[Tokyo, November 25. Image via Getty]

A Model displays a weddingdress during a collection of British designer Vivienne Westwood at a boxing stadium in Tokyo on November 25, 2009. AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO (Photo credit should read YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images)

But her parents recall that Taylor's rise to fame has not been easy. Her father said "you could write 10 pages" about what he had to do to get her into the Irish Amateur Boxing Association. •  Meet Diane Macchino, the so-called "Cement Princess." Macchino owns eight cement trucks, which she refers to as her "babies," manages a cement yard, wears three inch heels, and fights sexual harassment on what sounds like a daily basis. Macchino says shes had trouble from competitors, who don't like the fact that a women is getting into the business, but she has big plans: "This Cement Princess will be back like a woman scorned. Offering the best product at the best prices, honest service with a smile, and a woman's touch." • Police have discovered a seventh body in the Cleveland, Ohio home of convicted rapist Anthony Sowell. He was arrested last week after the decomposing bodies of six African-American women were found in his house and buried in his yard. • Three female college students from North Dakota have gone missing. Authorities refuse to speculate on what has happened to the girls, but a friend reports receiving two late night phone calls that mentioned water and asked for help. •  The Georgian Court Hotel in Vancouver has recently reopened with a new feature: A floor dedicated exclusively to female travelers. The "Orchid Floor" will provide extra amenities, including curling irons, yoga mats, and a collection of women's magazines. • According to a new government report, America's disturbingly high infant mortality rate can be blamed primarily on poor access to prenatal care and the resulting premature births. To make things more depressing, many low income mothers do not have access to proper care, which accounts for the high numbers of infant deaths among women in the US. •  Subjects in a Canadian study looked at photos of men's faces and said they thought those with wider, longer faces were more aggressive. The volunteer's guesses correlated highly to the men's actual aggressive behavior. "The greater the width-to-height ratios, the higher the aggressive rating, suggesting that we may use this aspect of facial structure to judge potential aggression in others," said the researchers. • Evelyn Border, 56, and her daughter Tina Griekspoor, 35, stood outside a Pennsylvania courthouse for four and a half hours today holding signs that read: "I stole from a 9-year-old girl on her birthday! Don't steal or this could happen to you!" The women, who were convicted of stealing the girl's gift card when she put it down on a shelf at Wal-Mart, agreed to hold the signs rather than serving jail time. • Ingmar "Iggy" Sprude, who appeared on the cover of Gulfshore Life magazine's recent issue, was arrested for allegedly pulling the fire alarm inside a Naples, Florida nightclub twice on Halloween. He was dressed as Pamela Anderson at the time. • In addition to taking care of the grounds, White House Horticulturist Dale Henry has developed a relationship with many presidential pets. Henry is Bo's primary walker when Michelle Obama is out of town. He says he's amazed by the public's fascination with With House pets: "Sometimes I think they're more interested in the pets than the president." • Voters at a town hall meeting in Dudley, Massachusetts have made it illegal to own more than three cats without being granted a $50 residential kennel license. The law was created after the neighbor of Mary Ellen Richards said her 15 cats are destroying her yard. Richards is selling her house and says she's moving to a "more cat-friendly community." •

