Link here. Excerpt:

'A new report released today shows that young men’s mental illness in costing the Australian economy more than $3 billion each year in lost productivity.

Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, today launched the landmark report, ‘Counting the Cost: The Impact of Young Men’s Mental Health on the Australian Economy’.

Commissioned by the Inspire Foundation and Ernst & Young, the Report highlights that mental illness in young men costs the economy $387,000 per hour and over 9 million working days lost per annum.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Zimbabwe is still falsely claiming that the surgical circumcision operation defeats the deadly HIV/AIDS virus.

This comes after more than 5 months of media coverage exposing the method’s weakness as a competent measure.

Several US medical practitioners have in the past few months warned third world countries upon whom the United Nations suggested the method, that they should not have their citizens deceive on circumcision and its supposed benefits.

The ministry of health is deceiving people by announcing to them that once they are circumcised, they become immune to HIV/AIDS effectively encouraging them to engage in promiscuity. Instead of reducing the risk, circumcision has been tested through behaviour change to actually be a protagonist of HIV transmission, critics state. One recent randomized controlled trial carried out in South Africa into male-to-female transmission actually demonstrated a 54% higher rate in the group where the men had been circumcised.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Routine circumcision in male infants is a potentially dangerous and unnecessary procedure, according to a Dublin surgeon, who has dismissed the rationale for the procedure as unproven and without medical justification.

Dublin consultant plastic surgeon Mr Matt McHugh said circumcision was a form of genital mutilation that exposed patients to a number of health risks.

However, a representative of the Jewish community in Ireland has defended the procedure, stressing that it is safe when performed correctly.

Writing in the latest issue of Modern Medicine, the Irish journal of clinical medicine, Mr McHugh said: "There is no rationale for carrying out this extremely painful, traumatic and potentially dangerous procedure on male infants.

"While female genital mutilation (FGM) is banned in Ireland and regarded as a serious assault, circumcision, which is a form of male genital mutilation, is not illegal, with the procedure still undertaken by some doctors."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The good news: Title IX has worked, big time. In 1970, two years before the seminal federal education law mandating equal opportunities for females was passed and signed into law, there were 3 million women, 3 percent of the female population, attending college. Today, more than 10 million women, nearly 7 percent of the female population, is attending college.
...
You might notice a gap in the numbers there. Not only are young women attending college in greater numbers than young men, the growth in the Title IX era is close to figurative exponential in comparing the numbers.

Which makes me wonder aloud … is it time, maybe, for a Title IX for Males?

Could it be that we’re putting so much emphasis on pushing young girls into realizing their full potentials that we’re forgetting that young boys might need a similar push?'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In that, not much has changed between Peggy Olson’s 1967 job search and our own lateral moves today.

Simply put, we continue to accept unequal conditions in the workplace serving lesser clients for lower pay, fewer promotional opportunities and far less respect than our work product deserves.

Peggy, who worked her way up from secretary to copywriter with the mentorship and sponsorship of the fatally handsome and deeply flawed Don Draper, learned a few things in last night’s show that men in the workplace have known since they first gathered together to raid the next village.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The EU Commission wants the proportion of female board members at big companies to rise to 40% by 2020, from the current average of 12%.

The Commission has said it may legislate to make quotas compulsory.

The Euro MPs in Strasbourg also called for EU-wide measures to boost female representation in politics.

Last week the EU's Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, launched a public consultation to generate initiatives - including possible legislation - aimed at redressing the gender imbalance.

Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain are among the countries that have already introduced gender quotas for companies.'

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.'