• A Florida judge refused to block the prosecution in Casey Anthony's murder trial from seeing the death penalty. Lawyers for Anthony, who is accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, claimed that the state seeking the death penalty violated her constitutional rights. The judge said whether or not Anthony should face the death penalty is a decision for the jury to make. • Banita Jacks, who was found in her Washington, D.C. home last year with her four daughters' decomposing bodies, was sentenced to 120 years in prison today for murdering the girls. The judge rejected the defense's suggestion that the four 30 year sentences be served concurrently, and their claim that she's wasn't competent when she rejected their advice to plead insanity. • Two British boys have been charged with the rape of an 8-year-old girl. At 10 years old, they are the youngest children to be charged with rape in the history of England. The assault occurred at a park, where the three children had gone to play on the jungle gym. The boys have been released on bail, and will return to court on January 2nd. • Members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted today to subpoena data from 19 colleges to investigate whether some schools favor men in their admission process. The probe is based on news reports and anecdotal evidence that colleges discriminate against women to maintain an even gender balance. A mix of schools near D.C. were chosen as a sample of U.S. colleges, not because they're specifically suspected of discrimination. •  A new book, The Death of American Virtue, reveals that Monika Lewinsky believes Bill Clinton lied to a federal jury about their affair. The author quotes a letter from Lewinsky, which reads: "There was no leeway on the veracity of his statements because they asked him detailed and specific questions to which he answered untruthfully." •  According to a new study from Canada, 10 to 15% of women have maladaptive eating behaviors. However, out of the 1,500 women interviewed, not one had anorexia, and the most common disordered behavior was binge eating. 2.5% also admitted to using laxatives, diuretics or vomiting to purge. • The Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected a motion from Marion Jones' relay teammates at the 2000 Olympics to overturn the International Olympic Committee's decision to strip them of their gold medals after Jones admitted to doping. The ruling was a setback, but the court will hold a full hearing on the case next year. •  Billie Piper, the actress who played Belle in the TV series The Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Dr. Brooke Magnanti, the woman behind the Belle du Jour blog and book, will meet in person on a television documentary, Billie and the Call Girl Bare All. It will be "the last world on what it was like to be Belle - how my sexuality was formed, how I came to the work and what it's like to be portrayed on TV," said Dr. Magnanti. •

• The Dr. Biden love continues in this interview, where we learn how she influences her husband (Scotch-taping articles and opinions to the bathroom mirror) and her reasons for working ("I think it's very important for a woman to have her own money and be independent"). • A recent study shows that those who witness bullying may experience just as many problems afterward as the victims themselves. A survey of 2,002 students from the UK found that those who reported seeing bullying were more likely to report psychological distress than either the bullies or the victims. •  Italian officials have made it illegal to perform breast enhancement surgery on girls under the age of 18. While there are many good reasons to wait a few more years for surgery, they are primarily concerned with the number of under-qualified doctors. They claim that the legislation is aimed primarily at girls who go under the knife "purely for fashion reasons and have no idea of the risks involved." •  On Sunday, the New York Times reported on Mar/Com, a company that is making a killing fighting gay rights. The San Francisco-based company has worked against human rights in both California and Maine. Residents in Maine payed Mar/Com about $1.6 million to produce anti-gay marriage television and radio ads. • Amanda Knox spoke with reporters from the Associated Press in her jail cell in Perugia. She says she is "waiting and always hoping," and recalls feeling "horrendous" after her conviction. "The guards helped me out, they held me all night," she says. Knox also says she is continuing her studies from prison, and remains in contact with her former professors. •  Investigators announced on Monday that two Muslim women, whose deaths sparked independence rallies and riots in Kashmir, were not actually murdered. The Central Bureau of Investigation says that the two young women were drowned and have taken action against doctors for fabricating evidence. However, the victims' relatives reject the CBI's findings. • The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has called for an investigation into college admission procedures to determine whether or not women are being discriminated against. Many schools apparently do not want to have a female-heavy population, yet receive far more applications from females than their male peers. In attempts to keep a balance, some schools have ended up making it much easier for men to be accepted than women. •  Pregnancy hormones may give women superpowers, according to a new study. When pregnant, women display a heightened ability to read faces, especially threatening or angry expressions. •  Police have combed the journals of Mitrice Richardson for clues to explain her disappearance three months ago. While her family holds onto the hope that Richardson is still alive, officials believe the most likely scenario is that she wandered into the mountains and "succumbed to the elements" after being arrested for skipping out on a check. • Two female players from the University of Missouri's basketball team were arrested on Friday after they allegedly beat up a 21-year-old male cheerleader at a party. Both women have been suspended from the team. • R.I.P. Rose Kaufman, co-screenwriter of the first NC-17 rated film Henry & June. Kaufman passed away on December 7th at the age of 70. • 

In one of the most in-depth examinations yet of the ins and outs of the Polanski case, The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin explores not just Polanski's crime and its aftermath, but Polanski himself. Polanski the man has, in the words of his agent Jeff Berg, "a very existential approach to life." This existentialism allows him to live without "bitterness," again according to Berg, about the death of his mother at Auschwitz and the murder of his wife Sharon Tate. It also produces some rather upsetting statements. In his autobiography, he wrote that during his time in Gstaad after his wife's death,

Kathy, Madeleine, Sylvia and others whose names I forget played a fleeting but therapeutic role in my life. They were all between sixteen and nineteen years old ... They took to visiting my chalet, not necessarily to make love — though some of them did — but to listen to rock music and sit around the fire and talk.

