Today in Syria:

The deadliest chemical weapons attack in years in Syria killed dozens of people in northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning, including children, and sickened scores more, according to medics, rescuers and witnesses in the rebel-held province, who said the gas had been delivered by a government airstrike.

A few hours later, according to several witnesses, another airstrike hit one of the clinics treating victims, who had been farmed out to smaller hospitals and maternity wards because the area’s largest hospital had been severely damaged by an airstrike two days earlier.

That’s a favorite trick of terrorist groups – set off bomb 1 and then when rescuers gather to help the injured, set off bomb 2.

It

Protesters in Australia raised the ante enough that Ayaan Hirsi Ali decided not to risk it. The Guardian joins the fun by phrasing its reporting in such a way that it bullies her too.

The controversial speaker and vocal critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali has blamed the last-minute cancellation of her speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand on “a succession of organisational lapses” by the event organiser.

What a calculatedly obnoxious way to put it. People made such a fuss about her speaking that she decided not to go, and that’s what they should have led with.

The 47-year-old Somali-born activist, author and former politician has previously received death threats for her strident criticism of Islam.

It’s … Read the rest

So yes there’s a new lawsuit against Roger Ailes.

A lawsuit filed on Monday morning by a paid political commentator for the Fox News Channel alleges the network’s past chairman, Roger Ailes, made unwanted sexual advances while leading her to believe that a big promotion would follow.

The suit says Ailes encouraged Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky to date older, married men, repeatedly praised her looks and sought to get her to join him for drinks, even in his office, away from prying eyes that could get them “into so much trouble.”

Roginsky spurned the advances, according to the lawsuit, and as a result never received the promotion to become host of the popular early evening program The Five.

This looks like a good event, should you be in or near Bristol (the UK one) on April 20.

The afternoon panels:

2.00 – 3.15 – Knowledge base: understanding and perceptions – chair Finn Mackay

Professor Jackie Jones – professor of feminist legal studies, UWE, specialising in women’s rights, international human rights, human trafficking and violence against women

Geetanjali Gangoli of Bristol University Gender and Violence research group

Sarah Ditum, local freelance journalist on the importance on how the media shapes perceptions of sexual violence and the role of the state

Jacci Parry BBC documentary film maker on responsible broadcasting of legal cases around violence against women and girls

3.15 – 4.30 From the frontline: identifying the challenges women

Godalmighty, Trump’s real estate developer son-in-law has been sent to Iraq to perform diplomacy. Seriously? Why? He has no relevant experience or training or education, he’s just a child of money who makes money selling real estate. What is he doing in Iraq??

Kushner, 36, who is married to the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, acted as a de facto campaign manager during much of the 2016 presidential race, and has consolidated even more power since entering the White House.

Kushner also has taken on some international outreach for the White House, and his portfolio includes China, Mexico, Canada and the Middle East. The president, in fact, has specifically tasked Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, with brokering peace in the

A disconcerting first paragraph:

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a new, more detailed plan for laying off 25 percent of its employees and scrapping 56 programs including pesticide safety, water runoff control, and environmental cooperation with Mexico and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Oh splendid, they’re cutting back on pesticide safety. You can see where Trump would approve of that: much of the danger of pesticides is to farm workers who pick crops, and most of those are what Trump calls “bad hombres,” in other words immigrants from Mexico and points south.

In a recent interview, Sen. James M. Inhofe said he would like the department to focus on more traditional environmental concerns rather than

NL Times reports:

Police took four teenaged boys into custody late Sunday in connection with the assault of two gay men in Arnhem. The victims were holding hands walking home from a party early Sunday morning when they were confronted by a group of young men shouting slurs at them.

They were then struck by a man wielding a heavy set of bolt cutters, kocking out four of Ronnie Sewratan-Vernes’ teeth and severing his lip, and injuring the ribs of Jasper Vernes-Sewratan. The two say they usually conceal their relationship in public, but were holding hands after a fun night out.

The journalist Barbara Barend sent a tweet calling on men in the Netherlands to hold hands in public, … Read the rest

Only in America.

