Child Murderer Jailed for Life. [Belgium] Tuesday's sentencing ends a 3 1/2-month trial and a case that has haunted Belgium for nearly a decade. Dutroux, 47, was convicted on Thursday along with his former wife and another co-defendant of kidnapping and repeatedly raping six girls during the mid-1990s. He was also found guilty of murdering two of four girls who died after being sexually assaulted and tortured as captives in his house. His ex-wife, Michele Martin, was sentenced to 30 years in jail. On Thursday, she was convicted of allowing two 8-year-old girls to starve to death in a basement cell at her home, as well as involvement in the abductions. Another accomplice, Michel Lelievre, was sentenced to 25 years for helping in the kidnapping and imprisonment of the girls, and for drug trafficking. The fourth defendant, businessman Michel Nihoul, was convicted for trafficking drugs and people into Belgium but was acquitted of involvement in the abductions. Dutroux's arrest in 1996 provoked widespread national soul-searching amid fears that the country could be harboring one or more major pedophile networks with links to the upper echelons of Belgian life.

IET Launches Search for Britain's Best Young Female Engineer. [England] The Institution of Engineering and Technology has today launched the search for Britain's top young woman engineer. The Young Woman Engineer of the Year Award is the most prestigious honour of its kind in the UK. With only eight per cent of the UK's engineers being women, the judges are not only looking for candidates with exceptional skills but also those that have the ability to be a great ambassador for the profession and a role model for the next generation of engineers. The awards are open to women under the age of 30 with an appropriate engineering qualification such as an HNC, HND or a degree. Candidates must also be able to demonstrate their practical experience, which is considered of equal value to academic achievement. The winner of the Young Woman Engineer of the Year award will receive a cheque for GBP1,000 and a engraved trophy at a ceremony in London on 25th January 2007. The runner-up will receive the WES prize of GBP500 (WES - Women's Engineering Society). In addition to this, The Mary George Memorial Prize will be presented to a candidate who has completed her academic studies but has yet to obtain sufficient training and experience to enable her to qualify for the main award.

Female Jockeys Join Shergar Squad. [England] Two female jockeys will join their male colleagues for the first time in the Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup. Joint champion British apprentice Hayley Turner will be on the Great Britain and Ireland Team, while Canada's Emma-Jayne Wilson will be riding for the Rest of the World in the tournament at Ascot on August 12. Though the full line-up has yet to be confirmed, Turner is likely to be riding alongside the likes of Kieren Fallon, Jamie Spencer, Mick Kinane and Kevin Darley. Wilson will be alongside Frankie Dettori, Australian star Glen Boss, the multiple Hong Kong champion Doug Whyte, Japanese ace Yuichi Fukanaga and French star Gerald Mosse. Wilson, 24 from Brampton, Ontario, rode 180 winners last year, notching over Can 6.3 million in total prize money. "The 2006 Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup is going to be a ground-breaking competition, with two young female Flat jockeys put under the spotlight for the first time in this country alongside many of the world's greatest male riders," said Shergar Cup event manager Alistair Haggis.  

The Big Question: Should Women Players Get Paid as Much as Men at Wimbledon? [England]  How much less will the women earn than the men at this year's Wimbledon? The prize money at Wimbledon this year is higher than at any other tournament in world tennis. The total pot is £10,378,710, an increase of 2.9 per cent on last year. The total prize fund for the women's singles is £4,446,490 (3.4 per cent up on last year), while the men will be competing for £5,197,440 (a 3.3 per cent increase).  

Lewd Office E-Mails To Constitute Sexual Harassment. [England] Employees who send lewd jokes around the office by e-mail or text message could land their companies with unlimited compensation payments for sexual harassment. New advice from the Equal Opportunities Commission states that even when an offensive e-mail is not sent directly to a colleague, but is circu- lated to others in the same workplace, it can constitute harassment. So too can viewing pornographic images on a computer screen next to a colleague who finds them offensive. Unacceptable e-mail behaviour ranges from the more crude practice of circulating e-mails or text messages with pornographic attachments to the more insidious one of sending e-mails laden with sexual innuendo or commenting on a colleague’s appearance.

Raunch: Is It Liberating or Destroying Women? [England] An old saying among Sixties feminists was that when there were as many women in prison as men, only then would we know we were truly equal. What we meant was that women should feel as free to join the criminal classes as well as the ranks of lawyers, doctors and bankers on whom we set our sights. It was a wonky idea, but you get the meaning. Women would equal men in all things. Gloriously, it didn't happen. Women remained true to their authentic selves and, for the most part, stayed out of jail. A case of genuine gender difference – women are less violent and criminal than men - was triumphantly demonstrated. Not so, it seems, in the case of their sexuality. We must all be aware of the hideous and distorted culture of raunchiness that is deluging young women with false values and aspirations.

