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Today’s Lady News: Mackenzie Phillips Spurs 26% Increase In Rape Reports

Jessica WakemanSeptember 25, 2009
// news
  • The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network hotline has reported a 26 percent increase in phone calls since Mackenzie Phillips told Oprah that she had an incestuous relationship with her father, John Phillips. RAINN also said website traffic has increased 83 percent since Phillips’ appeared on “Oprah” earlier in the week to promote her book High On Arrival. A RAINN spokeswoman said it is common for rape reports to increase after such a public confession. [ABC News]
  • Police arrested a pilot for stalking his ex-girlfriend by hovering a low-flying airplane over her home. Several dozen residents of Concord, CA called to report that Tom Huey’s single engine aircraft was too close to a house, which turned out to belong to his ex. Huey is held on $155,000 bail on suspicion of felony stalking and violating a restraining order. [Fox News]
  • The percentage of homeless female veterans is growing at a higher rate than male veterans, according to advocates for the homeless, with roughly 740 former women of the military living on the streets. This number is extremely troubling because only 15 percent of the U.S. Army is female. [CNN]

  • Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg spent the night at a D.C. hospital as a precaution after she fell ill in her office yesterday. Get will soon, Justice! [NY Daily News]
  • New York State had the lowest divorce rate in the nation in 2008, with an only 8.4 percent of couples splitting up, while Nevada had the highest divorce rate in the country with 14 percent of couples splitting. [NY Post]
  • We all know world leaders roll deep! But did you know the leader of Libya travels with 40 to 50 female bodyguards? Yep, Moammar Khadafy says he arranged his cadre of gun-toting female guards to raise the status of women in the Arab world. [NY Daily News]—I’m no foreign policy scholar, but methinks this guy surrounds himself with 50 female body guards because he thinks that will make him less likely to be shot at.
  • Nelly Arcan, the author of Whore, an autobiographical novel about her adventures as a prostitute, was found dead last night in Montreal. Police believe her death was a suicide. [Jezebel]
  • BBC News has announced it seeks to hire a female newscaster over the age of 50 at some point in the next year after complaints that it only hires sexy young things to read the news. [Times of London]—Can you just imagine an American news channel doing something like this? Get this: the British government apparently has an “ageism czar” named Joan Bakewell, who said she raised the ageism issue with BBC higher-ups for awhile.
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