AP) — Afghan officials said they found the bodies Sunday of five kidnapped campaign workers for a female parliamentary candidate in the western province of Herat.The five were snatched Wednesday by armed men who stopped their two-vehicle convoy as it was traveling through remote countryside. Five others traveling in the vehicles had earlier been set free, according to a man who answered the phone at the home of candidate Fawzya Galani and declined to give his name. Read Article
The Guardian – A record number of women are running in Afghanistan’s critical parliamentary elections next month despite many being inundated with threatening phone calls, including death threats from insurgents. Amid ever-rising violence, which some people fear could foster a repeat of last year’s catastrophic presidential election, women are struggling to campaign at all outside a few areas, poll monitors say. Even in Kabul, the capital, where the Guardian has interviewed a number of female candidates, women say they are facing daily obstruction from conservative hardliners. Read Article
Wisconsin State Journal – A social conservative group filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging Wisconsin’s domestic partner registry, arguing it is a violation of the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court by members of Wisconsin Family Action contends the registry creates a legal status substantially similar to that of marriage. Read article
BBC – The Catholic Church is being sued in California by seven people who claim they were sexually abused by a priest several decades ago. The six women and one man accuse the Diocese of Oakland of negligence for hiring the Reverend Stephen Kiesle. They say it was known that there were multiple allegations of abuse against him. Read article
Daily Mail – American appeal court has put same-sex weddings in California on hold while it considers whether the state’s ban on gay marriages is constitutional. the decision, made by a three-judge panel, over-rules a previous lower-ranking judge’s order earlier this month that would have allowed same-sex marriages to commence from Wednesday. Read article
AP – This picturesque town [Trinidad, Colorado.] known for decades as the sex-change capital of the world — thousands of gender-reassignment operations have been performed here — is becoming a beacon for victims of female genital mutilation. Dr. Marci Bowers has performed about two dozen reconstructive surgeries on mostly African born women victimized as children by the culturally driven practice of female circumcision. Bowers is believed to be one of the few U.S. doctors performing the operation. Bowers, who underwent a gender reassignment operation in the 1990s at age 40, said she relates to what her mutilation patients describe as a loss of identity, of not feeling whole. “It took me so long to get there in my own life. I know what the feeling is like, seeking my own identity,” she said. Read article
Washington Post — The federal judge who overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban has more bad news for the measure’s sponsors: he not only is unwilling to keep gay couples from marrying beyond next Wednesday, he doubts the ban’s backers have the right to challenge his ruling. Read article
Washington Post — The federal judge who struck down California’s gay marriage ban said Thursday that same-sex weddings can resume next week unless an appeals court intervenes before then. The news raised hopes among gay couples that they soon could tie the knot after years of agonizing delays. Read article
Daily Telegraph – The Vatican has rejected the resignations of two Catholic bishops in Ireland who offered to quit in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal, the Archbishop of Dublin said. rchbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a letter to priests in his archdiocese that Auxiliary Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field will remain in their jobs but will be given “revised responsibilities”. The bishops presented their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI in December following a judge’s damning report on the Dublin archdiocese that found the Catholic Church concealed the abuse of children by priests for three decades. Read article
Health.com — Girls in the United States are entering puberty at earlier ages than they have in the past, a new study reports. More than 10 percent of white 7-year-old girls in the study, which was conducted in the mid-2000s, had reached a stage of breast development marking the start of puberty, compared to just 5 percent in a similar study conducted in the early 1990s. Black and Hispanic girls continue to mature faster than white girls, on average. Nearly one-quarter of black girls and 15 percent of Hispanic girls had entered puberty by age 7, according to the new study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics. Read article
Guardian – The client of human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei has been sentenced to death in spite of retracted testimony. An 18-year-old Iranian is facing imminent execution on charges of homosexuality, even though he has no legal representation. Ebrahim Hamidi, who is not gay, was sentenced to death for lavat, or sodomy, on the basis of “judge’s knowledge”, a legal loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where there is no conclusive evidence. Read Article
Daily Mail – A ‘gender bending’ chemical in food and drinks containers could be behind rising male infertility, scientists say. Men with high levels of Bisphenol A (BPA) in their bodies are more likely to have low sperm counts, according to a study. BPA is widely used to harden plastics and is found in baby bottles, CD cases, plastic knives and forks and the lining of food and drink cans. Read article
