"I am not one of the women at your disposal, Prime Minister." Women's groups, feminist organizations, and even Facebook groups are urging Berlusconi to apologize. •  Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to meet with Britain's most senior representative in the country, Andrew Heyn, for the first time since 2003. British foreign secretary David Miliband says of the meeting: "The fact that the Burmese authorities have allowed this meeting gives us some hope that the authorities might finally be ready to start a genuine dialogue which can lead to political reconciliation." • A recent study shows that cognitive behavior therapy may be the fastest way to help bulimia patients. After only a few months of the talk therapy, 37% of ED patients showed an improvement. • Senior Catholic Bishops sent a letter to congress saying that they will oppose healthcare reform unless changes are made on the abortion coverage. They also ask that Congress make quality healthcare affordable to everyone, especially those living near the poverty level. • Amanda Knox's mother, Edda Mellas, says she is hopeful about the outcome of her daughter's trial. Knox has been imprisoned in Italy for the last two years for the murder of her roommate, but Mellas says she is innocent, and the court needs to overcome "a year's worth of bad press and lies." • A 40-year-old Bavarian woman who fell into a coma in her 13th week of pregnancy delivered a healthy baby a year and a half ago. The hospital director said, "We wanted to keep the spectacular case secret for as long as possible to demonstrate that we're not experimenting on people and that the child is still healthy." • President Obama says that after he was woken up by a telephone call telling him he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize "Malia walked in and said, 'Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday.' And then Sasha added, `Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.' So it's - it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective." • President Obama will donate the $1.4 million cash award that comes with the Nobel Peace Prize to charity, but hasn't decided which organizations he'll give it to. • The International Olympic Committee is unhappy with three unnamed countries for failing to support the participation of female athletes in the games. IOC president Jacques Rogge said the countries all pose "religious, cultural and political difficulties for women" to compete in sports. "We are engaged now in high-reaching discussions with these countries to try and persuade them to be a little more liberal or positive about women's sport." • Journalism groups and media law experts are defending TMZ founder Harvey Levin. The groups say the L.A. County sheriff's investigators violated the law when the obtained a search warrant for Levin's record to find out who gave him details on Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade during his 2006 drunk driving arrest. • German researchers have found an account of Joseph Goebbels post-war trial that reveals in more detail how his six children were killed. Dr. Helmut Kunz, who helped with the killings, said, ''Towards the end of April, Magda [Goebbel's wife] came up to me and said, 'I need your help in the killing of the children.' I refused her, saying that was not my responsibility... But Magda Goebbels insisted and shortly afterwards declared to me that it was no longer a request for help but a direct order from Hitler.'' He escaped from the bunker but was tracked down and told by Magda that he had to return or, ''you will be a dead man." • The first Norman Mailer Writers Colony Gala will honor novelist Toni Morrison for lifetime achievement and the late David Halberstam for distinguished journalism on October 20. • A woman from New Mexico has sued Delta Airlines for throwing her off the plane when she refused to cover herself while breastfeeding her baby. The lawsuit was brought in Vermont, which has some of the strongest breastfeeding laws. • 12-year-old Jennifer Valdivia caught the ball from Ryan Howard's 200th home run. A representative from the Philadelphia Phillies asked her for the ball back because they wanted to give it to Howard. When Valdivia's mother found out Jennifer had given up the ball she contacted a lawyer who sued on her behalf and made Howard return it. • Serena Williams says on her nude ESPN magazine cover photo, "ESPN had a 'Body Issue' and they told me I had a great body and they wanted me to be on the cover so I was super flattered. But I wanted to do it really classy and not trampy. I thought it was a really tasteful picture... I love it." •

A decade ago, reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown, but the "tsunami" of cases—as Vatican prosecutor Charles Scicluna calls it—brought to light in the past seven years in the U.S. may have encouraged Italian victims to come forward. A recent Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse against minors in the past decade, with more than 235 victims. The information was gathered from local media reports, linked to by victims groups websites and blogs, reports Nicole Winfeld for the Associated Press. Perhaps even more tellingly, almost all of the victims came forward since the allegations of sexual abuse forced the U.S. Catholic Church to deal with the staggering number of sexual crimes committed by its priests and clergy.

