Article here. Excerpt:

'If a young girl wanted to play basketball in the Pittsburgh Public Schools last season, she didn't have many options.

Only two schools had a K-5 girls' team. Other schools invited girls to play on co-ed teams in a male-dominated 16-team league against boys' teams. And at some schools, no girls played basketball.

Now, K-5 boys and girls will be split as the district revamps its program to remedy years of "Title IX equity issues," or unequal opportunities for girls.

But there's a twist.

If a school can't field enough players for both a boys' and a girls' team, neither team will be allowed to compete in the eight-game season that begins in January.

The district says the new rule is intended to force schools to make more vigorous efforts to recruit girls and offer equal opportunities.

One person familiar with Title IX issues says the all-or-nothing approach could potentially limit opportunities and do the opposite of the federal law's intention to provide gender equality.'

Link here.

(There are links to a copy of the Draft Technology Assessment, and the page for submitting comments near the bottom of the page.)

Many of the products being included in this review are derived from foreskin fibroblasts (eg Apligraf). A thread has been started previously collating information about the use of foreskin fibroblasts in cosmetics and medical products, which readers are welcome to utilise in preparing responses to this Call for Review:

http://www.foreskin-restoration.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8415

Article here. Possibly I will field accusations of anti-Semitism or at least anti-Jewishness or whatever. Well anyone who may know me personally would know such an accusation is utterly ridiculous. (But just read some of my previous comments about circumcision and how I think the religious lobby around it is the least of the anti-circ world's concerns and that the danger lies much more in the secular and corporate lobby's efforts to keep it going.) I will write more as the first comment since I think that is the appropriate place for it. Excerpt:

'Thousands of people in Israel rallied against religious extremism on Tuesday, protesting against the way some ultra-Orthodox Jews treat girls and women.

Protesters held signs reading, "Free Israel from religious coercion," and "Stop Israel from becoming Iran."

Medical journal article here. Excerpt:

'That was before the three RCTs, publication of which has led to the current drive to inflict mass circumcision on southern African men. Circumcision intervention has now been embraced by the WHO, the Centers for Disease Control, other health-based organisations and some researchers. Even the MRC has since reversed its position, with lead researcher Siegfried declaring on 15 April 2009 that ‘Research on the effectiveness of male circumcision for preventing HIV in heterosexual men is conclusive. No further trials are required to establish that HIV infection rates are reduced in heterosexual men for at least the first two years after circumcision.’

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Bradford woman who won the Yorkshire Refugee of the Year award is setting her sights on even greater achievements in 2012.

Next year, Beatrice Botomani, who fled to the UK from Malawi in 2004 with her two children, will qualify as a teacher fulfilling a lifelong ambition.

She hopes to work in the adult learning sector once her studies at Bradford College finish.

Miss Botomani has already helped improve the lives of others by campaigning for the rights of women and child refugees in detention.

She was spurred on after her own family’s experience at Yarls Wood Immigration detention centre in Bedfordshire, where her children were so traumatised they wrote a letter to MPs.

Since coming to Bradford she has worked as a volunteer for the Women’s Forum, as a Trustee for Forster Community College and with BCB community radio station.'

Petition here. Think the "teacher" would have done this to a girl? I doubt it. Excerpt:

'In Mercer County, Kentucky, nine year old Chris Baker, an Autistic student, was told by his special education aide to climb inside a bag intended for therapeutic purposes as a punishment to "control his autistic behavior" on 14 December 2011. He was placed in the bag with the drawstring tightened and left in the hallway in the school. When his mother, Sandra Baker, was called to the school to get her son, she demanded that he be removed from the bag right away. The teacher struggled to undo the drawstring, and Chris emerged sweaty and non-communicative. According to the teacher, this had been done several times over the last year, but Sandra didn't know until this latest incident. While she met with state officials on Monday 19 December 2011 before a possible meeting with school officials, there is no guarantee that those meetings will prevent this kind of abuse from happening again -- either to Chris or to other students.

Story here. Excerpt:

'SMYRNA, Tenn. - For the rest of the semester, a Rutherford County elementary student has to eat lunch at the "silent table" for allegedly waving around a slice of pizza some say resembled a gun.

Nicholas Taylor attends David Youree Elementary School in Smyrna, about 30 miles southeast of Nashville.

School leaders say the 10-year-old threatened other students at his lunch table with a piece of pizza with bites out of it so it looked like a gun and when asked about it was initially not truthful.

Nicholas' mother LeAnn calls her son's punishment "absolutely ridiculous" saying he was just playing around and never said anything derogatory or anything about shooting anyone.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last year an article in The Atlantic asked the headline question, "Are Fathers Necessary?" The answer was thoughtfully supplied in the subhead -- "A paternal contribution may not be as essential as we think." Uh-oh.