A 20-year-old Connecticut college student whose father was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks has died after choking during a pancake-eating contest.

Police say Caitlin Nelson died at a New York City hospital on Sunday, three days after participating in the contest at Sacred Heart University. She was from Clark, New Jersey, and was majoring in social work at the Catholic school in Fairfield.

Officials say the contest was part of a fraternities and sororities event.

Can we stop doing this now? Can we just shut that whole thing down and never open it again?

Eating contests – in a world where famine and food insecurity and chronic malnutrition still afflict billions of people, what could … Read the rest

Via Heroic Women to Inspire Game Designers via Wikipedia: Elizabeth Freeman.

Elizabeth (“Mum Bett”) Freeman was a slave in Massachusetts before US independence. She protected another slave whom her mistress was about to hit with a red-hot shovel, receiving a deep wound on her arm and another on her face. She left the arm wound visible as evidence of her mistreatment. After independence, she heard (she was illiterate) the new Massachusetts state constitution, which stated that all men are born free and equal. Consulting an Abolitionist lawyer, she sued for her freedom under the constitution, and won. Her suit effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts.

The Elizabeth Freeman Center has more:

Born into slavery in 1742, she was given to

I saw this cited as a useful source for explanation of “gender identity” and all that: Transgender Identity Formation. In it I read this claim:

Biological

We are just beginning to understand the various aspects of the biological components of who and what we are, and how they interact.

In an invited paper published in the December 2001 issue of Neuroendocrinology Letters, Dr. Gunter Dorner and his colleagues outlined two probable causes of transsexualism that fall into two general categories: 1) genetic enzyme mutations and 2) epigenetic effects which can include stressful prenatal situations and fetal exposure to endocrine disruptors i.e. the breakdown products of DDT (DDE which is estrogenic in nature).

Gender and sexual brain organization is dependent

Caroline Criado-Perez does it again: Parliament Square will add to its eleven (11) statues of men one (1) statue of a woman.

Prime Minister Theresa May announced on Sunday that Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who campaigned for the right of women to vote, will be honored with a statue to stand in the company of giants like Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela.

Mrs. Fawcett formed the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897 and died at age 82 in 1929, a year after all women in the United Kingdom were granted the right to vote.

It’s only the right to vote for half of all human beings. No biggy.

Fawcett, a political and union leader, is not

Administrators at a Louisiana university are busy sweeping away pesky useless shit like scientific specimens to make room for athletic facilities.

The curators of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Louisiana-Monroe got grim news last week from the school’s director: The museum’s research collection had to be moved out of its current home. The reason? The space was needed for expanded track facilities.

The curators were given 48 hours to find a new place on campus to store the collection — something they weren’t able to do. Now they must get another institution to take their several million specimens. Their hard deadline is July, when the track renovations are slated to begin. And if the collection

The violence on Westminster Bridge last week was a horror, but so was this:

His name was Timothy Caughman. He was from Manhattan and was 66 when he died. The police say he was stabbed on Monday night by a 28-year-old man who had come to New York City from Baltimore looking to kill black men. It was Mr. Caughman’s misfortune to be male and black when the stranger with a 26-inch sword approached on Ninth Avenue near 36th Street, around the corner from where he lived.

We don’t know much else about Mr. Caughman, but the persona he shared with the world on Twitter was that of a man of buoyant outlook and varied interests, who was amused

Lordy. Lor-deee.

Why is Omarosa Manigault there?

Manigault, 43, is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump, whose decision to cast her as an alpha-female villain in the first season of “The Apprentice” more than a decade ago made her a reality television celebrity.

Apparently that’s the reason right there. But I was asking about what qualifications she has to be there. Being a reality television celebrity isn’t a qualification.

But because she is one of the few African Americans in Trump’s immediate orbit, others caution against dismissing her.

“It’s important that we take Omarosa seriously, irrespective of how we feel about her,” said Leah Wright Rigueur, a professor of public policy at Harvard. “The idea of having access to the White