An American school has taken down banners reading "No Place for Hate", since one of the banners' sponsors was a gay and lesbian group.

Platte County School District 1 in Cheyenne, Wyoming took down the Anti-Defamation League's "No Place for Hate" banners after receiving complaints.

One of the sponsors listed on the banner is the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado.

(Source: Wyoming Tribune Eagle)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that."

South Carolina Republican politician Andre Bauer, of welfare recipients.

 

Private schools will receive $12 billion more in federal funding than government schools, according to a new report.

The report by Dr Jim McMorrow, honorary associate professor of education at the University of Sydney, found that private schools would net $47 billion from the federal government in the five years to 2013, while public schools would receive $35 billion.

The Australian Education Union said that public schools taught over two-thirds of students.

(Source: Brisbane Times, AEU media release)

 

The Australian of the Year has described refugee detention centres as "factories for producing mental illness", and urged the government to close them.

Professor Patrick McGorry described mandatory detention as "an absolute disaster."

He said asylum seekers had "experienced severe torture and trauma", and "what we have been doing...is adding to those mental health problems."

Both the Labor Party and Coalition rejected the idea.

(Source: Brisbane Times)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"We're looking across a range of all the platforms and areas we produce, and trying to improve all the mechanisms...everything from looking at making a fighter jet more fuel-efficient and looking at the materials that munitions are made of and what their impact on the environment would be."

Deborah Allen, director of corporate responsibility for weapons manufacturer BAE, announcing the company's development of more ecologically-friendly and low-collateral damage weapons.

 

Quote of the Moment:

"What brings you here?"
"I have to have an abortion."
"Why?"
"I'm not old enough to have a baby."
"But you told the counsellor we should all be killed?"
"Yes, you should all be killed."
"Why?"
"Because you do abortions."
"Me too?"
"Yes, you should be killed, too."
"Do you want me killed before or after I do your abortion?"
"Before."

Conversation between Doctor Warren Hern of the Boulder Abortion Clinic and a prospective patient. Doctor Hern is the last doctor in the United States specialising in late abortions, after the murder of Doctor George Tiller in 2009.

 

A top fashion designer has unveiled a range of clothes inspired by the appearance of homeless people.

Several hundred fashion experts burst applauded the Milan show by Dame Vivienne Westwood which featured models carrying sleeping bags and emerging from cardboard boxes. The models' hair was dishevelled and discoloured by something silvery to make it look "like they were sleeping rough and they'd got frost in their hair."

One magazine editor said that "it is a little close to the bone. The clothes were fantastic, though."

The press release for Westwood's menswear collection, for Milan Fashion Week, declared "perhaps the oddest of heroes to emerge this season, Vivienne Westwood found inspiration in the roving vagrant whose daily get-up is a battle gear for the harsh weather conditions...quilted bombers and snug hoodies also work well in keeping the vagrant warm."

Dame Westwood said that she had no experience of being homeless.

(Source: Times [UK])

 

A death is inevitable unless a chronic shortages of paramedics is addressed, according to a doctor in the Victorian town of Yarrawonga.

Dr John Emery said paramedics took 45 minutes to reach an elderly woman because no local services were available on the day, forcing Ambulance Victoria to dispatch paramedics from Wangaratta and Corowa, 56 kilometres and 43 kilometres away respectively.

Dr Emery said he rushed to be with the woman after the local hospital notified him of the delay, but she had already died.

"There probably wouldn't have been a different outcome in this case, but there was a near drowning in a swimming pool that afternoon" he said.

"The Wangaratta crew were on their way back and only 10 kilometres away, so they could turn back, but it could have been disastrous if they couldn't get there."

In a seperate incident, Kim Broadbent was left impaled on a fence for 47 minutes last month while waiting for an ambulance from Wangaratta.

"This is a chronic problem and it's going to cost a life sooner or later. It's the busiest two-man ambulance station in the state" Dr Emery said.

"This is not a new problem. We have been trying to bring this to the minister's attention for more than 18 months now."

(Source: The Age)

 

Women are having vaginal surgery, sometimes unncessarily, and sometimes without proper safety procedures being followed.

