Velez, an Army private, had recently returned from Iraq, where she disarmed bombs. She had served for three years, recently reenlisted for another three, and wanted to become a psychologist to help other soldiers deal with the stress of military life. Her friend Sasha Ramos says she respected the position of Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter. "He's somebody she would have saluted," Ramos said. "It's degrading to all soldiers that he did something like that." • Vandy Beth Glenn has filed a federal lawsuit to get her job at the Georgia General Assembly back after she was fired for being transgender. She had been working as Glenn Morrison and living as Vandy Beth, but she and her supervisor agreed she would start dressing as a woman on Halloween 2006. But she was fired by Georgia Legislative Counsel Sewell Brumby, who said in a deposition, "It makes me think about things I don't like to think about, particularly at work … I think it's unsettling to think of someone dressed in women's clothing with male sexual organs inside that clothing." • According to the American Psychological Association's annual stress survey released earlier this week, women are more likely than men to say they lack the willpower to make lifestyle changes to improve their health. But, Helen Coons, director of the Women's Mental Health Center in Philadelphia, says "willpower" is a misleading term because women may really mean they're too exhausted to make changes and think of themselves as being "selfish" if they put their needs ahead of others'. • A survey of 1,212 doctors published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that many doctors do unnecessary pap smears, adding to heath care costs. Doctors were asked what screening they'd recommend in various situations and most said they'd give a pap smear to a 35-year-old woman with no history of cervical cancer whose cervix had been removed, which is inconsistent with guidelines from several medical associations. • Though many men think women are mainly interested in color when buying a car, a survey by Ipsos Public Affairs for CarMax found 33% of women say price is the most important factor, followed by reliability and fuel efficiency. • Canadian researchers compared 6-year-old children who were breast-fed for 6 months with those who were breast-fed for only three months and found that there were no differences in intelligence, behavior, or blood pressure. While longer breast-feeding gave the children an immunity boost as infants, the researchers say the advantages of breastfeeding do not include lower risks of obesity, asthma, allergy, or dental problems in the long term. • Elizabeth Lambert, the NCAA women's soccer player whose unsportswomanlike behavior was featured on SportsCenter last night has been suspended indefinitely from the University of New Mexico's team. "Liz is a quality student-athlete, but in this instance her actions clearly crossed the line of fair play and good sportsmanship," said her coach, Kit Vela. • A prosecution source in the Amanda Knox trial says her DNA is on the handle of a knife used to kill Meredith Kercher, but the defense still insists there was DNA tampering at the scene of the crime and that the kitchen knife doesn't match Kercher's wounds. Closing arguments in the case begin in two weeks. • Mary Karr, who just published her memoir Lit, says she developed her storytelling ability as a child. She and her mother would play a game when they were driving or her mom was hungover. "Tell me a story she liked to say, meaning charm me - my life in this Texas suckhole is duller than a rubber knife. Amaze me," says Karr. • "Presidents hate the press," says White House reporter Helen Thomas. "They hate me most of the time. ... Asking questions about Watergate, about Monica Lewinsky, they're questions that will hurt and yet you can't avoid them. If you do avoid them, it shows you don't have guts." •

• A Texas judge has ruled that a same-sex couple should be able to get a divorce in Texas, even though the state does not recognize gay marriage. Although it is too early to tell what this will mean for human rights in Texas, the couple is "ecstatic" at the news. •  Allergan Inc., makers of Botox, have filed a lawsuit against federal health officials, which alleges that the government violated their free-speech rights by barring them from distributing information about the antiwrinkle injections. •  Grab your babies, because Today is the Synchronized Worldwide Breastfeed. The event started in the Philippines, with breastfeeding advocate Elvira Henares-Esguerra. •  Lauren Book, a survivor of sexual abuse, once lobbied for stricter laws governing paroled sex offenders. However, she recently realized that the laws she worked so hard to have passed may have backfired, leaving hundreds of sex offenders in such deplorable living conditions that they might just get "desperate" enough to offend again. •  French PM Francois Fillon said today that he is considering enforced chemical castration for sex offenders. France currently allows the use of chemical castration, but only with the consent of the prisoner. •  Patriza D'Addario went on Italian television to tell her side of the whole Silvio Berlusconi sex scandal story. She says Berlusconi knew she was an escort when he slept with her, and that his Rome residence "seemed like a harem." • 

