Hmmm....

Paternity Test Ordered in Duke Case:

A judge Friday ordered a paternity test on a baby expected by the woman who has accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape. But both the district attorney and the defense rejected any possibility that one of the men is the father.

News of the accuser's pregnancy comes roughly nine months after the team party where she says she was raped.

District Attorney Mike Nifong said the woman's baby is due in the first week of February.

The defense asked for the paternity test. At the same time, defense attorney Joseph Cheshire said it is an "absolute impossibility" that she got pregnant during the alleged attack.

Cheshire said the woman was given a pregnancy test immediately after reporting she was raped — and it was negative — and she took an emergency contraceptive. In addition, DNA tests found no genetic material from any Duke lacrosse team members on the woman or her clothes.

A person familiar with the case, speaking to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the pregnancy late Thursday but had no information about the father.

Also Friday, a lab director admitted in court that after an agreement with Nifong, he violated his own procedures and withheld results showing none of the players' DNA was found on or in the woman's body.

Dr. Brian Meehan, lab director at DNA Security Inc., said he and Nifong agreed to include only DNA matches in the report on his testing results. The report released in May omitted information about people the DNA tests excluded, including the fact that no genetic material from any member of the lacrosse team was among that from several males found in the accuser's underwear and body.

"We are extremely troubled by that," Cheshire said. The full testing results, showing the exclusions, were disclosed through a defense request in October. They did not become public until Wednesday.

Meehan said that he had been concerned about sensitive, private information becoming public and that the omission was not an attempt to withhold information.

"I was just trying to do the right thing," he said.

The defense attorneys also asked in Friday's hearing that the trial, which probably will not begin until spring, be moved outside of Durham County because publicity may have biased potential jurors.

Defense attorneys have stressed for months that no sex occurred at the party and have cited DNA testing that found genetic material from several males in the accuser's body and her underwear — but none from any member of the lacrosse team.

The woman has said the three men raped her in a bathroom at a March 13 team party where she had been hired to perform as a stripper. Defense attorneys have said for months that no sex occurred at the party.

The defense claimed in court papers that the woman misidentified her alleged attackers in a photo lineup that was "an incoherent mass of contradiction and error." They want the judge to bar prosecutors from using the photo lineup at their clients' trial and prevent the accuser from identifying the players from the witness stand.

The judge set a Feb. 5 hearing on that request and the bid to move the trial.

Pakistani Rape Victim gets Honour in US

NEW YORK - A Pakistani activist who was gang-raped at the orders of a tribal council was honored by Glamour Magazine as Woman of the Year for her fight against oppression in her homeland. Mukhtar Mai braved social stigma by going public with her 2002 assault, and used the international attention she attracted to set up a girls school in her rural community.

This award is a victory for poor women; it's a victory for all women," Mai said at the Wednesday night Lincoln Center ceremony after actress Brooke Shields presented her award.

She said her motto is: "End oppression with education." Mia, 36, said she plans to donate $5,000 of her $20,000 prize to victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed more than 70,000 people in Pakistan. The rest of the money will help her establish schools and a women's crisis center.

Mai already has set up a school for girls. She said she considers schooling equally important for boys, because they must learn that under Islam, and under the law, women have the same rights to be left alone as they do.

Mai was ordered raped in 2002 by a council of elders in Meerwala*, her home village in eastern Punjab province, as punishment for her 13-year-old brother's alleged affair with a woman from a higher caste. Mai and her family say the boy had been sexually assaulted by members of the woman's family.

In Pakistan, using rape to restore a family's honor is commonplace. The victim often kills herself in shame. But Mai's outcry drew international attention and landed her alleged attackers in the national courts of Pakistan. A trial court in 2002 sentenced six men to death and acquitted eight others in Mai's rape. In March, the High Court in Punjab province acquitted five of the men and reduced the death sentence of the sixth to life in prison.

After an emotional appeal by Mai, the acquittals were overturned in June and the 13 men who had been released were arrested again. They remain in jail while Pakistan's Supreme Court considers the case.