ALBANY, N.Y. – The National Organization for Women on Tuesday urged New York Gov. David Paterson to resign because of a report he directed two staffers to contact a woman about a domestic violence case involving one of his top aides.
The group is highly influential in Democratic politics and called [...]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US commanders are taking a second look at policies that bar women from ground combat, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thrust female soldiers into the thick of the fight.
The Army chief of staff, General George Casey, told lawmakers last week that it was time [...]

GEORGETOWN, Del. —  A former Georgetown high school teacher has been sentenced to five years in prison for having sex with a 15-year-old student.
Twenty-seven-year-old John Thompson was a highly regarded social studies teacher at Sussex Central High School until his arrest last summer.
Superior Court Judge Richard Stokes sentenced Thompson to 25 [...]

Joseph Reyes, an Afghanistan veteran and law student, converted to Judaism when he married Rebecca Shapiro in 2004. When they split up in 2008, Rebecca won primary custody of their daughter and Joseph got regular visitation. The Reyeses had allegedly agreed to raise their child Jewish, but Joseph, seeking to expose his 3-year-old to his [...]

RIVERSIDE, Calif. —  Authorities say a father has been arrested for investigation of attempted murder and torture after his two baby girls were found bound, gagged and left on a bedroom floor in Riverside County.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Brown says deputies responded to the home in the Indian Hills area Friday on a report of a family [...]

(Feb. 26) — A 19-year-old woman says she lost her job at a popular clothing store after refusing to remove her Muslim head scarf.
When Hani Khan, who was born in New York and is of Indian and Pakistani descent, interviewed for a job at a Hollister store at a mall in Hillsborough, Calif., she was [...]

Pennsylvania parents are suing their son’s school, alleging it watched him through his laptop’s webcam while he was at home and unaware he was being observed.
Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley are suing the Lower Merion School District, its board of directors and the superintendent. The parents allege the district [...]

There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, “I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)” scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker.
Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this [...]

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children issued an alert Tuesday after a former Red Wing teen ran away with Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey, the self-proclaimed vampire who in 2006 ran for Minnesota governor.

RED WING, Minn. — The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children issued an alert Tuesday after [...]

LOUISVILLE, Ohio — A crime in Louisville, Ohio has left Stark County resident shocked and angered.
A 20-year-old man was accused of applying a tattoo on the backside of a little girl.
“I cannot come up with a reasonable explanation for why somebody would tattoo a child, no,” Louisville Police Chief Andrew Turowski [...]

(WTOL) – Orlando Reyes-Cairo was hired as a professor of Spanish at Owens Community College in 1999, which is one year after he got out of jail for attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a 13-year-old boy in north Toledo.
Representatives of Owens Human Resources Department say there was not a policy in [...]

Rate jumps for first time in decade, raising alarm among experts
WASHINGTON – The pregnancy rate among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according to a report released Tuesday.
The [...]

(CNN) — Police tentatively identified remains found on a remote farm as the Virginia Tech student who disappeared in October during a Metallica concert.
Morgan Harrington, a 20-year-old education major, went to the concert at the University of Virginia’s John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Virginia, on October 17. She was [...]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Samantha Burton wanted to leave the hospital. Her doctor strongly disagreed, enough to go to court to keep her there.
She smoked cigarettes during the first six months of her pregnancy and was admitted on a false alarm of premature labor. Her doctor argued she was risking [...]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January 15, 2010 – Fort Washington, PA – In consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Division of McNEIL-PPC, Inc., is voluntarily recalling certain lots of OTC products in the Americas, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Fiji (FULL RECALLED PRODUCT LIST BELOW). The company is [...]

(Jan. 14) – A former chief U.N. weapons inspector was recently arrested on charges of making unlawful sexual contact with a minor over the Internet, again.
Scott Ritter, who searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction from 1991 to 1998, has been accused of using an online chat client to send sexually explicit videos to [...]

(CNN) — Even before her 18th birthday, Maria had already been enslaved by a gang of human traffickers and held in captivity for four months in her homeland of Mexico.
While a prisoner, Maria witnessed a sickening trade in human life and recalls how young girls were drugged, forced into prostitution and then murdered.
What makes Maria’s [...]

SAN FRANCISCO – The first federal trial to determine if the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from outlawing same-sex marriage got under way Monday, and the two gay couples on whose behalf the case was brought will be among the first witnesses.
The proceedings, which are expected to last two to three weeks, involve a challenge to [...]

by Larry Geller

On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. The distance was 2,048 miles. The flight was also the first civilian flight to carry a two-way radio.
I don’t know if any commemoration is planned for Monday, but there ought to be something. Given [...]

(CNN) — Paula Sladewski, a 26-year-old who once modeled for Playboy, was identified Wednesday by Miami police as the person found dead and “burned beyond recognition” in a trash bin on Sunday.
Now, police are asking for the public’s help to put her killer behind bars. Whoever the murderer is, police said, they are nothing short [...]

Vershire, Vermont (CNN) — Armed with a law degree, an SUV that serves as a mobile office and her own harrowing personal history, 58-year-old trucker-turned-lawyer Wynona Ward navigates the back roads of rural Vermont.
Her mission: to aid victims of domestic violence.
Ward is the founder of Have Justice Will Travel, a group that works to end [...]

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Steve McClairin,36, is accused of placing his seven-year-old daughter in the dryer, shutting the door, and turning it on.
McClairin was arraigned Wednesday morning on a handful of charges, including two counts of endangering children, felonious assault, kidnapping and domestic violence.
Prosecutors say the accusations in this story are horrific.
“There’s no [...]

Friends and family of Susan Powell launched a three-day social media blitz on Monday to help find the missing Utah mother of two who disappeared almost a month ago.
Friends saturated social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, and organized a mass e-mail campaign to spread information about Powell through the Internet, The Salt Lake [...]

FRIDAY JAN 1st 6 PM
CHATTOOGA COUNTY, GA (WRCB) — The mother accused of tattooing her own children invited Eyewitness News inside her home today to set the record straight.
“We were making it look like it was a cross,” said Jo-Jo Marsh, “so the kids could have something they could say it was.”
Jo-Jo Marsh shows Eyewitness [...]

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Seven women on a 562-mile Antarctic ski trek reached the South Pole Thursday, 38 days after they began their adventure to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth.
“I’m incredibly proud of the team and I think … if we can do this then you can do anything that [...]