And two years after his rape of Samantha Gailey, he told Martin Amis,

I realize, if I have killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But ... fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls — everyone wants to fuck young girls!

This last reveals a solipsism (everyone wants exactly what I want!) that may have deserted Polanski in the long years of his rather comfortable exile, many of which he has spent married to actress Emmanuelle Seigner. While Polanski's claim that everyone was so worked up about his rape because of their desire to have sex with thirteen-year-old themselves is idiotic, it's true that others' feelings about the way he conducts his life — whether informed by jealousy, disapproval, or admiration — have influenced the progress of his case.

Toobin notes the now-famous probation officer's report, which creepily praised Polanski for being "solicitous regarding the possibility of pregnancy" (this solicitousness took the form of anal sex). He mentions an "equally smitten" psychiatrist, who reported that prison time "would impose an unusual degree of stress and hardship because of [Polanski's] highly sensitive personality and devotion to his work." Both men were, in Toobin's words, "starstruck" by the famous director. Toobin also notes that part of the reason Samantha Gailey (now Geimer) was unwilling to testify was because of the high-profile nature of celebrity trial. This unwillingness enabled Polanski to plead down to statutory rape, a bargain that not only shortened Polanski's potential sentence but also allowed many people to forget how severe his crime really was.

On the other hand, all the public attention on Polanski's trial may have made Judge Laurence Rittenband harsher. Polanski's prison sentence was stayed (again, a bit of leniency likely influenced by his fame) so that he could finish a film — while in Munich, apparently working on a distribution deal, he was photographed sitting with women and smoking a cigar. The photograph would never have been made public, and probably never taken, had Polanski not been world-famous. But along with public reaction to the case, it made Rittenband consider a longer sentence for Polanski, and possible deportation. It was at this point that Polanski fled.

In the end, Polanski's fame may have done him more good than ill — he'll never have to stand trial for rape, only for unlawful sex with a minor, and he can't serve more than two years. At the same time, Judge Rittenband was under all the pressure of public scrutiny in sentencing, and this may have influenced the result. Amanda Knox's case is obviously much different from Polanski's — for one, the details of her crime are far less clear. But she too may have suffered from a judicial system that wanted to make an example of a high-profile defendant. And on the flip side, she too has benefited from that high profile.

Just a few days after Knox's conviction, a senator from her home state is already advocating on her behalf. The Secretary of State may get involved. While many Americans — and Italians — revile her, many others leap to her defense without ever having met her. Knox isn't a famous director, but she's pretty and young and white, and her story makes better human-interest news than, say, those of the over a million people arrested for drugs in America this year.

Knox and Polanski became cause celebres to different people, for different reasons, but both now enjoy the benefit of supporters far beyond their own families and defense teams. Sadly, many people indicted in America and worldwide don't even have that much support. In the upcoming weeks, we'll be hearing a lot about both Knox and Polanski. We won't be hearing about the countless men, women, and teens represented by overworked public defenders, who will be convicted during that time of crimes they didn't commit, or given unfair sentences for crimes they did. The pressures of celebrity justice may sometimes work against famous defendants, but the pressures of racism and classism and unenlightened tough-on-crime-ism work just as steadily against the anonymous, and the problem that gets less media attention may actually be the more important one.

Image via The New Yorker.

The Celebrity Defense [The New Yorker]

Knox is reportedly on suicide watch, and one of her lawyers has announced that he'll appeal her conviction, focusing on the fact that none of her DNA was found at the crime scene. Meanwhile, some Americans supposedly "vowed to boycott Italian holidays, wine and food," at least according to The Sun. And Sen. Maria Cantwell, of Knox's home state of Washington, says, "I think what happened [Friday] is we had a decision in which it seems the overall impression of Amanda Knox by the press in Italy and the overwhelming amount of attention given this case may have prejudiced the jury." She continues, "I think it's important for both of our countries to make sure that justice is served and that there is a rule of law and a standard that people believe in." Cantwell plans to ask the EU to put pressure on Italy, and she will request a meeting with Hillary Clinton regarding Knox. Says Clinton, "Of course, I'll meet with Sen. Cantwell or anyone who has a concern but I can't offer any opinion about that at this time."

Knox's family members swear she's innocent, and are preparing to begin the arduous appeal process — it could be a whole year before her appeal even goes to trial. Meanwhile, her defenders continue to question the objectivity of the Italian court. Time writer Nina Burleigh tells ABC,

People here in this town [Perugia] have been reading these stories ... 'Sex Game Gone Wrong,' 'Drug Fueled Sex Game. They believe that scenario is real, that it's true. [...] A lot of people think that this verdict has a lot to do with the power of the prosecutor, the power of the police in this town and the fact that once this train started to roll ... the jury and the judge in this case were very leery of stopping it.