• Despite earlier reports, Cheyvonne Molino, a woman who knows Garrido and the girls says they never acted robotically and didn't wear prairie dresses. • President Obama and Megan Fox are both experts at packaging sound-bites according to The Huffington Post because they each have made similar statements in different interviews. Yesterday when asked about claims that those who dislike him are racist, Obama told both George Stephanopoulos and John King basically, "Are there some people who don't like me because of my race? I'm sure there are." In a Rolling Stone interview Fox talked about her "powerful, confident vagina," and she told Cosmopolitan, "Women hold the power because we have the vaginas. If you're in a heterosexual relationship and you're a female, you win." Maybe their respective thoughts on racism and vaginas are just very consistent. • Between 14 and 23 percent of pregnant women experience a depressive disorder during pregnancy and 13 percent took anti-depressants in 2003. According to a new study short-term neonatal irritability and neurobehavioral changes were linked to maternal depression and anti-depressant treatment. • In the video at the link, a local Florida station, reports that parents are complaining about billboards in 16 cities that say "sex without consent is rape" that are paid for with federal tax money because the ads force them to discuss sexual violence with their children. • Many skin care products and cosmetics contain alcohol and pork products. Aside from being gross, this means Muslim women who keep Halal can't use them. After converting to Islam and finding few cosmetics options for Muslim women, a former makeup created OnePure, a cosmetics line approved and certified by the Malaysian Islamic Authority. • An AP investigation found that baby formula companies are aggressively promoting formula over breast-feeding in Vietnam. Formula companies have paid doctors to push their products and advertised formula for babies between six and 12 months even though Vietnam's law prohibits advertising formula for children under age one. • In a New York Times profile, Beth Kaplan, the president of GNC says, "I need to be part of a big organization, and my kids get it. I was at Bath & Body Works when my father died, and I struggled with being away from home. I resigned and thought my boys would be thrilled. My younger son, who was 8, was so excited that he jumped into my arms. My older son said, 'But Mommy, I really liked that job.'" • Sixty-eight of the 72 known people 110 and older are female, even though there are more boys than girls born each year. Part of the reason may be that men are five times more likely than women to die by firearms, men are more susceptible to fatal conditions like cancer and heart disease, and men are more likely to ignore emotional problems and are nine times more likely to commit suicide between the ages of 75 and 79. • According to government estimates more than 16 million Japanese women, or one quarter of the country's female population, are 65 or older. The country is anticipating a shortage of workers as the population ages. • The Australian Fair Work Ombusdman's office has found that women are being fired for taking maternity leave and being told to quit if they can't juggle work and family. In one case, a woman saw her position being advertised in the newspaper eight months into her maternity leave and was told she couldn't come back. In another case a woman's boss shifted her from five eight-hour days to four 10-hour days so she couldn't drop her kids off at day care, and told her to quit if she didn't like it. • The Pasco, Washington planning commission voted down a proposal to allow a Planned Parenthood in town because they say it would attract too many protesters. Anna Franks, president of Planned Parenthood of Central Washington says the decision was political: "What we have here are protesters protesting against Planned Parenthood that there may be protesters at our clinic." The county has one of the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the state. •

[Image via Art Info.]

