British couples will be able to include their mothers’ names on their marriage certificate under a change in law hailed as a step forward for women’s rights on Wednesday. Church of England leaders also praised the change, which passed into law this week, saying the previous system demeaned women and was out of step with modern times. Previously, marriage certificates in England and Wales only included space for fathers’ names. “We have finally achieved tangible progress towards the equal treatment of both parents,” said the Bishop of St Albans in a joint statement with Caroline Spelman, a lawmaker who works closely with the church and had campaigned for the change. “Only fathers’ names were formerly recorded when marriages were registered, a custom unchanged since 1837,” she said. “This clear and historic injustice reflected the time when children and wives were considered property of men and it is high time for…

The Pennsylvania Commission for Women held a Female Veterans Day ceremony yesterday in which two Lebanon County women were among those recognized for their military service and selfless sacrifice to Pennsylvania and the nation. Dana Boyer and Danielle Watkins were among the sixteen women total recognized, given Lebanon County an unusually high percentage of the overall list. (Needless to say, it helps that Fort Indiantown Gap lies within the County, the nation’s busiest National Guard training site.) “The 16 women who we honor today represent the patriotism and commitment to country that more than 60,000 Pennsylvania female veterans have demonstrated through their military service,” said Maj. Gen. Tony Carrelli, Pennsylvania’s adjutant general and head of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Dana Boyer “Major Dana Boyer enlisted as a private in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard in 1996. In 2004, she commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Quartermaster…

In the spring of 2018, Chinese diplomats strong-armed United Nations bureaucrats into blocking a prominent ethnic Uighur activist from entering U.N. headquarters on unsubstantiated charges of terrorism, but Kelley Eckels Currie wasn’t having it. Currie, then a senior appointee at the United Nations under U.S. President Donald Trump, tracked down the activist, Dolkun Isa, marched him to the U.N. entrance, and demanded he be allowed into the building for a conference on indigenous peoples. When U.N. security still barred his entry, Currie got Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, to take her case directly to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who granted Isa a grounds pass for the day. “If Mr. Isa were in fact an actual terrorist … do you seriously think we would be inviting him into this country and giving him free rein to travel about?” she would later tell a gathering…