Not everyone is so supportive. Says the murder victim's brother, Lyle Kercher, "We're pleased that we got the decision but it's not a time for celebration." According to Libby Purves of the London Times, it's a time for an indictment of "fling culture." Here's her version of the crime:

We live in a transitional age where sexual licence is concerned: those who embrace it enthusiastically (bragging of having strangers on trains, like Knox) remain uneasily aware of old taboos. They can become shrilly angry if anyone seems to disapprove, possibly because deep down they are not sure they wholly approve of themselves. It is not hard to see how hostile Amanda Knox could become to her sober flatmate; and how, assisted by drink, drugs and admiring men, it could lead her into a vicious folie à trois. And thence, confused, to a drunken, clumsy cover-up and a chilling flippancy (even turning cartwheels) at the police station.

Purves says it's inaccurate to portray Knox as "sexually adventurous," and that "these people" (people who have casual sex? People who get accused of brutal throat-slittings? Are they one and the same?) are simply "randy and needy, and afraid or incapable of love." Purves continues,

What is really sad though - see, even I jib at saying "wrong" - is the idea of "adventurousness": sex made "zipless", gourmet, divorced from affection, understanding, wonder or hope. You clock a hot piece, pull, mate and discard with hardly a name-check. It rounds off the evening but blunts your humanity. Many grow out of it and find faithful partnerships. Some find later life haunted by it. Some misunderstand the other party's intentions and are devastated, or become stalkers.

At worst, a few confuse the general tolerance with permission to bully and coerce.

That's right, ladies. Better keep your pants zipped — or you might end up murdering your roommate and spending your life in an Italian jail. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Amanda Knox: U.S. Backlash Grows As Hillary Clinton Is Called In Over Jailing [Daily Mail]
Clinton In Knox Vow [Sun]
Fantasy World Fuelled By Sex, Drink And Drugs [TimesOnline]
Foxy Knoxy On 'Suicide Watch' [New York Post]
Knox "Completely Surprised" By Verdict, Parents Say [MSNBC]

• He went on to say that Knox is a "clean-faced young girl, swept away by a tsunami." • Two California girls, ages 12 and 14, have been arrested for attacking a 13-year-old classmate - twice. The girls lured the victim, who they believed had been talking shit about them, to a field, telling her that they had some belongings of hers to return. Police caught the attackers after they posted videos of the beatings on YouTube. • Accused Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell has been indicted on murder charges in the deaths of 11 women, plus dozens of other counts, including kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, attempted murder, assault and rape. Authorities say many of the 10 identified victims were homeless addicts he lured into his home. • NPR's Richard Gonzales, who grew up in Richmond, California, returned to see how the town is coping after a teenage girl was gang-raped at the high school. He spoke to sophomore Lizette Franco, who said, "We don't want it to be our identity, because there is so much more to Richmond than what they're portraying in the media. We're not animals. We're not savages. We're students striving to be better people." •  Former track star Marion Jones has announced plans to sign up with a W.N.B.A. team. Jones, who was busted for steroid use and has since toured the country speaking to students about making good choices, says she hopes the W.N.B.A. will provide a larger platform for her message, as well as a "second chance." •  Good news: According to the DCist, a bill instituting same-sex marriage has just passed in the D.C. council. Ben Smith from Politico notes that this is "a sign that same-sex marriage has really become a quite mainstream Democratic cause, one embraced equally by a Massachusetts court and an urban City Council." • The Senate is expected to vote today on an amendment that would increase health insurance benefits for women in the first vote on the health care overhaul legislation. The amendment was introduced by Senators Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine and inspired by the recent and controversial mammogram and Pap smear recommendations. "My amendment guarantees screening for breast cancer, yes, mammograms," Mikulski said. "We don't mandate that you have a mammogram at age 40. What we say is discuss this with your doctor, but if your doctor says you need one, my amendment says you are going to get one." • Zeituni Onyango, the half sister of President Obama's late father, gave an interview to the Associated Press in which she said she's anguished over not having contact with the family after it was revealed that she'd been illegally living in U.S. public housing for years. She isolated herself from the family after the inauguration because she didn't want her immigrations problems to hurt his presidency. "Before, we were family. But right now, there is a lot of politics, and me, I am not interested in any politics at all," she said. • South African President Jacob Zuma said today - on World AIDS Day - that the government will make sure that all HIV-positive babies receive treatment. There are also plans to expand testing and treatment for pregnant women. •  Sarah Palin's absurdist memoir Going Rogue has sold 1 million copies, a HarperCollins spokeswoman reveals. The publisher has increased the print run accordingly, to 2.8 million. • Asma Hanif, who runs a Baltimore domestic violence shelter for Muslim women says, "My biggest problem was that if you send a Muslim woman to be counseled in a shelter that's run by Christians, then what the people say is the reason why you're being beat is because of that religion. We do not want Islam to be the focal point of domestic violence." She added that in other shelters, "There may be situations - such as, there would be men that were there, or there wasn't any place for them to pray, or maybe there was an issue with the food." • An online poll of 1,027 people by the Tylenol Canadian Pain Survey found that women report experiencing headaches more often than men, and they experience somewhat more pain than men. "Pain doesn't discriminate against gender; however, with headache pain, women tend to be more expressive in reporting their pain than men, and tend to be more proactive in managing it," said Dr. Gary Shapero, a family physician who has studied headache and pain management. • Salon owner Cindy Vong is fighting the Arizona Board of Cosmetology's decision to ban flesh-eating fish foot treatments. "The board knows nothing about spa fish therapy, so its reaction is to shut it down," said her lawyer. "The board's action is more about protecting cosmetologists from competition than it is about protecting consumers against anything except wet feet and smooth skin." • On Thanksgiving, a woman and her brother were fighting over whether their parents are too old to be watching their children, when he allegedly threw extremely hot pecan pie at her after it was heated in the microwave. She was treated for first and second degree burns to her neck, face, and chest. Her brother is expected to be charged with aggravated assault. • 26-year-old Swedish father Ragnar Bengtsson has given up his months-long attempt to pump milk from his breasts. "All he got was sore breasts," said the host of a local show that was following the progress of the "Milkman." However, Bengtsson isn't walking away empty handed: He's flying to the U.S. to appear on - of course - The Tyra Banks Show. •

