Archive for the ‘Health & Children’ Category
Monday, July 19th, 2010
19/7/10; http://www.theage.com.au/national/letters/only-steps-have-been-backward-20100718-10fwp.html (3 Items)
The Vatican has again excelled itself. Its declaration that paedophilia among priests and religious is a crime is at last one great positive step. But its declaration that it is a similar ”crime” for a priest to ordain a woman must rank as one of the most negative and insensitive steps the Vatican has taken. No doubt the Vatican will hide behind Latin definitions of ”crime” or trot out the usual statement that ordinary people are incapable of understanding the theological philosophy behind it. Nevertheless, for many people in the church, myself included, the attitude to, and treatment of, women in the church by many in the hierarchy is archaic, offensive, anti-social and above all, certainly not Christian. But even within Vatican rules, I would not dare suggest that it is criminal. Ken Browne, Wheelers Hill
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Christianity, Pedophilia, USA
Posted in Australia, Christianity, Health & Children, Human Rights, Religion, USA | No Comments »
Monday, July 19th, 2010
19/7/10
Malaysian police have smashed a child-trafficking racket and rescued eight children and babies, an official said yesterday. Police detained 16 suspects, including four Indonesian women, in a sting operation after an Indonesian woman was nabbed last Monday when she tried to sell a 23-day-old baby girl for 10,000 ringgit ($3590). In the latest operation on Friday, police rescued a four-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl and detained two Indonesian sisters, said to be the caretakers of the children. Police said they were yet to determine who was behind the group or whether the eight rescued children involved any foreigners. The eight children, including three infants, are aged between 23 days and 12 years.
(more…)
Tags: Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Malaysia
Posted in Health & Children, Human Rights, Indonesia, Sex Trade | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
15/5/10
What are these? The NSW government is moving to grant itself sweeping powers to control alcohol consumption. Under changes introduced to state parliament yesterday, the government has moved to seize control of the opening hours of pubs, bars and clubs and give itself the power to impose measures such as lock-outs and service restrictions on any licensed premises, The Sydney Morning Herald says. The new laws also empower council officers and police to confiscate alcohol in parks and other areas that have been designated alcohol-free zones. Under changes to the Liquor Act, the government will no longer have to be responding to a complaint from the community or police to impose licensing restrictions on violent premises. In December, 66 of the state’s most violent venues had severe trading restrictions imposed on them by the government.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Drugs, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
Mark Metherell; 13/5/10
In contrast to the crackdown on cigarettes, the Rudd government has rejected its own experts’ recommendations to take on the powerful food and alcohol industries. Obesity was recently found to trigger more diseases in Australia than tobacco, but the government has given the thumbs-down to the call from its preventative health taskforce for a ban on junk-food advertising before 9pm. It has also refused the taskforce recommendation to phase-out alcohol advertising during live sport broadcasts, in a detailed response to the taskforce recommendations released with Tuesday’s budget.
(more…)
Tags: Asutralia, Drugs, health
Posted in Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
15/5/10; A mud-walled village in Iran. Soraya, a 35-year-old mother of seven, is falsely accused of adultery by her violent husband, who wants to be rid of her to marry a 4-year-old girl. He blackmails the local mullah, who sentences Soraya to death by stoning under Sharia law. The crowd cries “Allahu akbar [God is great!]” as Soraya’s two young sons are invited to hurl the first stones. It takes Soraya an agonising three hours to die. The next day an Iranian-French journalist, Freidoune Sahebjam, stops in the village to get his car fixed and is told the horrific story by Soraya’s fearless aunt, Zahra. He makes a narrow escape from the village and goes on to write a book in honour of Soraya that will become an international bestseller in 1994, opening the eyes of the West for the first time to the barbaric practice of stoning in some Islamic countries.
