Article here. Excerpt:

'WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) -- A Wilmington man is fighting for the right to raise his own child. A child he's never met. A child he never knew existed until the baby was several months old and already living with its potential adoptive parents. So far, trying to intervene has been a losing battle.
...
"I'm already a father," John said. "I'm just looking to be a daddy."

In April 2011, Johns discovered he had a six-month-old baby boy. A mutual acquaintance told Johns his ex-girlfriend had a baby and put it up for adoption. He confronted her and found out the truth.

"The emotions of anger, sadness, the joy of being a father... I had all that compacted into a five-minute conversation by her just saying, 'You have no rights.' I just kept thinking, 'What is she talking about? I'm the father,' John said.'

Link here. Excerpt:

'A 39-year-old woman who injected waste matter into a child's intravenous drip as she lay in hospital has been sent to rehabilitation instead of prison.

CCTV footage showed Nicola Clark injecting the substance into the girl's drip at Medway Hospital in Kent in April last year.

The substance contained E.Coli, a bacteria that lives in human intestines and can be detected in faeces.
...
Judge Jeremy Carey decided to spare Clark jail time because she was more in need of rehab.

"There will be those who, if they read the headline, will be surprised at the very least at the seemingly lenient sentence," Judge Carey said.

"I need to explain why I take that course. I have to consider the need for the protection of the public and the need for rehabilitation."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Health Service has removed the word ‘dad’ from a pregnancy handbook for fear of offending gay and lesbian parents.

Officials decided to use the term ‘partner’ throughout the 200-page guide, titled Ready Steady Baby, after receiving a complaint that ‘dad’ was discriminating against same-sex couples.

But the omission of the word has angered some campaigners who claim that traditional family values are being undermined.

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: ‘This is all part of an agenda to present as natural a type of family that cannot be created by natural means.

‘The NHS should not be squandering taxpayers’ money to advance the cause of a minority interest group.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The high mortality rate in Mexico's drug war has seen women progress quickly in the shadowy underworld of the cartels and they are increasingly taking on key management roles, a new book says.

"Female Bosses of Narco-Traffic," by Arturo Santamaria, a researcher at the Autonomous University of the State of Sinaloa, traces the ascent of women in drug trafficking organizations.
...
Santamaria said women act with more caution and use deadly force more sparingly than men.

"Maybe this is because they are mothers and have children," argued the researcher, while cautioning that younger women were apt to be as bloodthirsty as men.
...

Manuel Clouthier, a businessman and politician from Sinaloa, said he believed women in the drug trafficking business were more responsible, more loyal and, therefore, more effective.

And he warned that the rise of women augurs ill for the war on drugs.

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON — Men continue to take a bigger hit in their paychecks than women because of lingering effects of the recession, according to a study by the Conference Board.

Average wages for women remain lower than those for their male counterparts, by nearly 20 percent. But men’s wages have been much slower to rebound from the effects of the recession, which had its most severe effects on male-dominated industries, such as construction, the study found.

Although the recession technically ended in 2009, men’s wage growth had rebounded to half the average rate of the previous decade by last year. Meanwhile, the growth in wages for women had almost fully recovered, the study said.

The findings came as the Obama administration has sparred with the campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in recent weeks about which gender has suffered more in the down economy.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Every perpetrator of this crime against justice deserves to be punished, starting with Banks’ accuser. There is word that Wanetta is going to be asked to repay the $1.5 million she was paid by the school district for what she claimed to have happened to her, but her repayment should go far beyond money:

She should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and deserves a prison sentence no less severe than the time that was going to be given to Mr. Banks when the state chose to believe that he was a rapist.

The second party to pay for what happened to Mr. Banks should be the attorney, judge, and prosecutors who coerced him into taking a plea deal. Mr. Banks was told that if he continued to hold on to his “illusion” of innocence and actually fight for his right to a fair trial, he could face up to 41 years.

This kind of threat is similar to what was done during the Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition, where anyone who proclaimed their innocence was tortured until they admitted guilt.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'All these examples seem like strong evidence for Benatar’s thesis. Others he advances are more contentious, however. He finds it hypocritical that people get “very exercised” about female circumcision, but the decision to circumcise baby boys, often without anaesthetic, is uncontroversial. It was pointed out at Monday’s seminar that the two are virtually incomparable in terms of pain, scale and long-term effects, but Benatar says he addresses this argument in more detail in his book.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A team from the University of Virginia law school is suing the Pentagon for excluding women from combat units on behalf of two female Army reservists who say their careers were stymied by the policy.