The article cites a study conducted by researchers from New York University and the University of Southern California which "consolidated the available data on the role of gender in child rearing." The results of that data-crunching The Atlantic summarizes as follows:

[O]ur ideas of what dads do and provide are based primarily on contrasts between married-couple parents and single-female parents: an apples-to-oranges exercise that conflates gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and biogenetic relationships in ways that a true comparison of parent gender -- one that compared married gay-male couples or married lesbian couples to married heterosexuals, or single fathers to single mothers -- would not. Most of the data fail to distinguish between a father and the income a father provides, or between the presence of a father and the presence of a second parent, regardless of gender.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A typical day for Andrew Lawrence seems to be a pretty simple one. The 18-year-old said it usually consists of him sleeping until the early afternoon, playing video games at his apartment, and then going to work as a cook at a Superior restaurant. About once or twice a week, he goes to visit his parents about a mile away and do laundry.

It’s a far cry from his life just over a year ago, when he was facing charges that in July 2010 he broke into a Superior woman’s home, held a weapon to her throat, and raped her.

Those charges were dropped by the Douglas County Attorney’s office on Dec. 11, 2010, after DNA evidence found at the woman’s house didn’t match Lawrence.
...

A year after the charges were dropped, Lawrence said he still thinks often about the case and worries about how it could affect his future. Though the charges have been dropped, the accusation is still on his record.

Story here. Excerpt:

'For the first time since his ex-wife spirited their daughter away to Japan nearly four years ago, a Wisconsin doctor was able to tuck his little girl into bed after a bitter court battle that brought her home just in time for Christmas.

"Karina is at home and it's a miracle," Moises Garcia told reporters Saturday.

Garcia fought passionately -- and spent about $350,000 -- to get his daughter back after her mother, Emiko Inoue, took the five-year-old girl to Japan in February 2008.

The liver transplant doctor learned to speak Japanese so he could communicate with a daughter whose English was slipping away.

He hired lawyers in Japan and flew across the Pacific nine times to press his case and try to see his daughter. He enlisted the help of the US State Department and his native Nicaragua. He became active in an advocacy group -- Global Future -- run by US parents whose children were taken to Japan.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'LONDON, December 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A UK government parenting adviser has publicly stated that lesbians make better parents than heterosexual couples.

“Lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman,” said Professor Stephen Scott, director of research at the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners and the director of the National Adoption and Fostering Team at Maudsley Hospital, during an event hosted by the think-tank Demos, according to a Daily Mail report.
...
A spokeswoman at the Demos event defended Professor Scott’s declaration on lesbian parenting, saying other contributors had pointed out there was a relative dearth of research on the impact and importance of a father’s attachment to a child, according to the Daily Mail report.

However, there is a vast amount of research into the importance of fathers to children.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Annual checkups and tests such as colonoscopies and PSA assays are important, but it's not a good idea to rely on tests alone to protect you from cancer. It's just as important to listen to your body and notice anything that's different, odd, or unexplainable.
...

Commonly overlooked cancer symptoms, 1-10

1. Upset stomach or stomachache
...
2. Chronic "acid stomach" or feeling full after a small meal
...
3. Unexplained weight loss
...
4. Jaundice
...
5. Wheezing or shortness of breath
...

6. Chronic cough or chest pain
...
7. Frequent fevers or infections
...
8. Difficulty swallowing
...
9. Chronic heartburn
...
10. Swelling of facial features'

Link here. Excerpt:

'Fears about the emotional, financial, social and legal consequences of divorce explain why the percentage of married adults in the United States has reached an all-time low, researchers report.

The study of 122 people in cohabitating couples found that 67 percent said they worried about having to deal with the fallout of divorce, the University of Central Oklahoma and Cornell University researchers said in a Cornell news release.
...
Lower-income women were especially likely to have doubts about the "trap" of marriage. Many believed it would lead to more domestic responsibilities with few benefits or that it could hard to get out of a marriage if things go wrong.'

Women possibly being inconvenienced by over-servicing in the health care sector, but more research is needed. Link here. Excerpt:

'Women with breast cancer undergo many more imaging tests between diagnosis and surgery than they did in the early 1990s, a new study finds.

The tests -- breast ultrasounds, MRIs and mammograms -- help doctors determine the best course of treatment, but add to the hassles and expense of care, the study says.

"The burden to the patient is increasing substantially," said study leader Dr. Richard Bleicher, an associate professor of surgical oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. For older patients, especially, coordination of care is needed, he said.

Article hee. Excerpt:

'LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A 9-year-old autistic boy who misbehaved at school was stuffed into a duffel bag and the drawstring pulled tight, according to his mother, who said she found him wiggling inside as a teacher's aide stood by.

The mother of fourth-grader Christopher Baker said her son called out to her when she walked up to him in the bag Dec. 14. The case has spurred an online petition calling for the firing of school employees responsible.

"He was treated like trash and thrown in the hallway," Chris' mother, Sandra Baker, said Thursday. She did not know how exactly how long he had been in the bag, but probably not more than 20 minutes.'