Shane Ryan, creator of classics like Amateur Porn Star Killer and Sex, Kids, Party, says that the film will handle her story with care: "We're trying to figure out a way to do that so it's not exploitative." • Prosecutors have decided that a 59-year-old man from the UK probably did murder his wife in her sleep, as his defense has claimed. Brian Thomas dreamt that his wife was an intruder, and strangled her to death. Prosecutors, persuaded by expert testimony about automatism and sleep disorders, are now arguing for a ruling of not guilty by reason of mental insanity - the alternative being a "simple verdict of not guilty." • Back in June, New York State decided to allow researchers to pay women for their eggs for stem cell research. But many fear that this policy will take advantage of underprivileged women, since donating eggs is not without risks. • The March of Dimes' Premature Birth Card has graded the U.S. a "D" when it comes to preterm birth rate. Not a single state was awarded an A, and only Vermont was given a B. • Government researchers report black women are twice as likely as white or Hispanic women to suffer a stillbirth, partly due to higher pregnancy rates and because African-American women are more at risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, and pregnancy complications like uterine bleeding and premature rupture of the sac surrounding the fetus. The racial gap is even wider between more-educated women. Higher education is linked to a 30 percent reduction in stillbirths among white women, but no reduction in risk among African-Americans. • An interesting new study from the University of Pennsylvania found that children who are insensitive to fear are more likely to grow up to be criminals. Researchers examined toddlers, measuring their sweat output to determine fear. Years later they pulled the records of participants, and found that toddlers who did not sweat in response to a loud noise were more likely to have a criminal record. •  A government watchdog group has asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate whether Michele Bachmann violated house rules by organizing the November 5th Tea Party rally. • Wanda Eileen Barzee, the woman accused of helping her then-husband kidnap Elizabeth Smart, has plead guilty to charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor. The terms of her plea agreement have not yet been made public. • According to a children's charity, Britain lacks the resources to protect thousands of young girls vulnerable to being forced into sexual slavery. Only 20% of local authorities have the specialist sources to intervene, said the chief executive of Bernardo. • A 21-year-old Army mom may face criminal charges after she skipped a deployment flight to Afghanistan in order to stay home and care for her infant son. Alexis Hutchinson's attorney says her superiors ordered her to place the child in foster care and resume service. •  Several organizations are trying to get more British girls to ride bikes, but the campaigns focus too much on looking good while cycling, according to an editorial in The Guardian. One site called Bike Belles actually advises girls to, "Use waterproof mascara when it's raining on your bike, and take a powder compact for a quick refresher on arrival." • Burkittsville, Maryland, the town where The Blair Witch Project was filmed, had to design new welcome signs because people keep stealing the ones that were shown in the movie. • Hooters Las Vegas lost millions of dollars this year and now the company has received a notice of default from its lenders. The company is trying to restructure, but maybe frat boys just don't have as much money to throw around these days? • A New Jersey high school student is suing her school because administrators wouldn't let her participate in the Pro Life Day of Silent Solidarity, an annual worldwide protest. She wanted to remain silent on October 20, except when called on in class, wear an armband with the word "life" on it, and hand out anti-abortion pamphlets. "The school district basically held that there is no religion allowed in school, which violates the students' First Amendment rights," said her lawyer. • On Saturday, a French woman was allowed to marry the father of her two children nearly a year after his death in a car accident. She stood next to his picture while she recited her vows. "I'm not really in the mood to celebrate," she said afterwards. "We're going to drink a cup of coffee and I will thank those who have supported me." •

In the article "Killer@Craigslist," which appears in the magazine's October issue, Orth explains that while Markoff and murdered masseuse Julissa Brisman both arranged their meeting through a series of temporary email addresses and texts in an attempt to remain anonymous, their electronic trail wound up helping police expose their identities. Orth writes:

Few Americans, even those from the younger, Internet generation, seem to understand how easily their clicks and text messages can be detected, and how little privacy any of us have anymore. Every search, every posting, every text message or Twitter, leaves a cyber footprint. The content of every e-mail sent by any one of us is kept by the Internet service provider and stored for a period of time, usually six to nine months. Google and Gmail used to store e-mails indefinitely; now they claim they're within the same range, but all the e-mail we choose to keep until we delete it can also be accessed by the provider.

