Delhi Police claimed to be dissatisfied by the response it got from social media platform Instagram in the case of ‘Bois Locker Room’, where a group of male students made sexual threats to girls and carried on salacious conversations about their female schoolmates. On Saturday, Delhi Commission for Women also sent a second notice to police on the case after a girl student alleged receiving threats.

Minor sexually assaulted, accused held

Civic vice-chief, techie held in sex racket case

Sex chatroom: Police not happy with Insta reply

His friend, organiser too booked; three women rescued

Earthquake strikes Sussex/Surrey border | Meridian - ITV News  ITV News

In fact, researchers have learned, the detached male pedipalps transfer more sperm faster after copulation is ended by the female rather than the male.

The post Male spider’s sexual organs work fastest only when a female breaks them off appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

They observed that no plugs were ever formed during mating trials, but instead, females exposed to many males produced the amorphous plugs during the egg-laying process.

The post Female spiders produce mating plugs to prevent unwanted sex from males appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Clearly visible connecting the dark-purple cephalopods was the white “terminal organ” or penis of the male, extending out through the male’s funnel.

The post First detailed sex video of deep-sea squid resolves long-standing mysteries as to how these animals mate appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Many animals change sex at some point in their lives, often after reaching a certain size. Snails called slipper limpets begin life as males, and […]

The post The Power of Touch: Sex-changing snails switch sooner when together appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

(A male golden-collared manakin cleans up his display area.) Few of us would find a marriage proposal made amidst dirty dishes and messy clutter particularly […]

The post Clean = Sexy for this Panamanian Bird appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

File photo: LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines faces a suit brought by a school district employee, who has sued him twice before.; Credit: David McNew/Getty Images

A Los Angeles Unified School District employee filed suit Wednesday accusing Superintendent Ramon Cortines of sexual harassment and retaliation, and alleging officials failed to intervene when told of the situation.

The lawsuit is the third one filed by Scot Graham, LAUSD's real estate director, who has made similar charges in previous complaints. The suit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

LAUSD General Counsel David Holmquist issued a statement Tuesday saying the courts have previously ruled on the case and the district is not aware of any new charges. "This is simply a frivolous refiling of the same allegations," he stated.

The latest suit alleges Cortines made sexual advances to Graham in 2000 soon after Cortines helped Graham get a job with the school district’s real estate leasing operations. Cortines left the school district that same year and Graham didn’t report what allegedly happened, according to the suit.

Graham claims that Cortines made additional sexual advances in 2010, the year the school board hired Cortines a second time to run the school district. The sexual advances were made at Cortines’ second home in Kern County, the suit alleges.

“Cortines’ advance shocked and disturbed Graham, who feared that declining Cortines’ request for sex would lead to unwarranted retaliatory consequences,” according to the lawsuit.

Graham said he notified his boss John Creer, and his boss’ boss James Sohn, but the school district conducted no investigation. Then in an October 2010 meeting, the suit claims General Counsel Holmquist “discouraged Graham from pursuing his claims, and suggested, in an intimidating and patronizing manner, that the incidents at the Ranch and Cortines’ unsolicited phone call were better left unreported.”

In May 2012, the district announced that it would pay $200,000 to Graham to settle his sexual harassment claims against Cortines, who by then had left the post. In the announcement, the district said Cortines denied sexually harassing Graham, but acknowledged they had a consensual relationship.

Graham later declined to sign off on the settlement. He filed one lawsuit in 2013 that was dismissed on a legal technicality and then a second one that was withdrawn in May 2014.

Five months later, the LAUSD school board rehired Cortines as an interim superintendent after the resignation of his predecessor, John Deasy. Cortines is expected to serve until a permanent replacement is chosen by the board later this year.

“What makes this different and new is the school board has rehired Ramon Cortines despite documented history of sexual harassment and sexual assault against Scot Graham,” said Rob Hennig, Graham’s lawyer.

By failing to investigate whether there was any merit to Graham’s allegations, the lawsuit argues, the school district failed in its duty to protect an employee from potential sexual harassment.

“Cortines shouldn’t have been rehired by the school board,” Hennig said.

In his statement, Holmquist said the district intends to "seek reimbursement for the taxpayers' dollars that are having to be expended in attorney's fees and costs" in dealing with Graham's allegations. The district said it spent about $240,000 defending itself against Graham's first two lawsuits.

Graham said in an interview Tuesday that he has been on leave since late last year because he’s developed a type of seizure disorder that prevents him from driving long distances.

