Article here. Excerpt:

'If you take what you hear in the mainstream media as gospel, you probably believe that women are discriminated against, marginalized and held back unjustly in the workplace.

As a strong woman in the workplace myself, I am tired of being portrayed as the feeble minority encircled by the bloodthirsty men waiting to pounce on me at any given moment. Any such portrayal is a disingenuous attempt at victimization. I, for one, refuse to be a victim.

Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, alleged at a White House conference on urban economic development last month that women have "fallen into what I call the 16 percent ghetto, which is that if you look at any sector, be it aerospace engineering, Hollywood films, higher education, or Fortune 500 leading positions, women max out at roughly 16 percent... That is a crime."

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'Evidence of the castrations has emerged amid controversy that it was not included in the findings of an official investigation into sexual abuse within the church last year.

The NRC Handelsblad newspaper identified Henk Heithuis who was castrated in 1956, while a minor, after reporting priests to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home.

Joep Dohmen, the investigative journalist who uncovered the Heithuis case, also found evidence of at least nine other castrations. "These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced," he said. "There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story."

Link here. Excerpt:

'Under the Affordable Care Act, 45.1 million women – including 20.4 million women with private health insurance and 24.7 million women with Medicare – can receive recommended preventive services with no cost-sharing, new data released today by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius show.
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The data highlighted in an issue brief by the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation show that Affordable Care Act provisions are already improving women’s health by making recommended preventive care services more accessible and increasing access to health insurance coverage.

“From increased health coverage to free preventive services and lower prescription drug costs, our mothers, grandmothers, daughters, friends and neighbors are already benefiting from this law and will continue to in the months and years to come,” said Secretary Sebelius.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Members of Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) staged a naked protest in the flagship London branch of Marks & Spencer at Marble Arch, Oxford Street.

Group founder Matt O'Connor was arrested during the weekend protest, which criticised the high street store for its advertising on parenting blog site Mumsnet.

Along with four other members of the group, O'Connor took off his clothes in the store to draw attention to what F4J claimed was Mumsnet's "anti-male agenda".

He claimed that the protest was just the start of a series of attacks on M&S in order to draw attention to the "naked truth" that Mumsnet "promotes gender hatred".'

Article here. Excerpt:

'As Senate Republicans resist renewing the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), raising questions about immigration fraud and Indian tribal courts, and Democrats indignantly declare their support of it, civil libertarians should take a hard look at some of the Act's deceptively innocuous provisions. Section 304, which governs the treatment of sexual violence charges on college and university campuses, requires that cases involving allegations of violence or stalking provide for "prompt and equitable investigation and resolution."

What's worrisome about this language? Will Creeley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) points out that "prompt and equitable" is a term of art under federal anti-discrimination law. It's construed by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights to require a low standard of proof ("preponderance of the evidence") in sexual misconduct cases.
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Article here. Excerpt:

'Last month, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) proposed a reauthorization of VAWA, which passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Senate floor. But for the first time in VAWA's history, the bill encountered strong opposition. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), aware of VAWA many flaws, offered an alternative bill, but that bill did not pass out of committee.

SAVE report documents 10 fundamental rights and protections that are being harmed by the Violence Against Women Act:
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"Indiscriminate restraining orders, unconstitutional standards of evidence, and arrests without probable cause have been ravaging this country since VAWA passage in 1994," SAVE spokesman Philip W. Cook notes. "The civil rights of African-Americans and other minorities have been especially hard-hit by strong-arm domestic violence policies."

Article here. Excerpt:

'DAMASCUS, Syria – The wife of Syrian president Bashar al Assad told a friend she was the "real dictator" in the family, leaked emails revealed Monday.

Asma al Assad, 36, apparently showed no remorse for the deaths of thousands of Syrians in the brutal crackdown on protests and backed her husband in a series of emails to aides, friends and family.

Around 3,000 messages were obtained by activists and then passed on to several media outlets including The (London) Daily Telegraph.
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She also praised Assad for being "very strong, no more messing around," and in another email complained that ABC News had unfavorably edited an interview with him.

She said, "As for listening -- I am the REAL dictator, he has no choice..."

The mother of two, who was born in Britain and studied at a university in London, was forced to shop online using an alias after international sanctions were brought in over the bloodshed in Syria.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'...Business experts have expressed scepticism that the EU could impose uniform restrictions on such diverse national working cultures.

Kenneth Ahern, a professor of finance from the University of Michigan, doubted whether Britain was ready to make the necessary financial sacrifice to push women onto boards. His own research on Norway, published last year, showed that "the quota led to younger and less experienced boards, and deterioration in operating performance, consistent with less capable boards."

