Category Archives: News

News

No charges planned for accuser in Hofstra rape hoax

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Story from the New York Times. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) — A prosecutor has decided not to file criminal charges against a Hofstra University freshman who falsely said that she was gang-raped in a dormitory bathroom.

The prosecutor, District Attorney Kathleen Rice of Nassau County, said on Friday that the freshman, Danmel Ndonye, 18, must undergo mental health treatment and community service in exchange for not being prosecuted.

Ms. Ndonye, previously described by the prosecutor as ”a deeply troubled woman,” had claimed she was attacked after a dance party at a Long Island nightclub. Four men were arrested and a fifth was being sought when she recanted the story three days after making the charges.

The turning point in the case came when the woman was confronted with a videotape of the encounter, which indicated the sex had been consensual.

The four men in custody were released two hours after the woman changed her story.

More commentary here and here.

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Mothers more likely to engage in neglect, verbal abuse and physical abuse

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Story from the West Australian. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Mothers are more likely than fathers to neglect and emotionally and physically abuse their children, information obtained under freedom of information laws reveals.

But figures from the WA Department for Child Protection show substantiated cases of child sexual abuse against fathers still far outnumber those against mothers.

The data shows that parents were the perpetrators in almost 39 per cent of the 1505 substantiated cases of child abuse in 2007-08. Of the 582 cases of abuse by parents, mothers were responsible for 73 per cent, while fathers committed 27 per cent.

Mothers were more than 17 times more likely than fathers to neglect their children, while fathers were responsible for 85 per cent of sex abuse cases against children.

Mothers carried out almost 68 per cent of cases of emotional and psychological abuse committed by parents, about 53 per cent of physical abuse and more than 94 per cent of neglect cases.

I wonder if data like this might help advocates of shared parenting (joint custody)?

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Science News reports that habitable planets less common than previously thought

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Story from Science News. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

According to the most popular formation theory, planets coalesce from a swirling disk of gas and dust that surrounds young stars. Since the disk rotates in the same direction as the star, the planets spawned by the disk should revolve in the same direction. But in an overcrowded planetary system, where a gravitational game of billiards is all but inevitable, orbits can get scrambled. A close encounter between planetary siblings can push one body outward while flinging the other inward, elongating and tilting the inner planet’s orbit.

In this scenario, the solar system may have been unusually lucky. Either it avoided catastrophic gravitational encounters between massive planets or it suffered such interactions so long ago that most of the planets had the chance to resettle into nearly circular orbits with little or no tilt, says Frédéric Pont of the University of Exeter in England.

“The presence of advanced life on Earth may be contingent on our planetary system having avoided the brunt of planet-planet scatter,” keeping Earth on a circular, Goldilocks-style orbit—neither too hot nor too cold for life as we know it, he speculates.

The circularity of the orbit is crucial for maintaining liquid water at the surface. If the the planet’s orbit is too eccentric, then the temperature variations will either freeze the water, or evaporate it into the atmosphere. Either condition is fatal to complex life.

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