The cases also in Italy follow a similar pattern to those reported in the U.S. and in Ireland. The victims are often poor, physically or mentally disabled, or struggling with drug addiction. These vulnerable kids are appealing targets to priests, who needed to intimidate their victims into silence. Several of the cases reported in Italy came out of a Catholic-run institute for the deaf (which were omitted from the AP survey because by the time the victims went public, the statute of limitations had already expired). Along with 14 other former students, Alessandro Vantini has come with the story of his abuse. He says he was sodomized repeatedly by the priests, until he began to feel "as if I were dead." The abuse took place in the priests' bedrooms, in the bathroom, and sometimes in the confessional. As Winfeld says, the deaf students were targeted particularly because their speech impairments "made the priests' admonition 'never to tell' all the more easy to enforce."

Although 67 former students from Verona's Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf signed a statement accusing 24 priests, lay religious men, and religious brothers of participating in a pattern of abuse that took place from the 1950s to the 1980s, the investigation conducted by the Verona diocese has chosen not to interview any of the alleged victims. Gianni Bisoli, 60, named Verona's late bishop, Giuseppe Carraro (image above), of molesting him on five separate occasions. A diocesan probe cleared Carraro of all charges—again, without interviewing Bisoli—and Carraro is currently being considered for sainthood.

While the fact that Verona bishop Giuseppe Zenti even ordered the investigation is encouraging (although they were originally dismissed as a publicity stunt), the way in which the probe was conducted is incredibly questionable. Advocates have criticized the diocese's investigation because they only interviewed people with links to the school, the very people most likely to try and cover up a scandal of this magnitude. "If they had wanted to shed full light on it, they wouldn't have only heard from priests and lay brothers, but from the deaf as well," said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for the victims.

Scicluna says he sees the increased public awareness of clerical abuse in Italy as a bright spot in a whole mess of darkness. "There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive," he told the Associated Press. He continued: "[sexual abuse] has always happened. It's important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing which the church can offer to people who need it - both the victims and perpetrators."

Italy Grapples With Priest Sex Abuse [MSNBC]

The biggest investigation is called an Apostolic Visitation, which Vatican Cardinal Franc Rodé ordered Mother Mary Clare Millea (right) - the head of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rome - to head up after he gave a speech last year criticizing some American nuns of being women "who have opted for ways that take them outside" of the Church. Millea and Rodé claim the Visitation is intended to look into the "quality of life" of American nuns — mind you, this is the same church that is selling off nunneries in order to finance the many judgments brought against it over the abuse of children by priests — a reasoning, to people who don't know their Church history but know a few nuns, sounds reasonable. Only it's not.

Church historians said that the Vatican usually ordered an apostolic visitation when a particular institution had gone seriously astray. In the wake of the priest sexual-abuse scandal, the Vatican ordered a visitation of American seminaries. It is now conducting a visitation of the Legionaries of Christ, a men's order whose founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, sexually abused young seminarians, fathered a child and was accused of financial improprieties. He died in 2008.

So, yeah, right, "quality of life."

Millea swears it's not about forcing nuns to stop some of their more worldly (i.e., outside the Church hierarchy) work — like, say, caring for the poor. In fact, she says:

"It's an opportunity for us to re-evaluate ourselves, to make our reality known and also to be challenged to live authentically who we say we are," she said.

Each congregation of nuns will be evaluated based on how well they are "living in fidelity" both to their congregation's own internal norms and constitution, and to the church's guidelines for religious life, Mother Clare said. For instance, if a congregation's stated mission is to serve youth, are the nuns doing that? If they do not live in a convent, are they attending Mass and keeping the sacraments? Are their superiors exercising adequate supervision?

Which would, of course, be all well and good if Millea and her investigators were giving their questionnaires to and interviewing all American nuns. But, of course, they're not:

The visitation focuses only on nuns actively engaged in working in society and the church, not cloistered, contemplative nuns.

So as long as the nuns are keeping their heads down and their noses out of modern life, their "quality of life" isn't important? Or is the investigation, as some American nuns who aren't cloistered suspect, just a way to get them to change how they view their service to God — particularly, the parts where they're not beholden enough to the all-male hierarchy of the Church?

