Article here. Excerpt:

'A widely criticized German court verdict on religious circumcision this week aims only to delay the act, not ban it, and is not directed against any faith, a jurist with a leading role in the legal debate said on Friday.

The operation does serious bodily harm and only males old enough to consent to it freely should undergo it, said Holm Putzke, law professor at Passau University in southern Germany.

Using arguments Putzke has published in recent years, a court in the western city of Cologne ruled on Tuesday that the circumcision there of a Muslim boy who suffered post-operative bleeding had violated a German law against causing bodily harm.

Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Protestant leaders in Germany denounced the ruling as a serious intrusion on religious freedom. Even Germany's foreign minister spoke out, saying such faith traditions must be allowed in a tolerant modern society.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It's not unusual for people looking for a relationship to keep a mental checklist of qualities they absolutely require in a a partner. But a recent survey by the dating service "It's Just Lunch" found that there's one box in particular that straight women want checked: they want the men they date to have jobs.

Of the 925 single women surveyed, 75 percent said they'd have a problem with dating someone without a job. Only 4 percent of respondents asked whether they would go out with an unemployed man answered "of course."

"Not having a job will definitely make it harder for men to date someone they don't already know," Irene LaCota, a spokesperson for It's Just Lunch, said in a press release. "This is the rare area, compared to other topics we've done surveys on, where women's old-fashioned beliefs about sex roles seem to apply."
...

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'“Equal shared parenting as a default in custody disputes is the logical and ethical choice: a win-win for fathers, for children and the nation. Let tomorrow be Day One of family law reform in America,” wrote Barbara Kay, a columnist with the National Post of Canada, in her article, A Father’s Day Downer, that ran in the New York Daily News, on Father’s Day.

Kay made her case with the facts and figures we know too well: “Father absence is devastating for children. Exhaustive peer-reviewed research confirms that the absence of a father is the single most reliable predictor for a whole roster of negative outcomes: low self-esteem, parental alienation, high school dropout (71% are fatherless), truancy, early sexual activity, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, gang membership, imprisonment (85% of jailed youth are fatherless), drug abuse, homelessness (90% of runaway children have an absent father), a 40 times higher risk of sexual abuse and 100 times higher risk of fatal abuse.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'"To ban infant circumcision is essentially to make the practice of Judaism illegal in Germany; it is now once again a crime to be a Jew in the Reich ... Perhaps those convicted of wrongful circumcision could be required to wear a yellow star?"

... But the court does indeed get to a central issue: can parents permanently mutilate a child's genitals to pursue their own religious goals? I have a rather expanisve view of religious liberty, so I would veer on the side of permissiveness here. But that it is an assault on a child seems obvious to me. If it were done not for religious reasons, it would be banned. And so I do not see making this mutilation as illegal as it is for girls to be somehow bigoted or intolerant.

Brian Banks, a star high school football player, was falsely accused of rape by a female acquaintance. Banks served five years in prison and was required to register as a sex offender. The accuser received a $1.5 million settlement from the school.

Last year, Banks logged onto Facebook and had a friend request from his accuser, Wanetta Gibson!

Private investigator Freddie Parish hid two cameras to record statements by Gibson when she met with Banks in the investigator's office. "Did he rape you?," asked Parish. "No," Gibson said, "he did not rape me." "All that money they gave us, I mean gave me, I don't want to have to pay it back, all of it, because that would take a long time," Gibson said on camera.

See the video: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/06/brian-banks-accuser-money-wanetta-gibson.html

This is a response to the document "Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposals, Submissions, and Approvals: PEPFAR Program Expenditures" [regulations.gov Docket ID: DOS-2012-0032, FR Doc No: 2012-11190] ( http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOS-2012-0032-0001 ).

The deadline for submissions is 8 July 2012.

This submission can be made by anybody from any country around the world.

Instructions:

Download and save the document from the following link (Click 'Download'):

http://www.2shared.com/document/i3rMxhR1/DOS-2012-0032_8July2012.html

Go to the following regulations.gov submission page:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=DOS-2012-0032-0001

Article here. Excerpt:

'Educators have long struggled to motivate boys to read on their own. Boys tend to be more active, hands-on learners and would rather clean their rooms than read Little Women, educators say.

But the stakes are high to get boys nose-deep in books, especially in the summer when kids who don’t read can lose ground on their reading skills. Boys have consistently lagged behind girls on state and national reading and writing exams, a gap that widens by the time they reach high school.

