On Sunday, Port Authority police detectives pulled International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Dominique Strauss-Kahn off of an Air France flight in John F. Kennedy International Airport departing for Paris and arrested him for allegedly sexually assaulting a New York hotel housekeeping employee, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment. He was then taken into the Manhattan police […]
Following a 22 month investigation, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Vice Chair Johnny Isakson (R-GA), released a report yesterday, supported unanimously by the bipartisan committee of three Democrats and three Republicans, that former Nevada Senator John Ensign violated Senate rules, broke federal law, made false statements to […]
Yesterday, the Ugandan Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee issued a report recommending passage for the Anti-Homosexuality or “Kill a Gay” Bill, which calls for the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality,” for engaging in same sex relations with someone who is HIV positive, and life imprisonment for having sex with someone of the same […]
The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was re-introduced in the Senate yesterday by Senators Richard Durbin, Harry Reid, Robert Menendez, and 30 others. The DREAM Act would allow undocumented young people to apply for legal status upon joining the military or attending college for two years. President Obama gave a speech […]
A study published in the American Journal of Public Health revealed that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, women are raped at a rate 26 times higher than the rate of 16,000 rapes yearly reported by the United Nations (UN). The national study, conducted by Amber Peterman of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Tia […]
Yesterday Syrian officials released information on the whereabouts of Dorothy Parvaz, 39, an Iranian-born US citizen and Al-Jazeera reporter who went missing for two weeks while covering the uprisings against President Bashar Assad. The Syrian officials reported that Parvaz was deported from Syria after being detained in Damascus and is currently being held in Iran. […]
Yesterday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) signed a bill that would make Indiana the first state to defund Planned Parenthood. In April, the state Senate and House voted to cut about $2 million in federal money that goes to Planned Parenthood, much of which is for Medicaid services. The bill also calls for a ban […]
Following vocal condemnation from US political leaders, human rights groups, and activists, the Uganda Parliament decided to drop an anti-gay bill, which would impose life sentences or the death penalty for gay people. The bill went before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee on Friday and was originally scheduled for a vote today before it […]
The Obama administration defended the constitutionality of the 2010 health care act Tuesday before a panel of three federal appeals court judges in a Virginia courtroom. All three randomly selected judges, two of which were appointed by President Obama himself, indicated they are likely to uphold the healthcare law. Supporters and opponents of the law […]
Di Tzeitung, an Orthodox Jewish newspaper based in Brooklyn, released a statement yesterday to apologize for deleting Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason from a photograph of President Obama and the national security team in the White House Situation Room during the capture of Osama bin Laden. Di Tzeitung stated […]
Yesterday Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) announced that she will file a request that the US Supreme Court overturn the April ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which upheld US District Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling to block portions of Arizona’s immigration law. The three judge panel ruled that Judge Bolton […]
A New York City audit released last week revealed that women seeking mammograms from New York public hospitals have to undergo harmfully long waits. The audit recorded the waiting times at 9 hospitals for the 2009 fiscal year and found that Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens to have the longest waits for women seeking mammograms. […]
Iowa legislators are scheduled to vote this week on a bill (HF 657) that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. The bill, which passed the House last March but stalled in the Senate, is aimed at preventing Dr. LeRoy Carhart from opening a clinic in Council Bluffs, where he would offer late-term abortions. […]
According to a study published in Fertility and Sterility, since emergency contraception (EC) became available to women without a prescription, the number of women using EC has doubled. The study, written by Megan Kavanaugh, a senior researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, found that after EC became available without a prescription in 2006, 10 percent of […]
According to the 2011 India census, the country continues to have a disproportionate rate of abortions of female fetuses. For every 1,000 male children under the age six, there are only 914 girls. Malnourishment and the neglect of girls also contribute to this unequal sex ratio. This is the largest imbalance between boys and girls […]
Today, May 5, 2011 is International Day of the Midwife, which was spearheaded by the International Confederation of Midwives in 1992. It’s been said over and over, but it bears repeating. ONE WOMAN DIES EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY DUE TO COMPLICATIONS OF CHILDBIRTH. That’s approximately 529,000 women each year, with another 10 MILLION more […]
Yesterday all House Republicans and 16 Democrats voted to pass HR 3, the “No Tax Payer Funding for Abortion Act.” The bill, which purports to prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions and ensure that healthcare reform law does not cover the cost of abortions, is misleading and punitive. Currently, because of the Hyde Amendment, there is […]
In Illinois, a bill requiring sex education teachers to instruct students about both contraception and abstinence fell short by one vote in the state Senate yesterday. Conservative groups protested a provision in the bill that would require the information presented in sex education to be age appropriate and “medically accurate,” claiming that pre-marital sex should […]
In honor of Mother’s Day, Save the Children released its 12th annual Mothers Index report,“Champions for Children: Why Investing in Maternal and Child Health in Developing Countries is Good for America,” which rated 164 countries to determine the best countries in which to be a mother. The rating was based on maternal and child mortality […]
A U.S. District Court judge ruled last week in favor of a woman who was shackled while giving birth at a Tennessee jail in 2008. Juana Villegas had been arrested and charged with careless driving and driving without insurance in July of 2008 when her immigration status showed that she had a prior deportation order […]
