressure campaign designed to portray Republicans as unsympathetic to the plight of domestic violence victims.

Within hours of Senate approval of the bill, a group called UltraViolet issued a statement announcing its strategy in bold-faced type: “If we can spread the word that House conservatives are blocking legislation to reduce domestic violence because ‘it’s not fair to men,’ we can create a political firestorm no politician will want to get caught up in.”

A press release from the National Organization for Women claims a “radical fringe” controls the Republican leadership and that majority leader Eric Cantor would continue his “shameful efforts” to delay passage of the bill. The N.O.W. statement includes an emotional claim about daily “burnings” of women.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Recent studies are revealing that young boys are being discriminated against in schools and being graded unfairly because of how their active nature is perceived by teachers.

It is no secret that boys tend to be very hyper active at a young age. While most girls are happy doing whatever task is handed to them, boys often can’t focus unless they are given the opportunity to run around a bit and let out all that built up energy.

While their active nature is perfectly innocent, researchers believe teachers are discriminating against them unfairly.

The problem appears to be that teachers are interpreting being active as being “bad” and punishing young boys for not cooperating or behaving well in a classroom environment.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A men's issues website has cried foul after it was apparently classified as a "hate" site by Symantec.

Surfers visiting A Voice for Men (AVoiceForMen.com) were confronted by a message stating that it is a "known hate site" blocking from going any further by web-filtering technology in Symantec. A Voice for Men angrily denounced the move, which it ascribed to settings built into Symantec's Norton Internet Security software.

Paul Elam, publisher of A Voice for Men, fumed in an open letter to Symantec's senior management: "Your customers are given no supporting information or rationale for such a listing, and no immediate option to override the warning and proceed according to their own will; just the simple invective of being painted as a hate organisation."
...
Edwards then set up Norton DNS but that did not block the site either, and said: "[L]ooks like Symantec has updated its records".

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

"Boys are lagging behind girls in school; on average, they get worse grades, take fewer advanced classes and are less likely to graduate. To find out why boys are taking a back seat in education, host Michel Martin speaks with Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of 'The War Against Boys.'"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Host Michel Martin continues the conversation about why boys fall behind in school. She speaks with a group of parents and experts: author Christina Hoff Sommers, New York University education professor Pedro Noguera, University of Virginia Dean Bob Pianta, and Glenn Ivey, father of five boys.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In last week's blog, I discussed my predominantly male class--a group of kids whose behavior I'd had tremendous difficulty managing last semester while team-teaching with a female special-education teacher. Now, with a male special-education teacher, the students' behavior was suddenly much improved. I considered that something Christina Hoff Sommers had suggested in her article--that boys needed more male teachers--might deserve some credence, despite the fact that I don't inherently like the idea: I believe that boys should be able to be educated by teachers of either gender, as long as that teacher is attuned to their learning needs.
...
... Thus, at the end of the day, the gender of the teacher cannot be the only factor that predicts the success of the students--although, sometimes, it really does help.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Britain's farcical benefits system was exposed yesterday after a cheating mother was told she can now claim twice as much rather than go to jail.

Joanne Gibbons, 23, fiddled £3,140 in income support while holding down two jobs, a court was told.

But after she was caught it was revealed the shop assistant mother-of-one was entitled to claim £130 a week – £64 a week more than the amount she was swindling the taxpayer.

During her court appearance even her lawyer admitted: “This case is extraordinary and perhaps an indictment of the benefits system.”
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'Falsely accused by his ex-wife, after a bitter divorce, of being behind in his child-support obligations by more than $3,500, Tony Schehtman was prosecuted for months and had his passport confiscated, restricting his business travel.

But last month he won a measure of vindication when a South Florida judge issued a scathing sanctions order. In addition to ordering Schehtman's ex-wife to pay him $7,645 in legal fees, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Pedro Echarte also required prosecutors to do the same, calling the "pointless litigation," which proceeded for months after the defendant proved that he was not delinquent, "reprehensible" and "irresponsible," reports the Miami Herald.
...
"The state attorney deprived a law-abiding citizen of a fundamental liberty: his freedom of movement,” said Heller. “We will do what it takes to make sure this never happens again.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A graduate of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. has sued the school for $1.3 million because she is unhappy that she got a C+ in a class in 2009.

Megan Thode, 27, says the grade ruined her dream of becoming a licensed professional counselor, reports The Morning Call, an Allentown-based newspaper. Her civil suit alleges breach of contract and sexual discrimination. It contends that the grade was part of a broader attempt to force her to abandon the graduate degree she was pursuing.
...
Thode’s lawyer, Richard J. Orloski, maintains that she deserved a higher grade. However, her professor, Amanda Carr, awarded her a big, fat zero for classroom participation. That zero brought her grade down.

Orloski has also alleged that Carr and Nicholas Ladany (who was the director of the degree program) conspired against Thode because she and three other students were critical when they were had to search for supplemental internships midway through a semester.

Link here. Excerpt:

'Video footage has been obtained by Nine News showing scenes of shocking violence at Sydney train stations.

CCTV cameras at Kings Cross, Cabramatta and Blacktown railway stations captured violent attacks which left victims seriously injured and security staff outnumbered.

At Blacktown station in Western Sydney a group of teenage girls were recorded attacking a couple, leaving the man unconscious and his partner with blood streaming down her face.'

Letter here. Excerpt:

'The way to deal with boys’ underachievement in school is not through “boy friendly” policies like more recess, single-sex classrooms and male teachers but through strong academic climates and clear, consistent information about occupations and the educational pathways that lead to them.

After years of research for our forthcoming book, “The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools,” Thomas A. DiPrete and I found that in schools where academic effort is expected and valued, boys compete for high grades and more often achieve them. Such schools reduce gender gaps and promote healthy, multifaceted gender identities for both boys and girls.
...
Rather than remaking schools in ways that reinforce gender stereotypes, we need schools that set high expectations for student achievement and treat students as individuals.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Although I suffer the cultural drawbacks of being born and raised as an Australian male (i.e. to be ‘masculine’), I empathise with Kali Goldstone’s frustrations at the disadvantageous treatment of women in many organisations, to the detriment of both (On Line Opinion February 11, 2013). It is unfortunate, however, that she often relies on and quotes poor science. Here are some more research-based findings.

How ironic: the Education Minister busted for cheating! You can't make this stuff up! So at the risk of being accused of schadenfreude, here it is. It's like the old joke about the atheist who became a priest. Anyway, there is this notion that females are less likely to cheat or be academically or generally dishonest than males. It's reports such as these that show such ideas for what they are: hogwash. Excerpt:

'BERLIN — For 32 years, the German education minister’s 351-page dissertation sat on a shelf at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf gathering dust while its author pursued a successful political career that carried her to the highest circles of the German government.

The academic work was a time bomb, however, and it exploded last year when an anonymous blogger published a catalog of passages suspected of having been lifted from other publications without proper attribution.