New England Sun-Times

(RTTNews) - A conservative Wisconsin lawmaker is pushing a bill that labels single parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse. In the bill (SB507), State senator Glenn Grothman calls for the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize that non-marital parenthood (including single parents and same-sex couples) is a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect. Grothman appeared on the Alan Colmes show on Friday to defend his bill, explaining: "There's been a huge change over the last 30 years and a lot of that change has been the choice of the women. […] I think a lot of women are adopting the single motherhood lifestyle because the government creates a situation in which it is almost preferred." 31 percent of children in Wisconsin are raised by a single parent, slightly less than the national average, according to a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Senate Bill 507 specifically requires "the Child Abuse and Negl...

BOSTON (CNN/WCVB) - A Massachusetts appeals court ruled Tuesday that Chukwudera Okoli must pay child support for twin girls, even though he and his wife had split before the babies were born by in vitro fertilization. "They can order anything I have to be given to them but that doesn't make me their father," said Okoli. Okoli expressed disappointment over a Massachusetts appeals court ruling ordering him to pay child support to twins conceived through in vitro fertilization with donated sperm and eggs. The twins were born in 2003 to his then wife, Blessing Okoli, but he claims that his ex-wife had filed for divorce when she began the process of in-vitro fertilization, so in his mind, they were not married. "I disagree because I never saw any divorce that was valid at a time that these children were conceived," said Collins Akukwe, Okoli's ex-wife's attorney. Akukwe also disagrees with Okoli's claims that he agreed to the IVF t...

BOSTON — A Boston man who survived being shot in the head has testified in the trial of two men charged with killing a 2-year-old boy and three other people during a drug robbery. Marcus Hurd, who was left paralyzed in the 2010 shooting, testified from his wheelchair Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court at the trial of Edward Washington and Dwayne Moore. During his testimony, Hurd never called anyone by name. He described going to a house on Sutton Street in Mattapan to buy marijuana. That’s when he became a victim of an alleged drug robbery turned violent. Under direct examination by Assistant District Attorney Edmond Zabin, Hurd described how he and four other people in the house were marched into the street by two armed gunmen. Hurd said he never saw their faces and the man closest to him was armed with a machine gun. “The gunman ordered me in the bushes, to lay in the bushes,” Hurd testified. “I did as he requested. … [Then,] he shot me in the back of the he...

President Barack Obama is scheduled to host Ghanaian President John Atta Mills at the White House in Washington Thursday. On his visit to Ghana in 2009, Obama said his trip was to highlight the West African nation’s democratic track record. Koku Anyidoho, communications director for the Ghanaian presidency said the two leaders are scheduled to discuss their shared objectives in advancing development, as well as the commercial and economic ties between Washington and Accra. “It is to further deepen the existing bilateral ties and bonds of friendship development agenda that has existed between Ghana and the United States,” said Anyidoho. During his visit to Ghana, Obama delivered a speech to parliament, where he underscored the need to build strong democratic institutions on the continent. He said Africa needs strong institutions, but not strong men. Anyidoho said, since his election, the Ghanaian leader continues to implement policies which, he said, ensure de...

By msnbc.com staff and news services A charity whose tactics have been criticized is making traction online with a video, "KONY 2012," that aims to bring down the leader of a cult-like rebel army in Africa. The 30-minute documentary, which has had more than 7 million YouTube downloads, was made by Invisible Children, a charity that wants Joseph Kony, head of the Lord's Resistance Army, to face trial in an international court on charges of using children as soldiers and other human rights crimes in Uganda. A recent Foreign Affairs report challenged the tactics used by the charity and several others, saying they had exaggerated the scale of Kony's crimes. The blog Visible Children, written by a Canadian college student, also questioned the value of Invisible Children's emphasis on filmmaking and social media advocacy and pointed out that it advocated western military intervention in Africa. Jedediah Jenkins, the charity's director of idea developmen...

Rome -- Hackers are claiming to have shut down the website for the Catholic Church Wednesday. Vatican.va, the official website of the Holy See, was not operational Wednesday afternoon. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi confirmed to CNN the site was hacked, but said it would be "fully operational" again shortly. Anonymous, a loosely-knit international hacking group, claimed responsibility for the church website shutdown. "Anonymous has now decided to lay siege to your site in response to the doctrines, liturgies and the precepts, absurd and anachronistic, that your organization, (which) is for profit, propagates and spreads worldwide," a statement in Italian on the blog "ufficiale di Anonymous Italia" read. "This is NOT intended to attack the Christian religion or against the faithful around the world, but to the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church and all its emanations," the statement added. A longtime follower of Ano...

Paul Carroll, an 86-year-old World War II veteran who has lived in the same Ohio town for four decades, was denied a chance to vote in the state’s primary contests today after a poll worker denied his form of identification, a recently-acquired photo ID from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The poll worker rejected the ID because it did not contain an address, as required by Ohio law. Carroll told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he got the ID from the VA after his driver’s license expired because he doesn’t drive anymore:  “My beef is that I had to pay a driver to take me up there because I don’t walk so well and have to use this cane and now I can’t even vote,” said Paul Carroll, 86, who has lived in Aurora nearly 40 years, running his own business, Carroll Tire, until 1975. “I had to stop driving, but I got the photo ID from the Veterans Affairs instead, just a month or so ago. You would think that would count for something. I went to war for this count...

(CBS News) Rep. Donald Payne, who has represented New Jersey for 23 years and who was the state's first African-American Representative, has died. He was 77. The congressman's Newark office confirmed his passing Tuesday, first reported by the Star-Ledger. Payne, who was planning to run for a 13th term, announced last month that he had colon cancer. First elected to Congress in 1988, the Democrat was former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and a member of the House Democratic Leadership Advisory Group. He was known for his advocacy of education and was active in foreign policy. Payne was instrumental in the fight against HIV/AIDS and malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa, and wrote the Sudan Peace Act. He was also a strong supporter of the Northern Ireland peace process. The Star Ledger reported that Payne's health took a turn for the worse last week after battling colon cancer for several months. He was hospitalized in Georgetown, then flown to S...