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "In Norway, they knew that the value of their companies would drop, but society there cared more about equality than finance. It was a conscious decision.

"For the EU to make such an important moral choice, across such a variety of countries, is a very big ask indeed. I could see there being real resistance to obligatory quotas from countries such as Germany and the UK, which prize the financial output extremely highly." '

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here.. Excerpt:

'Women are poised to become America's biggest breadwinners.

The tipping point is a generation away, assuming women's economic power keeps rising as expected. But already, the trend is stunning enough that TIME made it the subject of its current cover.

"Almost 40% of working wives out-earn their husbands," noted Liza Mundy, author of "The Richer Sex"--both the cover story and a new book that goes by the same title--at a breakfast in New York City, hosted by TIME and Fortune.
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Why such rapid advancement? The Pill, Mundy said, helped spark the trend 50 years ago: Newly able to delay marriage and childbearing, women began focusing on their careers. America's shift to a service economy also favors college grads, who increasingly tend to be female. Today, women make up 60% of U.S. college classes and earn more masters and doctorate degrees than men.

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'MAGNOLIA, TX (KTRK) -- A Montgomery County child was in the hospital in critical condition Saturday night and his mother was behind bars after authorities say she attacked him.

Magnolia police were called to a home in the 100 block of Roy Street near F.M. 1488 just after midnight for a welfare check on a child.

According to police, the child's father called 911 after he returned home and found his son covered in blood and unresponsive.

When authorities arrived, five-year-old Michael Spurlock was lying on the living room floor.

According to investigators, the child's throat had multiple lacerations and was sliced from one side to the other. Officials said he also had a crushed chest and severe head injury.
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Beverly Latham heard that her sister claimed she was trying to rid her son of demons, but Latham said that's uncharacteristic of her sister.

"I know my sister would never hurt her children," Latham said. "Never."

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Government is studying ways under which it will set up circumcision camps or clinics in schools for boys who are willing to be circumcised.

Education ministry's permanent secretary Francis Xavier Lubanga told New Vision that when arrangements are done, the ministry will send circulars to all schools in the country about the issue.

"Schools will also be instructed to communicate to the parents on how the programme will be conducted.

For children below the age of consent, written consent of the parents will be required," Lubanga explained.

He also said the education ministry would partner with the health ministry. Citing an incident where 13 students of Teso College Aloet, were recently suspended after they sneaked out of school to get circumcised, Lubanga said the number of students in need of circumcision across the country may be high.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'This year’s figures erased a gap that peaked at 2.6 points in May 2009, when a greater proportion of men were out of work. The differential was the largest since the government started tracking the numbers in 1948.

“It’s a function of manufacturing coming back strong and mining doing really well,” Dutta said yesterday in a telephone interview. Men have benefited more from the industries’ growth than women because they traditionally do most of the jobs, the New York-based economist added.

Even so, women are more likely to stay in school and get the college education needed for jobs in health care and other expanding industries, according to Dutta. He highlighted this trend in a report published on March 6, during International Women’s Week.

“The problems for men are mounting,” he said. “They just don’t have the skills for today’s labor force.”'

Article here.. Excerpt:

'In 2010, a multi-partisan group of thirty-four scholars made a proposal that President Obama create a White House Council on Boys and Men, as a parallel program to the White House Council on Women and Girls. Warren Farrell, the leader of the effort, identified five different areas in which boys are in crisis—education; jobs; emotional health; physical health; and fatherlessness. In an interview with Forbes, Farrell said that “The White House Council would signal to the world that boys and men are facing problems, alert schools and parents as to the nature of these problems, and alert all the nation’s institutions to explore how attending to these problems might help our sons, daughters, families and nation.” One educational issue to be addressed by the Council would be the huge gender gaps in educational attainment for young adults illustrated by the BLS report.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The men of WKU will hit the streets in high heels on Wednesday for the Interfraternity Council’s annual “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” event.

About 40 men signed up to wear a pair of heels while walking a mile around campus to raise awareness about sexual abuse and violence against women.
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“We want to raise awareness to stop rape, violence and sexual assault,” said Phil Korba, IFC’s activities chair. “The money we raise will go to Hope Harbor.”

Hope Harbor is a non-profit organization in Bowling Green that offers support to women who are victims of abuse.
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Because they had trouble getting men to sign up, IFC postponed the deadline for signing up several times.

“We were trying to make this event bigger than last year,” Korba said. “This is out of the guys’ comfort zone. They don’t want to walk around in red high heels.”

Korba said he hopes that the event will continue and that more and more men will participate.