• Researchers have found that the drugs used to treat bleeding after a woman has given birth, as well as the drugs administered to deal with labor pains, may impede milk production and hamper a new mother's ability to breastfeed her newborn. • Children as young as two or three have been shown to harbor certain negative stereotypes about the elderly. "We're seeing what we could call ageism by about age three," said University of Alberta researcher Sheree Kwong See. An obvious antidote? Taking toddlers to visit their grandparents. • Taco Bell has agreed to pay two 16-year-old former employees a total of $350,000 to make up for the fact that they were both raped by supervisor Terence E. Davis. Davis plead guilty to the charges, and will serve two concurrent eight year sentences. • GHB may be most commonly known as a "date rape" drug, but apparently, many people are sipping the stuff to get high. One capful gives a feeling similar to drinking five beers in five minutes, topped off with some PCP, but don't get too excited; it is incredibly dangerous and highly addictive. • Statistics New Queensland Health show that one in four abortions performed at 20 weeks or later went wrong in 2007. The figure is up 20% from 2003. • Three American men have been charged with molesting young children in Cambodia. Ronald Gerard Boyajian, Erik Leonardus Peeters, and Jack Louis Sporich were prosecuted under a new initiative, that aims to crack down on U.S. citizens who travel abroad, often to Cambodia, to prey on kids. All three men had previously been convicted of sex offenses in the U.S. • A Maine man has been arrested - for the second time - for climbing down into the waste pit in an outhouse. Gary Moody claims he went into the pit to rescue his shirt, which he says he put on the outhouse seat "because outhouse seats are dirty." No shit, but whats underneath them is way, way worse. • Samar Saed Abdullah has been condemned to die for being accessory to the murder of three men. She claims that her husband committed the murders, yet he remains on the loose while she faces hanging. Her parents swear she is innocent, and claim the Iraqi police tortured her into confessing. • Ever wondered what it is like to be a baby? Philosopher Alison Gopnik says: "When we travel for instance, we are suddenly surrounded by an unexpected new world and, instead of just focusing on the important things, we take in lots of information at once. That actually makes us more vividly conscious of our surroundings, not less. I think that for babies, every day is like first love in Paris." • Meet Calvino Inman, a young boy who cries tears of blood. Even though vampires are so in right now, this poor kid's condition sound terrible, not to mention painful. •  To celebrate the legalization of gay marriage in Vermont, Ben & Jerry's has announced they are temporarily changing the name of the delicious classic "Chubby Hubby" to "Hubby Hubby." •

Scientific American's resident provocateur Jesse Bering, who once cited Jezebel as an example of "acts of social aggression" among women, tackles bottle-feeding in the somewhat creepily titled article "Breasts in Mourning." He cites a study by evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup and colleagues. The study says,

Opting not to breastfeed precludes and/or brings all of the processes involved in lactation to a halt. For most of human evolution the absence or early cessation of breastfeeding would have been occasioned by miscarriage, loss, or death of a child. We contend, therefore, that at the level of her basic biology a mother's decision to bottle feed unknowingly simulates child loss.

The evidence: mothers who bottle-feed score higher on one measure of depression than breast-feeding moms, even after controlling for age, education, and socioeconomic and relationship status. Also, bottle-feeding moms apparently want to hold their babies more than those who breast-feed do. Somewhat bizarrely, the study authors believe this desire "parallels findings among nonhuman primates where in response to the death of an infant, mothers of some species have been known to tenaciously hold, cling to, and carry their infants for prolonged periods after they die." To which this admittedly lay-reader responds — don't moms like to hold their living infants too?

Bering does admit that "these women may simply want to make up for lost bonding time that would otherwise occur during breastfeeding." He also cautions that "the reasons for bottle-feeding are complex and many, and not all women have the luxury of a choice in this regard." However, he winds up his article (which is illustrated, somewhat incongruously, with a picture of Bering himself in front of some water) with the statement, "the present logic may give new meaning to the expression 'breast is best'-if not for infants, then at least for their mothers."

There may be physiological and psychological advantages to breast-feeding, but we're not yet convinced that "not treating your baby like a corpse" is one of them. Might the elevated depression bottle-feeding moms experience be caused not by a subconscious belief that the baby is dead, but by wanting to breast-feed and not being able to? If so, couldn't more paid maternity leave and flexible work hours help alleviate the problem? Moms who don't breast-feed may also feel inadequate, perhaps as a result of pro-breast-feeding rhetoric. We should be making it possible for mothers to breast-feed if they want to and physically can, but for those who can't — for medical or other reasons — giving yet another "new meaning" to "breast is best" isn't all that helpful.