He said he filed the latest lawsuit after the school board rehired Cortines and he was running into him in the workplace. Graham also said he felt his allegations were swept under the rug.

“No one came to talk to me…it was like being in a fraternity house,” he said.

The suit does not say how much in damages Graham is seeking, but it asks among other items for back pay, future pay, benefits, and compensation for medical treatment. It also seeks an investigation into Graham's accusations against the superintendent.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A bold national initiative is needed to reduce the enormous health burden of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States, according to a new report from a committee of the Institute of Medicine.

Rates of physical and sexual abuse of children have declined over the last 20 years, but for reasons not fully understood, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Yet, reports of psychological and emotional child abuse have risen in the same period, and data vary significantly as to whether child neglect is increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant.

One of the nation’s largest surveys of crime victims is likely undercounting incidences of rape and sexual assault, making it difficult to ensure that adequate law enforcement resources and support services are available for victims, says a new report by the National Research Council.

Sexual harassment in science, engineering, and medicine diminishes the integrity of the U.S. research enterprise.

A systemwide change to the culture and climate in higher education is needed to prevent and effectively respond to sexual harassment, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have joined with over 40 colleges, universities, and research institutions to launch an Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education.

This is a public service campaign suggesting you save water...and suggesting some other things too. ; Credit: SFPUC

Friday's news is going to make you wait for it...when it comes to an explanation for the picture above.

The Wall Street Journal takes on pricing and other big-think policies that various authors claim are worsening the drought.

• Those higher food prices Jed wrote about yesterday? Alyssia Finley, assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com, says they're the fault of environmentalists, and higher food prices will be the way the rest of the country will pay for California's "green sanctimony." (WSJ)
• Economist Edward Lazear argues that "government-dictated prices, coupled with restrictions on the transfer of water, have made a bad situation much worse." He takes aim at the state's limitations on water transfers (lifted, he doesn't note; but he argues that pricing distorts the need for transfers anyway). He argues that public agencies that protect environmental conditions with water should pay for the privilege:

Although there may be good reasons to ensure that some fish and wildlife be protected, we should not pretend that this protection is costless. Agencies that divert water for environmental purposes should be required to budget explicitly for the lost revenue associated with the decision to divert it for this purpose, rather than allowing it to be sold at the market price for urban or agricultural use. (WSJ)

...and he argues that farmers, who might have to pay more for water on a more-open market, should get extra money to help them transition to the free market.

• Cato loves Lazear's arguments, and offers one amendment. Chris Edwards wants the federal government to get out of the water business, and in California, to hand over the Central Valley Project to the state. (Cato)
• In other business news, it's going to be a mixed bag for boat businesses at California recreation areas this summer. They're nervous in Tahoe, but overall expect to benefit from Folsom Lake's bad year. (TradeOnly Today)
• CNN gets into the Firehawk, which is a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with a giant water tank on it. L.A. County owns a few. They're going to be busy this summer, thanks to the drought. (CNN)
• And finally, in a move that reminds me of the time I wanted to name this blog "Hot, Wet, Climate Action," the San Francisco Public Utility Commission has a new, sexy (or is it sexxy?) campaign to conserve water, with words like "QUICKIE" and "DOING IT" popping out of copy alongside minimalist pictures of pieces of water plumbing. My favorite is "DIRTY HANDS" with its faucet shot to look like a piece of anatomy. (SFPUC)

VIDEO: Get paid for doing it nice!

How has your community been affected by the drought (besides getting more suggestive ads about jiggling the toilet handle)? Share your story with a photo on Twitter or Instagram. Tag it #mydrought. For more details on our photo project, click here.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.; Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

The U.S. Education Department on Wednesday finalized campus sexual assault rules that bolster the rights of the accused, reduce legal liabilities for schools and colleges, and narrow the scope of cases schools will be required to investigate.  

The change announced by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reshapes the way the nation’s schools respond to complaints of sexual misconduct. It is meant to replace policies from the Obama administration that DeVos previously revoked, saying they pressured schools to deny the rights of accused students. “Today we release a final rule that recognizes we can continue to combat sexual misconduct without abandoning our core values of fairness, presumption of innocence and due process," she said. "This empowers survivors with more tools than ever before." Democrats and education groups had asked DeVos to delay any changes until after the coronavirus pandemic, saying colleges don’t have time to implement new federal rules while they respond to the crisis.