• "I think people may have seen that and got the wrong idea about us," said the chief executive officer, and a former employee claims there is nothing sexual about it. Oh really? •  Wanna know what's on Obama's walls? The Times has a full list of the art on display in the White House. The pieces range from a Winslow Homer to a Degas to a Rothko, thus proving once again that the first family has good taste. •  A supermarket in Britain has issued an apology after a pregnant woman was denied an unpasteurized cheese by a concerned employee. She described the experience as the "most patronising encounter I have had the misfortune of experiencing in a long time." •  Recent legislation in Gaza that bans women from riding on motorbikes has raised concerns over efforts by Hamas to Islamise Palestinian society. While few women ride motorbikes, this seems to be part of a larger trend toward moralized legislation. •  Michael Vick, the football player most famous for his dogfighting bust, is getting a reality TV show. Although we hate PETA, we agree with them here: "People who abuse animals don't deserve to be rewarded. They shouldn't be given multimillion-dollar contracts...or given the privilege of being a role model." • A British man who had sex with his daughter over a period of 33 years and fathered two children by her has been sentenced to twelve years in prison. He pled guilty to two of incest, two rapes, 12 indecent assaults and two indecency with a child. • Here's a good reason to move to Sweden: Toys "R" Us has been reprimanded by an agency that polices advertising in Sweden after a group of sixth-graders learning about gender roles determined that boys were portrayed as active, but girls were passive in the store's 2008 Christmas catalog. • Mazen Abdel-Jawad, a 32-year-old Saudi man, has been sentenced to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes after boasting about his sexual conquests on TV. For being shown on TV with sex toys, condoms, and lubricants and cruising the streets for women he was charged with, "publicizing vice and confessing to crimes on a satellite television channel." • According to a new study from the University of Michigan, an increase in the number of cases of nasopharyngeal cancer, a rare condition in which a tumor grows behind the nose and above the tonsils, is linked to HPV. • University of Toronto researchers have invented a new technology that can measure tiny droplets of estrogen from samples of breast tissue the size of a needle. Currently doctors need to do a biopsy to collect such data, which could be useful to see the progress of breast cancer therapy, to see if a woman is at risk, or for other problems like infertility. The technology will not be ready for several years. • Katie Couric will be honored with the 2009 Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media by the University of South Dakota, but a columnist for the school's student newspaper says she's not ready for the award. "A 'life-time achievement award' to Couric is jumping the gun," writes David Whitesock. "Despite Ms. Couric's laudable efforts to introduce the evening news to the Internet generation, she has fallen short of 'Evening News' predecessors." • Bob Dole, who lived next to Monica Lewinsky at the Watergate complex in the '90s said at a heath reform summit today, "If I'd had little wiretap there, I could've been president... I never had..... a conversation with that lady." • Before making his final decision on whether he should run for president, Barack met with Chicago politicians Newton Minow and Abner Mikva who have six daughters between them. Obama said he admired both men's daughters, and hoped his own daughters would grow up to be like them, and that he wouldn't run if the two men felt that doing so while the girls were so young would damage them in any way. • An Australian hospital psychologist has had his license suspended for just two months after telling a sexual assault victim that he was sex-obsessed, had "very strong sexual feelings for her" and that he had "fucked up big time" with her therapy. He treated her in 2004 and 2005 and authorities only learned of his misconduct after the woman threatened to kill herself and hospital staff found a noose in her home. • Advocates say advances in DNA technology, reforms in how police investigate rapes, and better prosecution of rapists are reducing the number of reported U.S. rapes. FBI statistics say 89,000 women reported being raped in 2008, down brom the 109,062 reported rapes in 1992. • Julie Parker, 80, is the oldest and longest-tenured employee at Yosemite National Park. "Julia interprets Native American culture to our visitors," says a park spokesman. "She shows visitors how baskets were woven, toys or brushes were made and acorns collected from native black oak trees, ground up using a metate and made into mush... Julia is truly a national treasure." • It took Patrick Mills of Florida two days to get a nine week old kitten out of his car's engine compartment. Someone heard meowing coming from his engine, but Mills and firefighters were unable to coax the cat out even with donated milk from Starbucks and tuna from Panera Bread. The cat was finally frightened from her hiding spot when a Feline Friends of Destin volunteer rattled a metal coat hanger in the engine. The volunteer took the cat home and said she's healthy except for a minor cold. •

The Journal reports that, although new opportunities are opening up every day for young Indian boys, many young women still have a difficult time rising above difficult economic circumstances. There are a few jobs available to them, including working at nonprofits and teaching, but sports has become the preferred avenue out for some. "In sports, boys and girls are equal. Everybody is the same," said 16-year-old Sughra Fatma.

Fatma studies boxing at the Khidderpore School of Physical Culture in southeast Kolkata. She is one out of 47 students fighting under instructor Sheikh Nasimuddin Ahmed, who treats his female boxers just as he does the boys. In a country where gender roles remain strictly defined, the boxing club offers a rare refuge where gender does not matter. Women who are typically told to cover up are asked to wear shorts, not to titillate the men, but to grant them greater range of motion for fighting.