At least one nun is convinced this is all an exercise in getting some nuns to change their activities.

"They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force," said Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California. "Whereas we are religious, we're living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet."

Other nuns wonder why they're being singled out — and why legitimate issues about their welfare and well-being (and the physical infrastructure afforded their communities) aren't part of this investigation into the "quality" of their lives.

Sister Janice Farnham, a part-time professor of church history at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, said, "Why are the U.S. sisters being singled out, when women religious in other countries are struggling with many issues about the quality of their lives, in the Church and in their societies?"

I think Schneiders knows the answer to that: because American nuns have been naughty, and it's time to shut them up, and seal them in.

U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny [NY Times]

Earlier: How Does The Church Pay For All Those Boys It Molested? Evict The Nuns!
Change Of Habit

• One woman's request for police to search her ex-boyfriend's laptop for child porn horribly backfired when they found two pictures of her engaged in illicit acts with a dog. She has been charged with two felony bestiality counts. • A 43-year-old Muslim cleric from Indonesia has been detained on suspicion of violating the child protection law after he publicly married a 12-year-old girl. • A new study shows that black girls are 50% more likely to suffer from bulimia than white girls. • Nudists apparently have a solution to the teen pregnancy problem, and it (obviously) involves being naked. • An awesome 78-year-old woman named Doris Henion helped police catch a serial robber after he threatened her at gunpoint. • New trend in broadcast journalism: female reporters! Apparently, more stations are hiring young women in attempts to improve their ratings. • The Catholic Church is pissed at Spain because of recent plans to loosen legal restrictions on abortion. The Church has launched a campaign to stop the government from approving the changes. • A new ad campaign in New Mexico seek to target female drunk drivers. • Netflix has become a sponsor of Women in Film's Finishing Fund, an organization that gives money to women who are just a little bit short of completing their movies. • The U.K. has just approved Azzalure, a French, Botox-like drug, for sale in Britain. • Many Israeli women claim "religious modesty" as a reason for avoiding military duty, but the Israeli Army isn't buying it. They have started a surveillance program to catch female "draft-dodgers". • Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani rape victim-turned-advocate, has married. The wedding was a simple ceremony in her hometown. Congrats! • A new study from the University of Illinois has found that co-parenting with a violent ex is possible, but only if the violence was "situational" rather than "intimate terrorism." • Employers in Denmark have begun the process of compensating female workers who developed breast cancer after working night shifts. • 

On March 4th, a medical team from Recife, Brazil, performed an abortion on a 9-year-old girl. She was pregnant with twins after being raped, allegedly by her stepfather. Police say that the abuse had been going on since she was 6. Abortion is illegal under Brazilian law, but it is possible to get a judge's approval in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger, both of which applied in this case. The girl's doctors, her family, and the court were all in agreement that this was the safest way to deal with the pregnancy. The Catholic Church disagreed.

Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho (seen above left) swiftly excommunicated the entire medical team, along with the the girl's mother. Church law exempts minors from excommunication, so the girl was not included in the blanket condemnation of the medical procedure. They also chose not to excommunicate the stepfather. Sobrinho told Globo TV that "A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life." As Hortense mentioned over the weekend, a senior Vatican official has spoken out in support of Sobrinho's actions, and said: "Life must always be protected, and the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified."

The Church's decision has sparked an international debate on the ethics of abortion, and inspired a great deal of criticism of the Catholic Church. The Brazilian Minister of Health, Jose Gomes Temporao, publicly acknowledged the work of the medical team that performed the abortion at a national convention on women's health. He called their work "brilliant," and argued that doctors must put law before religion: "The question posed is very simple. There is a Brazilian law which states that a pregnancy can be interrupted in case of rape. It is legitimate for the church to have its dogmas, but these dogmas must not be imposed on society as a whole." President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has also spoken out against the excommunications. "In this case, the medical profession was more right than the church," he said.

