[Port Elizabeth, South Africa; December 7. Image via Getty]

A group of young South African children in Port Elizabeth wave flags (Germany) of the countries that are taking part in the 2010 Fifa Football World Cup in South Africa from June 11 to July 11, 2010. AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER JOE (Photo credit should read ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Gugulethu, South Africa; December 2. Image via Getty]

Girls play football in the Gugulethu township outside of Cape Town on December 2, 2009. With the draw for the World Cup 2010 turning Cape Town into a hive of activity, the townships are still untouched by the build up. AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER JOE (Photo credit should read ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)

Although some have claimed that threats are "up 400%," Sullivan denies that there has been much of an increase at all. "I'm not sure where that number comes from," he said. • Congressman Bennie Thompson, the House Homeland Security Committee Chairman, says his staff is preparing to subpoena the Salahis to testify as to how they crashed the White House State Dinner. He added that he will not subpoena White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers because her testimony isn't worth "engaging in a protracted legal battle with the White House." • Anthony Sowell, who was accused of the murder of 11 women in Ohio, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity today. Sowell has been charged with an 85-count indictment, for crimes including rape, murder, assault and corpse abuse. If convicted, he could be given the death penalty. •  French tennis player Amelie Mauresmo has announced plans to retire. "I don't want to train anymore," said the 2006 Wimbledon title winner. "When you grow older, it's more difficult to stay at the top. It's a bit sad but this is the right decision." •  The Optimum Population Trust has determined that contraception is the cheapest way to help the environment, much cheaper than, say, planting trees of investing in wind power. The group has created a website that accepts donations to help pay for family planning services. •  This story, about a team of soccer-playing grannies from South Africa, will seriously brighten your day. The group of 40 older ladies has been playing since 2006, when cancer survivor Beka Ntsanwisi saw a group of women waiting for treatment, and decided that they needed somewhere to go for both exercise and companionship. Since 2006, several other teams have been set up, and they all compete in a league called the Top Eight. • The Berhane Hewan or "Light of Eve" program funded by the U.N. and Nike Foundation educates about 10,000 women and girls in Ethiopia in hopes of preventing child marriage. The program holds meetings for whole villages to discuss why child marriages hurts girls and gives families a pregnant ewe each time a daughter completes two years of school to offset the poverty that drives parents to marry off their daughters. • Sarah Palin received a special award from College of the Ozarks, a small Bible school in Missouri that goes by the slogan "Hard Work U." (strangely, this was a great favorite of my high school guidance counselor). They gave her the first ever "Great American Award." The press release reveals she got the award for being super patriotic: "Patriotism is one of the important goals of the College." •

[Vientiane, Laos; December 2. Image via Getty]

A Vietnamese female fan attends a football match between Vietnam and Thailand at the 25th Southeast Asian Games (SEAGAMES) in Vientiane on December 2, 2009. The match ended 1-1. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

[Khartoum, Sudan; November 18. Image via Getty]

An Algerian football fan cheers for her team ahead of the 2010 World Cup qualification play-off between Egypt and Algeria in Khartoum on November 18, 2009. Sudan's security forces threw a tight security cordon around Khartoum to prevent violence between fans of Algeria and Egypt, who will clash for a place at the football World Cup finals. AFP PHOTO/KHALED DESOUKI (Photo credit should read KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)

