Story here. Excerpt:

'STORRS, Conn. (AP) — University of Connecticut police say a report that a group of men struck a woman with a skateboard and sexually assaulted her is false.

Police say they investigated the report of the alleged attack early Saturday at Storrs campus and learned the incident did not occur and the person who made the complaint "falsely reported the assault."

They say on their website that after receiving the report, they issued an alert warning through the university's emergency alert notification system. Detectives reviewed security camera footage and conducted interviews with the person who made the complaint. They did not say if charges would be filed.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Known as Personal Empowerment Through Self Awareness training, or PETSA, the new tutorial includes seven video segments followed by a quiz, along with a list of emergency contacts. Every student, regardless of age or academic year, is required to watch the video and pass the quiz.

“It didn’t teach me anything,” said Blake DeShaw, a junior majoring in international business. “I support the help system they’ve created, and I think that’s great. But the mandatory tutorial is overkill.”

DeShaw believes the tutorial focuses on the obvious – don’t drink alone, make smart decisions, don’t hang out with jerks who are aggressive toward women and don’t rape.

His sentiments were similar to some of his peers, who struggled to define drunken consent, or an absence of consent, as rape. Many students believe the video fails to hold individuals accountable for their decisions, regardless of gender.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Despite this laudable reason for getting snipped, medical science remains rather more sceptical about the matter. Harking back to biblical times, circumcision is habitually passed off as “cleaner” than its laissez-faire alternative, but statistics about the spread of disease in roundheads versus cavaliers are inconclusive. The British Medical Association states that “the evidence concerning health benefits from non-therapeutic circumcision is insufficient for this alone to be a justification.” Although the World Health Organization has found “compelling evidence” that the practice can reduce the risk of transmitting HIV, this claim has been disputed by various studies and was recently savaged on the Oxford University Practical Ethics blog, which concluded that it was based on “bad science”. In Africa, the procedure is also becoming a worrying substitute for contraception.

The University of Montana has recently implemented new sexual assault guidelines and created a series of personal empowerment awareness videos for students. Unfortunately, the videos are spreading misinformation about rape, and the guidelines are restricting the civil rights of falsely accused students.

The videos are based on claims by the Justice Department that are wholly unverified -- such as "80 reported rapes" at the university in the past three years. The videos even promote the untrue statistic that only 2 percent of rape accusations are false.

Montana quarterback Jordan Johnson was charged with rape despite all evidence pointing to his innocence. His accuser admitted to her friends "I don't think he did anything wrong to be honest," but prosecutors continued with the case inviting, as an investigation reported, "the possible conviction of an innocent defendant."

In a letter to Univ. of Montana President Royce Engstrom, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) has requested that the university immediately remove the damaging videos from its curriculum.

Link here. Excerpt:

'A teenage girl has run out of Perth Magistrates Court and smashed a car with an axe on a main street, yelling and swearing at officers as they tried to restrain her.

The 15-year-old girl began smashing the windows of the parked Pajero in front of dozen of stunned onlookers on Hay St yesterday.
...
It is believe the frenzied attack was related to a family dispute over unpaid parking fines.'

Story here. I am reminded of that plea to the All-Mighty, "Lord, save me from your followers!". People are marching for the right to sexually mutilate their sons. For religious reasons? For any reason other than to save their lives or to address a serious health problem is unbelievable. But really why should it still shock me? Think of all the completely bonkers stuff people have done in the name of their religious beliefs, whether those be actual religious beliefs or what some have called "secular religious beliefs", such as those held by political extremists or really anyone so beholden to a single way of doing anything or looking at the world that they can't even tell when their behavior has gone from self-expression to just plain nutty. Anyway, excerpt:

'AFP - Around 500 mainly Jewish but some Christian and Muslim protesters gathered in Berlin on Sunday to demand the right to circumcision after a disputed court ruling in Germany outlawing the rite.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Journal reported recently that the Rapid City School Foundation honored the Teacher of the Year and the Teachers of Distinction. I couldn't help but notice all 20 teachers honored are female. Not to say that the 20 aren't deserving but, even if there are more women teachers than men, it seems strange that there isn't a more equal ratio of deserving male teachers. Maybe teachers had to apply and no males applied. The Journal article didn't state how the winners were nominated or chosen or who makes up the foundation.

Article here. Excerpt:

'CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Women's issues were front and center at the Democratic National Convention as President Obama and the many women headliners underscored over and over again the reasons why this election is critically important for women. The choice on November 6 for women could not be more stark and will determine if this country continues the progress we have made on women's rights, or if we retreat and lose the gains of more than forty years.

