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During a Mar. 6 panel discussion, professor Sami Schalk of the University of Wisconsin-Madison gave an account of an epiphany she had while researching disability studies. Schalk realized 'there was a part of [her] that knew' she had a disability, similar to her self-realization that she was queer. During a Mar. 6 panel discussion, professor Sami Schalk of the University of Wisconsin-Madison gave an account of an epiphany she had while researching disability studies. Before conducting this research, she did not think of herself as disabled. After, however, Schalk realized “there was a part of [her] that knew” she had...

A petition in Ukraine calling for same-sex marriage to be legalised has gained enough signatures for the president to consider the proposal. The petition has more than 28,000 signatures, meaning President Volodymyr Zelensky now has 10 days to respond. Homosexuality is not illegal in Ukraine, but same-sex marriages and civil partnerships are not recognised. This has caused particular problems for LGBT people signing up for the military following Russia's invasion. For example, under Ukrainian law if someone in a same-sex relationship dies, their partner cannot collect their body or bury them. The online petition says: "At this time, every day...

Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Bisexual women are more likely to report experiencing male-perpetrated, "non-voluntary" or "forced" vaginal intercourse in their lifetime than heterosexual women, according to survey findings released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among respondents, 36% of bisexual women reported instances of non-voluntary or forced sex, compared with just under 18% of heterosexual women and 18% of women who identified as lesbian or gay, the data showed. Nearly 19% of the more than 14,000 women surveyed indicated they experienced non-voluntary or forced sex at some point, the researchers said. "Understanding harmful attitudes toward bisexual women...

California’s controversial new sex ed guidance contains medically risky advice that reads like it was written by a college fraternity, says a former public school teacher who’s been helping parents mobilize against the curriculum. “It’s shocking,” Rebecca Friedrichs, the founder of For Kids & Country, said in an interview with The Christian Post when describing the condom relay races 10- and 11-year-old girls have been participating in at schools where, in front of boys, they’re taught how to put a condom on a model of an erect adult male penis. Students as young as 11, she warned, are also being...

In controversial “implicit bias” training, New York City’s public-school educators have been told to focus on black children over white ones — and one Jewish superintendent who described her family’s Holocaust tragedies was scolded and humiliated, according to firsthand accounts. A consultant hired by the city Department of Education told administrators at a workshop that “racial equity” means favoring black children regardless of their socio-economic status, sources said. “If I had a poor white male student and I had a middle-class black boy, I would actually put my equitable strategies and interventions into that middle class black boy because over...

Stone Transferred To Wisconsin Veterans' Museum Storage After 113 years, a monument to Confederate soldiers in a Madison cemetery has come down. The stone cenotaph, inscribed with 140 names of prisoners-of-war, stood on an area known as Confederate Rest since 1906 — that is, until last week, when a crew from the Madison Parks Department and a local monument company transferred it from the Forest Hills Cemetery to storage at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. Madison City Council voted in October to remove the monument and place it in a museum. Logistics and weather delayed the transfer until now, said Eric...

The University of San Francisco this week is scheduled to host a segregated orientation dedicated to black students, a program that takes place in addition to its standard welcoming activities for all students. The Black Student Orientation is slated for Aug. 18, the day prior to the university’s New Student Orientation.

Here are three ideas that will cost far less than what supervisors intend to give New York PR firmOn its agenda Tuesday, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is proposing to spend more than $1 million for a New York PR firm to rebrand the county, telling citizens all the wonderful things that county government does. The supervisors are paying far too much. I’ll do the job for a tenth of the price. After brainstorming the matter, I have three ideas that you, dear readers, can choose from online. I promise my proposals will be more honest and memorable...

BE A MARTIAN! Mars needs YOU! In the future, Mars will need all kinds of explorers, farmers, surveyors, teachers . . . but most of all YOU! Join us on the Journey to Mars as we explore with robots and send humans there one day.

