1.Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) sided with military brass and not fellow Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), thwarting her effort to place military sex assault cases in the hands of an independent prosecutor.

Levin (D-Mich.) will strip a proposal by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) from the policy-setting Defense Authorization Act and replace it with a measure that instead requires senior military officers to review decisions when commanders refuse to prosecute a case, writes NBC News.

2. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) stunned House members with his resistance to a rape exception in his bill to nationally ban all abortions after 20 weeks. Franks told colleagues “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.”

In fact, experts estimate that at least 5% of all rapes result in pregnancy or about 32,000 rape pregnancies each year. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists calls the Francks’ claim “medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous.”

It was the Nazis who created this myth that women, who believe they will die, stop ovulating.

3. “Some girls enjoy being raped,” Israeli judge Nissim Yeshaya declared in the case of a 19-yeart-old Israeli girl who was raped by four Palestininians at age 13.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who described the remarks as “unfortunate” and “unacceptable.” He said he would withdraw his support for the judge’s appointment as the head of the Likud Party’s internal Court. Likewise, in a joint announcement Wednesday, Israel’s Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and the Supreme Court President Asher Grunis, said Yeshaya has officially resigned his post.xxxz

4. Komen’s former CEO Nancy Brinker announced recently that the organization will cancel half its breast cancer fundraising races in 2014, due to decreased participation. Fundraising has dropped precipitously since Komen tried to sever its ties with Planned Parenthood. It came to light this week that Brinker’s Komen salary is $684,000 a year. For an organization the size of Komen, $400,000 is the average CEO salary. Ken Berger, president and CEO of charity watchdog Charity Navigator told NBC: “This is more than the head of the Red Cross is making for an organization that is one-tenth the size of the Red Cross.”

5. The US fashion industry is only one high-profile business group that relies heavily on the service of unpaid internships. The decision of Judge William H. Pauley III that Fox Searchlight should have paid two interns on the movie ‘Black Swan’, because they were essentially regular employees should send chills through Seventh Avenue. The judge rules on Tuesday that Fox Searchlight Pictures had violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying production interns.

The judge forcefully called for following criteria that the Department of Labor has laid out for unpaid internships. via NYTimes