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From our fabulous News Hawks!

Have you seen a TG-related news story online or in your local paper? Send it in to TGF and become a News Hawk! Don't assume we know everything that's out there, because you are our eyes and ears. To file a story, send it in to Cindy.



Village Rejects TS Mayor

Contributed by Jodie Miller
via Associated Press
November 29, 1998

QUELLENDORF, Germany -- Residents of the eastern German village of Quellendorf voted to dismiss their mayor Sunday after he announced he was becoming a woman.

Norbert Lindner, 40, was elected to a seven-year term in 1996 but shocked many villagers last summer when he began wearing women's clothes and calling himself Michaela.


Lindner (right) with a visiting TS
who came to show support

Lindner's celebrity has since spread far beyond the village of 1,048 people, where transsexuals from Germany and France converged Sunday to show support for the mayor.

Quellendorf's citizens voted to oust Lindner, despite his appeal for tolerance.

"I think society as a whole has some catching up to do,'' he told reporters.

Lindner, a father of two children whose wife has left him, said he plans to start sex change surgery Thursday. A member of the reformed East German communists, he had said he would leave Germany if voted out of office.



TS's Offered Museum Jobs

Contributed by Stephanie Louise Gray
via Electric Telegraph
November 28, 1998

TRANSSEXUALS are being offered training as museum staff by the city of Bologna with the Italian government's blessing, but to the dismay of local clergy.

Marcella Di Folco, head of Italy's Transsexual Identity Movement (MIT) hailed the course, funded by the European Union, as a "futuristic project". He said it would "restore dignity and rights to people who have them only as words".

The intention is to give transsexuals, who are synonymous with prostitution in Italy, other chances of employment. Later, there will be courses for immigrant women, gypsy women, battered women and lesbians. Laura Balbo, Italy's Minister for Equal Opportunities said: "Finally the approach to equal opportunities is being widened to include other walks of life."

But Padre Oreste Benzi, a priest who works with the disadvantaged, called it an absurd initiative that "stank of demagogy". He said: "A course like this, which is not for everyone but is reserved for 16 'lucky' ones, risks being a boomerang. Instead of integrating them, it will create discrimination. Transsexuals instead should be considered normal citizens."



Guard Fights Firing

Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
via PA News
November 25, 1998

A prison custody officer who claimed he was forced to resign when bosses found he was a transvestite today had a claim for constructive dismissal adjourned at an industrial tribunal. Anthony Jensen-Read of Wolverhampton, West Midlands, claims managers at private jail company Premier Prisons regarded him as an "embarrassmentt" and took an opportunity to "get rid of him". Mr Jensen-Read's cross-dressing habit became known to them when he appeared in a feature in a local newspaper about transvestites. Today a hearing in Birmingham was adjourned when Mr Jensen-Read's solicitor Dean Morris made an application to call two extra witnesses. Tribunal chairman David Hewitt granted the application and the hearing was adjourned until February 10.



TG Bank Robber Busted

Contributed by Rachelle Austin Elizabeth Parker
via NewsPlanet
November 20, 1998

After more than 30 bank robberies in four provinces totaling some $80,000 over two years, police in Canada believe they've caught the crook variously known as the Bookworm Bandit, the Bomb Bandit and the Unisex Bandit. As the last one might imply, the suspect is at least a cross-dresser and possibly has undergone sex reassignment surgery. The ability to change gender presentation had allowed the robber to seemingly vanish when escaping and contributed to confusing eyewitness reports. But that may have all come to an end on November 18 with a dramatic high-speed chase and the arrest of Christine White, a.k.a. Anatoli Ivan Misura, an Edmonton resident. One report suggests that the robberies were intended to pay for sex reassignment surgery; another says that White had the surgery before the robberies began.

The Bookworm Bandit nickname came from writing demands for cash inside hardcover books and displaying them to tellers; the Bomb Bandit title came from leaving behind ticking bags the robber claimed were bombs, although none actually were. After a mid-morning hit on the Bank of Nova Scotia in Belleville that netted $6,400 on November 18, a tow truck driver spotted the suspect -- apparently a white-haired older man -- running through the bank parking lot with a black attache in one hand and the other hand buried under his coat. The tow truck driver tailed the suspect while calling police on his radio. Police cars joined the chase within minutes, in a race that reached speeds of 140 km/hr. The suspect twice fired at police with what was taken to be a semi-automatic 8 mm. handgun, but later turned out to be a starter's pistol which fired blanks.

Finally, she spun out on a hairpin curve and landed in a ditch, sustaining minor injuries. Although she dropped her weapon when ordered by police, police apprehended her in what they called a "high-risk take-down."

She was later taken for medical treatment.

Inside the suspect's car, registered in Alberta, police found $20,000 in cash, "a number of weapons and a considerable amount of clothing," including three pairs of spectacles. An anonymous informant told one source that there were hormone pills in the car as well. White was charged with one count of armed robbery for the Belleville hit, but is expected to be charged in the coming week for robberies in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. Police in Ontario had thought for some time that their suspect was "commuting" from the western part of the country to commit the robberies in their area, and photos from security cameras at victimized banks had already been widely distributed through both police agencies and the Canadian Bankers' Association for about a year.