One of the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angel pilots recently flew right over the Golden Gate Bridge during rush hour, and the moment was perfectly caught on camera by a fan. Tiburon, California, resident Rich Shelton captured Lt. Cmdr. David Tickle fly his F/A-18 right above San Francisco traffic Oct. 9 during Fleet Week. “They don’t always make many passes between the towers, so I was very lucky to catch this shot with my relatively slow camera!” Mr. Shelton told Navy Times. Navy Times reached out to Blue Angels for comment and was assured that all necessary safety precautions were taken...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — President Barack Obama says his administration is working with Congress to provide Jordan with an additional $200 million in aid this year.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Nobody's going to win an Emmy for a parody of the TV show "Star Trek" filmed by Internal Revenue Service employees at an agency studio in Maryland.</p> <p>Instead, the IRS got a rebuke from Congress for wasting taxpayer dollars.</p>

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016. By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

Stuck in a standoff with teachers unions, the San Francisco and Oakland school districts have abandoned efforts to bring in up to $15 million each to develop high-quality math classes for upper-elementary and middle school students. The two districts spent months preparing a joint application for the next round of federal Race to the Top funding - which required districts to incorporate student test scores, among other criteria, in teacher evaluations. And because of that critical clause, union leaders refused to sign, as required by the federal application.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday downplayed a Los Angeles television station's report of Caltrans employees using state rental trucks for personal purposes, saying "only God" can watch over every one of the state's hundreds of thousands of public employees. "Caltrans has been looking at it. I would be glad to look into it," the Democratic governor said after a speech to the California state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "If somebody took some time off to do something, we'll find it, but, you know, to blow it up like it's some major thing –...

The governor of California may not be toast – yet – but, one might say, he's turning browner by the moment in the heat of a political campaign he hoped would be his legacy achievement. Two new statewide polls confirm what political instincts – and Jerry Brown's body language – were already telling us: His tax increase measure, Proposition 30, is fading fast with scarcely a week remaining until Election Day. Proposition 30, a $6 billion per year boost in sales and income taxes that Brown said would resolve the state's chronic fiscal problems, never was particularly popular with voters,...

Senator says nuts to SDSU 'RoboSquirrel' study - The 'Robosquirrel' developed by San Diego State and UC Davis can move its tail to mimic the behavior of a real animal. UC Davis A San Diego State University research project involving robotic squirrels has been placed on Sen. Tom Coburn's annual list of wasteful government spending, a move the campus says is unfair and misleading. Coburn, R-Okla., issued the list last week, criticizing everything from the use of food stamps to purchase fast food to a subsidy for a struggling ferry business in Alaska. The list also is critical of the...

So far this year, three California cities have filed for bankruptcy protection, and it's likely they will be joined by at least a few others in the not-too-distant future. That's not merely journalistic speculation. Moody's Investment Service, which closely monitors state and local governments for the huge municipal bond industry, issued an unusual public warning the other day that other California cities may be headed down the same path. "To summarize," Moody's said, "we expect … more bankruptcy filings and bond defaults among California cities, reflecting the increased risk to bondholders as investors are asked to contribute to plans for...

UC has reached a $1 million settlement with UC Davis students who were pepper sprayed at an Occupy-inspired Nov. 18 demonstration to protest rising tuition. UC will pay student plaintiffs $30,000 each, and the ACLU will pocket up to $250,000. Everything that is wrong in California resides in this story. For $30,000, I'll get pepper sprayed. Students think tuition costs too much, so what do they do? Sue the university - it has deep pockets. This episode began because students know that if they stood around smoking pot and demanding more money from Sacramento, the administration would be tickled pink....

A campaign finance measure on the November ballot is trailing among likely California voters, according to a new survey, although a sizable percentage remain undecided as dueling campaigns head into their final weeks. The poll, by the Field Poll and the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, shows 44 percent plan to vote no on Proposition 32 while 38 percent support the measure. The rest, 18 percent, said they haven't decided. "Opinions on this aren't fully formed yet," said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. Proposition 32 would ban unions and corporations from using payroll-deducted money for...