The new rules appear to be consistent with much of what was originally proposed in 2018, but also set a more specific definition of what constitutes sexual assault and require that colleges and universities hold live hearings during which the victim and defendant would be allowed to cross-examine one another. K-12 schools have the option to hold live hearings as well, though it is not required. In order for a school to be found legally liable under the new rules, there would need to be evidence that the school was “deliberately indifferent” in following directives for providing resources for the victim and investigating the complaint fairly. 

Today on AirTalk, we’ll debate the finalized rules and talk about the practical and legal implications for students, schools and administrators.

With files from the Associated Press

Guests:

Jenna Parker, partner at Hathaway Parker based in Los Angeles; she specializes in Title IX cases and has represented  students and others accused of sexual misconduct

Michele Dauber, professor of Law and Sociology at Stanford University; chair of the “Enough is Enough Voter Project,” a political action committee that advocates for making violence against women a voting issue; she helped revise Stanford’s policy on sexual assault; she tweets @mldauber

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Updated at 10 p.m. ET

Australia's High Court has found reasonable doubt that Cardinal George Pell sexually assaulted two boys in the 1990s and has overturned his conviction.

The court acquitted the former Vatican treasurer of the charges, and no retrial will be possible.

Pell, 78, had been serving a six-year prison sentence in the case. The High Court ordered that he be released.

He was convicted of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne.

As an adult, one of them went to the police in 2015 and accused the cardinal of abusing him and the other boy in 1996. The other individual died of a heroin overdose the previous year without reporting abuse.

In a statement after the acquittal, as reported by Reuters, Pell said, "I hold no ill will toward my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough."

Pell was convicted in 2018 and an appellate court upheld those convictions last year.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference's comments on the acquittal recognize that the outcome will be good news for some people and "devastating for others."

"The result today does not change the Church's unwavering commitment to child safety and to a just and compassionate response to survivors and victims of child sexual abuse. The safety of children remains supremely important not only for the bishops, but for the entire Catholic community. Any person with allegations of sexual abuse by Church personnel should go to the police."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Emily Quinn speaks from the TED stage at TEDWomen 2018; Credit: /TED

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Biology Of Sex

Artist Emily Quinn is intersex. She's one of over 150 million people in the world who don't fit neatly into the categories of male or female. She explains how biological sex exists on a spectrum.

About Emily Quinn

Emily Quinn is an artist and activist. She worked at Cartoon Network on the Emmy Award winning show, Adventure Time. While there she partnered with interACT and MTV to develop the first intersex main character in television history. She came out publicly as intersex in a PSA alongside the character's debut. She later worked as the Youth Coordinator for interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth.

As an activist, she speaks about intersex issues before audiences and through her YouTube channel: intersexperiences. As an artist, her most recent projects include a genderless puberty guidebook and a portrait series of intersex people that will be exhibited at medical schools across the U.S. in 2020.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Fanatic Studio/Gary Waters/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

There has been a rise in the number of minors contacting the National Sexual Assault Hotline to report abuse. That's according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, which runs the hotline.

By the end of March, with much of the country under lockdown, there was a 22% increase in monthly calls from people younger than 18, and half of all incoming contacts were from minors. That's a first in RAINN's history, Camille Cooper, the organization's vice president of public policy, tells NPR.

Of those young people who contacted the hotline in March, 67% identified their perpetrator as a family member and 79% said they were currently living with that perpetrator. In 1 out of 5 cases where the minor was living with their abuser, RAINN assisted the minor in immediately contacting police.

"As a result of looking at the information that we had from those sessions, it was clear that the abuse was escalating in both frequency and severity," Cooper says. "So a lot of the kids that were coming to the hotline were feeling pretty vulnerable and traumatized. And it was a direct result of COVID-19, because they were quarantined with their abuser. The abuser was now abusing them on a daily basis."

Lockdown orders are first and foremost public health and safety measures. But statistically speaking, home is not the safest place for every young person. RAINN reports that about 34% of child sexual abusers are family members. Closing schools and canceling youth activities like sports removes children from the watchful eyes of "mandatory reporters" — those trusted adults, like teachers, nurses and child care providers, who are required by law in most states to report suspicions of child abuse or neglect.

However, Cooper says her organization has confirmed with authorities around the country that the child welfare system is still operating during the pandemic. That is, an official report of current and ongoing abuse will still trigger an investigation, and, if necessary, a child will be removed from the home.

"[Child welfare workers] will be coming to the home in person and proceeding with a formal investigation and a child forensic interview and things like that," she says. If the abuse is farther in the past and the child is not quarantined with the accused, Cooper says, the interview may take place over video chat.