Breasts In Mourning: How Bottle-Feeding Mimics Child Loss In Mothers' Brains [Scientific American]

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.

• A 24-year-old biologist from Rutland has become the first woman to row solo across the Indian ocean. Sarah Outen began in journey off the west coast of Australia in April and ended it Monday night at the island of Mauritius. • A man was arrested in Tokyo Monday on suspicion of stabbing a young woman in the ear-cleaning salon where she worked and killing her grandmother. The 41-year-old man had been previously banned from the salon. • According to a report in the journal Pediatrics, only 10% of girls who describe repeat sexual abuse by genital penetration have "definitive" physical evidence. However, this does not mean that the other 90% is making it up; an earlier study shows that very few children fabricate stories of abuse, and most victims under-report attacks. • A recent study conducted by The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research found that cheerleading is the leading cause of catastrophic injury among young women. Researchers cite the increased difficulty of cheerleading stunts as the most likely reason for the high number of injuries resulting in either death, head or spine trauma. • The Advertising Council has announced a new campaign, which will make its debut this fall, to "encourage blacks to adopt children from the U.S. foster care system." However, it is not clear from the article whether the ads are aimed at black would-be parents (as suggested in the previous quote), or meant to encourage the adoption of black children, or both. • According to new regulations, employers in DC will now be required to provide sanitary rooms (other than a bathroom) for moms that need to breastfeed at work. Surgeon General Steven Galson deemed the new laws "profitable, important and feasible." • The traumatized gorilla mom who carried around the corpse of her dead baby for several days has given birth again, and this time, the baby is happy and healthy. • Police have arrested the owner of an Ohio sports bar for pointing a gun at an 11-year-old girl and robbing her of her skateboard. • A small Vegas-style wedding chapel has popped up in Manhattan as the newest incarnation of art collective Grand Opening's ever-changing storefront. It costs $100 for a half-hour ceremony, and they offer both mock and legal weddings.

According to a survey, 65% of British moms say they don't breast-feed because they're worried about people looking at them. And their fears may not be unfounded — 54% of women who do breast-feed they've been asked to leave the restaurant for doing so. Some have to retreat to their cars to feed their kids, and, in an unfortunate example of the differences between British and American English, "35 per cent admitted they were forced to feed their baby in a toilet."

Mammographer Ella Laseinde (pictured) has a solution to breast-feeding shyness: a special bib with a hole for the breast and a flap that goes over the baby's head. It may not cover the whole breast, but there are other options. Recent inventions include a curtain suspended from the mother's neck by a circular rod, or, for the baby, a wide-brimmed Breast-feeding Hat.

Breast-feeding advocate Dia Michels, however, doesn't think the solution lies in such innovations. She says,

The reason women are so freaked out about breast-feeding in public is because we have completely sexualized the breast. The only way to make breast-feeding easier for women is to desensitize the public to breast exposure. If these devices allow women to hide what they're doing and cover it because it's shameful and because it's embarrassing, it's just perpetuating the sexualization of the breast.

Desensitizing the public, however difficult, still seems like a better option than making a baby wear a giant boob hat.

Image via The Sexist (Washington City Paper)

Two-Thirds Of Women Too Shy To Breastfeed [Daily Express]
Public Breast-Feeding: What The Nursing Bib Means For The Right To Bare Breasts [The Sexist]