Some are even arguing that the Church's position on abortion is losing it followers, and weakening their message. Beatriz Galli, the policy associate for Ipas Brasil, an NGO that works for women's rights, said: "In this case, most people support the doctors and the family. Everything they did was legal and correct... But the Church takes these positions that are so rigid that it ends up weakened. It is very intolerant, and that intolerance is going to scare off more and more followers." In the past few years, Brazilian devotion to the Catholic Church has already begun to decline. This trend is also visible in America, where the young adults are steadily becoming increasingly less religious than their elders. Dr. Olimpio Moraes, who was involved with the pregnancy termination procedure on the 9 year old girl, says he is thankful that the archbishop excommunicated him because the resulting controversy will draw attention to Brazil's restrictive abortion laws. He hopes that the public outrage over this girl's case will lead to greater reproductive freedom for Brazilian women, who are "victimized by Brazil's ban on abortion." This is tragically true: out of the 1 million women to undergo illegal abortions in Brazil each year, 250,000 need further treatment for complications resulting from botched back alley abortions.

Excommunicated Doctor Hailed For Abortion On Child Rape Victim [CNN]
Nine-Year-Old's Abortion Outrages Brazil's Catholic Church [Time]

Related: The Young And The Godless [Andrew Sullivan]

Earlier: "She Is Very Small. Her Uterus Doesn't Have The Ability To Hold One, Let Alone Two Children.", Vatican Defends Brazilian Catholic Church After Excommunication Of Mother Of 9 Year Old Rape Victim

Now, the order numbers only a hundred nuns, but according to sisters Sisters Virginie Fish and Marcia Hall, a former academic, (interviewed by NPR's Michel Martin) it's still a rich and fulfilling life. The Oblates, who were founded by Mother Mary Lange, a Haitian nun, was an integrated order from inception, and dedicated to good works. Says sister Virginie, who joined the order right out of high school 63 years ago, "We are ordinary women trying to live an extraordinary lifestyle because it it what we feel God is asking of us." Of the order's dwindling numbers she declares, "Jesus had twelve apostles...look what he did with twelve unlikely, uneducated men!" [NPR]

They called the thing a "habit" for a reason. We all have them: I buy all my clothes at American Apparel despite a general unease with the institution's values; if I could I'd go back to wearing a Catholic school uniform despite unease with the institution's values. The biggest community of hijab-wearers I ever met worked with me at the phone sex call center, where I would regularly watch one habitually fiddle with her scarves as she regaled clients with detailed descriptions of her denim miniskirt and red lace thong and horny San Fernando Valley cheerleading squad's locker room antics.

Obviously, one cannot bear witness to such a spectacle and emerge without entertaining thought: "God I love this country." Which is, seven years on in this dumb Terror War, what makes this headscarf thing so infuriating: where K-Mart is free to peddle track pants that advertise abstinence from sex on their asses and the Secretary of State can don boots that look swiped from an S&M dungeon and pop culture celebrates bearded cross dressers…what does anyone give a shit about headscarves for? Where the perpetuation of conformity and envy is still the primary role of fashion, a lot more civilians will die at the hands of those who covet their Nikes than those who hate their "freedom" to wear them.

Muslims Barred From Picture At Obama Event [Politico]
How I Nearly Lost My Business After Refusing To Hire A Muslim Hair Stylist Who Wouldn't Show Her Hair [Daily Mail]

During an interview with KMOV-TV at Saturday's Clinton rally in suburban St. Louis, the first-year Billikens coach identified himself as a Catholic and called himself pro-choice. At first when asked for his views on abortion, he said he didn't want to "go there," but then said he is personally "pro-choice."

So yesterday the St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke struck back:

"I'm concerned that a leader at a Catholic university made these comments. It can lead Catholics astray," Burke said by telephone as he attended March for Life anti-abortion events in Washington. "I just believe that it's of the essence for people to understand as a Catholic you just cannot hold these beliefs."

Oh sure, Ray, just use that old excuse again: he just doesn't believe abortion is murder because he's not actually a Catholic. But what if I told you he liked to whip out his dick around strapping younger men? Would you maybe rethink that position?

