In the rest of the world, lots has been going up to, so let's get to it: it's Newsday Tuesday!!Urgent News
The US Department of Justice has withdrawn the federal marshals charged with protecting Leroy Carhart, MD, one of the few physicians in the country who provides late abortions.
Middle East
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Sunday that he will appoint at least three women to his cabinet. If approved, these appointees will be the first women cabinet ministers since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Iranian authorities allowed Esha Momeni, an American graduate student and feminist activist who was imprisoned and then detained by the Iranian government, to return to the US Thursday. Momeni's passport had been confiscated by the Iranian government after her release from the notorious Evin prison in November 2008.
Iranian opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi announced that he has received reports of jailers raping prisoners during the government crackdown on protesters after June's disputed presidential election.
The controversial Shia family law that restricts the rights of Shia women in Afghanistan was published in the country's official Gazette on July 27th, making the law's provisions official. President Hamid Karzai published the law as he courts fundamentalist Shia mullahs in advance of the presidential elections scheduled for next week.
National Rulings
A jury in Florida awarded Alejandra Ramos and Maria Onelia Maco Castro, two women hired to work as nannies, $125,000 in back wages and damages and found the couple that employed them guilty on five counts, including violating labor and human trafficking laws.
A federal judge ruled Monday that the Gay-Straight Alliance at Yulee High School in Florida must be permitted to meet on campus and be granted the same privileges as other student clubs.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that Belmont Abbey College discriminated against its employees on the basis of sex by denying them health care coverage of contraceptives, through removal of coverage for oral contraceptives, voluntary sterilization, and abortion.
Reports and Polls
Equality California, California's largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, released a report Wednesday urging gay rights activists to wait until 2012 to repeal Proposition 8.
A poll released Saturday by CBS and the New York Times indicates that just 53 percent of American adults support military women serving in combat roles. The poll also found 83 percent support women serving in support roles for ground troops. The US currently restricts women from direct combat roles in infantry positions or in the Special Forces.
Global Happenings
The International Olympic Committee voted Thursday to add women's boxing to the 2012 Olympics in London.
Fourteen Nobel Laureates released a letter Tuesday urging the United Nations Security Council to take action to support fellow Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the last 20 years and was sentenced yesterday to 18 months of house arrest after temporarily housing an American who swam to her lakeside property unannounced.
The Organic Laws and Statues Bureau of Taiwan's legislature has released a report suggesting changes to the nation's abortion laws to give women greater control over their reproductive rights. The bureau proposes that women should be able to obtain abortions without spousal consent.
Photo courtesy of Matt Callow on flikr.com
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