Female Presence in Boardrooms Shows Little Improvement. [EU] The number of women on the boards of Europe's top companies is stagnating, with Portugal claiming the dubious honour of being the only country not to have a woman on the board of any of the nation's companies. Women occupy just 8.5% of the 4,500 corporate boardroom seats available, up by only a fraction on 2004, according to a new study by the European Professional Women's Network. The exceptions are the Scandinavian countries, which, through proactive policies and quotas, are surging ahead.  Norway has strengthened its lead with 28.8% (up from 22%) board seats accounted for by women, after its government introduced a new law introducing quotas of 45% for publicly listed companies. Sweden (22.8%), Finland (20%) and Denmark (17.9%) are close behind. The rest of Europe trails these countries, although the number of companies with at least one woman on the board has increased over the past two years (from 62% to 67.8%).

Frenchwoman Windsurfs Across Indian Ocean. [France] Frenchwoman Raphaela le Gouvello became the first person to windsurf across the Indian Ocean on Thursday after spending 60 days at sea on a specially designed 7-metre (23-foot) board. Le Gouvello, 46, set out from Exmouth in northwestern Australia on April 9 and windsurfed some 6,500 km to get to the French island of La Reunion. The official time for the voyage was 60 days, two hours and one minute. She fell into the sea on a number of occasions during the crossing and her board capsized twice, but an accompanying team escorting her across the ocean prevented serious mishap. "I didn't have any major problems on a physical level," she told reporters after reaching La Reunion. She has previously completed solo crossings of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  

For Gals Who Get No Kick From the Game. [France] Some women jam the remote control. Some release rage by shopping. But with the World Cup fast approaching, entrepreneurs have another strategy. For soccer widows facing temporary abandonment by their sports-obsessed partners, companies are poised to offer sympathy at a price. There's the "lifesaving Kettering Park Hotel & Spa" in Northamptonshire, England, that promises Champagne and canapés on arrival for £99, or $185, a night, or the "Ladies Power Weekend" in Basel, Switzerland, at a four-star hotel starting at 113 Swiss francs, or $93, a night. EasyJet, the cut-rate airline, is promoting women-only World Cup getaways to the Mediterranean island of Gozo, far from Germany's soccer fields. In England, the Grand Hotel Brighton intends to bar soccer from its Victoria Lounge for afternoon tea, while the Linthwaite House Hotel in the Lake District promises a free glass of Champagne in apology for any staff member who dares to blurt the "f- word": football. These public relations ploys have proved effective, but advertising media buyers and sports research groups say they overlook a rising trend: more women are watching major sporting events. "When you look at women today, they may not play football, but they like to speak and talk about football stars as people," said Lucien Boyer, chief executive officer of Havas Sports, a sports communications agency based in Paris. "They like to consider the football players as part of their favorite stars and a reference for fashion and lifestyle like British player David Beckham."

Coalition Tackles Falling Birth Rate. [Germany] At a time when many European countries are struggling to reverse falling birth rates, Germany's coalition government agreed Wednesday on a financial package that will compensate professional women to take a year's leave to have children and then return to work. The decision, a major break with traditional family policy, represented a victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democrat family minister, Ursula von der Leyen. Both have been fighting hard to modernize their conservative bloc, which until now wanted even educated women to stay at home and depend on the man as the breadwinner. The move was strongly supported by Merkel's coalition partners, the Social Democrats, who said it marked just the beginning of family reform. At present, 30 percent of German working women are childless, according to Family Ministry statistics, and Germany lags far behind its European neighbors in terms of birth rate.

