Archive for the ‘Health & Children’ Category
Friday, March 19th, 2010
19/3/10
DNA tests have allowed a judge in Miami to reunite a baby rescued from the rubble of the earthquake in Haiti with her parents. Aid workers, meanwhile, say the 33 children illegally taken by US missionaries in the aftermath of the quake have been reunited with their families. The baby was two months old when she was pulled alive from the ruins in Port-au-Prince, four days after the quake in which 220,000 people died. An American rescue team believed baby Jenny was an orphan and flew her to the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami for treatment. She was dubbed ”the miracle baby” after surviving for so long without milk or water. DNA tests proved she was the daughter of Nadine Devilme and Junior Alexis, who lost everything in the earthquake on January 12.
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Tags: Christianity, Haiti, Human Rights, USA
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Friday, March 19th, 2010
Roger Boyes; 19/3/10
The most famous choir in the world has been caught up in the wave of paedophile scandals sweeping Germany and Austria, with eight former choristers denouncing their teachers in the past few days. An open letter from the management of the Vienna Boys’ Choir to parents expressed regret at the incidents, which were recounted by former singers now aged between 40 and 70. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, called yesterday for truth and clarity in investigating paedophile abuse not only in church institutions but everywhere within the educational system. “We all agree that sexual abuse against children is a despicable crime,” she told parliament. So far about 300 claims of sexual abuse have been made by former pupils of German church schools and of non-denominational boarding schools, which have upset Church-State relations.
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Tags: Christianity, Germany, Pedophilia
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Thursday, March 18th, 2010
Christopher Hitchens; 18/3/10
On March 10, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, the Reverend Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, and that “when one speaks of `the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true, including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia”. This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation. Concerning the most recent revelations about the steady complicity of the Vatican in the ongoing, indeed endless, scandal of child rape, a few days later a spokesman for the Holy See made a concession in the guise of a denial. It was clear, said the Reverend Federico Lombardi, that an attempt was being made “to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse”. He went on to say that “those efforts have failed”. He was wrong twice. In the first place, nobody has had to strive to find such evidence: it has surfaced, as it was bound to do. In the second place, this extension of the awful scandal to the top-most level of the Roman Catholic Church has only just begun.
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Tags: Christianity, Pedophilia
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Monday, March 15th, 2010
15/3/10; (4 Items)
The Vatican is fighting attempts to link Pope Benedict XVI to child sex abuse in a counter-offensive against widening pedophilia scandals. “It is clearly evident that in the past few days there are some who have sought – with a dogged focus on Regensburg and Munich – elements to personally implicate the Holy Father in questions of abuse,” spokesman Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio over the weekend. “It is clear that these efforts have failed.” Earlier, the Pope’s former diocese of Munich had confirmed a report that, as an archbishop in 1980, he approved housing for a priest who had been accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. Six years later, the priest was given a suspended sentence for child sex offences. The archdiocese said he still worked in Bavaria, with no known repeat violations.
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Tags: Christianity, Pedophilia
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Sian Powell; 13/3/08;
A laugh rings out; one of the young women leans over, grinning, and whacks her neighbour on the arm. There are eight or 10 friends here in the Can Do bar in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai, sitting in easy camaraderie around a big table in an open-air back room. Eating noodles, teasing, gossiping – they are clearly enjoying themselves, at ease with one another, relaxed. These women could be students, or colleagues, or factory workers on a break.
Instead, they are all prostitutes – forced by economic necessity and a lack of opportunity to make a living selling sex to men. Thailand has limited social welfare provisions and life is hard for the poor, especially refugees.
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Tags: Sex Trade, Thailand, Womens Rights
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Michael Duffy’ 13/3/10;
50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology, by Scott Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio and Barry Beyerstein (Wiley-Blackwell, $37.95), is out now.