(more…)
Tags: Children, Human Rights, Marriage, Religion, Womens Rights
Posted in Gender & Marriage, Health & Children, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
15/5/10
A Catholic diocese in the US has agreed to pay more than $US20 million ($22.3m) to victims of predator priests and says it will sell some of its real estate to foot the bill. The diocese of Burlington in the northeastern state of Vermont agreed to pay $US17.65m yesterday to 26 sex abuse victims and settled three appeals cases for undisclosed amounts, Bishop of Burlington Salvatore Matano said in a letter posted on the diocese’s website. Jerry O’Neill, from the legal firm that represented many of the victims, said the diocese’s total payout exceeded $US20m. The amounts awarded on appeal were withheld at the request of the victims, he said. To pay the bill, the diocese had put up for sale its administrative building in Burlington and its 10.5ha leisure facility, Camp Tara Holy Cross on Lake Champlain, and had secured a loan using other diocesan property as collateral, Bishop Matano said.
(more…)
Tags: Christianity, Pedophilia, USA
Posted in Christianity, Health & Children, Human Rights, USA | No Comments »
Friday, May 14th, 2010
14/5/10; http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/literacy-tackled-in-two-languages-20100513-v1ud.html
It is more than 2500 kilometres from Kempsey to Groote Eylandt, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, but the early childhood literacy work piloted in NSW is about to begin on the island … with one big difference.The preschoolers, aided by family and other community members, will be taught in both the Anindilyakwa language and English. Mary-Ruth Mendel, the chairwoman of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, said the combination of speech pathology and educational understanding significantly improved children’s entry to school. ”Playing games and activities designed by [us] in the Anindilyakwa language and in English develops strong oral language skills and crucial brain development,” she said. ”These skills are essential stepping stones towards strong English reading and writing development.” The speech therapy component helped children reach an ”aha” moment, she said, when deciding whether they were listening with their ”English ears rather than their Anindilyakwa ears”. The Territory’s Department of Education has signed a three-year contract for the program. Up to 130 children will have access to it.
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Education
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Friday, May 14th, 2010
John L Allen Jr; 14/5/10;
Few Catholic bishops anywhere in the world have spent more time coping with the fallout from the sexual abuse crisis – pastoral, political, legal, and spiritual – than Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston. When he became bishop of Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1992, he inherited the infamous James Porter case, and ten years later he took over an archdiocese in virtual meltdown when he succeeded Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston. O’Malley sat down with NCR on May 13 in Fatima, Portugal, where he’s participating in the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. He discussed the pope’s comments on the crisis en route to Portugal – insisting that the real problem is not attacks from the outside, but the reality of sin within the church – and other matters.
(more…)
Tags: Christianity, Pedophilia, Rome, USA, Women
Posted in Christianity, Health & Children, Human Rights, USA, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
13/5/10
The Pope has admitted for the first time that the Catholic Church must accept responsibility for the child sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed it. Speaking on a visit to Portugal yesterday, Benedict XVI said “sins inside the church” must be blamed, rather than “outside enemies”. He added that “forgiveness is no substitute for justice” and that the church had to “relearn prayer and penance”. His comments were hailed from within the Vatican hierarchy, with one senior figure on the Pope’s staff saying it amounted to a “sea change” in the way that the church is dealing with the scandals.
(more…)
Tags: Christianity, Pedophilia
Posted in Christianity, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Sarah Elks; 13/5/10
Ipswitch City Council has rejected James Hardie’s claims that the council is liable to pay compensation to former employees suffering from deadly illnesses caused by the company’s asbestos products. The Australian revealed in September that Amaca Pty Ltd – also known as James Hardie & Coy Pty Ltd – had sued the council to recoup $195,000 the company was forced to pay a former council worker now suffering from asbestosis. In its defence, filed in the District Court of Queensland last week, the Ipswich City Council claims it provided a “safe place of work” for carpenter Anthony Harry Cannon, who briefly worked for the council in 1976. The council claims it provided Mr Cannon with masks and respiratory protection and did not allow him to “engage in dusty work without ascertaining the nature of that dust and the dangers”.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, health, Human Rights, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Eugene Cullen Kennedy; 13/5/10
The beleaguered Pope Benedict XVI has dealt with the sex abuse crisis like a shy bachelor who holds back from stepping onto the dance floor at the parish social. A lifetime of dealing abstractly with men and women from the safe perch of a classroom podium did not exactly prepare him for the immersion in the human rhythms of intimacy that define the dance even on church property. He has shifted from one foot to the other, letting others call the tune while he hung back, turning ashen and turning away when he learned, as Paul did of his Corinthian community, that what he remembered as a fox trot had been taken over by a wolf pack. Yes, he promised, I’ll get involved in this soon and then woe betide the wolf pack.