• Police believe Joshua Woodward, a restaurateur from L.A., gave his 13-weeks pregnant girlfriend an abortion inducing drug without her consent. She claims just hours before she miscarried, Woodward touched her sexually, leaving white powder in her underwear. • Conseulo Carreto Valencia, 61, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison - the maximum sentence - for forcing girls to work as prostitutes. In this rather tasteless article, the NY Daily News refers to her as a "mini-madam," due to her short stature. •  A Danish political party has fessed up to pasting yellow penis stickers all over the posters for opposing parties. "We admit we did it," said party Vice President Niels Andreasen. But it seems like their hilarious efforts paid off: "At first we figured we'd get around 200 votes. But now we've had 10,000 visitors to our Web site and we have 500 new Facebook friends." • Two cities in California have voted to outlaw the declawing of cats. Beverly Hills City Council and the Los Angeles City Council joined Santa Monica and San Francisco in the recent ban. •  A 20-year-old Somali woman was stoned to death for adultery in front of a crowd of 200 on Tuesday afternoon. She had recently been divorced, and was reportedly dating a 29-year-old man. He received 100 lashes for his part in the affair. • A research team from the UK found that almost 50% of women have a genetic variation which reduces their ability to produce vitamin A from beta-carotene. This may mean that up to half the women in England could be at risk for vitamin A deficiency. • Doctors believe that they may be able to use eggs donated by younger women to increase the chances of conception among older women. A team from Japan removed the nuclei from eggs of women undergoing IVF and injected them into eggs donated by women under 35. • The city of Sacramento, California has presented 18-year-old Margarita Vargas with an official proclamation, calling her decision to call the police after hearing about the brutal gang rape of a teen girl "a bold act of humanity." • Olivia Thomas, the oldest person in the U.S., died this week at the age of 114. Thomas was believed to be the third oldest person in the world at the time of her death. •  A police officer in Arkansas recently tasered a 10-year-old girl when she refused to get into his police car. The report says the stun was "very, very brief" and only used to bring the girl to a youth shelter. • It seems Brian Adams, the photographer who shot the picture of Sarah Palin in shorts for Runner's World violated his contract by reselling the photo to Newsweek. A spokeswoman for Runner's World said the picture was supposed to be under embargo until August 2010, and "Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image... It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without Runner's World's knowledge or permission." A Newsweek spokesman responded, "We purchased the photo from an agency and were not aware of any issues with it." • Police say they're not filing any more charges in the murder of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis until it's decided which North Carolina county will handle the case. Her mother, Antoinette Davis, and Mario McNeill have already been arrested and charged with kidnapping and child abuse involving prostitution. • Katherine Sebelius addressed the confusion over new breast cancer screening recommendations saying, "The U.S. Preventive Task Force is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations... They do not set federal policy, and they don't determine what services are covered by the federal government... The Task Force has presented some new evidence for consideration but our policies remain unchanged. Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action." • A 13-year-old boy in Alabama was arrested after he asked an undercover officer posing as a prostitute for sex. The officer says she tried to run him off more than once, but he insisted, so she had to arrest him. He was charged with a misdemeanor count of loitering while looking for a prostitute. • In its 2009 state of the world population report, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says the world's poor are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and most of the 1.5 billion people living on less than $1 a day are women. "Poor women in poor countries are among the hardest hit by climate change, even though they contributed the least to it," said UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. • Last month the U.K.'s Law Commission proposed that unmarried couples who live together for two years should be able to claim half of their partner's estate if they die without a will. Baroness Deech, chairman of the Bar Standards Board says, "Cohabitation law retards the emancipation of women, degrades the relationship, takes away choice, is too expensive and would extend an already unsatisfactory maintenance law for married couples to another large category," adding, "Women do not need and ought not to require to be kept by men after their relationship has come to an end." • British hedge fund manager Mark Lowe is being sued for sexual discrimination by female executive Jordan Wimmer because he repeatedly forwarded the office sexist emails. She confronted him when he sent around a dumb blonde joke. He said in court: "I didn't for a moment suppose anyone would take exception to a feeble joke of this sort. It was not directed against [Ms Wimmer]. The thought never occurred to me that she'd be offended." •

[Muscat, Oman; November 17. Image via Getty]

Fans hold the Omani flag as they attend the friendly football match between Oman and Brazil in Muscat on November 17, 2009. AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED MAHJOUB (Photo credit should read MOHAMMED MAHJOUB/AFP/Getty Images)

Earlier: Female Soccer Player's Bad Behavior Makes Headlines

The player in question, Elizabeth Lambert, punches one player in the back and yanks another player to the ground by her ponytail.

Radar Online calls their clip of the incident "Watch Elizabeth Lambert, The Dirtiest Player in Women's Soccer." Adding:

Lambert's aggressive, dirty play was displayed on ESPN's national stage during her team's 1-0 loss Thursday night to Brigham Young University, and the results — unlike her — weren't pretty.

See, it's incredibly important to comment on an athlete's looks! Especially if she is female. The Radar piece also claims that:

[the] attractive 20-year-old blond displays some of the most violent behavior we've ever seen on any level of sports.

O RLY? More violent than boxing? Or MMA? Or does it only seem violent and newsworthy because women are involved, and they're not acting like delicate princesses? If men were in this clip, would it even have made it onto SportsCenter?

True/Slant's Dundas makes an excellent point:

Thousands of women devote millions of hours to their collegiate [soccer] careers, only to be overshadowed by one semi-psychotic outburst from a… thugette. But, you know, such is life.

