Harassment

AURORA, Colo. - On May 2, D'Avonte Meadows, a 6-year-old with an infectious grin and rambunctious streak, was suspended for three days from Sable Elementary in suburban Denver for crooning "[I'm] Sexy and I Know It" to a girl in lunch line. The school declared it sexual harassment and told his parents that, because D'Avonte sang the same song to the same girl before, he is a repeat offender. The news media pounced. And Stephanie Meadows, D'Avonte's 29-year-old mother, gave her bewildered son, a special needs student, a crash course in birds, bees and sexual boundaries.

A UCLA physician has filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the UC Board of Regents, alleging that he was routinely publicly humiliated and once was depicted as a gorilla being sodomized in a slide show presentation during a resident graduation event. In a 40-page complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, Dr. Christian Head, a head and neck surgeon, accused the university of failing to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation. "I am very discouraged," Head said in an interview.

A former business manager for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Leonard Cohen was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in Los Angeles County jail for violating restraining orders and sending Cohen and others thousands of harassing email and voice mail messages. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert C. Vanderet said Kelley Lynch, 55, showed no remorse for a "long, unrelenting barrage of harassing behavior. " "No person should be subject to that kind of targeting by anyone," Vanderet said.

SAN DIEGO —UC San Diego officials have reached an agreement with the federal government to end an investigation into racial tensions on campus that began after white students held an event laced with racial stereotypes during Black History Month. In a settlement announced Friday with the federal departments of Justice and Education, UC San Diego promised to maintain an Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination to receive, investigate and resolve complaints. Among other things, administrators will offer training sessions for staff and students on the university's policy against harassment, and will make more efforts to interest low-income and minority students in attending UC San Diego, where about 2% of the undergraduate student body is African American.

A Los Angeles County jury Thursday found the former business and personal manager of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen guilty of violating restraining orders, making harassing phone calls and sending thousands of harassing emails. Kelley Lynch, 55, showed no emotion as a court clerk read the verdict. She had pleaded not guilty to five counts of violating protective orders and two counts of repeatedly contacting Cohen with the intent to annoy or harass. Over several days, prosecutors played voicemails said to be from Lynch, who had a business and personal relationship with Cohen for about 17 years.

The woman's voice in telephone messages left for singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was low and steady. "You are a sick man....You are a thief....You are a common thief. " Prosecutors say the voice mails were from Cohen's former business manager, Kelley Lynch, 55, who is on trial for allegedly making harassing phone calls to Cohen, sending him, his attorneys and other people he knew thousands of emails and violating restraining orders. Lynch, sitting next to her attorneys, occasionally smiled as voice mails from 2011 were played for jurors in L.A. County Superior Court on Friday.

CAIRO — The ragged effigy of a fallen leader dangles from a lamppost over the remnants of a dying revolution. Those left from the uprising that swelled through Tahrir Square last year and brought down Hosni Mubarak live in tents, harassed and cursed, but mostly forgotten. TV cameras no longer perch on balconies; the great banners have been spooled away. The slogans of rebellion have been pressed onto T-shirts, and tourists, their expressions saying they somehow expected more, take pictures, trying to summon the images that captivated the world those many months ago. But the joy has turned sullen, and the nation has slipped back to the burdens of life while these defiant few still hunker with their placards and rage.

MOSCOW - The only thing missing from the scene was one of those heroic images of Lenin peering from a shop window, or perhaps a glimpse of the Soviet hammer and sickle fluttering over the nearby Kremlin. When the new U.S. ambassador to Russia arrived this week for a private meeting with a prominent human rights activist, he was confronted by a crew from a Kremlin-controlled television station that blocked his path and peppered him with questions. Uniformed men, tall wool military hats on their heads, were there too. And a burly civilian held up a sign with a pointed question for Ambassador Michael McFaul's host: "What is the price of the motherland today?"

The slaying of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, black 17-year-old, by a neighborhood watch volunteer has prompted a federal investigation and, on Thursday, the temporary ouster of the city's police chief. To many black residents of Sanford, the escalating national anger over how local police have handled the case reflects years of tension and frustration over their treatment by authorities. Murray Jess, for one, can't shake the memory of an evening two years ago, as he drove through Sanford at dusk, heading home after attending an art show with his fiance and his 14-year-old nephew.