• Get your resumes ready: A tourist attraction in Britain is offering a salary of £50,000 for a knowledgeable witch. Duties include: teaching tourists about witchcraft and magic, hexing competing businesses, and pain-free wart removal. • Elderly Swedes may soon have the option to live in a gay-friendly nursing home. Plans have been in the works for ten years for a home that would advertise their welcoming attitude and accept all residents, gay or straight. • Same sex couples in Australia have won a legislative victory, with Law and Justice Committee in the New South Wales Parliament issuing a recommendation to change the law and force most adoption providers to allow adoption agencies to judge based on parental suitability and not sexual orientation. • D.C.'s new law recognizing same sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions went into effect today. Councilman David Catania plans to draft a bill to allow the city to perform same sex marriages but, given that Congress has 30 days to disapprove any law D.C. passes, its changes are uncertain. • The Viinzs Aviation Training Institute is now offering courses to Kashmiri women looking for upward mobility in careers like aviation. • Sad news: Oscar Mayer, the grandson of company founder Oscar F. Mayer, died today at the age of 95. • England has abandoned a £5.9m project to reduce teen pregnancies after figuring out that the program made girls more likely to become pregnant. "This pilot was based on a successful American programme. It didn't appear to reduce teenage pregnancy so we will not be taking it any further," said a spokeswoman from the Department of Health. •  A new report by the Guttmacher Institute shows that the United States' restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion (i.e., the Hyde Amendment) forces 1 in 4 poor women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Conservatives have responded that that's the point. • One in four women in America who has an abortion has a medical abortion rather than a surgical one. • Police in Germany received a call on Wednesday about a badger believed to be lying dead in the middle of the road. It turns out that the badger was alive, but not quite well: he had gotten extremely drunk off fermented cherries, which gave him a bad case of the runs. Police eventually chased the non-responsive animal from the road with a broom. • The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights and the UN's Assistance Mission in Afghanistan issued a report on the culture of impunity in Afghanistan that results in further violence against women. •

• Also, in a confusing statement, the Iranian state-run news network is claiming that an extreme Marxist group killed Neda because they thought she was a terrorist's sister. The network says the killers "thought that they were targeting one of the government opposition people, and that is why they immediately distributed the video of the aftermath of the killing through the official and unofficial media in order to reach their murderous objectives against the Iranian government and revolution." Right. • A strange ring of smoke recently appeared in the sky over an amusement park in Eastern Virginia. The UFO-like ring may have been caused by one of the rides, but it has yet to be fully explained. • Government officials in the UK have decided not to lower the screening age for cervical cancer from 25, because they say lowering the age could lead to too many false positive results. • The BBC has apologize after tennis player Elena Baltacha was heard screaming a four-letter word (starts with f) in frustration during her first round match at Wimbledon this week. After she won the match, Baltacha admitted that she felt rather "emotional," but she was always determined to win. • A woman from North Dakota has plead guilty to drunkenly feeding her six-week-old baby. She was charged with child neglect after giving her baby the breast milk cocktail (the original White Russian?), but she will not be forced to register as an offender against children. • "Bra banks" in the UK allow women to donate their unwanted bras, which are very difficult to recycle, to other women in need. There's even one at the Houses of Parliament. • A Connecticut church is drawing criticism after it posted footage on YouTube of a violent exorcism intended to drive a ''homosexual demon'' from the body of a 16-year-old boy. • Now that women make up 20% of the Air Force, more dads are staying home with their kids while moms fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. • A study has found that Girl Scout meetings can be an ideal place to teach healthy diet and exercise habits — hopefully this won't result in the Girl Scouts eliminating delicious Thin Mints. • Hollywood Madam Michelle Braun allegedly charged almost $50,000 — far more than Heidi Fleiss — for a night with one of her escorts. But does the Daily Fail have to call them a "stable"? • According to a US News & World Report blogger, keeping money separate can help couples avoid conflict. • The newest demeaning and overgeneralized term to describe male behavior is "neosexual," which apparently refers to a guy who has "shrugged off the femininity of the metrosexual and returned to his more masculine, primitive roots." • Rainbow party alert! A study found that one in five teens engage in sexting, and one in four "knew someone who had a bad experience because of information posted on the Internet." •

Schreiber said it isn't quite that bad, but he still has Wolverine-related stress, as he keeps checking to see if his older son is playing with his "Daddy action figure." As the boys' mother Naomi Watts told Letterman a few months ago, Schreiber says life involves plenty of sleepless nights and breastfeeding now that they have two boys under two-years-old. Clip at left.