Girl-on-Girl Violence Makes Women's Soccer a SportsCenter Sensation [True/Slant]
BYU Fights Off New Mexico, 1-0 [ESPN]
Watch Elizabeth Lambert, The Dirtiest Player In Women's Soccer [Radar Online]

[Carson, CA; November 1. Image via Splash.]

[Johannesburg, October 19. Image via Getty]

A young South African girl takes part in 'football for Hope' in Alexandra township in Johannesburg on October 19, 2009. While the FIFA World Cup 2010 will bring together the greatest football teams on the planet, a different 32 teams from across the globe will converge on Alexandra for a very different festival of football: to represent the power of the game for social change. The teams taking part in football for Hope will represent organisations from around the world that use football to tackle such issues as ethnic violence in Israel and Palestine, environmental pollution in the slums of Kenya, HIV/Aids education in South Africa, landmine education in Cambodia, and gang culture in Ecuador. AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER JOE (Photo credit should read ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)

• Australian researcher Maggie Hamilton interviewed thousands of parents and kids for her book What's Happening To Our Girls?. She found that the hypersexualization of kids has lead many youngsters to feel like they have to be, well, hypersexual. • But there is some good news out of Australia today: Australians are pretty pro-choice, says a new study. Only 4% of Australians oppose abortion outright, and 57% think abortions should be readily available for those who want them. •  According to a recent paper, cosmetic eyelid surgery actually improves quality of life. They asked patients who had undergone the procedure to fill out a retrospective questionnaire, the results of which indicated that cosmetic surgery may in fact improve the lives of those unhappy with their looks. •  A Canadian dominatrix and two other sex workers have asked Ontario's Superior Court of Justice to change Canada's prostitution laws, on the grounds that they are unconstitutional. Terri-Jean Bedford, 49, told the Toronto Star that she plans to bring her riding crop to court. "You never know when you might run across a naughty boy, or a naughty judge," she said. •  A study from the University of Copenhagen found that women who join a soccer league are more likely to stick to their workouts than those who run. The soccer plays also reaped more health benefits from their exercise, and tended to enjoy working out more. •  Sitting up straight may actually help improve your self esteem. Researchers found that people who are told to sit up at their desks are more likely to believe positive things about themselves than those who slump over. •  A pregnant aerobics instructor who was wounded when George Sodini fired at least 52 shots into her fitness club has sued the estate of the gunman, saying that the injuries she received that day put her in danger of having a miscarriage. •  Egyptian lawmakers have called for a ban on the Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit. The kit is manufactured in China, but they advertise that it ships to all countries in the Middle East. Conservative Egyptians fear that women will begin using them to trick their new husbands, and that it may make it easier for women to "give in to temptation." Some have even called for the exile of any woman caught ordering the kit. •  Burmese pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi was escorted into "surprise talks" with a junta leader on Saturday. Optimists think this may be the start of a new era of cooperation between Suu Kyi and the current government. • A woman from Florida was the victim of a raccoon "gang attack" at her Lakeland house. A group of five raccoons pounced on the woman after she tried to shoo them away. Fortunately, she is in recovery and will be fine. •  The Supreme Court has decided to refuse the request of the Connecticut Diocese and keep court documents on the sexual abuse committed by clergy members unsealed. • South Africa's African National Congress says that since Caster Semenya was raised as a girl, she should "continue to run as a woman." • Harriet the Spy will become a live-action TV movie on the Disney Channel. • Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, an authorized sequel to A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books, came out today. The book features a new character, a pearl-wearing otter, and the author says, "I made Eeyore a little more proactive so he wasn't always the victim." • Scientists have discovered a damaged gene that is linked to half of all breast cancers. Damaged NRG1s have been found in 50% of all breast cancer patients, and it has also been linked to ovarian and bladder cancers. Although everyone is born with an intact NRG1, many cancer patients have faulty NRG1s, which were damaged at some point during their lives, but doctors have yet to pinpoint how. • 

Image via Yahoo TV

[Tampere, Finland; September 3. Image via Getty]

Netherlands' Anouk Hoogendijk celebrates her penalty kick goal during the UEFA women's Euro 2009 quarter-final football match between Netherlands and France in Tampere, Finland, on September 3, 2009. AFP PHOTO LEHTIKUVA / Antti Aimo-Koivisto *** FINLAND OUT *** (Photo credit should read ANTTI AIMO-KOIVISTO/AFP/Getty Images)

[Helsinki, August 26. Image via Getty]

