conservative cultures that place a high value on women s virginity. so you will hear of conservative parts of egypt where a traditional midwife will be in charge of showing or examining whether a bride-to-be is a virgin or not. and there are cases in which some egyptian families have gone to medical authorities to determine whether women are virgins or not in the way that we hear in latin america they have, and also as recently as 1976 in the u.k., where virginity tests were forced on women immigrating from india. so essentially what i m saying is, these are tests that are forced on women by a patriarchal authority to determine something as flimsy as a hyman. so it happens in egypt, in countries that are conservative. and at the end of the day, extremely humiliating to women. and mona, you bring up a good point. you talk about the fact that this was used as a form of sexual assault under the mubarak regime, but now you have the military in charge, and it is also being used in that wa
taking on islamic militants who have overrun a coastal town. it s a case eerily similar to the one against former imf chief dominique strauss-kahn. an egyptian businessman could be arraigned in new york today, charged with sexually assaulting a hotel housekeeper. 74-year-old mahmoud abdel salam omar is accused of groping a maid at the pierre luxury hotel. she says she went to the room at omar s request to drop off tissues. call it a bin laden bounce. strong performances on national security and international relations are driving president obama s overall poll numbers even higher. a new cnn opinion research survey finds that 54% approve of the job he is doing. that is up six percentage points since early april. when are you planning to announce you ll run for president? what do you think the odds are you ll run? are you going to run? that is the question. there is no public schedule, but sarah palin s bus tour seems to be headed for philadelphia today. now palin v