Cleric condemns coach's abortion remarks [AP]

• Big conundrum for Paris Hilton - continue to be against testing on animals or support research into curing (her) Chlamydia? Toughie. [Science Daily]
  
• This headline makes us sad: "Stunning New Revelations on Cancer; Limit Bacon, Alcohol & Red Meat." So what are we supposed to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? [ABC News]
  
• A man who is suspected of abducting two women from Soho and raping them in separate incidents is being sought by the cops, not to mention the Jezebel Vigilante Justice Task Force. [NY Times]
  
• Feministing draws our attention to a new Amnesty International report which says that 600 women are raped in Kenya every day. Sickening. [Feministing]

• Some doctors are shooting collagen into the vaginal walls near the G-spot to help women orgasm. No, the FDA didn't approve that memo. [First Coast News]
• The stupid Pope is urging Pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control as "conscientious objectors." Oy. [Ms.]
• Singapore Airlines, which is designing those dope-sounding first class cabins with beds, doesn't want you soiling the mattresses with your love-making, okay? [MSNBC]
• There are some things we're cheap about (drugstore makeup, Forever 21 ensembles, tacos) and other things we don't mind paying big money for, namely, plastic surgery. Others, it seems, fly down to South America for a bargain sale on boob jobs. [MSNBC]
• Cambodia's Prime Minister is disowning his daughter and cutting her out of his will because she recently came out as a lesbian. At the same time, however, he urged others not to discriminate against gays because, "Most of them are good people and are not doing alcohol, drugs or racing vehicles." Racing vehicles? Is this some new lez hobby we don't know about? [NY Times]
• Black women who have breast cancer and get the necessary treatment of tumor removal and radiation therapy still have a larger chance of the disease reappearing within 10 years of diagnosis. We reiterate: Mother Nature can be a fucking racist bitch. [Science Daily]

• Bush does it again: The forty-turd president has appointed birth-control opponent Susan Orr — who thinks contraceptives encourage our "culture of death" — to head the family planning branch of the Department of Health and Human Services. [Washington Post]
  
• Novelist Anne Enright beat out favorites like Ian McEwan for the prestigious Booker Prize. Bonus! We're pretty sure if a film adaptation is done of The Gathering, body-dysmorphic Keira Knightley will not be starring. [Guardian]
  
• Scientists are developing a hormone-free contraceptive that actually changes the genetic make-up of a woman's eggs, making it impossible for them to be fertilized by sperm. Hey, we have an idea for scientists: Fuck with the sperm for once, not the eggs! [Guardian]

• Getting acupuncture negatively impacts the chances of conceiving via IVF, according to a new study. Bright side for holistic health nuts craving babies? That weird suction-cup treatment Gwyneth Paltrow got in the late 90's clearly does not! [Guardian]
• Breast cancer treatment for the uninsured is an impossible cost, but even those with insurance get stuck with massive bills. Seriously, is there anyone more evil than health insurance "providers"? [ABCNews]
• Hmm. Men who having trouble knocking up their partners because the quality of their sperm sucks can improve their little guys potency by having sex everyday. Question for the mommies: If you're trying to get pregnant, don't you and the man have sex everyday anyway? [Times Online]
• Scientists have developed a hypersensitive method of detecting HPV and other DNA viruses in their early stages. However, an increase in false positives also comes with the territory. [Science Daily]

• We were feeling kinda blue today. Then we saw this. [Boing Boing]
  
• Now that Isaiah Washington has a new job maybe he'll stop his pointless bitching. The former Grey's Anatomy cast member been cast in 5 episodes of the upcoming TV show based on The Bionic Woman. [E!]
  
• In the UK curry laced with ecstasy = attempted murder. Over here curry laced with ecstasy sounds kind of like a fun Friday night! [BBC]

• The Killers' Brandon Flowers and his wife now have a son. They are both 26. We were about to feel a little depressed about this, but then we remembered that all three of the Hansons are now married with children. And now we feel really depressed. [People]
• The Catholic Church has been ordered to fork over $660 million to 500 alleged sexual abuse victims in Los Angeles alone. [CNN]
• The X-Files Movie, Round II?! Oh 1998, it's as if we never left you! [Entertainment Weekly]
• President Bush has pledged his support to Palestinian President Abbas. Oh, Georgie — way to play the Arabs both ways! [NYT]
• So unacceptable: Celebrity The Apprentice. Any (has been) star who goes on this show will lose whatever piddling amount of respect we still hold for them. [USA Today]
• 1 U.S. casualty identified over the weekend. [DoD]