• Welfare workers report that girls in gangs are often raped by the male members of the gang as part of initiation, but many of them accept this as routine. "The girls think they are going to be protected by the gang if they have sex with one person but then they find there are more boys there," said Teresa Pointing, chief executive of In-volve, a charity that works with teen girls. • According to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Sasha and Malia Obama have not been vaccinated for swine flu. The vaccine is currently unavailable to the twogirls because they are not at high risk. • Doctor Patrick O'Brian recalls being shocked at the state of pregnant women in Uganda, a country that apparently has some of the worst maternal care in the world. In efforts to address this issue, he started a program with the University College Hospital in London that works to distribute medicine to women in need and offer pre and post-natal care to mothers. • Researchers have found that breast reduction surgery may have unexpected benefits. Through testing the removed tissue, doctors may be able to better identify patients at risk for breast cancer. Another upside to breast reduction? Decreased back pain and increased range of movement. • According to a new study, well-educated older women who live alone report a lower emotional well-being than breast cancer patients who live with a partner. •  A little girl from Brooklyn has made the news for a heartbreaking letter she wrote to Sasha and Malia Obama. Bianca's mother was shot several years ago by an abusive boyfriend, and the 6-year-old and her father are still struggling. In her letter, she begged for help for her family, and readers of the Daily News have been quick to respond. • Researchers have found that sperm itself - and not just the fluid it travels in - may transmit HIV to healthy cells. Doctors previously suspected that sperm could transmit the virus, but they were unable to prove this until recently. • A revealing new poll from the UK shows that 90% of expecting mothers are denied the choice as to where they will give birth. The vast majority of women in Britain are not offered the option to give birth at home or at a birthing center attended by a midwife. • The Daily Beast on sexism in nonprofits: "Charity is not allowed to use the same tools as business because society subconsciously regards it as female, and discriminates against it the same way it has historically discriminated against women." Read the rest of their interesting take on charity here. • Good news: The Saudi king has decided not to flog a female journalist charged with participation in a television show in which a man spoke publicly about his sex life. • Among women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, breast cancer is diagnosed six years earlier than in previous generations. Doctors don't know if women are screened better today, or if hormonal and environmental factors are giving women cancer earlier. • Jury selection will begin today in the trial of the first 12 male members of the polygamist sect whose Yearning For Zion ranch was raided last year. Flora Jessop, who escaped the compound 15 years ago, said she's happy to see the men go on trial but, "What I'm upset the most about, I think, is the fact that none of the women have been indicted, as well. ... I think that the women were nothing but pimps on that compound and giving their daughters over to these perverts knowing what was going to happen to them." • A study by the National Center for Voice and Speech found that female teachers used their voices about 10 percent more than males when teaching and 7 percent more when not teaching. Female teachers speak louder than male teachers at work. All teachers spend more time talking than most professionals and are at a greater risk for hurting their voices. • Debbie Davis, 29, of Sunderland, England has been named Britain's top Avon saleswoman. She started selling the cosmetics when she was laid off five years ago and now she's making $408,000 a year. • 14-year-old Dutch girl Laura Dekker says she will wait until the school year is over to begin her attempt to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe. She had planned to head out in August but was stopped by authorities who said she was too young. The court is expected to rule on her case by Friday. • Elizabeth Edwards told a local news station that John Edwards said of their relationship, "Perhaps [it's] not the great love story that we hoped, but maybe a great love story nonetheless." Well, most great love stories don't involve the man possibly fathering a child with another woman. • After more than 120 years, the Beloit's girls reformatory school in Kansas closed for good in August. Before 1983 the institution often housed girls who hadn't committed criminal offenses, but were considered "incorrigible," "immoral," or had suffered abuse at home. Under some administrations, girls were punished with huge doses of vomit- and diarrhea-inducing castor oil, humiliated with forced hair clipping, or even sterilized. • After a "concerned citizen" in Yulee, Florida tipped the police that the Girls Gone Wild bus was in town, police organized an undercover investigation and arrested seven women who complied with the organizers' request that they "show their breasts so they could be photographed/filmed or so they could have their breasts spray painted. The women were charged with indecent exposure along with the bar's owner and two Girls Gone Wild employees, who were each charged with illegally operating a sexually oriented business. •

Hoffman realized the book had been published after seeing a photo of Peggy and her daughter, Rya, in the Times' "Home & Garden" section last week. That story described Peggy's pink hoodie, "gangland slang" and acrylic nails, and congratulated her for her grit in overcoming her underprivileged existence. (Sample passage: "'The first time my o. g. visited me here'"  meaning original gangster, the gang's leader  'he slept 20 hours straight. In L.A. your anxiety is so high you sleep three hours a night.'") The Times had been creaming themselves over Love and Consequences until the fabrication news broke. In addition to the "Home & Garden" profile, the notoriously poison-tongued and powerful book critic Michiko Kakutani had given Love an outright rave.

Sarah McGrath, Peggy's editor at Riverhead (the same imprint that published James Frey's My Friend Leonard), is devastated. "It's very upsetting to us because we spent so much time with this person and we felt such sympathy for her and she would talk about how she didn't have any money or any heat and we completely bought into that and thought we were doing something good by bringing her story to light," McGrath told the Times. McGrath added: "There was a way to do this book honestly and have it be just as compelling." (McGrath is absolutely correct. If you want to read a well-researched book about the inner city world of drug running, try Random Family by Adrien Nicole LeBlanc.)

Peggy sounds only semi-contrite about lying her way to a book deal. "For whatever reason, I was really torn and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don't listen to...I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk." Peggy did work with gang members in South Central and, for a time, attended Grant High in a poor section of the Valley; she based the book on the experiences of those around her. "Trust no one. Even your own momma will sell you out for the right price or if she gets scared enough," she writes in Love and Consequences. Sadly, book editors may have to start heeding that advice more and more.

Author Admits Acclaimed Memoir Is Fantasy [New York Times]
A Refugee From Gangland [New York Times]
However Mean the Streets, Have an Exit Strategy [New York Times]
Gangbanger Margaret B. Jones Is Really Peggy Seltzer, Valley Girl [Mediabistro]
Why Do We Keep Publishing Fake Memoirists? [Mediabistro]

Related: Fabricating Writer's Hilarious Interview