Women's health, pay equity, women's jobs, the fight for women's equality, and reproductive choice and rights were featured in Charlotte as Democrats made a strong and compelling case on these issues. The women delegates and activists responded with loud applause and sustained enthusiasm.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The National Council of Women has dubbed as "shocking" news that the Maltese government will join a diplomatic push spearheaded by the United Kingdom, to oppose a law that will introduce mandatory quotas for women on public companies and private companies on the stock exchange.

The law, pushed by the EU's justice commissioner Viviane Reding, seeks to have 40% of all boards of directors for companies listed on the stock exchange made up of women, by 2020.

Justice minister Chris Said told MaltaToday yesterday the Maltese government believes the EU should stay out of such legislation and instead allow national governments to pursue their own equality measures.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The central government's proposal to introduce a law, which, if passed, would mandate every man to part with a portion of his salary income as salary to his wife, has been strongly opposed by men's rights groups.

Save Family Foundation, a non-government organisation, has written a letter to Union Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath [ Images ] seeking immediate withdrawal of the proposal.

The foundation, representing around 40 different men's organisations across the country, has termed this proposal one-sided.

The organisation has also sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention in this matter.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Preventing discrimination or exclusion in STEM education is important, experts say, because unequal opportunities may be partially to blame for the traditionally low number of female engineers and scientists.

President Barack Obama’s administration is evaluating what could be included in a Title IX compliance test for STEM and whether it could encompass criteria similar to the “three-prong” test for compliance in athletics, Maatz said.

Under the test, schools can prove compliance by showing a history and continuing practice of expanding athletic opportunities for girls, by proving the interests of both sexes are being met, or by making sure percentages of girls and boys participating in sports are proportional to percentages of girls and boys enrolled at the school.

The idea of applying a proportionality test to student populations in STEM classes scares some educators and at least one women’s group.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Although girls and women have made significant progress in the 40 years since the introduction of Title IX — the law that prohibits educational programs that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex — students and educators say more work is needed to truly level the playing field.

A Daily Herald analysis based on data from the 2011 Illinois School Report Card found that while female students at the 25 top performing high schools in suburban Chicago scored higher than their male counterparts in the reading section of the 2011 Prairie State Achievement Exam, boys continue to outperform girls in the areas of math and science.'

Article here. From June but contains some stuff I have suspected myself. There is no doubt in my mind that the access to all manner of distractions, whether it be pornography or games or something else, has had a really bad effect on our children's (and especially, it seems, our sons') abilities to get and remain focused on more productive and valuable pursuits likely to serve them in life. Excerpt:

'Psychologist Philip Zimbardo claims that today's young men are destined for failure because of porn and video games.

In his controversial book The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling And What We Can Do About It, Zimbardo and co-author Nikita Duncan outline why he thinks men are failing in education and personal relationships.
...
Some highlights from the book:

Article here. Excerpt:

'But men will never fully recover because the bad economy simply expedited something that had been happening for years, according to Hanna Rosin's new book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women .

Rosin explains in her book:

In the Great Recession, three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs were lost by men. The worst-hit industries were overwhelmingly male and deeply identified with macho: contruction, manufacturing, high finance. Some of these jobs have come back, but the dislocation is neither random nor temporary. The recession merely revealed--and accelerated--a profound economic shift that has been going on for at least 30 years, and in some respects even longer."
...
The August jobs report revealed men's participation in the workforce to be at the lowest level since 1948, the Atlantic reported. The number of men in the workplace began declining in the 1950s, when women entered the workforce in droves.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK (Reuters) - For all the bluster of her book's title, "The End of Men: And the Rise of Women," Hanna Rosin is surprisingly ambivalent about whether men are, in fact, doomed.

Women are quicker to adapt to the economy's new demands, Rosin says, pursuing higher education in record numbers and dominating fast-growing professions such as nursing and accounting.

At the same time, men watch the shrinking of manufacturing, construction and other traditionally male industries as if paralyzed, on the couch with a beer in hand.

More than two years of research and reporting, though, have left Rosin unconvinced that the end of men is inevitable.

"It's an obnoxious title," she conceded about her book and the 2010 cover story in the Atlantic magazine that launched it. "And I think my argument would have been much easier to make if I believed that women's brains are one way and men's brains are another way and the economy prefers our brains right now."'