HELSINKI, FINLAND - AUGUST 26: A Danish fan looks on during the UEFA Women's Euro 2009 group A preliminary match between Ukraine and Denmark at the Helsinki football stadium on August 26, 2009 in Helsinki, Finland. (Photo by Ian Walton/Getty Images)

• When presented with the dress, bride Lin Rong "laughed and cried at the romantic gesture." Her husband-to-be said: "I do not want a cliche wedding parade or banquet." • Following the success of a similar pilot program, DC officials have announced that they plan to offer STD testing to all high school students in the coming school year. Cue the denial driven parental outrage. • A new study found that 60% of black parents said that they would consider volunteering at their children's schools, up from 23% in 2008. Researchers believe this is part of the Obama Effect. • Little Orphan Annie turned 85 yesterday! The "Annie" comic strip first appeared on Aug. 5, 1924. Creator Harold Gray originally planed on publishing a strip called "Little Orphan Otto," but he changed it at the last minute on his editor's suggestion. •  The Australian government has forged a partnership with soccer authorities in attempts to encourage more girls (and women) to play football. • In order to better understand the life of Muslim women, three British police women donned robes and hijabs for a day. The exercise, called "In Your Shoes," has drawn some criticism. "This is a complete waste of police time and taxpayers' money," said Douglas Murray of the Center for Social Cohesion. "It's not the duty of police to empathize with particular sections of the community." • The British Trade Union Congress is considering a motion to ban stiletto heels from the work place as a health hazard to women. Some women are saying, "From my cold, dead feet." • A female stripper from Australia has been found not guilty of raping the best man at a bachelor party where she was hired to perform. The victim claims that, after sticking a sex toy into his anus against his protests, Linda Naggs told him it was "just a joke," and told him not to worry, "only you and I know." • Denver Radio Station KTNI decided to scrap its indie music format in favor of "Classic Non Stop Stripper Hits, from the 80's, 90's and today." They're now going by 101.5 The Pole. • Sam, the koala made famous by this photograph, has passed away during surgery to remove several cysts caused by chlamydia. • Two important advertisers have pulled their support of radio network Austereo, following the forced confession of a 14-year-old girl that she had been raped during a lie detector segment of the Kyle and Jackie O Show. • Newspaper editor Chansa Kabwela is currently on trial for distributing images of a woman giving birth in a parking lot after she was turned away from a hospital. Zambia president Rupiah Banda deemed the images pornographic and called for charges to be brought against Kabwela. • Lula Mae Battle, 81, had charges against her dropped when prosecutors learned that her public urination arrest was due to age-related incontinence. • A woman in Texas has been charged with mutilating her infant while high on drugs. Yes, another one. • A woman from New York was ticketed for breastfeeding in a parked car. Although she admits they were in a "no standing" zone, Marta Lily and Enrique Velez pleaded with the officer not to ticket them, and offered to move while he was busy writing out the forms. • Saudi citizen Mazen Abdul-Jawad is facing more than 200 charges for appearing on a Lebanese television show discussing the fact that he's had sex and liked it. Abdul-Jawad is the divorced father of 4. • New research shows that although baby-making declines as countries achieve certain levels of wealth, it goes up again once they get really rich. • Lori Drew wants her internet access back. The Internet doesn't want her. • Daniela Earnest of Tulare, California learned that California regulations really are as bad as conservative commentators warn: local officials shut down her corner lemonade stand, which she opened to pay for tickets to Disneyland, because it lacked the proper business permits. Although the city is contemplating a change to the law, a local radio station traded her family 4 tickets to Disneyland in exchange for 30 cups of lemonade. • Be warned: The story I'm about to link to may offend some with its absurdly bad puns: According to a new study, women who down one or two glasses of wine a day have better sex lives than those who abstain. •

[Marlow, U.K.; June 30. Image via Getty]

MARLOW, UNITED KINGDOM - JULY 01: Anna Blasse of Germany stops flying with the ball Claire Rafferty of England during the Women's U23 international friendly match between England and Germany at The National Sports Centre on July 01, 2009 in Marlow, England. (Photo by Tom Dulat/Getty Images)

[London, June 9. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Dubai, May 31. Image via Getty]

Arab supporters and two girls watch a training session of the German national football team on May 31, 2009 in Dubai, during the team's summer tour to China and the United Arab Emirates. Germany will play a friendly match against the United Arab Emirates in Dubai on June 2. AFP PHOTO / OLIVER LANG (Photo credit should read OLIVER LANG/AFP/Getty Images)