The young women see boxing as a possible way to support themselves. Those who do consistently well in competition might be able to land a scholarship for college, or even a spot on a sports team with the Indian railway or police force, coveted positions that come with a job, a pension, and subsidized boxing trainers and facilities.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone supports such ambitions: Professional boxer Razia Shabnam says when she first started training, people would approach her on the street and try to get her to stop. Some parents discourage their girls from boxing because of its effect on future marriage. "The problem is people think that it's an injurious game, especially for girls," said Shabam. Who cares if a man breaks his nose? But if that happens to a woman, she "can't get married."

Of course, the reality is that most of the athletes are unable to make money from fighting. The competition is fierce, and so far, no one from Ahmed's club has made it to national level. Fighters like Mary Kom (shown at left), a title-holding boxer from Manipur, India, are few and far between. But Simmi Parveen, a 12-year-old member of the boxing club, still dreams of being the next Mary Kom. "This is an addiction for me. I will achieve something," she said. "When I'm somebody I wouldn't have to go and look for a partner. Suitors will come themselves to talk to my brother and father for my hand. That's why I want to stand on my own feet and do something."

A Fighting Chance [Wall Street Journal]

A combination of wrestling/grappling; boxing; kickboxing/Muay Thai; and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Some may call it "cagefighting"; some may call it brutal, but MMA is a sport, with training, rules and referees. And for women, traditionally the "delicate" and "weaker" sex, to not only be represented — but headline — is a big deal.

Saturday's Washington Post had a story about more women and girls entering into amateur boxing; earlier this month, the Times covered an all-female wrestling team, the first ever in Iraq. If you thought of these sports as being fueled by testosterone, it may be time to rethink.

The MMA matchup Saturday night was between Gina Carano, an American, and the intimidating Cris "Cyborg" Santos of Brazil. In a lengthy New York Times profile a couple of weeks ago, Carano was described as being "a defining figure at a defining moment for her sport — cast as part suffragette, part test case, part marketing ploy and part crossover star." She's strong, she's gorgeous, and she could make MMA — which is already a huge business — even more mainstream.

Unfortunately, Carano lost the fight, and didn't even make it past the first round. But in a pre-taped interview, when asked why she wanted to take on Cyborg, Carano said, "Because she's the best."

Christy Halbert, a coach of the national women's boxing team, who campaigned to have her boxers accepted alongside men in the 2012 Olympic Games (which is happening!), told the Times: "Any exposure of women combatants is probably good exposure in general." And Ken Hershman, the general manager for sports programming at Showtime (which aired the bout) said that Carano would face "a lot of pressure, but that's the way it should be, right, if you're going to headline?"

These women are passionate. Cris Cyborg once famously choked out an interviewer just to prove she could; and when Gina Carano spoke to the Times, her motivation and dedication were evident:

"I want it to be easier for other females to be able to walk into a gym and train, because it changed my life," she said. "I live in Las Vegas, where it's difficult to meet a gentleman who doesn't think of you as a stripper or a piece of meat. I like the training and the lifestyle. I get to wake up and focus on myself and being better. It eliminates all the drama when you have to think about somebody punching you and taking your head off."

It's clear that it's not about winning or losing, but about reveling in her strength and doing her best.

First Women's Main Event [NY Times]
From ‘Gladiator' To Headliner, Carano Has Chokehold On Fame [NY Times]
A Ring of One's Own [WaPo]
Female Iraqis Take On Tradition In Wrestling Ring [NY Times]
Women's Boxing Included On 2012 Olympics List [CNN]

[Image via Showtime]