BBC – A US federal judge has overturned California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. The judge found it unconstitutionally discriminated against same-sex couples who sought to wed. The state measure, known as Proposition 8, was passed by voters in 2008. It banned same-sex marriage, although the state offered same-sex civil unions. Read article
PhysOrg.com – In one of the first human studies of its kind, researchers have found that urinary concentrations of the controversial chemical Bisphenol A, or BPA, may be related to decreased sperm quality and sperm concentration. However, the researchers are quick to point out that these results are preliminary and more study is needed. Several studies have documented adverse effects of BPA on semen in rodents, but none are known to have reported similar relationships in humans. Read article
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali Dutch feminist activist, writer, and politician. She is a prominent critic of Islam, and her screenplay for Theo Van Gogh’s movie Submission led to multiple death threats. Our reporter, Boomerang, attended her one off talk in Perth last night. To read his review CLICK HERE
ScienceDaily — What could be as alluring as a lady in red? A gentleman in red, finds a multicultural study published Aug. 2 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Simply wearing the color red or being bordered by the rosy hue makes a man more attractive and sexually desirable to women, according to a series of studies by researchers at the University of Rochester and other institutions. And women are unaware of this arousing effect. Read article
Daily Mail – The number of pre-teenage girls on the Pill has increased fivefold in the past decade, shocking figures reveal. Last year doctors prescribed the oral contraceptive to more than 1,000 girls aged 11 and 12, usually without their parents’ knowledge. Another 200 aged between 11 and 13 were given long-term implanted or injectable contraceptive devices on the NHS. Read article
UN News Centre– The continued criminalization of male-to-male sex in the Asia-Pacific, resulting in harassment and other human rights violations, is hurting the region’s response to HIV, a new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report has found. Of the 48 countries in the region, 19 of them – including Afghanistan, Bhutan, Kiribati and Malaysia – have outlawed sex between consenting male adults, with these laws often used by vigilantes in ways that lead to abuse and rights violations. Read article
ABC – Gay couples have rushed to tie the knot in Argentina two weeks after the country became the first in Latin America to grant them the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples. Talent agent Alejandro Vanelli, 61, wept as he exchanged vows with Ernesto Larrese, 60, an actor and his partner of 34 years. “We never thought we’d get to this point,” Mr Vanelli said after the service at a Buenos Aires registry office festooned with rainbow-coloured gay rights banners. Read article
ScienceDaily — Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers reveal in a new, large-scale study that “normal” blood pressure at age 17 can still predict hypertension at early adulthood and that teenage boys are three to four times more likely to develop high blood pressure in early adulthood than girls. Read article
Reuters – The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a new trial of a polygamist leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, who was convicted of forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her first cousin. Warren Jeffs, 54, whose word was considered God’s will to thousands of followers, was sentenced in November 2007 to a term of 10 years to life in prison. The high court ruled, however, that a new trial was needed because the lower court judge gave faulty instructions to the jury. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he was very disappointed with the court decision. Read article
PressTV – German prosecutors have dropped a probe into allegations that the country’s top cleric, Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, hired a pedophile priest. “The investigation into Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has been closed,” the Associated Press quoted Prosecutor Christoph Hettenbach as saying in a statement released Wednesday. “Since no concrete abuse cases or victims’ names have come to light from the priest’s second period in Birnau from 1987 to 1992, there are no grounds for holding Dr Zollitsch criminally responsible,” Hettenbach said in the statement. Read article
Daily Beast – Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein became a free man Wednesday, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast’s Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term. She reports: • Palm Beach’s police chief objected to Epstein’s “special treatment” and gave The Daily Beast an exclusive look at his nine-hour deposition about the investigation. Read article
The Independent – HIV infections among the over-50s have more than doubled in seven years, it was revealed today. The number of new cases per year recorded in England, Wales and Northern Ireland rose from 299 to 710 between 2000 and 2007, research has shown. Half were diagnosed late, increasing the risk of an early death from Aids. Among younger age groups, a third have the HIV infection identified at a similar level of progression. Read article
ABC – A Senate candidate for the Australian Sex Party is calling for the Federal Government to hold an immediate royal commission into child sex abuse in religious institutions. The party launched its federal campaign in Melbourne this afternoon. Party president and Victorian senate candidate Fiona Patten admits some of the party’s policies are controversial but says there is a progressive policy vacuum in Australian politics. Read article