Once Banned From Soccer, Women Stake Their Claim at World Cup. [Germany] They crowd stadiums and street festivals, rearrange their lives around game schedules. Germany's female chancellor is leading the cheers from the VIP section. It's a long way from the days when soccer was strictly men's business, when female spectators were an oddity. The German soccer federation only lifted a ban on women in the sport in 1970. Three years later, the nation's first female TV sports anchor was booed off the national stage by predominantly male viewers for getting the name of a Bundesliga team wrong. The decades-long exclusion of female fans and players bred a backslapping, violence-prone male soccer culture that put off even more women, said psychologist Ursula Kessels of the Freie UniversitaetBerlin. But once the dam was breached, the women came to the sport in huge numbers. Until 1970, the national soccer federation (DFB) banned female teams. Federation chiefs argued that the sport was too aggressive for women. During the ban, a secret soccer culture flourished, with women organizing teams and even holding unofficial international games, said Juergen Nendza, co-curator of an exhibit on women in soccer. In 1957, when the city of Munich provided a soccer field for such a tournament, it received an angry letter from the federation that it had ''undermined the federation's fight against ladies' soccer,'' according to the researcher. Yet, by the late 1960s, fueled by the women's and students' movements, more than 40,000 women played soccer in Germany, he said. Under growing popular pressure, the federation lifted the ban. Still, many men resisted the women's incursion into what they felt was their turf.

Women Warned Over Pension Provision. [Ireland] Women are more vulnerable to poverty in their later years, it emerged today. A longer life expectancy, retirement at 65, fragmented careers and generally lower wages all contribute to the problem, according to the Pensions Board. A study also found almost 80% of women feel they won’t be able to survive on a state pension. But despite this pensions coverage for the female workforce stands at 47.5%, compared to 54.2% for men. Women attending the Woman’s World Show at the RDS will this week be targeted by the Pensions Board to encourage them to start planning for their financial independence in retirement. “Our research tells us that 79% of women don’t feel that they will be able to survive on the state pension of 193.30 euro per week when they retire,” said Mary Hutch, of the Pensions Board. “The reality is that if you start a pension early, you won’t have to contribute huge amounts over the course of your working life to provide you with a comfortable retirement. However if you ignore the issue and start a pension late in life, you’ll have to contribute significant amounts which will impact on your lifestyle."

Fathers to Pay the Costs for Stressed-Out Pregnant Women. [Netherlands] New research by a Dutch Professor shows that pregnant women are putting the lives of their unborn babies at risk if they work more than 32 hours each week in stressful jobs. The research project, carried out by Professor Gouke Bonsel, involved 7000 expectant mothers and found babies born to stressed-out mums were up to 5 ounces lighter than the average birth weight. Professor Bonsel, who set up the Amsterdam Born Children and their Development research group, said: "Women with high-stress jobs would do better to work no more than 24 hours from the beginning of pregnancy". The findings would mean women should only work a 3-day week in the run up to having a baby something that would bound to have an affect on the family income. The survey also found that pregnant women working long hours were also revealed as having an increased risk of developing pre-eclampsia, a serious complication caused by a defect in the placenta that restricts blood flow to the baby.

Women Paid Less in Ex-Communist World. [Russia] The economic security of women in Central and Eastern Europe has declined since communism collapsed in those countries, a United Nations study says. Women in former Eastern Bloc countries are paid significantly less no matter what their occupation in both the public and private sectors, even though across the region they are -- on average -- better educated than men. The study, "The Story Behind the Numbers: Women and Employment in Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Commonwealth of Independent States," was released Tuesday by the U.N. Development Fund for Women. While statistics show the transition has resulted in economic hardship for both sexes, with living standards and work conditions being "leveled down" for most people, the study does point to an increase in gender inequality and launched possible longer-term deterioration in women's situations relative to that of men. Women in the region now comprise a larger share of public sector employees than they did in the early years of the transition, while men are much more likely to work in the private sphere. Public jobs are generally of low status and underpaid, the report notes. "Limited measures of gender inequality presented outside the broader socio-economic context could lead to inaccurate conclusions about the real situation women are facing, masking economic hardship, discrimination and declining living standards for many," said Osnat Lubrani, the regional program director of UNIFEM.

Scottish Women Most Likely to Assault Their Boyfriends. [Scotland] Scottish women are among the most likely to assault their boyfriends, according to figures released today. A survey of more than 6,000 women at 36 Universities across Europe found more than a third of Scots students had caused minor injuries to their partner. The rise in violent behaviour among women is being blamed on rising drug and alcohol use.

Female Genital Mutilation Trial Opens. [Sweden] A man of Somali origin has gone on trial here for forcing his 13 year old daughter to undergo genital mutilation, sometimes called female circumcision. It’s the first case since a law banning the procedure went into effect in 1982. Many immigrant families circumvented the law by having operations done abroad. The legislation was amended in 1999 to cover mutilations carried out outside the country. Last year the 41 year old man took his children to Somalia, where he allegedly held his daughter down while her clitoris was cut off. He has denied the charges, arguing that someone else must have forced his daughter to have the operation.