Free Republic

In the village of Novopokrovka of the Tumen region of Russia, a strange phenomenon has been discovered. A tom-cat called Barsik has been looking after kittens on his own. But that's not all. The strangest thing is that the heroic father "breast-feeds" them. When Barsik's "girlfriend" died, his owners decided to take the kittens. When the kittens were brought, Barsick accepted them and began to feed them right away. And the cat’s masters are totally sure that Barsik has milk. Veterinarians have read of these kinds of cases in special literature but they have never seen anything like that in...

It's the first question new parents hear: girl or boy? But hundreds of babies are born each year where the gender isn't clear. Prompt surgery to assign one was once the norm. But gender depends on more than anatomy or hormones. It also seems to stem from the very earliest brain development, researchers said Friday in urging doctors to hold off on the knife until children can determine their own sex. "To discover who or what a child is ... you have to ask them," Dr. William Reiner of the Oklahoma University Health Science Center told a meeting of the...

Doctors urged not to operate on infants with unclear gender It’s the first question new parents hear: girl or boy? But hundreds of babies are born each year where the gender isn’t clear. Prompt surgery to assign one was once the norm. But gender depends on more than anatomy or hormones. It also seems to stem from the very earliest brain development, researchers said Friday in urging doctors to hold off on the knife until children can determine their own sex. “To discover who or what a child is ... you have to ask them,” Dr. William Reiner of the...

There may be all of two people in America that believe John Kerry has a coherent strategy in Iraq. There are 25 million people in Iraq who know George Bush does. But when John Kerry begins to attack the leader of one of our infant allies you have to wonder if he may not change the minds of those who still support him. Yesterday in one of the strangest turns in foreign relations, Kerry went on the attack against the newly democratically chosen leader of Iraq - Iyad Allawi. And what was the reason for this scurrilous verbal drilling? Simply...

FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- A golfer who was born a hermaphrodite was banned from a woman's tournament because her birth certificate lists her gender as male. Instead, 40-year-old Danielle Swope will play in Saturday's qualifier for the Fort Wayne Men's City Tournament. "I have respect for the men for at least giving me the opportunity to play. The women I don't have any respect for," Swope said in The Journal Gazette on Sunday. Swope said she was born in Meridian, Miss., with both male and female reproductive organs and underwent gender-reassignment operations to become completely female. But her Mississippi birth...

FIVE adult sisters who have spent their lives longing to “correct” their sexual identities are having operations to become men in Saudi Arabia. But the doctor carrying out the surgery insisted he was not performing sex-change operations, which are forbidden in the Islamic kingdom. “It’s a sex correction, not a sex change,” Yasser Jamal told The Times. “They were born with the appearance of females but their chromosomes are male and their gonads are male. Just their external organs showed as female.” Their condition was known as “male pseudo hermaphrodite”, he said. The term refers to someone born with male...

Another shoplifting charge has surfaced against freshly fired Luzerne County Human Resources Director Kimberli Weiland, this one local and during the time she worked for the county. A private criminal complaint filed by the Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Wilkes-Barre Township accuses Weiland of stealing three boxes of sweetener, lettuce, a gift bag and stickers valued at $15.71. According to papers filed with a district justice: Weiland entered the grocery portion of Wal-Mart at about 6:30 p.m. May 22, took a brown paper bag off a shelf and put a bag of coleslaw inside. She placed three boxes of sweetener, lettuce and...