It's believed that Suman suffers from a hormonal imbalance, but her family has been unable to afford to travel to Calcutta for expert medical treatment. WWKAD? What Would Katy Abram Do? • Margaret Bush Wilson, a civil-rights activist and head of the Missouri NAACP, has died in St. Louis at the age of 90. • Jose Garcia-Perlera, who tied up and gagged widows living alone in a series of attacks in 2007 and 2008 in Maryland, was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole. • The mom in North Dakota who was busted (heh) for breastfeeding while intoxicated can't stay out of trouble: She's been arrested twice since her sentencing. • Poor Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones. They paid a Utah newspaper to run their wedding announcement, only to have it rejected. The same-sex couple were legally married in California in June and wanted the announcement to run in Jones' hometown before a family get-together next week. "After all, our marriage is just as real and legal and entitled to celebration as any of the others that are announced each week in the pages of The Spectrum," Jones wrote to publisher Donnie Welch. Welch replied: "This simply is not true. While that may be the case in some states it is not the case in the state of Utah. As our policy is to run marriage announcements recognized by Utah law, I have made the decision not to run the announcement." • Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota has asked a judge to prevent the state from suspending its license to perform abortions in Sioux Falls. • A 35-year-old woman known only as Carole — a convert to Islam — was banned from her local pool in Paris for trying to go swimming in a "burquini." She bought the garment because: "it would allow me the pleasure of bathing without showing too much of myself, as Islam recommends." But officials claim the "burquini" is a possible public health risk. Daniel Guillaume, a regional official in charge of swimming pools, says: "These clothes are used in public, so they can contain molecules, viruses, et cetera, which will go in the water and could be transmitted to other bathers." • "Everybody used to say how radical I was. I just thought I was pragmatic." — Billie Jean King, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Wednesday, the "the highest honor a civilian can receive in the U.S." • Scary, but not surprising: Pregnant women who underwent female genital cutting as girls are at increased risk of needing an emergency Cesarean section or suffering serious tears during childbirth. • Filament, a UK magazine for women featuring semi-naked men, is have problems pleasing its audience, which wants pictures of erect penises; its printers, which refuse and object to working with such content; and distributors which won't handle a women's magazine with a man on the cover. Writes Kristina Lloyd, "When set against the plethora of men's lifestyle and top-shelf magazines featuring scantily clad and open-legged women, the struggles faced by Filament highlight a deeply entrenched sexism: Men can look at women but women cannot look at men… The sexism is in the inequality. • Wow: Women's boxing will be added to the 2012 Olympic Games. Boxing was the last all-male Olympic sport.

[Mexico City, May 27. Image via Getty]

TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY GUILLERMO BARROS A Mexican girl trains at the 'Diaz Miron' boxing gym, located on a street of Mexico City, on May 27, 2009. Mexican boxer Edgar Sosa, mini-flywheight WBC world champion since two years ago, hasn't left the gymnasium that saw his first blows, placed between the lanes of a busy avenue of the Mexican capital. AFP PHOTO/Luis Acosta (Photo credit should read LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images)

• Young women who have undergone breast reductive surgery may have been screened for cancer without their consent, according to a recent report. • Doctors hope that a new type of screening for ovarian cancer will help decrease the number of cancer-related deaths among women. • Ugh: the Caylee Anthony "tribute" dolls are back. • Mormons are up in arms about an upcoming episode of HBO show Big Love that plans to depict a sacred Mormon temple. The church has not called for a boycott, believing (rightly so) that it would only give Big Love free publicity. • According to a new study, the high incidence of child marriage in India could lead to "poor fertility outcomes" among women. • Click here to watch a video of a turtle humping a shoe. • A preacher in rural Alabama is under fire for his "sexy sermons". The sex-positive sermons received negative attention after the church sponsored billboards that read "Great sex: God's way." • A baby boy born in Russia has just undergone surgery to correct his birth defect: he was born with two penises. • A Maryland woman was seriously injured (and probably embarrassed) from an incident involving a sex toy attached to a power saw. • Fertility patients are pleased with Obama's decision to lift the ban on stem cell research, since their donated embryos can now be put to good use. However, Scientists have some doubts. • New research from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia indicates that many doctors don't really understand the emergency contraception pill, and because of this, they don't often suggest it. • Studies performed on rats have found that children whose mothers drink alcoholic beverages while pregnant may find the taste more palatable than those born to teetotalers. • And for those of us who may be predisposed to loving the booze, there is a new website that can help monitor alcohol consumption. • More Filipinos are beginning to question the Catholic Church's teachings on birth control. "The influence of the Catholic Church has steadily weakened, just like in other countries," says Congressman Edcel Lagman. • According to a poll from 2007, 54% of Icelanders don't deny the existence of elves, and many believe that elves could be to blame for building disasters. • While women in Saudi Arabia are restricted from many activities, horse riding is not among them. • Protesters of the Miss University London pageant chained themselves to the entrance with bike locks and set off stink bombs. • The Scottish Prison Inspector has announced that many female inmates are living in "dismal and damaging conditions. • A new study shows that women expect men to do "masculine" chores, like taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn. • Film company Target Entertainment has bought the rights to a feature-length documentary titled "Monster: The Josef Fritzl Story." • Katie Couric has received a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence for her coverage of the 2008 campaign. • A 17-year-old gunman dressed in military gear entered a high school in Germany and murdered fifteen of his classmates. Out of the fifteen, fourteen were female. • Firefighters in the UK have gotten multiple calls about this dwarf pony's stumpy legs. • Last night Congress passed a bill that will help provide cheap birth control for college women. • And if you don't like hormones, a new, cheaper, female condom has been approved for sale in the U.S. • A total of 43 people in norther Nicaragua have fallen ill with "crazy sickness." • Female Guardian writer tries boxing, realizes it's an intense workout. • Men are shelling out big bucks for hair plugs to combat society's prejudice against the bald. • Salt may be addictive, says a new study on the evolutionary reasons for human's taste for salt. • 