In the meantime, RAINN and other child welfare organizations are lobbying to make it easier for children to report abuse. Cooper says, "One of the solutions we came up with that we are now currently working directly with the leadership in Congress on is to get all of the online learning platforms that children are interacting with to have a reporting function on that platform in plain sight for children."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, seen on March 27, has released new rules for sexual assault complaints on college campuses.; Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

New federal regulations on how schools – from kindergarten all the way through college — must respond to cases of sexual assault and harassment are drawing swift and mixed reactions.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced what she called historic changes Wednesday to Obama-era guidelines that she said will make the process fairer and better protect accused students. While some welcome the changes to Title IX as long overdue, survivors' advocates are panning the new rules as a throwback to the days when sexual assault was seldom reported or punished, and schools are protesting they can't possibly implement them by summer, as required.

Among the most significant changes are new regulations aimed at beefing up protections for accused college students, by mandating live hearings by adjudicators who are neither the Title IX coordinator nor the investigator, and real-time cross examination of each student by the other student's lawyer or representative.

"Cross examination is an important part of ensuring truth is found," said DeVos, adding that "our rule is very sensitive to not requiring students to face each other. In fact it specifically prohibits that. But it's an important part of ensuring that justice is ultimately served."

Under the new regulations, students also have a right to appeal, and schools are allowed to raise the evidentiary standard from "a preponderance of the evidence" to "clear and convincing," making it harder to find a student responsible for misconduct.

Also, the definition of sexual harassment narrows, so only that which is "severe, pervasive and objectively offensive" warrants investigation. On the other hand, dating violence and stalking would now be added to the kinds of offenses that schools must respond to.

Devos' proposed regulations, released last fall, would have given schools no responsibility to deal with off-campus incidents. But after a torrent of criticism, the final rules clarify that schools must respond to off-campus incidents that are in places or during events that the school is involved with. So, for example, frat houses would be covered, but a private off-campus apartment, would not. And a school would be obligated to respond to an alleged incident during a school field trip but not a private house party.

Cynthia Garrett, co-president of Families Advocating for Campus Equality, a group that advocates for the accused, welcomes the changes as long overdue.

"Anybody who's accused of something so vile [as sexual assault] has to have the opportunity to defend themselves," she says. "I think that in order to ruin someone's life [by expelling them from school] there has to be a process like this. It shouldn't be easy."

An accused student who asked to be identified as John Doe, as he was in his court cases, agrees that the new regulations are "very encouraging." He sued his school for suspending him after a hearing that he says denied him due process, by forcing him to defend himself without his attorney, and not allowing him to question his accuser. Later, after a federal court ruling in his favor, he reached a settlement with his school that wiped his record clean. But that was after nearly five years of what he describes as torment.

"People don't realize what these hearings used to look like," he says. "They can't just be a horse and pony show where they go through the motions and the school comes to a predetermined outcome."

Survivor advocates, however, say the new regulations will have a chilling effect on reporting, as alleged victims may view it as futile to file a formal complaint, or too retraumatizing, for example, to be subject to cross-examination. "This is extremely worrisome," says Sage Carson, manager of the survivor advocacy group Know Your IX. The new regulations "make it clear to me that DeVos cares more about schools and [accused students] than she does about survivors," says Carson.

The off-campus exclusion is also a sticking point. "We know that a majority of violence does not happen in libraries or in on-campus housing," says Carson.

She says she was assaulted in an off-campus apartment years ago, and was allowed to file a formal Title IX complaint back then. But if the rules then were like what DeVos is announcing now, Carson would not have had the option. "I would absolutely have dropped out of school," she says.

Doe, however, who was accused of an alleged assault during a private weekend jaunt hundreds of miles away from school during summer break, says the new rules prevent that kind of "overreach." His accuser wasn't a student at his college anymore. He says, "I just don't think that's reasonable."

Schools meantime, have objections of their own, first and foremost being forced to play the role of virtual trial courts to adjudicate intensely complex cases.

"We are not set up to do that," says Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a trade association representing 2,000 public and private colleges and universities. "We do not have the legal authority to do that. We don't have the social legitimacy to do that. We want to teach students. We don't want to run courts."

Schools also object to the timing, requiring the changes to be implemented by August 14th, even though schools are already overwhelmed with managing their sudden switch to online learning because of COVID-19.

"This is madness," says Hartle. "This is an extraordinarily complicated piece of work that they have spent more than three years developing. It's a mistake to now turn to colleges and universities and say, put it in place in 100 days. It's simply not going to work very well."

