• With today being the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the anti-choicers are out in full frontal crazy mode. One particularly dick protester smashed his SUV into a Planned Parenthood in St. Paul this morning. The damage was minor. • Two sixteen-year-old British girls were banned from school for being "too blonde." The school's dress code states that there should be no "unnatural" hair color on students. • The man charged with spraying Afghan school girls with acid says that he was paid by a major in the Afghan intelligence unit for the attacks. The girls continue to attend school undeterred. • Adolf Hitler Campbell's mother has told newspapers that "we would never abuse our children," and "I want my children back." • Mariana Bridi da Costa, a finalist in the Miss World competition, had her hands and feet amputated after being diagnosed with a urinary disease. • A new survey has found that professional women are more likely to drink alone at home than men or women in "routine or manual" occupations. • Two women whose sexual harassment accusations led to the resignation of an Ohio attorney general have reached a settlement and will receive over $200,000. • A man from Nevada shackled his 15-year-old daughter to her bed and beat her with a stick because he thought she was overweight. • In other awful parenting news: A 52-year-old Denver woman has been accused of binding her 10-year-old daughter's hands and feet each night because she suspected she was sneaking food. • Two teens from Minnesota have been arrested for abusing the elderly residents of a nursing home where they were employed part-time. • A town in Brazil where one in five pregnancies result in twins may have been the site of Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele's post-war experiments. Mengele was obsessed with twins, and some speculate that he "found the secret of twins." • Men's Health has named the worst food in America. This year it is the 2,600-calorie Baskin Robbin's large chocolate Oreo shake. • The Cat House in Parlier, California, is now home to 700 stray cats and even a few dogs. The owner of the 12-acre shelter says: "There was no place else for all of these cats, and I had all of this land." • Josef Fritzl's trial is set to begin March 16. He faces chargers of murder, rape, false imprisonment, and enslavement. • Polygamous communities in Canada are using the recent legalization of gay marriage as evidence to help overturn laws against polygamy. • Want to know what life looks like for your pet? For $50 you can buy a little camera to attach to their collars. Or you could just crouch down and see for yourself, but whatever. • Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Islamic leaders have condemned comments made by an Australian Muslim cleric who said it was OK to beat and rape your wife. • A British woman living in Dubai lost her appeal to have a sentence for adultery reduced from six months in prison to three. She also faces deportation. • A new study suggests that women suffer from worse nightmares than men because they are more likely to carry emotions from daily life into their sleep. • An 83-year-old man missed his bus back to Indiana because he was busy dancing with a young lady at the inauguration party. He has since found his way home and will be alright. • Head honchos at the San Fransisco Sentinel are trying to sell ad space by advertising their (attractive) female account executive. • A former manager of Hawaiian Tropic says that her boss bribed her to lie about her 2006 rape by a supervisor. • The Swedish National Library apparently has a large collection of child pornography dating from the 1970s, when it had not yet been made illegal. • 

• Authorities from Australia and New Zealand are investigating Roman Hasil, an uncertified OB/GYN who lives in a homeless shelter in Australia, after patients complained of medical negligence and sexual assault, including one claim that he touched a patient's vagina and said "who is the boss now?" • Rev. Peter Mullen, a chaplain in England, said on his blog that homosexuals should have warning labels such as "FELLATIO KILLS" tattooed on their backs and necks to warn about diseases; he now claims the statements "light-hearted jokes" that were "in the tradition of English satire." • Ultra-Orthodox Jewish "modesty patrols" in Israel have been accused of physically attacking women they view as being immodest and torching stores that sell internet technology. • A study of young children attending an international school in Beijing found that girls have a harder time than boys adjusting in an environment where they don't fully know the language. • A recent study has found that female smokers require less tobacco exposure than men to increase their colon cancer risk. • Sentencing is scheduled this week for a rapist in London who was nabbed by authorities because of distinctive rings he wore (two gold sovereign rings and one rink marked "Dad") when he attacked and raped a woman. • Holly Budge was among the three skydivers who became the first skydivers to freefall over Mount Everest yesterday after 15 years of preparation.• The centuries-old tradition of "sworn virgins" in Albania, where a woman can claim to be a man and have all the rights of a man in exchange for celibacy, is dying out. • Author Marc Silver asks if a wife's cancer will lead to her husband's infidelity and finds out that... it really just depends on the husband! • A cleric in Saudi Arabia has asked Muslim women to wear one-eyed veils because having two eyes visible (and being able to gauge distances) is too seductive. • Recent studies have found that there may be a link between CMV, a common herpes virus, and malignant giloma, a deadly brain cancer. • After a scandal broke out in Para, a state in Brazil where a 15-year-old woman was jailed for weeks with men who sexually abused and tortured her, the Governor of Para has acknowledged that girls were being arrested by police to "expressly to provide sexual gratification for prisoners." • A recent study has found that pregnant women who get flu shots can greatly reduce the risk of their infants getting the flu and/or respiratory illnesses for that year. • Meanwhile, a study has found that babies who slept in rooms with fans were 72% less likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. •

