The world welcomed the one and only Barbra Streisand to Instagram on Wednesday. The 72-year-old singer-songwriter/actress/producer/director/national treasure shared the pic below with her 1,699 followers, and we’re already thinking it’s time to start calling her posts Babstagrams.
The wife of the man who videotaped the NYPD chokehold that killed Eric Garner was arrested for assault on Wednesday.
According to the Staten Island Advance, Chrissie Ortiz, married to 22-year-old Ramsey Orta, was arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman in Staten Island. The two women had reportedly been arguing. Police say Ortiz, 30, has since been released and charged with misdemeanor assault.
Wednesday’s arrest was the most recent legal ordeal for the couple. On Saturday, Orta was arrested for alleged criminal possession of a firearm. Orta, who has 26 previous arrests according to the Advance reporting, has publically suggested his arrest was an act of retaliation by the New York City Police Department in the wake of the New York medical examiner’s ruling that the choking death of Eric Garner was a homicide.
You can’t fault the Seattle robbers who stole $50,000 worth of medical marijuana Wednesday for lack of creativity.
Local detectives reported that when they arrived at the scene of the crime—a dispensary “in the 5000 block of East Marginal Way South”—they found “a large hole cut into the side of the business and found marijuana strewn about.” The thieves may not get away with this cannabis caper for long though. The Seattle Police Department’s blog noted that detectives had recovered fingerprints, video surveillance, and other evidence from the scene.
Washington state is one of two states in the county, along with Colorado, where marijuana is legal for recreational purposes. As the commercial marijuana industry has grown, dispensary businesses have confronted safety fears because wariness by banks to involve themselves in a business still illegal under federal law forces pot businesses to resort to trafficking in large amounts of cash.
Activist groups called on African government officials to ban child marriage amid President Barack Obama’s first U.S.-Africa summit Tuesday.
“Child marriage is a complex human rights issue. It violates myriad women’s rights,” said Amanda Klasing, a women’s rights researcher for Human Rights Watch, during a discussion at United Nations Foundation on Tuesday hosted by the International Center for Research on Women.
The summit was one of many sideline events in Washington coinciding with the U.S.-Africa Summit, a three-day gathering that brings together President Barack Obama with nearly 50 heads of state from across the African continent.
Advocates for the rights of women and girls said issues facing women and girls must be addressed at the summit—particularly the marrying off of young girls. According to a recent UNICEF report, marriage at a young age can lead to women who are less educated, more susceptible to challenges during birth (due to lack of education) and less likely to receive medical care during pregnancy.
The greater issue, advocates said, is that marriage prevents young women from making decisions about their own bodies and lives.
An estimated 700 million women across the globe were once child brides, according to a recent UNICEF report, and about 14 million girls are married off before they reach the age of 18 every year. The International Center for Research on Women found Africa is home to 15 of the 20 countries where child marriage is extremely prevalent.
Without empowering women, says Behailu T. Weldeyohannes, a professor of law at Jimma University in Ethiopia, there is little chance the continent’s burgeoning economy will flourish.
“Africa right now is considered as a poor continent, but potentially it is not poor,” said Weldeyohannes. “If we address gender-based violence and if we provide education, if we provide health, if we provide other services to women—that by itself can increase the [Gross Domestic Product].”
Economic data backs this up. A 2011 World Bank study on the economic benefits of investing in girls found that if young Nigerian women and men had equal rates of economic activity—meaning active participation in the job market by both genders—annual GDP growth in the country would increase by 3.5%.
There are certainly precedents in intervention programs aimed at empowering young women that leaders could look to, should the activists’ words take root. A pilot study conducted by the Population Council and United Nations Population Fund in collaboration with stakeholders in Ethiopia was able to prevent girls age 10 to 14 from marrying young by working with communities, providing school supplies, and setting up mentor groups with girls.
But community-based work alone can’t solve the problem — Governments must put in place laws that promote equality and protect girls as they develop. Dorothy Aken’Ova, the executive director of the International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights in Nigeria, says Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who is reportedly attending the Summit, has yet to prove he’s willing to take a real stance on protecting women, even after the kidnapping of over 200 girls from a school by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram drew the world’s attention and ire.
“I am concerned that [Jonathan] is not connecting with the groups that matter adequately on this situation,” Aken’Ova says. “If he could only pause for once and get some feminist analysis into the situation then he will not be far away from a lasting solution. But the question is, is he ready to engage with the feminist movement in the country?”
Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton seem to have squashed their long-held beef over the weekend, when app-genius Kardashian posted a picture of the two cozied up on Instagram.
“Reminiscing about the 1st time we went to Ibiza in 2006!,” Kim wrote. “@parishilton it was so good to see you & catch up!! Loves it lol”
Both Kardashian and Hilton were reportedly in Ibiza, Spain, celebrating Givenchy Creative Director Riccardo Tisci’s 40th birthday—a star-studded event that included a “Happy Birthday” song from Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell and a performance by Kanye West—when the picture was taken.
Kardashian and Hilton are former besties who became enemies after Hilton publicly criticized Kim’s body, likening her rear-end to “cottage cheese stuffed in a trash bag” as former closet-organizer Kim’s stardom rose and Hilton’s went the way of her signature terrycloth track suits.
But all seemed to be forgiven in Spain as the two reminisced on the old times.
While that’s all well and good, we can’t help but wonder what Paris had to say about “Willow Pape.”
Actor Anwan Glover, who played “Slim Charles” in the hit HBO series The Wire, was stabbed in a Washington, D.C. nightclub early Sunday morning after a fight broke out.
The Washington Post reports Glover was treated for a laceration at the George Washington University Hospital after being stabbed in Cafe Asia, located in downtown Washington. Glover, who also appeared in the Oscar-winning film “12 Years A Slave,” is a 41-year-old Washington native. He’s the lead rapper in a local band called Backyard Band.