(more…)
Tags: Christianity, Pedophilia, USA
Posted in Christianity, Health & Children, Human Rights, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Anna Patty & Dn Harrison; 12/5/10; (2 Items)
Teachers will need to learn how to teach Aboriginal children as part of their training before they can register to work in public and private schools under national plans to lift the standard of indigenous education. Education ministers have agreed to a revised blueprint on how they will tackle disadvantage in schooling. They aim to halve the gap in the literacy and numeracy performance of indigenous and mainstream students by 2018. It is expected that a formal announcement will be made at the next Council of Australian Governments meeting, which is expected to be scheduled in the next two months. But leading indigenous educators have criticised the draft Indigenous Education Action Plan, saying it fails to recognise the crucial importance of cultural pride to success at school.
(more…)
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Children, Culture
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Adrian Love; 12/5/10
A Victorian Supreme Court judge has urged the victims and families of a piano tutor who molested 11 young girls not to blame themselves. Justice Paul Coghlan said yesterday it was important that people learn how the victims felt. through their victim impact statements. ”I’m a father, and a grandfather, and I’ve got a powerful sense, I think, of family. But I can’t possibly put myself in the position that you’re in, while I do my best to do so, because I’m not there … Things have occurred and they won’t be changed,” he said. ”… I can only reinforce: please don’t blame yourselves. You are genuinely the victims of these events, not the cause of them, and bear no responsibility for them whatsoever.”
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Pedophilia
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Adam Cresswell; 11/5/10
Dialysis services for kidney patients in Central Australia are to be scrutinised in a joint governmental review following a barrage of criticism over indigenous patients being turned away from Alice Springs. The review, to be conducted by the commonwealth in conjunction with the governments of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia, will seek to work out ways to avoid making patients travel thousands of kilometres away from their homes to receive kidney treatment. The study was imperative, said the federal Minister for Indigenous, Rural and Regional Health, Warren Snowdon. The current poor co-ordination of services caused a scandal in February when it emerged that a senior indigenous community leader from Ernabella, in the north of South Australia, had been told she would have to travel to Adelaide for dialysis treatment, despite Alice Springs being much closer.
(more…)
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health, Human Rights
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Monday, May 10th, 2010
10/5/10; (2 Items)
A couple who operated a Sydney brothel forced five women to live in “conditions of slavery”, making them work more than 100 hours per week, even if they were sick, a jury has been told. Trevor Frank McIvor, 62, and his de facto wife, Kanokporn Tanuchit, 44, have each pleaded not guilty to five counts of possessing a slave and five counts of using a slave. The jurors, who were told the hearing is a retrial, heard that the five women were recruited from Thailand by a third party, who arranged Australian visas for them. Crown prosecutor Bruce Levet said on their arrival in Sydney, the women had their passports and phones taken and they were housed in “restricted circumstances” at the Fairfield brothel or the couple’s house.
(more…)
Tags: Australia, Sex Trade, Thailand, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Sex Trade, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Monday, May 10th, 2010
10/5/10
A television channel is broadcasting the first lessons in an Aboriginal language aimed at young children, in a bid to stem an alarming decline that wiped out hundreds of native dialects. “Waabiny Time,” for three to six-year-olds, teaches “yes,” “no” and other basic terms in the Noongar language, which is spoken in the southwestern region around Perth. The show, broadcast daily and repeated Saturdays, started last month with 13 half-hour episodes and proved so popular the entire series is now being screened again. “I realised while working with Aboriginal communities that kids weren’t talking with their grandparents in their language,” producer Cath Trimboli said.
(more…)
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Education
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