"In a study of 170 volunteers asked to record their most recent dream, 19% of men reported a nightmare compared with 30% of women," the BBC reports. Additionally, the changes in body temperature that women experience during their menstrual cycle can lead to disrupted sleep, and as a result, "pre-menstrual women report more vivid and disturbing dreams."

Not only do we have more vivid and terrifying menses-visions, but we also are more likely to be insomniacs. "In terms of processing emotional information, women may be more prone to taking unresolved concerns into their sleep life," Dr. Jennifer Parker, a sleep researcher, told the BBC. This must be why my Palin-induced terror has led me to more than one night of less than five hours of sleep. Thanks for nothing, ovaries!

I Dream About Sarah Palin. Do You? [Slate]
Women 'More Prone To Nightmares'[BBC]

[Image via Barista]

• Did John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston break up? Sources say she's been dumped. Gah! An unnamed, possibly non-trustworthy, totally random source says: "John took the decision to end things as he felt he just wasn't ready for the level of commitment that Jennifer deserved. Contrary to reports, Jen didn't want to have kids or marry this year, but she did want to set a timetable for their future together." Is it a good or a bad thing? And how long will we have to hear the "desperate single" gossip about Jen? [Mirror]
• Britney and her sons are wearing white on the cover of OK!. And she, uh, doesn't want Jayden and Preston to have careers in showbiz. "But but I’d love them unconditionally if they wanted to. I’d just as soon they have a more normal childhood," she says. Is it "normal" to be on the cover of a trashy tabloid with your weave-wearing mom? (More in Midweek Madness!) [MSNBC]
• Britney went to a party! And her dad went with her! And she didn't drink! And people say she looked good! [E!]
• Madonna and Guy Ritchie are "on the very cusp" of adopting a little girl from Malawi. Her name is Mercy and Madonna "fell in love" with her at an orphanage last year. [The Sun]

