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Today’s Lady News: Abortion Protester Killed In Michigan

Jessica WakemanSeptember 11, 2009
// news
  • Anti-choice activist, James Pouillon, 63, was shot and killed while protesting abortion across from Owosso High School in Oswosso, Michigan. Police have a 33-year-old male suspect in custody who allegedly also shot and killed the owner of a local gravel company. [Detroit Free Press]—It’s premature to assume Pouillon’s murder is related to being an anti-abortion activist. Yet, after the murder of physician Dr. George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions, this summer, that’s the first place the mind goes.
  • Police say there is no evidence to link Philip Garrido, the man who kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard, raped her and held her captive for 18 years, with eight unsolved prostitute murders in California. [NY Daily News]
  • Kenya and Zambia have banned a brand of “leaky” condoms called Hot, which are manufactured in the U.K. According to the BBC, the Kenyan government gives out over 160 million condoms each year and they feared rumors of the “leaky” condoms would hinder the fight against the spread of HIV. [BBC]

  • About 700 schools in Belgium (in an area which is mostly Catholic) are banning female students from wearing Muslim headscarves. [News.com.au]
  • A male student in Afghanistan who was sentenced to death for downloading an article about women’s rights was secretly pardoned by Afghan President Hamad Karzai and removed from the country. The student, who worked as a newspaper journalist, had been convicted of “distributing blasphemous material.” [Feminist Daily News]
  • The new TV show, Glee, about a high school glee club, pokes fun at the school’s pro-abstinence Celibacy Club in a recent episode! [Feministing]
  • The activist group ACORN fired two employees who were caught on a hidden camera offering tax advice to a man and woman in Baltimore who posed as a pimp and prostitute. The prostitute was advised to fill out her tax forms saying she is an “adult entertainer”; it is unclear how the pimp was advised to explain his occupation. [NY Daily News]
  • Gertrude Baines, the oldest person in the world at 115, passed away this morning in Los Angeles. Baines, who was born when Grover Cleveland was president and whose father is believed to have been a slave, outlived all of her relatives. [L.A. Times]
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