Markoff responded to Brisman's Craigslist ad by sending emails from AMDPM@Live.com, an address he'd set up a few days earlier, using the name "Andy." Brisman advertised under the name "Morgan" and had messages sent to massagesbymorganboston@yahoo.com, an account that was being monitored by Mary Beth Simons, who owns the tanning salon where she worked. Simons screened offers for Brisman and even pretended to be her during a call with Markoff, who used a disposable Trac phone. Hours after her murder, when Simons hadn't received a text from Brisman to say how the meeting went, she contacted the police, who were gathering forensic evidence from the crime scene. Simons gave police the emails she had exchanged with AMDPM@Live.com and called Mark Rasch, the former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Department of Justice, who she knew was an expert in computer forensics and could help the police.

After obtaining a search warrant, Microsoft, which owns Live.com, gave police the I.P. address used to access the account. Police found the I.P. address was linked to two similar robberies that had occurred recently in Boston and Rhode Island.

Craigslist was able to see what time and date the user of the Live.com address responded to each of its postings-when he clicked Morgan's or the other two women's ads, for instance. "People who use Craigslist leave more of a trail than people who just use the phone," says Rasch. [Suffolk County district attorney Daniel] Conley goes further: "People feel online communication is pretty discreet. That's entirely false." (Hotel security services routinely monitor Craigslist to see how much of the erotic trade they are attracting.)

Though the I.P. address gave police Markoff's name, it led to a wireless router in his apartment building, meaning anyone there could have been using the address. Police matched records of Simons' and Markoff's phone calls and texts to hotel surveillance footage, but also turned to more common methods to get an idea of who Markoff was.

Rasch says, the first thing police did, once they had a name, was exactly what many of us would do-they went to Facebook and Google to find out who their suspect was and what he looked like. Then they fell back on tried-and-true detective work and began an old-fashioned stakeout.

Police arrested Markoff on April 20 as he was driving with his fiancée, Megan McAllister to Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, which was about a half an hour from the Rhode Island hotel where Cynthia Melton was robbed and assaulted.

...this would have been his 19th visit to Foxwoods in four and a half months. His first visit had been noted on December 8, 2008, when he signed up for the "Wampum" points awarded as perks for frequent gamblers. His presence had also been documented in the early evening of April 16, the night Melton was attacked. (Police were able to trace his Foxwoods visits by the computer records kept of his "burning Wampum.")

Though McAllister revealed to Orth in a phone call that Markoff was her first love, and she believes she was his too, internet evidence suggests he had a darker sexual life online she was not aware of. Orth writes:

A police source told me that Markoff's tastes were "wide and varied." That may be an understatement. A crime blogger recently uncovered evidence suggesting that Markoff once applied as a newcomer for sadomasochistic experiences.

Orth interviewed a transvestite who had communicated with Markoff on two separate occasions and exchanged explicit pictures with him. The transvestite showed her about 1,500 responses he'd received to ads on Craigslist.

"It's not blackmail per se," he explained, patting the laptop, "but in case I get murdered I have the information to share." One of the icons on the screen was for his complete Markoff file. "Hey sexy" was the first subject line. On May 2, 2008, at 12:29 a.m., the name "Phil Markoff" came up with the e-mail address Sexaddict5385@yahoo.com. He was replying to Craigslist personal No. 664395223... "I am 6'3" a 22y/o grad student." Along with the message, he sent his picture, which the tranny verified by going to Markoff's Facebook page and seeing the identical photo of him there, smiling, in a blue-and-white striped shirt, with a small drapery swag in the background.

In May, after pressure from the attorneys general of 43 states, Craigslist eliminated its Erotic Services category in the United States and changed it to Adult Services, which Craigslist C.E.O. Jim Buckmaster says is "manually reviewed to make sure a human reviewer looks at each ad and picture, reads each word, and compares the ad with our posting guidelines." Some still criticize Craigslist for only providing the police with information after a crime is committed rather than doing more to prevent crimes; however, Buckmaster says the site has many filters in place and it's not smart for people to arrange illegal activities via the site because, "It virtually guarantees they'll be caught."

Killer@Craigslist [Vanity Fair]

The suspect, Kat McGrath, was reportedly celebrating the results of her A-Level tests at a house party on the night Alyn Thomas, 22, was killed. Thomas and McGrath, who had been dating for a year, according to the DailyMail, allegedly had a fight during the party, and Thomas was found dead in the basement of McGrath's home hours later. "‘It is terrible, just terrible. Alyn loved Kat to bits. She did fine in her A-levels and went out with a lot of friends from school later to celebrate. It was a big day for them all," says a friend of the couple, "We don't know exactly what happened later but Alyn is dead and the police have got Kat for it."

This story is unfortunate on many levels; a 22-year-old is dead, an 18-year-old has been accused of murder, and the story itself is already being played up as a Lifetime movie in the making: much attention is already being paid to McGrath's A-Level student status and the fact that her boyfriend, Alyn Thomas, had listed "I love Kat" twelve times in his MySpace profile while McGrath's interests were "music, party dressing, reading and acoustic guitar." It's a strange method of attempting to determine a motive (or, in this case, to presume McGrath is guilty) by scouring online profiles and making sweeping judgments based on MySpace pictures and test scores, but it's the norm whenever a story like this comes about, as I suppose nobody wants to believe that violent crime can strike, and come from, just about anyone. In any case, I suspect we'll be hearing much more about Kat McGrath in the coming weeks: the story is sad, and it is terrible, and perhaps worst of all, it's the kind of thing that sells.

