Witchy Woman

"Two female high school students in Oklahoma are firing back at their school for refusing to let them graduate after discovering the two are a couple.

According to KWTV News, 18-year-old Melissa McKenzie said she was kicked out of Del City High School in Del City, Okla., at the beginning of the semester when the principal found out she was living with her girlfriend instead of her family. The principal then told her if she returned to her family's home, she would be welcomed back to school."

"The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a long-standing ruling that stopped police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer was present, a move that will make it easier for prosecutors to interrogate suspects."

"The Obama administration had asked the court to overturn Michigan v. Jackson, disappointing civil rights and civil liberties groups that expected President Barack Obama to reverse the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush."

"Kabul - More than 1,000 Afghans surrounded a group of 200 protesters who took to Kabul's streets Wednesday to protest a new family law that they said violates women's rights.
As police tried to keep the two groups apart, a man picked up a stone and threw it at a schoolgirl, shouting at her, "You dog of the Westerners, go from here."
At least three people were wounded by police gunshots in western Kabul, witnesses said, when a group of young Shiite men tried to stop schoolgirls who were on their way to join the protest against the Shiite family law that lawmakers passed and President Hamid Karzai signed last month amid national and international criticism.
Critics said the law "legalizes rape within marriage" because some of its articles allow husbands to demand sex from their wives every fourth night unless they are ill or have "lawful or logical excuses." "

"A video showing a teenage girl being flogged by Taliban fighters has emerged from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, offering a shocking glimpse of militant brutality in the once-peaceful district, and a sign of Taliban influence spreading deeper into the country.
The two-minute video, shot using a mobile phone, shows a burka-clad woman face down on the ground. Two men hold her arms and feet while a third, a black-turbaned fighter with a flowing beard, whips her repeatedly.
"Please stop it," she begs, alternately whimpering or screaming in pain with each blow to the backside. "Either kill me or stop it now."
A crowd of men stands by, watching silently. Off camera a voice issues instructions. "Hold her legs tightly," he says as she squirms and yelps.
After 34 lashes the punishment stops and the wailing woman is led into a stone building, trailed by a Kalashnikov-carrying militant.
Reached by phone, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the flogging.
"She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must
punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross," he said. He defended the Taliban's right to thrash women shoppers who were inappropriately dressed, saying it was permitted under Islamic law."

"Los Angeles County officials should move urgently to test a backlog of more than 12,000 rape kits - the physical evidence collected after a sexual assault - to ensure justice for rape victims, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 68-page report, "Testing Justice: The Rape Kit Backlog in Los Angeles City and County," reveals that the backlog of untested rape kits in Los Angeles County is larger and more widespread than previously reported. Through dozens of interviews with police officers, public officials, criminalists, rape treatment providers, and rape victims, the report documents the devastating effects of the backlog on victims of sexual abuse.
"Women who are raped have a right to expect police to do all they can to thoroughly investigate their case, but in LA they often feel betrayed to learn that their rape kits are never even tested," said Sarah Tofte, researcher with Human Rights Watch's US program and author of the report. "And in some cases, failure to test means that a rapist who could have been arrested will remain free."
Women who report being raped are asked to undergo a lengthy, extensive examination to collect DNA and other physical evidence that might identify their attacker, corroborate testimony about the assault, or connect their case to other rape crime scene evidence. The resulting rape kit is then booked into police evidence. However, although rape victims may believe it is automatically tested, that is often not the case in Los Angeles County. Rape treatment providers told Human Rights Watch that victims assumed silence from the officers investigating their case simply meant no evidence was found, or that there was no DNA match.
But Human Rights Watch analyzed data from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and Los Angeles County's 47 independent police departments, and found that as of March 1, 2009, there were at least 12,669 untested rape kits sitting in storage facilities. In those cases, officers never sent the kits on for forensic testing.
Of these 12,669 untested kits, at least 1,218 are from unsolved cases in which the attacker was a stranger to the victim. And 499 kits are attached to cases past the 10-year statute of limitations for rape in California, making it impossible to prosecute the alleged assailants even if they were to be identified. Under California law, if those 499 kits had been opened within two years of the attack, the statute would no longer apply.
Thousands more rape kits were destroyed untested."

"Starting in New Zealand's remote Chatham Islands, thousands of cities, towns, and landmarks around the world will start to go dark for Earth Hour on Saturday evening.
Up to a billion people worldwide are expected to participate in this global voluntary blackout by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time.
The movement, sponsored by the conservation nonprofit WWF, is designed as a symbolic gesture in support of action against global warming."

"Police chiefs apologised today after it emerged that a man convicted of sex attacks against women was not arrested until four years after he became a suspect.
An independent investigation has been launched into police handling of the case against children's football coach Kirk Reid, 44, who has been found guilty of stalking and attacking women for more than 12 years.
Police left Reid free to attack women for four years, despite identifying him as a suspect in a notorious unsolved series of sex attacks in 2004. A litany of errors, inaction and oversights was revealed during the nine-week trial at Kingston crown court.
Following Reid's conviction, Commander Mark Simmons, of the Metropolitan police's territorial policing unit, said: "It is clear from the evidence heard in court that the standard of investigation was not what we as an organisation, or the victims, should have expected. Reid should have been arrested sooner and I, on behalf of the MPS [Metropolitan police service] and as head of Sapphire [the police sex-crimes unit], am sorry those women who were subsequently attacked by him have been caused unnecessary suffering.""