Gene Therapy Can Help Baldness

Contributed by Jodie Miller
via CNN
November 24,1998

CHICAGO -- Researchers at the University of Chicago's Howard Hughes Medical Center have discovered a new approach to treat baldness -- gene therapy.

Scientists were able to successfully transform skin cells into hair follicles in lab mice through the introduction of a so-called messenger molecule containing the protein beta catenin.

"We've always been told that you're born with a fixed number of hair follicles and that you can never grow them again in adult life," said Angela Christiano of Columbia University. "This study would suggest we now we have the capability to do that."

Similar experiments on humans, however, are not likely in the near future. The scientists have created some very hairy lab mice, but still don't understand how to contain the hair follicle growth process.

"You can actually go too far and cause the cells to grow too much," said University of Chicago researcher Elaine Fuchs. She warned that unchecked cell growth could lead to the development of tumors.

"We still need to understand how this molecule is regulated inside the cell of the developing hair follicle to really take it to the level of clinical application," she added.

About 50 percent of men over 50 experience some type of baldness, although different types can affect women and children as well.



Body Parts
May Cause Sex Differences

Contributed by Rose Prescott
via the New Scientist
November 14,1998

What makes behavior typically male or female? It may have more to do with body parts than brains, says a scientist in the US who has shown that when you transplant a female crab's claw onto a male, the male uses it in a distinctly feminine way.

In many animal species, males and females often use their body parts in different ways. For instance, male and female marsh fiddler crabs (Uca pugilator) have very different claws. Females have two feeding claws, equipped with chemical receptors that detect nutrients in the soil. Males have only one feeding claw, which is less sensitive than the female's.

The male crab's second claw is much larger than its feeding claw, and is sensitive to pressure and touch but not to chemical stimulation. Males often wave this "major" claw seductively at potential mates or use it to defend themselves when threatened by other male crabs.

Marc Weissburg, a biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, says the reasons for these kinds of behavioral differences have been unclear. Is it the fact that males and females have different kinds of sensors in their claws? Or could it be because the male and female brains that control the organs are different?

To find out, Weissburg replaced a male's major claw with the feeding claw from a mature female crab. He found that the male then used the claw in the same way as a female. Instead of waving and fighting with it, the crab used the claw to probe for food in the sediment. "The transplant maintains its original function," says Weissburg.

What was especially surprising was that the transplanted claw seemed to "re- educate" part of the male fiddler crab's brain. Weissburg told this week's meeting that a brain region that the crab had formerly used to process touch, vibration and pressure had somehow been reconfigured to process chemical signals from soil. "We can evoke chemo-sensory processing by stimulating the claw," he says. What's more, the male could sense nutrients better than usual - almost as well as a female.

Weissburg says he plans to transplant a male's major claw onto a female next summer. He adds that it has been known for years that women tend to have a keener sense of smell than men. He speculates that this is thanks to the tissue in women's noses, rather than better processing of smell signals in the brain. "A large part of it may be what kind of nose you've got, not what kind of brain," says Weissburg.



US to Pursue Gay Bias Complaints

Contributed by Jodie Miller
via Washington Blade
November 25,1998

WASHINGTON -- The Washington Blade reports the U.S. Justice Department announced recently it will attempt to use current federal civil rights law to take legal action against businesses and state and local governments that engage in employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Legal observers quoted by the Blade said the Justice Department's decision was prompted by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, such as a recent case involving same-sex sexual harassment, that have expanded the legal reach of Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the U.S. Civil Rights Act Amendments of 1972.

Justice Department attorney Aaron Schuham told the newspaper that existing laws banning gender-based discrimination could in theory be applied to certain cases of anti-gay discrimination. The legal impact of using this strategy to pursue gay bias cases will not be known until the courts hear arguments and issue their judgements.

Schuham, who works in the Justice Department's civil rights division, said high-level officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Bill Lann Lee, approved the decision to try and use existing civil rights laws to prosecute suspected cases of anti-gay bias.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Helen Norton, told the Blade the Justice Department initiative would not be applicable in cases where anti-gay bias was the sole motive in a discrimination complaint. But if a transgendered person was discriminated against for "gender non conformity," for example, that could serve as the basis for a complaint based on sex discrimination, she said.

Legal scholars say pursuing the "gender non-conformity" or "sex stereotyping" line could be useful for men who suffer employment discrimination for being perceived as "too feminine" and women who are similarly victimized for being perceived as "too masculine."

Justice Department officials credit groups such as the transgender organization Gender PAC and legal groups including the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights for helping to codify the new policy.

The Justice Department is prepared to link sexual orientation discrimination and sex discrimination by citing the Supreme Court's recent decision in Oncale v. Sundowner. That decision established that same-sex sexual harassment is illegal under current sexual harassment law.

The 1989 Supreme Court decision in Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse will also be cited for precedent. In that case a woman was denied a partnership in the Price Waterhouse accounting firm because her superiors felt she dressed and behaved in too masculine a manner. The court found such gender role discrimination and gender stereotyping a violation of Title VII as a form of sex discrimination.

Schuham said civil rights attorney general Lee put the policy change into place "several months ago," although no formal announcement of the change was made. "It's a very serious commitment that has been directed by everyone from Janet Reno all the way down," Schuham was quoted as saying. "We can really bring our resources to bear on this."

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