The Happiness and Its Causes conference is on May 5-6 at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre. Most of us like to think we have a pretty good idea how others behave. It’s one of those basic adult skills, based on self- knowledge, our observation of others and the inherited wisdom of the ages. Everyone knows that opposites attract and if you spare the rod you’ll spoil the child.
- Understanding human behaviour: how hard can this be?
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Tags: Gender, health
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
13/3/10
The head of Germany’s Roman Catholic Church has issued a new apology to victims of pedophile priests and announced the creation of a watchdog to deal with the abuse issue. “I want to repeat here in Rome the apology that I made two weeks ago,” Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg told a news conference in the Vatican after meeting Pope Benedict XVI yesterday. Zollitsch said the Pope had praised “the steps taken by the German Bishops Conference (including) the naming of a bishop as a special counsel” who would act as a watchdog on the issue of the sexual abuse of children. Pedophile priest scandals have swept Germany since late January, one coming close to the Pontiff’s brother Georg Ratzinger, a former choirmaster.
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Tags: Christianity, Germany, Pedohilia
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Justine Ferrari; 13/3/10
Almost half the crisis funding intended to raise literacy and numeracy standards for struggling students has been distributed among NSW, Victoria and the ACT, which have the highest test rates in the nation, with 95 per cent of their students meeting minimum benchmarks. But the Northern Territory, which has the lowest literacy and numeracy rates in the nation, with about one-third of its students scoring below standard on national tests, received a fraction of the money provided under the $540m national partnership between the federal, state and territory governments. The Territory received $4.5m in the first round of funding under the national partnership to improve literacy and numeracy results in 19 schools, and stands to gain a further $10.5m in reward funding if the performance of its students improves in the national tests.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Tony Koch; 13/3/10; (2 Items)
The policeman who was charged with manslaughter over the death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee yesterday apologised to the Aborigine’s family. Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, appearing at the reconvened inquest into Doomadgee’s 2004 death in north Queensland, said he was sorry for the “angst” of the islander’s partner and loved ones. As Doomadgee’s de facto wife, Tracey Twaddle, his sister Valmae Aplin and other relatives looked on, Sergeant Hurley expressed sympathy to them for the first time. “There is nothing further I can say in regard to evidence but I have always wanted to say to Tracey and the family that I offer my sincere sympathy for Mulrunji’s death and I am sorry for that angst they have had to suffer over the last number of years,” he told the inquest. Doomadgee, 36, suffered fatal internal injuries, including a ruptured liver, after he scuffled with Sergeant Hurley and they fell to the concrete floor of the Palm Island police station.
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Tags: Australia; Aboriginal, Death in Custody, Human Rights
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Friday, March 12th, 2010
12/3/10
Improvements to physical health will probably be outweighed by the negative impact of the Northern Territory invervention on psychological health, spirituality and cultural integrity, according to a report to be released today. Indigenous doctors will release the damning report on the intervention and its health effects.”It is likely that new sustained investments in material resources, including education, housing and healthcare services and delivery, will make a significant contribution to improved physical health for some people,” the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association report says.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health, Human Rights
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Friday, March 12th, 2010
Richard Owen; 12/3/10
When Cardinal Sean Brady, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, met journalists in Rome after a two-day carpeting by Pope Benedict XVI of Ireland’s bishops over sex abuse scandals last month, he appeared contrite. “There have been failures in our leadership,” he told us. “The only way we will regain credibility will be through our humiliation.” Lent, Cardinal Brady said, was “a time of penance, and we must begin with ourselves and have a change of heart.” Similar expressions of contrition and “humiliation” can be expected from Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference, when he meets the Pope today as the growing clerical sex abuse scandal engulfs the Pontiff’s native Germany. Even now, though, despite the spread of a scandal that began in the US in 2002 and has since embroiled Ireland, Austria, Germany, Australia and The Netherlands, there is a danger that the Vatican and Pope Benedict have not fully grasped the devastating damage it is doing to the standing of the Roman Catholic Church.