Glover posted a note Sunday on Instagram detailing his version of the incident, which he said occurred while he was supporting another local band.
“I am not a stranger to adversity and when shown hate, I’m going to spread love,” Glover wrote. “I am recovering and will be back soon. My flesh may be stabbed but my spirit is unbreakable.”
A NOTE TO READERS:
Thanks again for your participation in the TIME subscriber Q&As. This week’s should be especially good with TIME foreign correspondent Simon Shuster answering questions about what it is like to report from the rebel-held territory of eastern Ukraine. So keep the questions coming in the comments below, or via the #AskTIME hashtag on Twitter.
I wanted to write about another change we plan to bring to MMR on Monday. As TIME.com has expanded, we’ve found that the current MMR list duplicates much of the news reporting we already have elsewhere on the site. We’ve also learned that the best stories posted to MMR do not always come from us, but from readers who post in the comments section, and we expect you to keep that going.
So instead of the daily compendium of political stories we post here, we’re giving you something we think is better: A curated list of what we see as our best stories, ready for you every morning by 8 a.m. We’re taking the idea from our new daily email, The Brief. For those who do not already get it, you can sign up here, and we hope it will start even more conversations in the comments section.
So please let me know your thoughts about the change on Twitter at @michaelscherer or here in the comments. New ideas are always welcome.
-Michael Scherer, D.C. Bureau Chief
Yvette Schneider spent a little over a decade as an active participant and a leader in the gay conversion therapy movement. In other words, she spent years working to convince men and women that they could stop being gay, lesbian, or bisexual through suppression and therapy.
But in 2010 she began to see things differently. At the time, Schneider did not share her feelings with her colleagues, but that same year, she was let go from her position as the director of the women’s ministry at Exodus International— a leading sexual orientation conversion organization that closed in 2013.
“I realized that no one was actually saying, ‘I’m straight,” she explains, referring to the post-treatment disposition of the Exodus clients she saw. “You can go through years of therapy and what are you left with—shame?”
Schneider, now 48, realized that simply leaving the movement wasn’t enough. On Monday, she officially apologized for her involvement in the anti-gay movement in an open letter published by GLAAD. And on Thursday she joined with eight other former leaders in the ex-gay movement to formally come out against the controversial practice in an open letter and support a widespread ban of the practice on minors.
“We know first-hand the terrible emotional and spiritual damage it can cause, especially for LGBT youth,” reads the letter, published by the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “We once believed that there was something morally wrong and psychologically ‘broken’ about being LGBT. We know better now.”
The former gay conversion leaders, including Schneider, Brad Allen, Darlene Bogle, Michael Bussee, Catherine Chapman, Jeremy Marks, Bill Prickett, Tim Rymel, and John Smid, are joining the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ #BornPerfect movement aimed at expanding state bans on conversion therapy.
“Conversion therapy reinforces internalized homophobia, anxiety, guilt and depression. It leads to self-loathing and emotional and psychological harm when change doesn’t happen,” the letter reads. “We now stand united in our conviction that conversion therapy is not “therapy,” but is instead both ineffective and harmful.
Currently, California and New Jersey are the only two states that have laws in place to ban the practice of using therapy to try to “cure” minors of homosexuality, though a Michigan lawmaker introduced a bill last week that would ban the practice on minors. In fact, the Texas Republican Party formally endorsed gay conversion treatments in their official platform in June. Yet, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and most leading professional medical and social science organizations oppose the therapy given its basis in the idea that homosexuality is “curable.”
“The idea that homosexuality is a mental disorder or that the emergence of same-sex attraction and orientation among some adolescents is in anyway abnormal or unhealthy has no support among any mainstream health and mental health professional organizations,” reads an American Psychological Association brochure titled “Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth.”
Michael Bussee, co-founder of Exodus International who has been speaking out against conversion therapy since 1989, says Thursday’s letter was the next step for leaders in the movement after Exodus closed. Now, he says their efforts should be focused on educating the public and ending the practice.
“There will be people who will be understandably upset, leaders can’t undo the harm they caused while they’re a part of these programs,” says Bussee who in 2007 publicly apologized for his work in the movement from 1976 until 1979. “All we can do know is say this harm needs to stop.”
After a little girl asked President Obama why there aren’t any women on U.S. currency, he said Wednesday that adding some female faces to our cash sounded like a “pretty good idea.” Almost immediately, all of our fantasies came alive on the web. What would, let’s say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg look like on a $20 bill? Where would we spend our Beyoncé $10 bill first? Will our grandmas give us a Susan B. Anthony $5 bill on our birthdays and tell us not to spend it all at once?
But then we remembered: because of the wage gap, a dollar for a woman is not the same as a dollar for a man. Although the true extent of the gender pay gap is widely disputed even among feminists, President Obama said in the 2014 State of the Union that women make only 77¢ for every dollar a man makes.
So here’s what U.S. currency would really look like, with women’s faces and women’s wages:
A Harriet Tubman $20 would only be worth $15.40.
A Sandra Day O’Connor $10 would only be worth $7.70.
A Rosa Parks $5 would only be worth $3.85.
A Gloria Steinem $1 would only be worth $0.77.
That just shrunk your 401(k).
What’s Prettier in Print:
We will hold an #AskTIME subscriber Q&A this Friday, August 1, at 1 p.m., with TIME foreign correspondent Simon Shuster, who has been covering the conflict in Ukraine. You can read his work here, his recent feature about being arrested by Ukrainian separatists here and his cover story on Russian President Vladimir Putin here.
You can submit your questions beforehand on Twitter using the #AskTIME hashtag or in the comments of this post. We depend on smart, interesting questions from readers.
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