Sarah Blewden, a former model, had surgery to pump up her 32Bs to 32Cs in 2003. The ABAE believes that Blewden's implants put her at a greater health risk, and argue that in asking her not to compete they are only following international rules, which currently ban anyone from boxing who has undergone breast enhancement surgery. At first glance, the ABAE's actions seem pretty reasonable, but Blewden is not going to take this lying down. She has volunteered to pay for any corrective surgery required to repair the damage to her breasts, but she doesn't anticipate this being a problem: "My surgeon said they make me no more vulnerable than any other woman. They are not enormous ones - they are in proportion. They are gel implants and not liquid so they won't burst," she said. She also asked to wear a breast protector, but was told that it may not provide sufficient protection. Blewden has only been boxing for two years, but had so much natural talent that she had hoped to be among the first women to compete in boxing in the 2012 Olympics. [Telegraph & Mirror]

The models in "Black & Blue" are portrayed as boxers, so supposedly they've subjected themselves to a friendly beating in the name of sports. However, it's hard to argue that these photos simply celebrate the athleticism of boxing, since we only see a heavily made up women being hit in the face by a disembodied hand and another in head bandages being aided by a male paramedic.

But really, why go the physical abuse route at all? Was this the only thing the editors of Allure could come up with to come up with to convey the idea that cobalt and turquoise eye shadow looks good with black liner?

Allure — February 2009 [Official Site]

[New York, October 14. Image via Splash.]

• Also awesome: Wallace and Gromit will appear in a new video game by Telltale Games, in which players can pilot either Wallace or Gromit through "zany entrepreneurial schemes." "We're certainly going for the clay look with this," says Telltale Games CEO. • Barred from competing in 1950 on suspicion of being a man, Dutch track star Foekje Dillema was actually a very rare "mosaic" of female and male chromosomes. • Over 50 dissident Catholic groups signed a letter to the Pope asking him to reconsider Catholicism's contraception ban. Vatican's response: this is ""paid propaganda in favor of the use of contraceptives." • Her mom called her "plain," and Meryl Streep overshadowed her in drama school, but Sigourney Weaver still grew up to be "the first woman action hero" and to give this funny, articulate interview to the Telegraph. • If you put all your money in Crocs, you're in trouble: shares of the company plummeted today. One doomsayer predicts that "with the weak economy, consumers may not be interested in new Crocs this year.'' Hey, a girl can hope! • Sound of Music news: Baron von Trapp's daughter Maria returns to her old family home for the first time since she fled the Nazis in the '30s. Of the movie, she says: all that singing really happened, but her dad was way nicer than Christopher Plummer. • Fewer men are attending church these days, prompting churches to organize 'beast feasts,' where men eat meat they hunted themselves. If they're Catholic, maybe they'd prefer some condoms. •

• Jenny Craig co-founder, Sid Craig, has passed away at the age of 76. • The domain name "narnia.mobi" was bizarrely given over to the C.S. Lewis estate from a father who had purchased the domain name for his 11-year-old son. • People living in London boroughs find people living in wealthy areas as being the most attractive. • Dozens of pantyhose have been left daily near an Milford school bus stop in England for 2 years and residents are planning to do their own sting operation to find the litterer. • Wal-Mart has teamed up with Disney to become the "retail headquarters" of Hannah Montana and plans on giving out free Hannah Montana "wake-up calls" in an effort to boost back to school sales. • Teens are more likely to be less sexually active if their parents do not engage in negatively controlling behaviors, a new "suggestive" study has found.• Two-thirds of people who erase their tattoos are women. • The bad housing market prompts a WWF Diva to give away her unwanted home for a charity essay contest. • A nude painting by Sir Gerald Kelly was put back on show in an a gallery in Newport, England after it was banned for 60 years for being "too brazen", only to be taken down again because the woman is depicted smoking. • Teenage girls who eat with their families during middle school are less likely to drink or smoke within the next five years.