• Meanwhile, Guy Ritchie has been doing ju-jitsu with Jason Statham. "I've been fighting Guy in his garage in L.A.," Jason says. "We're killing each other. That's another of my passions, strangling friends." Why does he make it sound so hot? [Mirror]
• Lily Allen is back with ex-boyfriend Ed Simons but by the time you read this they may be broken up again. [The Sun]
• Rhys Ifans is back with Kim Stewart but by the time you read this they may be broken up again. [Mirror]
• Amy Winehouse is finally settling down to work on an album, which she hopes to finish by the time Blake Incarcerated gets out. We'll believe it when he hear it. [The Sun]
• Oh, dear. In a survey of 3,500 Britons, the number one celebrity people had nightmares about was Amy Winehouse. [The Star]
• Officials have released the news that the cause of death for Isaac Hayes was a stroke. The saddest sentence ever: "Family members found Hayes lying on the floor of his home beside a treadmill that was still switched on." [Yahoo News]
• Natalie Portman's directorial debut, Eve, is a 17-minute film described as "a civilized comedy." Opening at the Venice Film Festival, it stars Lauren Bacall and Ben Gazzara. Wanna see! [Yahoo News]
• Oh lord. Here we go again. George Clooney says: "I have never texted or emailed Senator Obama. And I'll offer a million dollars to anyone who could prove otherwise. In fact, I've only talked to the Senator once in the last year and a half… on the phone." WTF. This is the same thing that happened with Scarlett Johannson. We just heard that George was giving Barack tips on policy! Does this mean that the Daily Mail lied? Are we not to believe everything we read? [Yahoo News]
• Nicole Kidman brought her one month old daughter to her movie set. Working mom! [Star]
• Blake Lively's nose job seems to have occurred sometime in 2006. Plus, she says: "I've kissed just three people in my life, other than stuff that I've done for TV or movies. I know — I'm weird!" [LA Times]
• Chris Martin joked about dating other women on Japanese TV, saying, "Thankfully, my wife is over 1,000 miles away." [Mirror]
• Is Tom Cruise's career in the shitter? [Page Six]
• Julianne Moore is a stone cold fox in shots for Wonderland magazine. She talks about always being nekkid in flicks: "People ask all the time if sex scenes and nudity are hard. What’s hard? Not the lines or the physicality, but the emotion." [Daily Mail]
• Does Ryan Adams want Mandy Moore back? [Gawker]
• The fantastic Ellen Burstyn is coming to Law & Order SVU as Stabler's mom! [EW.com]
• Adrian Grenier and Isabel Lucas (aka Shia LaBeouf's car crash costar): Dunzo. [Yahoo News]
• Tori Spelling won't be on 90210 after all. Jennie Garth=sad. "I'm really bummed because I love Tori and I was psyched Tori was going to be on the show. I think she should definitely get paid as much as either of us is getting paid. Her father created the show. It just seems wrong if that’s the case. I don’t know what really happened… I don’t know if it’s about the money." [EW.com]
• Mark Consuelos will perform the ceremony in the marriage of Howard Stern to Beth Ostrosky. Uh… [Fox News]
• Dane Cook is not alone in hating the poster for his own movie. It's dumb and ugly. And a Photoshop of Horrors. [People]
• A Kylie and Dannii Minogue duet of an ABBA song is the campiest thing I can think of without picturing Liberace. [The Sun]
• Shania Twain is "progressing" and "working hard" to get over her split from her husband of 14 years. Breakup advice, anyone? [People]
• Janet Jackson's set list for her upcoming tour: Yes, "Nasty" is included. [Perez Hilton]
• "It was fantastic to do that album. Not only live with that music that I love everyday, but I just worked with such wonderful musicians who are so talented. I would love to do another album. Right now, though, I'd like to focus on developing something to direct." — Scarlett Johansson. [Perez Hilton]
• Jay-Z may use is 40/40 club to take over Las Vegas. [Page Six]
• Adam West, aka Batman, might be on Dancing With The Stars. [Page Six]
• Paris Hilton is being sued for not doing enough publicity for a sorority film she was in, National Lampoon's Pledge This! Maybe she was doing them a favor? [AP]
• Now that he's a dad, Clay Aiken is returning to Spamalot, so he can make cash for his baby. The kid's name is Parker Foster Aiken. Unrelated: The pic of Clay makes me shudder. [USA Today]
• Bernie Brillstein, a Hollywood manager and producer, died last week. At a tribute Monday night, Jennifer Aniston, Rob Loew and Kermit The Frog attended. [E!]
• "I hate blogs but I love mine. Cause I can be F-in REAL with people!!!! I wanna make a difference in a good way even if that means speaking my mind. people might take offense to it but whatev. First of all lets address my 'voting" comment- first of all opinions are like (you know whats)-everyone has one. I decided to make a very blunt comment. Notice how i said "I know IIIIII couldn't do it cause I'd be pms-ing and freaking out all the time" ....Honestly I'd LOVE to meet a woman with NO emotional problems....but thats not the point...but its true. LOL Second- Only 54 percent of eligible american voters cast their ballots!!!!!! Half of them are only voting cause its "cool " to vote for so and so...they aren't even up to date on information. I'M personally not up to date on the facts, so I don't wanna make a stupid choice for our country. I WANT to vote but only when I know exactly whats going on. More ppl should think like that. Paris Hilton said "yaaaay go vote cause its cool and hott!!!!" ...SHE WASN'T EVEN REGISTERED. seriously." — Brooke Hogan. [ONTD]

[New York, February 18. Image via Splash.]