Earlier: Naomi Watts Schools Letterman In Lactose Lobotomies

• Cabergoline, a drug that makes women stop producing breast milk, is usually prescribed to women with HIV, but now, women are reportedly taking it for "social reasons" like wanting to return to work or not wanting the shape of their breasts to change. • A Toronto judge has ruled that a mother is using her breastfeeding schedule to keep the father of her 29-month-old daughter from seeing his child. The father says if the mother used a breast pump and gave him milk, he'd be willing to keep up with the feeding schedule. • A British sheep named Dolly has given birth to sextuplets. Sheep usually give birth to only two or three lambs at a time. Now Dolly's owners are hand-feeding the lambs because she doesn't have enough teats for all six. • China has moved the last six pandas still living in the Wolong Panda Breeding Center to another breeding facility. The preserve was badly damaged in last year's earthquake. • This Japanese potty training video shows a talking animated toilet bowl and dancing poop and pee with faces. • Residents in Melbourne, Florida are complaining because a church is holding a three-week program of "Great Sex For You" sermons in the auditorium of the local elementary school. • Voters in the Appenzell Inner Rhodes region of the Swiss Alps voted to ban naked hiking after dozens of German nudists started hiking through the region. Violators will be fined. • Eight-year-old Texas girl, Emma Hicks, steered her grandmother's SUV off the road after her grandmother had a seizure, saving both of their lives. • New U.S. Census data shows that in 2007 black college graduates made only 78 percent of the salary for comparably educated whites, which is the biggest disparity in pay between whites and blacks since 2001. • A grand jury has indicted two New York City police officers for allegedly raping a woman after they escorted her from a taxicab to her apartment while she was drunk. • New research shows children who are firstborn, breech or whose mothers are 35 or older have a significantly greater risk of having autism. • A British woman has been locked up until May 5 for violating a court order prohibiting her from having noisy sex. • Researchers have identified an area of the human genome that may contribute to the development of pelvic floor disorders like pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence, which will affect one-third of all U.S. women at some point in their lives. • Drinking diet soda may reduce the risk of forming kidney stones. Researchers found the citrate and malate content in many diet sodas may be enough to inhibit the development of calcium stones. • Cosmopolitan's new executive editor Nicole Beland has enraged Catholic League president William Donohue by writing about a sexually repressed woman, "It's not easy to undo damage caused by years of exposure to Catholic-school nuns or overly conservative parents." Donohue says, "It would never occur to Beland that a woman who is sexually repressed might have been molested growing up ... No, for Beland it is empirically obvious that Sister Mary Alice did it." Really? That's the most offensive thing he found in Cosmo? •

• An Australian study has found that kids whose parents yell at them or hit them are more likely to have difficulty sleeping. No shit, but researchers say they are puzzled as to which came first, the abuse or the sleeping issues. • Actor/audience participation went a bit too far at a recent showing of Neil LaBute's latest play, "reasons to be pretty." •  Today's Washington Post profiles several women who chose to undergo preventative double mastectomies. As you might expect, some women are pleased with their decision, while others regret it. • Olestra, the famous fat substitute that was pulled following reports of anal leakage, is now being used to make eco-friendly paints and lubricants. • You know those weird Activia ads with Jamie Lee Curtis? Dannon is currently working on a settlement over allegations that it makes unrealistic claims about Activia's health benefits. • The U.N. reports that violence against women and gays may be on the rise in Syria, although it is possible that they are just seeing more victims willing to come forward. • Canadian moms canceled their protest for the right to breastfeed at public pools after Calgary city officials made it clear that policy does allow them freedom to breastfeed. • Playmobil is suing German priest Marcus Bomhard for his creation of the "Playmo-Bibel," which uses Playmobil toys to act out scenes from the Bible. • Stem cells may be the next big thing in cosmetic surgery: women in Britain will soon be able to get high-tech boob jobs derived from their own fat cells. • Pakistan's Supreme Court has begun an investigation into a recently released video of Taliban members flogging a 17-year-old girl. The identity of the victim is still unknown. • After being washed overboard and away from her owners, Sophie Tucker, an Australian cattle dog, was found stranded but alive on a remote island. • A new study shows that women are better at smelling out body odor than men. Researchers believe that this may have something to do with our ability to choose mates. • 

Al proudly points out, "she latched right away!" Clip at left.