Command Sgt. Maj. Jane Baldwin and Col. Ellen Haring both argue in the lawsuit that they have been shut out of promotions and desirable jobs for which they were otherwise well qualified either because they were banned by the exclusion policy from serving in those units, or because the combat exclusion prevented them from getting vital career experience.
...
The Supreme Court last addressed combat exclusion issues in 1981, when it ruled that sex discrimination in Selective Service registration was constitutional because women were unable to serve in combat units. Coughlin noted that combat has changed dramatically over the past three decades, and even the Defense Department has acknowledged that women today have often been placed in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gov. Mark Dayton says he won't sign into law a bill that would have increased the minimum parenting time in cases of divorce.

"I'm very disappointed. This was such a small change in the right direction," said Republican Peggy Scott of Andover, the House sponsor of the bill.

But Liz Richards, director of programming for the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, called it "a very simplistic solution" that could have de-emphasized consideration of a child's best interests. "Our position is really: 'Proceed with caution,' " she said.

Most divorces are settled between the parties, Richards said, but the ones that need court intervention -- and thus would be affected by a change in statute -- often include complex and problematic domestic situations.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It doesn't take social science research to prove that men are angry and depressed. One measure of this trend is the increase in the rates of homicide and suicide we see in males. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), homicide rates for males are three to four times higher than they are for females. Among persons aged 20-24, the male homicide rate is six times higher than it is for females, and it is much worse among minorities than among whites. For those ages 10-19, the homicide rate is 10 times higher for blacks than for whites.

Article here. Excerpt:

'We need to talk about men and we don’t do so. Quite often, because of the cultures of both modern men and women, it’s because we can’t.

Even to suggest that there are issues among men that might need talking through is a minor heresy: being a white male is like playing a computer game on “easy mode” – men are the patriarchy. Not only do we sail easily into the elite, with great jobs and pay, we’re also responsible for a huge number of problems faced by other groups.

For some men, all of the above is true. Looking at the very top of society, you could imagine it was the case for huge numbers. But it's not the case for everyone: millions of men are losing out and their situation is getting steadily worse each year. And all too often, it’s happening below the radar.

Despite the focus on the real and severe impact of the UK’s austerity measures on women, men were more likely to be unemployed before the downturn and still are.

MANN Readers,

Regrettably, we've had to disable anonymous submissions due to loads of spamming to the site that started a few days ago. I waited to see if it would stop after a time but it hasn't; it only got worse. Somewhere out there, someone figured out how to automate spam advertising submissions to our site and for this reason, we all have to deal with the inconvenience of logging in first before submitting a story.

If you need a userid for the site to submit a story, just ask for one by sending a request to newaccounts@mensactivism.org. Again, sorry for the inconvenience, but spammers have made the web that much harder a place to enjoy the convenience it used to have.

Matt

Article here. Excerpt:

'The face never comes into view in my dreams, but I know it’s him. The twisted mouth is agape, molded in an eternal gasp of shock. The lower half of his body is gone, and there’s a black hole where his guts should have been. When Chevy was blown from the Stryker hatch, he took flight for an incalculable measure of time before landing on the slat armor of his vehicle. His uniform was blown off, which never happens in the movies. But he was whole, as complete and pure as the day he was born, I’m told. I never got the chance to see for myself before he disappeared into a body bag. The continuing ambush prevented that.

Memorial Day comes early and often for the men in my infantry battalion. During the unit’s second tour in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, we lost 21 men from three companies and attachments. We lost 17 in the span of four months during the Battle of Baquba.'

Issue downloadable from here. It contains an article on how men can reduce stress in their lives. I would say though the advice is probably just as applicable to women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A day after a former high school football star had his rape conviction dismissed, attention focused on the woman who recanted the sexual assault claim she made 10 years ago.

Wanetta Gibson was a high school sophomore when she accused Brian Banks of raping her at Long Beach Poly High School. She and her family sued the school, receiving a $750,000 settlement, and Banks spent five years in prison after pleading no contest to forcible rape.

Even though a judge tossed out the rape charge Thursday, it remains far from certain whether Gibson, 24, will face any consequences.'