But seriously. I started playing soccer at age five, and spent much of my adolescence viciously chasing after other girls on the field hockey pitch, wielding a wooden stick. And through all of that time I was mostly focusing on what my body could do — not what it looked like.
There is nothing in adult life that quite equals the pure elation of scoring a goal, which in itself is a kind of weightlessness. If only American men could support women in sports as the Zambian men are apparently supporting Esther (From the Christian Science Monitor article: "One young Zambian man shouted with a smile upon seeing an American leave Phiri's Saturday night victory - 'Zambia is strong!'")

This is not to claim that Zambia is some hotbed of enlightenment, Esther definitely experienced a lot of road blocks as a female athlete, but American men are particularly dismissive of women in sports. The University of Iowa painted the locker room for visiting teams pink, allegedly to make their opponents "feel like sissies." Meanwhile, the number of female coaches in college sports has reached an all-time low. The WNBA has never had a profitable season, and dudes all over the interwebs deride the league because its members can't slam dunk.

So what's the solution? If women start watching sports in droves, then the advertising dollars would follow, and with the ad $$ comes the power. But fuck, as much as I love playing sports, I hate watching sports. Um, maybe we should just get Venus and Serena Williams to buy us a stadium or something.

In Zambia, Woman Boxer Emerges As A New Role Model [Christian Science Monitor]
Number of female coaches in women's sports shrinks to all-time low [LA Times]

Girls like the cash they receive for fighting, but women face many obstacles in the culture of muay Thai.

Until recently, it was considered very bad luck for a girl or a woman to enter the boxing ring. Muay Thai is a sport steeped in superstition, where gold and silver talismans, blessed by Buddhist monks and engraved with words and symbols, are sometimes imbedded under the fighter's skin. The presence of a woman, especially if she was menstruating, was thought to cancel the invulnerability conferred by these and other charms and blessings.As a concession to tradition, girls these days enter the ring by crawling under the bottom of four ropes. Boys can climb through the ropes any way they want.

In addition to self-defense and discipline, the girls are earning money, fight by fight and blow by blow. One boxer and her twin sister box to pay for school fees, books and pocket money. They get about 300 baht ($8) per fight, whether they win or lose. But an older boxer can make about $260 for a bout, like one 17-year-old show who says she fought a foreigner on the resort island of Phuket.

Unfortunately, girls' matches are not as popular as the mens', for which placing big bets and gambling is part of the point. "Women are weak. It's no fun to watch," said Apichai Chanchailerk, a Bangkok taxi driver. "I watch all kinds of boxing but I can't gamble on the women."

Femininity, With A Sharp Jab, In Thailand [International Herald Tribune]

• Italian women over the age of 40 are having more babies than similarly-aged women in any other western industrialized country. But the U.S. is not far behind! [Guardian]
  
• Speaking of wombs: A group of politicians in Ohio are pressing the state legislature to pass a bill that "would ban women from seeking an abortion without written consent from the father of the fetus. In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers." [Feministing]
  
• A peace group is sponsoring a group of women in Afghanistan to train as boxers as symbols of women's independence and power, and as possible Olympic contenders. [BBC]
  
• Young women from China, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nepal and other countries who have been forced into sex slavery are not only highly likely to be infected with HIV but to spread the virus once they are freed and return home. [International Herald Tribune]

• Profit before health: Executives at pharmaceutical giant Wyeth are anxious to bypass the FDA's demand that the menopause drug Pristiq be tested further; they want it to be approved for treatment of depression. [MSNBC]
• Despite serious and incessant warnings over the fact that the acne drug Accutane causes severe birth defects, women continue to become pregnant while taking it. [MSNBC]
• One woman in the NY Times' obituaries section today: Norma Gabler, 84, who worked to rid Texas schools of content she considered "anti familiy, anti-American and anti-God". [NYTimes]