All India Mothers-in-law Protection Forum

Article by Geeta Pandey @ BBC News:

A group of Indian mothers-in-law have come together to fight the harassment they claim to endure at the hands of their daughters-in-law.

Fifty women have joined the All India Mothers-in-law Protection Forum (AIMPF), launched in Bangalore city. A spokeswoman told the BBC that while there were 15 laws to protect the younger generation, there was nothing to protect mothers-in-law from abuse.

India's National Commission for Women has acknowledged the problem. It says that cases against in-laws are often registered by brides who are protected by strict anti-dowry laws. But a number of the accusations turn out to be false.

Obituary: Ruth Ford

From the Times Online:

The life of the actress Ruth Ford might aptly be called Upper West Side Story. During her long residence in the Dakota building near Central Park, New York in 72nd Street she created a fabled salon. Among its denizens were Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents, whose encounter there led, thanks to a chance remark, to collaboration with Leonard Bernstein on his musical about romance amid the city’s street life.

She studied philosophy for five years at the University of Mississippi and became lifelong friends with William Faulkner. On visiting her brother in New York, however, she realised that, rather than continue in the South, she too would thrive in a more cosmopolitan world. She turned her looks to modelling in New York, caught by the lenses of such people as Man Ray and Cecil Beaton before she joined Orson Welles’s fabled Mercury Theater troupe later in the Thirties.

Female Foeticide and the Dowry System

From the Times of India:

"The Nanhi Chhan programme has been launched in the state to spread awareness regarding protection of the girl child and preservation of trees." This was stated by member of parliament Harsimrat Kaur Badal while attending the concluding day function of the two-day 'Virasti Mela Dhiyan Da' at the Government College for Women here on Monday. She said evils like female foeticide and dowry system should be abolished as they hindered the society's growth.

Yakina: Womens' Clinic Turns 30

Article by Leah Beth Ward of the Yakima Herald Republic as reported in the News Tribune:
Beverly Whipple and Deborah Lazaldi

opened the Feminist Women's Health Center in Yakima [in 1979], which has been operating ever since, surviving the violence and turmoil of the anti-abortion movement at its height from the late 1980s to the mid-'90s.

Now in its 30th year of operation, the original clinic and two others in Renton and Tacoma operate under the umbrella of Cedar River Clinics, providing safe abortions, birth control services, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and Pap smears to about 11,000 visitors a year. The Yakima clinic provides approximately 1,000 to 1,200 abortions per year.

Activists Scuffle With Islamists

From the Independent:

Sudanese women's rights activists scuffled with Islamists and riot police today before a court session for Lubna Hussein, who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers deemed indecent by the authorites.

Hussein's case is being seen as a test of Sudan's Islamic decency regulations, which many women activists say are vague and give individual police officers undue latitute to determine what is acceptable clothing.

The judge had adjourned Hussein's last court session to investigate whether she was immune from prosecution because she was working as a press officer for the United Nations at the time of her arrest.

Fatemeh Alia

From the Khaleej Times:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated another woman for the post of education minister after his first choice, also a female, failed to win the support of parliament, a report said.

Ahmadinejad also proposed a new energy minister after his first pick likewise failed to muster enough support from MPs, the Mehr news agency said.

‘This afternoon (Sunday) the president presented Mrs. Fatemeh Alia and Mr. Ali Zabihi in an official letter to the parliament as his nominees for the education and energy ministries,’ respectively, a member of the parliament presiding board Hamid Reza Hajibabai was quoted by as saying by Mehr.

Iran: Brutal Treatment of Female Protesters

From the Daily Star:

The interrogator politely apologized for grilling the prisoner about her role in the mass protests over Iran’s disputed presidential election. Then the prisoner was made to sit facing a wall in the courtyard of Iran’s Evin Prison, blindfolded, handcuffed and covered in an all-enveloping chador for four and a half hours under the blazing sun.

The ordeal of Nazy, a 29-year-old university student who worked with the campaign of defeated presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi, gives a rare glimpse of what is happening to detained protesters. Nazy spoke to the Associated Press by telephone from Tehran after her release on the condition that only her first name be used, to protect herself and her family.

Thousands have been arrested since incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, despite cries of fraud. The opposition claims detainees were savagely raped by their jailers and at least 69 people were killed, including some from beatings in prison.

Gajalakshmi

From Afzal Bhat @ Taragana:

An ancient sculpture of Hindu Goddess of wealth Gajalakshmi has recently been discovered at Nagbal Lesser village in Jammu and Kashmir.

The sculpture, carved out of brownish limestone, is now kept for further examination at the office of Archives Archaeology and Museum in Srinagar. It will be shifted to Sri Pratap Singh Museum for public display later.

This is the only sculpture found from the Lesser Kokernag area of Kashmir so far. However, the presence of pottery in an around the Lesser village reveals presence of some ancient settlements.

Causa Anglica

From Richard Owen @ Times Online:

A facsimile of an historic document from the Vatican Secret Archives in which English peers appeal to Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon is to be given to the Queen tomorrow.

The 95 x 46cm (37 x 18in) parchment, which dates from 1530 and bears 81 red wax seals, is a key document of events leading to the schism between Rome and the Church in England.

Vatican historians say that whatever the later causes of the schism, the “most immediate and determining cause” was Henry VIII’s “wish to get rid of his legitimate wife, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in order to marry Anne Boleyn.”

But Marco Maiorino, a Vatican historian of papal diplomacy, said the King’s other motive was to ensure succession, since Catherine, of whose six children only Mary Tudor survived, had failed to provide a male heir.