A-Level Student Accused Of Killing Boyfriend After Party To Celebrate Results [DailyMail]

• A new summer camp has opened in the U.K. that advertises itself as an alternative to all the religious camps run by church groups. The atheists camp says it teaches climbing, canoeing, and rafting, along with tolerance and empathy. If only this has been around when I was expelled from camp YMCA at age 17 for not being "Christian enough." • According to a new study, pregnant women who contract swine flu are four times more likely to be hospitalized than others with the virus. • Doctors have developed a new way to test for chlamydia in men, which requires nothing more than a little pee in a cup. The old way involved a painful urethral swab, and doctors hope that more men will be willing to get tested now that they don't need to have a q-tip stuck up their dicks. • The most horrible story in the news this week just got sadder: Otty Sanchez, the schizophrenic mother who killed and cannibalized her infant baby, may have exhibited warning signs that she was suffering from postpartum depression before the murder. • British TV presenter Nick Knowles tells The Mirror about being a "sex god," which apparently requires drinking Jack and Coke, smoking, and going for a run once in a while. • James von Brunn, who shot a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum last month, is being indicted on hate crime charges. • A man was arrested for sexually assaulting a horse named Sugar — again. He had been arrested for the same crime a year earlier. • A dubious-sounding online study suggests that Canadian men think of physical contact as the boundary between fidelity and infidelity. 16% of respondents thought going to a strip club was cheating, but 65% thought getting an "exotic" massage was. • Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese UN employee, is challenging her arrest in Khartoum for wearing pants in public. If she loses, she could get 40 lashes. • Despite publicity about such "fringe" cosmetic surgeries as vaginal rejuvenation, this and other unusual procedures are only performed on 1.6% of cosmetic surgery patients. • In a substantive and "judicious" criticism, Rush Limbaugh says Andrea Dworkin "could be the poster child" for obesity. • Australian radio host Kyle Sandilands won't apologize for asking "is that the only experience you've had" after a 14-year-old girl revealed on his show that she had been raped. • According to GLAAD, HBO has the most LGBT representation on television, TBS and A&E have the least, and TNT showed the biggest increase. • More women use social networking sites than men, especially among those 45 and older — 4.6 million women over 45 are signed up for Facebook, compared to only 2.6 million men of the same age group. • A study by the amusingly named Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior found that depressed patients saw relief from their symptoms after a weight-loss program. • Pro-choice activist Charles Wright was beaten to the ground outside an Akron abortion clinic on Saturday; you can send him a message of support through NOW. • Porn star and possible Senate candidate Stormy Daniels was arrested Saturday night on domestic violence charges. •

The Guardian's Julie Bindel (no stranger to Jezebel) writes that while British men who kill their wives often use the defense of "provocation" to reduce their sentences to manslaughter, women who kill abusive husbands or boyfriend are often convicted of murder. She contrasts the case of Sara Thornton, who killed her husband after he repeatedly beat her, with that of Joseph McGrail, who kicked his common-law wife to death. A judge in Thornton's case said she should have "walked out or gone upstairs" instead of killing her husband; she was sentenced to life in prison. The judge in McGrail case, meanwhile, expressed "every sympathy" for him, and said his wife "would have tried the patience of a saint." He got a two-year suspended sentence.

Bindel writes,

For men who kill their partners, the defence of provocation is tailor-made. Provocation will reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter if the defendant can show that things were said or done to provoke them, causing them to experience a sudden loss of control. In such cases they will often justify their actions by claiming that they "just snapped" or "saw red". Judges have been known to express sympathy for men who claim they were nagged or cheated on by female partners, but often appear to have little for women who kill after being raped by their partners or experiencing domestic violence. This tends to be because when women who are being regularly beaten by their partners kill, their dominant emotions are usually fear or despair - not exactly a sudden, explosive "loss of self-control".

Judges may be more sympathetic to male killers because they see their anger at more justified, or because violent outbursts are more accepted from men than for women. But Bindel implicitly buys into double standard by writing that women's "dominant emotions are usually fear or despair." Society may expect the dominant emotions of abused women to be fear or despair, but that's a stereotype — one that may cause judges and juries to treat women more harshly when they do turn angry or violent. Killing an abuser obviously isn't a good solution for anyone, but the idea that it's somehow more natural for men is deeply damaging.

The view that men are provoked and somehow forced to kill, while women should know better, jibes with recent research on perceptions of male and female responses. Women who get angry are seen as emotional, while men are assumed to be reacting to some outside stimulus. Bindel illustrates this upsetting dichotomy in her analysis of Thornton's case: "as the judge's comments made clear, little was known about what drives a battered woman to kill her abuser." Wouldn't that be abuse? If McGrail's wife's actions drove him to kill her, why couldn't the beatings Thornton received drive her? Again, murder is never justified, but why can the British courts explain it away for men but not for women?