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Tags: Christianity, Germany, Pedophilia
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Friday, March 12th, 2010
Tony Koch; 12/3/10; (2 Items)
The policeman who arrested Aboriginal cell death victim Mulrunji Doomadgee yesterday told a coronial inquiry he could not explain how the Palm Islander suffered his fatal injuries. Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley told Coroner Brian Hine that he had a “tussle” with Doomadgee at the north Queensland island’s lockup on November 19, 2004.Sergeant Hurley insisted that they tripped near a doorway leading into the watchhouse and that he fell “beside” Doomadgee. But he said he accepted medical evidence that Doomadgee’s massive injuries were consistent with his tall and heavy frame falling on the slightly built Doomadgee. While he still believed they had hit the concrete floor side by side, Sergeant Hurley said: “I have since said that is obviously not the case (and) some part of my person has touched Mr Doomadgee.”Sergeant Hurley said he could not explain exactly how Doomadgee had been so seriously injured.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, deaths in custody, Human Rights
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Friday, March 12th, 2010
Natasha Robinson & Lex Hall; 12/3/10
The future of the nation’s biggest remote housing project is hanging in the balance at Groote Eylandt, where the Rudd government is considering sacking the building consortium carrying out housing works. A meeting of the Council of Territory Co-operation was held at Groote Eylandt yesterday following a closed-door meeting of the same committee last week, in which the Northern Territory’s chief housing bureaucrat spelt out the latest crisis confronting the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program. The Australian understands housing department chief executive Ken Davies last week said during confidential testimony that the federal government had become so concerned about the progress of housing on Groote Eylandt, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, that it was contemplating terminating the contract of Earth Connect, the alliance charged with building 80 houses at Groote and the nearby Bickerton Island.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010
11/3/10; http://www.theage.com.au/world/monk-admits-child-abuse-20100310-pzbf.html; (2 Items)
The head of a Salzburg monastery has admitted sexually abusing a child decades ago and is offering to resign. Arch-abbot Bruno Becker said he abused a 12-year-old boy more than 40 years ago. In a statement cited by the Austria Press Agency, he said he informed church authorities last year after his victim contacted him. Becker said he was not yet ordained when the abuse occurred and apologised to the victim last year. The revelation comes amid a widening sexual abuse scandal involving the Roman Catholic Church in neighbouring Germany, where abuse in church-run schools dating back several decades has surfaced, including at boarding school where Pope Benedict’s brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, ran a choir.
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Tags: Chrsitianity, Germany, Kung, Pedophilia
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Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
10/3/10
US judge who sentenced a couple to prison for the death of their son says members of their church must stop relying on faith healing when their children’s lives are at stake. “Too many children have died unnecessarily – a graveyard full,” judge Steven Maurer said yesterday. “This has to stop.” Judge Maurer spoke in a quiet voice as he led to his conclusion: Jeffrey and Marci Beagley each should serve 16 months in prison. Members of the Followers of Christ church who packed the courtroom sobbed. The Beagleys were convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the June 2008 death of their son, Neil, 16, of complications from a congenital urinary tract blockage. The condition normally is easily treated.
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Tags: Children, Christianity, health, USA
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
8/3/10
A bishop has given new details of sex abuse at a boys’ choir in Germany once headed by the Pope’s brother. Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, bishop of Regensburg, in southern Germany, where the Domspatzen choir is based, said Pope Benedict XVI’s brother Georg Ratzinger, 86, did not head the choir at the time. The two “remembered” cases of sex abuse at Domspatzen dated back to 1958 and therefore “did not coincide with the period where professor Georg Ratzinger was in charge”, Bishop Mueller said in the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper. Mr Ratzinger headed the choir between 1964 and 1994, he said. The director and composer Franz Wittenbrink, a former pupil of the school attached to Domspatzen, spoke of an “ingenious system of sadistic punishments connected to sexual pleasure” at the school.
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Tags: Christianity, Germany, Sexual Abuse
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