Under a new reading requirement recently approved by state legislators, third-graders who aren’t reading at grade level must be held back by the 2013-14 school year. In the 2010-11 school year, the most recent for which results are available, 22.3 percent of Ohio’s third-grade boys failed the reading exam.

Part of the problem is that teachers — many of them female — have steered boys into books that the teachers are interested in.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A North Carolina father is embroiled in a legal battle with a hospital that wants to assume guardianship of his comatose son.

A hearing was held on Tuesday to determine who will make the medical decisions for Freddie Lempe, 18, of Smithfield, N.C. The teenager has been in a coma since a car accident on March 6, 2011.

Lempe was in the passenger seat of a car that spun out of control on Highway 39 in Johnston County, N.C., throwing him out of the car. While the driver walked away with only minor injuries, the accident left Freddie with both brain and spinal cord trauma.

Now, WakeMed, the Raleigh hospital in which he has been receiving care for over a year, has filed a suit in Wake County Courthouse to replace Lempe's father as his legal guardian to ensure that the overwhelming amount of paperwork is completed so that the teenager is eligible for Medicaid.'

Press release here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON / June 26, 2012 – One month after revelations of Wanetta Gibson’s false rape accusation, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) is charging Los Angeles County prosecutors with unacceptable delay in filing perjury charges against Gibson. A vigorous prosecution of Gibson is critical to restoring the credibility of true rape victims, who often complain investigators with growing case loads don’t take their claims seriously, SAVE says.

Rape is No Joke, a victim advocacy group, has charged that “Enormous damages are done by making a false allegation of rape.” New York Post Andrea Peyser columnist laments that false accusations represent a “huge problem for future rape victims.” And Justice Enriques has decried that “False complaints of rape necessarily impact upon the minds of jurors trying rape cases.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

Story here. Excerpt:

'The ex-wife of NBA star Dwyane Wade was arrested and charged with “child abduction” in Chicago over the weekend.

According to the Associated Press, Wade has asked a judge to terminate Siovaughn Funches-Wade’s visitation rights with their two sons.

The couple divorced in 2010 and Wade was awarded custody of the boys in March 2011 due to Funches-Wade’s erratic behavior in court.

Wade’s attorney, James Pritikin, filed an emergency motion today to terminate Funches-Wade’s visitation rights, just hours before the Miami Heat were to take on the hapless Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 4 of the NBA Finals in Miami.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A Cambridge graduate who described herself as the “office cougar” has been jailed for falsely claiming she was having affairs with her married male colleagues.

Software engineer Jeevani Wickramaratna, 44, spun a web of deceit, bombarding the men with sexually explicit messages, emailing their wives and even falsely claiming one man had HIV.

She was found guilty of sexual harassment and jailed for 26 weeks by District Judge David Parsons, who blasted her "complete fantasy world".
...

Christine Hart, prosecuting, said: "She claimed that Mr Stokes was having an affair with the office 'cougar', and many of the messages were sexually explicit and caused great distress to both him and his family.

"Wickramaratna then began sending him a series of messages saying she was setting him free and said she had told his family about their affair and that he loved her."

Article here. Excerpt:

'Title IX is controversial with some men’s coaches and male athletes.

For instance, in order to close a $2 million shortfall in their athletic budget earlier this year, Slippery Rock University dropped two women’s sports and five men’s sports. After some female athletes filed a lawsuit in federal district court earlier this year, the university was required to reinstate the two women’s sports, swimming and water polo, because their elimination violated Title IX regulations. The school did not have to reinstate the dropped men’s programs.

Pecora explained that Title IX has been very positive for women’s athletics. However, the rules do have an impact on some men’s programs, although not at Pitt-Johnstown.

Article here. Excerpt:

'When Clay McEldowney saw the Princeton University wrestling program get pinned to the mat in 1993, he wanted to do something about it.

Eventually, the Pittstown resident and former Princeton grappler spearheaded a movement that enabled the sport to remain on the campus at Old Nassau, although struggling mightily at times. And along the way, McEldowney learned plenty about sometimes messy athletic politics and, more specifically, Title IX, a law Congress implemented in June 1972 as a means to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees of educational programs and activities at both public and private institutions that receive federal funds.
...
“I’ve been working on the national level but my mission is to alert people to the very high likelihood [Title IX] could impact scholastic activities as it relates to boys who participate in high school sports.'