"Amnesty International has put out an urgent appeal on behalf of a Honduran transgender woman who was arrested by the police, beaten up and threatened with death if she reported what happened to her.
The attack on the woman follows the murders of three other transgender women in Honduras since last October.
The women were all working as sex workers near Palmira when they were attacked.
Transgender women who work as sex workers are frequently attacked by clients or police officers. No one has been brought to justice for these killings.
Amnesty International UK LGBT Rights Campaigner Kim Manning-Cooper said:
“Transgender women in Honduras must be terrified right now. Their community is experiencing serious violence and the authorities are not doing enough to protect them. If these killings are not thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators brought to justice, then a very clear message is sent that violence against these women is acceptable and can go on without punishment.”
It is alleged that on 20 December 2008 police officers approached the transgender woman (who has asked Amnesty International to withhold her name), who is an HIV/AIDS campaigner and sex worker, in the Palmira district of the capital, Tegucigalpa. The police officers tried to rob her but, when she resisted, they grabbed her by the hair and repeatedly smashed her head against a nearby window, breaking the glass. She received numerous cuts to her face and knees.
The police officers then arrested the woman, took her to a police station and then to a health centre to be treated for her wounds.
Because she was bleeding the woman informed the officers that she is HIV positive, to which they responded by calling her an “AIDS bitch”. She was then taken back to the police station and released without charge. The officers threatened her, “if you speak out we will leave you dead in the countryside.” Despite this the woman has filed a formal complaint with the Human Rights section of the Public Prosecutor's Office about this incident.
Amnesty International believes that the woman’s life is at serious risk and has issued an urgent appeal asking its members to write to the Honduran authorities calling on them to guarantee the woman’s safety and to order swift investigations into all incidents of harassment and killings of transgender people.
Three transgender women have been killed in the last three months while working in the area of Comayagüela, near Palmira. Jazmín Zelaya was killed on 30 October 2008 and her body was found along a road. Another transgender woman was killed on 17 December 2008.
Cintia Nicole Moreno, who was also an activist working for the promotion of the human rights of transgender people, was killed on 9 January 2009 at around 1am. No-one has yet been charged with these murders."

"(Gary, Indiana) A federal judge has ordered Gary Community Schools to pay legal fees after finding that school administrators had ignored a ruling to turn over documents to lawyers for a former student. The student is suing the district for barring him from the senior prom because he was wearing a ball gown.
Attorneys asked the court to sanction the school district, saying it could not properly prepare its case without the documents which were to have been turned over last May.
Last fall, Judge Paul R. Cherry ordered the district to turn over the files and fined the school board $540 for dragging its heels. This time the fine is expected to be substantially higher.
In December 2007, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of K.K. Logan challenging a Gary School Corporation policy barring clothing that advertises sexual orientation or indicates that a student’s gender is different from the student’s sex.
Logan argues that the policy violates students’ First Amendment freedom of expression. Logan also claims that his exclusion from prom constitutes discrimination on the basis of gender.
Students and teachers knew that K.K. Logan was transgendered. During his senior year, Logan attended West Side High expressing a deeply rooted femininity in his appearance and demeanor.
At school, Logan wore makeup, accessories and clothing typically associated with girls his age.
However, on May 19, 2006, Principal Diane Rouse stretched her arms across the door of the senior prom, blocking Logan’s entrance because Logan was wearing a pink gown. Classmates and friends rallied to Logan’s defense to no avail—even though a female student was allowed to attend dressed in a tuxedo.
Principal Rouse enforced a Gary School Corporation policy that forbids any clothing or accessories that “advertise sexual orientation” or “portray the wearer as a person of the opposite gender.”
Ragen Hatcher, the attorney for the school district, said the board was not deliberately trying to prevent Lambda from access to the files, but that gathering the information had taken longer than anticipated. Hatcher said that she is confident the board will win its case."

"(New York City) A Wall Street currency trader is suing his former bosses claiming he was subjected to homophobic slurs after he said he did not eat meat.

Ryan Pacifico worked in the New York office of Calyon in the Americas, a firm owned by Credit Agricole CIB of France.

According to Pacifico’s suit, filed in a Manhattan court, he was doing well at the company until he got a new boss.
The discrimination suit names the supervisor, Robert Catalanello, Calyon, and one
other employee.
Pacifico claims that after complaining about the slurs he was fired last March.
In papers filed with the court, Pacifico claims that when Catalanello learned the 28-year-old trader did not eat meat, he called him “a vegetarian homo.” The slurs continued when Catalanello saw a photo of Pacifico in running tights.
The court papers say that Pacifico is not gay and married, but that the law protecting workers from homophobia in the workplace extend to heterosexuals.
The company has not commented on the lawsuit. “They associated being a vegetarian with being gay,” Pacifico’s attorney Rick Ostrove told The Daily News. “It’s a ridiculous male stereotype that only real men eat meat.”

"Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, two of the child actors in “Slumdog Millionaire,” are still living in the slums of Mumbai, despite the film’s $14 million budget and worldwide success. Ali earned 500 British pounds ($710) for one year’s work and Ismail earned 1700 pounds ($2414), “less than many Indian domestic servants“:
Both children were found places in a local school and receive £20 a month for books and food. However, they continue to live in grinding poverty and their families say they have received no details of the trust funds set up in their names. Their parents said that they had hoped the film would be their ticket out of the slums, and that its success had made them realise how little their children had been paid.
Ismail is in fact “worse off” now, as his “family’s illegal hut was demolished by the local authorities and he now sleeps under a sheet of plastic tarpaulin.” Ali lives nearby — in a “hut.” A Fox Searchlight spokesperson said he is “proud” of their treatment and boasted, “For 30 days work, the children were paid three times the average local annual adult salary.”"