The research on emotion implies that people see women as flighty and fragile, but the cases Bindel discusses bring up another stereotype: that women have a greater obligation to control their tempers than men do. Bindel mentions Alicia Crown, who killed her boyfriend in what she says was self-defense. Her lawyers argued that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from her boyfriend's abuse and from a difficult upbringing in Jamaica, but the jury rejected this defense, seeing her as "remarkably resilient." Domestic violence expert Marai Larasi comments, "In my experience black women are particularly susceptible to being viewed as 'strong', able to cope and somehow not vulnerable." In this case it wasn't Crown's fragility that got her in trouble, it was the assumption that she, a black woman, should be "strong enough" to take abuse and not fight back.

Kirsty Scamp was sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing her abusive boyfriend Jason Bull. Scamp worked in a home for adults with behavioral problems, and Bindel writes that "the judge commented to the jury that Scamp should have been able to tolerate Bull's erratic outbursts because of her experience at work." Again, the assumption is that women have the responsibility to "tolerate" abuse.

The cases of Thornton, McGrail, Crown, and Scamp show that the way we perceive men's and women's emotions can have a terrifying impact on people's lives. We see men's feelings as determined by outside factors — if someone "provokes" them, it's natural for them to respond with violence. Yet for some reason we don't think of women's anger as being triggered in this way. The assumption that women's emotions come from within — that women are simply "emotional" creatures — delegitimizes these emotions. When a woman gets angry, or when she turns violent, it's not because of something someone else did — it's because she didn't sufficiently control herself. This leads not only to unfair gender disparities in sentencing, but also to victim-blaming and indifference to domestic violence. Certainly murderers deserve justice, but so do abuse victims, and no one is going to get this justice until we stamp out the view that a man's anger is justified, while a woman's is somehow her own fault.

Driven To Kill [Guardian]

Earlier: Study: Women Are "Emotional," Men Are "Having A Bad Day"

[Shopian, Kashmir; June 24. Image via Getty]

A Kashmiri woman takes part in a protest rally headed by Kashmir's chief cleric and All Parties Hurriyat Confrence (APHC) chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Shopian, south of Srinagar on June 24, 2009. Thousands of people in Indian-ruled Kashmir defied a ban on protest marches June 24 with a fresh demonstration over the alleged rapes and murders of two young Muslim women by Indian troops. The death of a 17-year-old girl and her 22-year-old sister-in-law has sparked widespread anti-India demonstrations in the disputed Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley since their bodies were found in a stream on May 30 and forensic tests revealed they had been raped. AFP PHOTO/Tauseef MUSTAFA (Photo credit should read TAUSEEF MUSTAFA/AFP/Getty Images)

The video, which was taken right after Neda was gunned down - she was reportedly shot in the heart - is below. It is extremely graphic and very upsetting — a more graphic version is on Facebook - providing a snapshot of life, and death, that is quickly becoming an iconic image for some Iranians, and, our headline attests (the phrase is popping up on posts all over Twitter), a rallying cry for people around the world.

The Iranian election was considered especially important to the country's female population and women have been some of the more visible protesters, even as the the situation has become increasingly violent and dangerous. From pictures on Flickr to images on blogs to citizen reporters on Demotix, images of women of all shapes, sizes, ages and styles are becoming the more-friendly face of the movement for government change. Instead of just men hurling rocks and being beaten (and killed) and standing, congested with tear gas, in front of burning cars, we are viewing the violence perpetrated by the state and its agents against women, some of whom are shown with rocks in their hands... and others, like Neda, innocent of anything other than a desire to make themselves heard.

The stories emerging from the chaos (despite the ban on Western journalists reporting on the protests) include tales of female leadership and courage. From Roger Cohen in today's New York Times:

I also know that Iran's women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I've seen them urging less courageous men on. I've seen them get beaten and return to the fray. "Why are you sitting there?" one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. "Get up! Get up!"

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of "Death to the dictator!" and "We want liberty!" accompanied her.

From eyewitnesses in Iran, reporting to the BBC:

There were lots of female protestors - I saw a guard attack one women and then she went back up to him and grabbed him by the collar and said 'why are you doing this? Are you not an Iranian?' - he was totally disarmed and didn't know what to do but her actions stopped him.

From another eyewitness:

In Sattar Khan I saw with my own eyes two ordinary 40-year-old women being beaten severely with electric batons, for nothing but raising their voice in protest.

From an Iranian student to a professor, as printed in the Jerusalem Post:

Girls are extremely active in all these rallies (a little less in night riots where patches of young men are more visible). They courageously charge anti-riot police, chant slogans in front of them, lead the crowd, etc., but they are equally beaten too.

From Nico Pitney's Iran Live Blog yesterday on the Huffington Post, there were a number of accounts of women's actions in the protests. At 3:20:

I witnessed peoples fear of the Basij dissapear, an 80 year old chadori woman with rocks in her hands calling for the exacution of khamenei and all Basij

At 3:25:

they were hitting the women as hard if it didn't seem harder.

And at 3:31:

I saw a girl injured by gon shot (in Amir abad St.)! and there weren't enough ambulances .

A young woman provided a first person account to The Guardian Weekly:

Yesterday evening I joined a demonstration at Hatim Nizar street, responding to the call given by our leader Mousavi to hold peaceful protests and march in memory of eight people killed. Most people wore black as we marched the streets silently, the majority of them were young boys and girls.