Smaller schools, especially, Hartle says, "are just overwhelmed. They don't know how or where to begin" to implement these changes.

Anticipating the objections, DeVos insisted that "civil rights really can't wait. And students cases continue to be decided now." She suggested that this may actually be the best time for schools to make the changes since there are no students on campus.

Hartle says schools will continue pressing for the Department of Education to allow schools more time. Meantime, several legal challenges are in the works, so a temporary stay is also a possibility. That would give schools a reprieve while those cases wind their way through the courts.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Emily Quinn speaks from the TED stage at TEDWomen 2018; Credit: /TED

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Biology Of Sex

Artist Emily Quinn is intersex. She's one of over 150 million people in the world who don't fit neatly into the categories of male or female. She explains how biological sex exists on a spectrum.

About Emily Quinn

Emily Quinn is an artist and activist. She worked at Cartoon Network on the Emmy Award winning show, Adventure Time. While there she partnered with interACT and MTV to develop the first intersex main character in television history. She came out publicly as intersex in a PSA alongside the character's debut. She later worked as the Youth Coordinator for interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth.

As an activist, she speaks about intersex issues before audiences and through her YouTube channel: intersexperiences. As an artist, her most recent projects include a genderless puberty guidebook and a portrait series of intersex people that will be exhibited at medical schools across the U.S. in 2020.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The email includes the potential victim’s password as evidence of a hack, but there is more than meets the eye

The post Sextortion scammers still shilling with stolen passwords appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Hypoxia – low levels of dissolved oxygen – can cause genetically female fish to develop into males, new research has found. Hypoxia in aquatic environments is often the result of eutrophication, which is caused by pollution from human activities. The findings suggest that hypoxia could cause fish populations to collapse, with consequences for entire ecosystems.

The invasion of the American mink (Neovison vison) is linked to a shift in the adult sex ratio of the native European polecat (Mustela putorius) across its entire range, a new study has discovered. Through aggressive competition, the American mink has decreased the number of reproductive female European polecats. This is the first study to identify such an effect upon a native species across its entire range in Europe.

Intersex fish, in which male reproductive tissues become ‘feminised’, are increasingly being identified. This effect has traditionally been attributed to birth-control medications. This study exposed fish to a widely prescribed anti-diabetic, metformin. Male fish developed female sexual characteristics and reproductive rate decreased, which suggests that metformin may be a non-traditional endocrine-disrupting compound.

Three men have been arrested as a result of coordinated operations conducted across NSW in two days, targeting purchasers of child-like sex dolls.

Josh Shaw returned his best figures of the season as Gloucestershire gained the upper hand by bowling Middlesex out on the opening day of their County Championship clash in Northwood.

Tim Murtagh grabbed his fourth five-wicket haul in the County Championship this season as Middlesex rolled Gloucestershire over for 137 to clinch victory inside three days at Merchant Taylors’ School.

Steven Finn feels Middlesex’s Vitality Blast side possess similar qualities to the team that clinched the county’s first and only T20 triumph 11 years ago.

This file is in PDF format, requiring the Adobe Acrobat Reader to open.

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt talked about his 'trouble with girls' this week, and women in the scientific community responded perfectly.

New survey compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds condom use is up, but teen sexual behavior has not changed over the last decade, mea

Having sex with an ex seems to be a fairly typical part of the breakup process for young adults, a new study shows.

To provide complete care for its residents, Chaseley Trust, offers amenities such as a movie theater, a gymnasium and a pool table. And strippers.

Treating the country's 110 million STDs comes with a price tag of $16.7 billion a year.

Cohabitating doesn't provide the same health benefits for gay couples that marriage does for straights.

But rolling in the hay resumes as doctors treat her allergy to semen.

The same-sex marriage rulings by the Supreme Court are but the most recent in a long history of cases that reshaped the family structure.

New research concludes that hypersexuality is not a neurological or physiological disorder, but just heightened libido.

Women who have had heart attacks want more information than they're currently getting from their cardiologists in order to move on with their lives.

Videos and ads by Roxy for women's surfing gear and swimsuits anger female surfers.

Most middle-aged women do not give up sex as they age, especially if sex is important to them.

Certain female spiders are infamous for eating their partners after sex, but some actually pounce on suitors, fangs first, before mating.

"Sex in the Wild" is an entertaining, educational, explicit and scientifically stimulating look at how animals reproduce.