CNN talked to a woman it calls "Parisa."

"This regime is against all humanity, more specifically against all women," said Parisa, whom CNN is not fully identifying for security reasons.

"I see lots of girls and women in these demonstrations," she said. "They are all angry, ready to explode, scream out and let the world hear their voice. I want the world to know that as a woman in this country, I have no freedom."

The Wall Street Journal also carries a number of first-hand reports of the role women are playing in the protests, like this from "Negin".

At the beginning I thought this was going to be a fight between the lower class and the middle class. What I saw on Monday changed my mind completely. I saw many women, young and old, covered head-to-toe in black chadors shouting and chanting among the demonstrators and joining the young girls who were sitting on the ground in the middle of the street to stop the Basij militia from walking inside the crowd.

That image will never be wiped away from my mind. The women on the front line with their loose colorful scarves had opened their arms, ready to be killed, while others were beaten by the Basij on the side of the road.

Women in have become more than just a symbol for the kinds of reforms people were seeking with the election of Mir Hossein Mousavi: they're leading protests; they're encouraging others; they're allowing themselves to be visible symbols of the oppression of any opposition to the regime; and they're rapidly becoming the face of that opposition. (Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of a prominent cleric - and herself an opposition leader - has reportedly been arrested.) The thing is, the more a paternalistic regime with laws designed to "protect" women from men allows its (male) forces to brutally impose its will on those women, the more it shows the world that its laws are designed for the benefit of men — and only some men at that.

Update: Time magazine has just posted a piece on Neda's murder, what it may mean for the opposition movement, and the country as a whole.

Videos Posted by Shekoo Sab [Facebook via BreakforNews]
Removing The Veil That Covers The Truth [CBS News]
Etehraz's Photostream [Flickr]
Minute To Minute With Revolution [Revolutionary Road]
Running Battles As Iran Battle Reaches Climax [Demotix via The Guardian]
A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura As Iranians Flock To The Streets [NY Times]
'Ten Killed' In Iran Clashes - State TV [BBC]
'Movement By The People, For The People' [Jerusalem Post]
Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising [Huffington Post]
Iran Protests: 'I Ran For My Life' [The Guardian Weekly]
Women In Iran March Against Discrimination [CNN]
'The Fear Is Gone' [Wall Street Journal via Ianyan Mag]
In Iran, One Woman's Death May Have Many Consequences [Time]

Related: Everything by Andrew Sullivan [Andrew Sullivan]

Earlier: In Iran, "Pretty" Is Sometimes The Protest
10 Reasons Why You Should Be Following The Iranian Elections

The story, not involving Americans, hasn't gotten a ton of play Stateside, but since 2006 the name Véronique Courjault has been familiar to anyone in France. The couple was living in South Korea when police found the bodies of two newborns in the freezer of the home Courjault shared with her engineer husband Jean-Louis and their two sons. Although the family initially denied any knowledge, Véronique later admitted to giving birth to both babies in secret and smothering them - in addition to a third baby she'd buried back in France.

Prosecutors apparently accept the fact that her husband was totally oblivious to the three pregnancies, home deliveries, and stranglings - to say nothing of the babies stashed in the freezer for years. (He allegedly found them when attempting to make room for a fish in 2006.) This mystery - as well as the motivations of the friendly kindergarten aide - have created a lurid national fixation with the case, currently on trial in Tours. Until recently, a Facebook page existed in which users could bet on the verdict.

Neither husband nor wife seems able to provide any explanation - although some family members do say that Veronique was prone to dramatic shifts in weight that might have explained his obliviousness. (Although, you know, being pregnant will do that.) As to Courjault herself, she only says, "What I did is so monstrous, without explanation...For me, those children did not have a real existence." The issue, for many, is why she chose to carry the babies to term - well, okay, one of the issues. And in addition to the very odd and lurid particulars of the case, is the dreadful fascination that always accompanies cases of infanticide - a crime so universally reviled as unnatural that it provokes the greatest self-righteousness, horror, and confusion of any kind of crime.

In fact, it's not that uncommon - homicide is apparently the 4th leading cause of death of children under four. Many of these are attributed to Postpartum depression, or in cases like that of Andrew Yates, Postpartum psychosis. Of the 49 women on death row, nearly 11 are there for murdering their children - and in almost every case, the women claim they knew they were in danger of doing so, but were ignored. Says one medical anthropologist, '"There's a collective denial even when mothers come right out and say, "I really shouldn't be trusted with my kids."' Simply put, we want to think it's rare and horrible. Horrible it might be, but pretending it doesn't happen does no one any favors. When one of these high-profile cases occur, we are duly horrified; there is a flurry of analysis and speculation; we are told of the warning signs; then we forget about it. One hopes that the Véronique Courjault case will move beyond the "why was she a secret monster - and how did she hide it?!" speculation to the realization that this can happen - and how to prevent it.

Veronique Courjault, French Woman Who Allegedly Killed Her Babies And Hid Them In The Freezer, Goes On Trial [Huffington Post]
Infanticide Case Mesmerizes France [Washington Post]

Related: Women Who Kill Their Children [About.com]

Mothers Who Kill Often Give Warnings [Women's News]