More than 1,200 Australian women undergo the procedure of labioplasty every year. Dr Kourosh Tavakoli of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons and the Australasian College of Surgeons says that he has seen a 100 per cent increase in the number of operations year on year.

"Let's not kid ourselves. The last survey in my practice was 80 per cent for cosmetic and I would say for psychological reasons - that's what I see as a function," he said.

Dr Tavakoli says "I have seen horrendous results from them. I mean there's three groups doing it - plastic surgeons, gynaecologists and GP surgeons in their offices, without proper lighting or sedation or anything."

Dr Ted Weaver from the Royal Australian College of Gynaecologists says that "we felt that often it did prey on fears of women...the surgery's potentially damaging. It could potentially lead to further problems for a woman as a result of surgery and may not fix her insecurity."

There have been no studies to prove the operation's long-term safety.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"Spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ."

According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, American officers have referred to rifles equipped with sights supplied by weapons manufacturer Trijicon in this way. The sights are stamped with abbreviated Bible references, for example 2COR4:6 for Second Corinthians 4:6.

 

Kevin Rudd has personally endorsed a book produced by the Exclusive Brethren, a small religious group he once described as an "extremist cult" that breaks up families.

The Prime Minister provided a letter, accompanied by a photo, congratulating the Brethren-run Glenvale School in Victoria for producing the book. The Brethren yesterday confirmed Mr Rudd was aware the sect was involved in the book when he agreed to provide the letter.

The letter is reproduced on a full page at the front of the book, which is billed as a fundraiser for the Country Fire Authority.

The prefrace to Firestorm: Black Saturday's Tragedy says the book was the work of "parents and friends" of Glenvale's Lilydale and Berwick campuses, but fails to note the school is run by the sect.

Peter Flinn, a western Victorian CFA brigade secretary and ex-member of the Brethren, said people needed to be aware who was behind the book.

"It all sounds very good but these people have always got their own agenda," Mr Flinn said. "A lot of people wouldn't realise the Brethren is behind this book. There's no detail about how the money would come to the CFA and under what conditions."

The Brethren runs a network of schools, including Glenvale, which will receive $70 million in federal funds in the four years to 2012.

Complaints that the Brethren was contacting CFA brigade secretaries urging them to buy the book have sparked a privacy investigation within the CFA.

(Source: news.com.au)

 

A huge rise in birth defects and cancer in the Iraqi city of Fallujah might be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting, according to experts.

Doctors in Fallujah are dealing with up to 15 times the normal number of chronic deformities in infants, as well as an increase and an increase in early-life cancers.

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city say the rise in birth defects - which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.

A group of Iraqi and British officials have petitioned the UN general assembly to ask that an independent committee fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over decades of war, including the six years since Saddam Hussein was ousted.

Fallujah general hospital's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais, said that "before 2003 [the start of the war] I was seeing sporadic numbers of deformities in babies. Now the frequency of deformities has increased dramatically."

A year ago the hospital saw roughly one case of deformities in babies a week. Today they see roughly two a day.

"Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs" Dr Qaid said.

"There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours."

Abnormal clusters of infant tumours have also been repeatedly cited in Basra and Najaf. Both areas have seen intense intense fighting, and modern munitions have been heavily used.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

An American clothing shop has been accused of deliberately destroying unused clothes, in the middle of one of the harshest winters and deepest recessions for many years.

Cynthia Magnus found bags in the New York subway, containing gloves with the fingers cut off, socks, patent leather shoes with the instep cut up, and warm men's jackets slashed across the body and arms.

She traced the clothes to a branch of the multi-national chain H&M.

Ms Magnus said that "it was a very frigid night, and there were bags upon bags of warm winter clothing not 50 feet away from where a homeless man slept on cardboard boxes."

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, the number of people sleeping rough in New York city has reached its highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s. There are thought to be about 39,000 people who do not have a home, including more than 10,000 families and 16,500 children.

A cold snap has also meant outdoor night temperatures in New York of 10 degress Celsius below freezing.

The charity New York Cares, which holds an annual drive that distributes 70,000 secondhand winter coats to needy individuals, is based five blocks away from the H&M shop.

The group says that nine in 10 homeless adults need to replace their winter coat each year because they have no place to store it during the summer.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

Pupils at more than a dozen 'elite' private schools have joined an internet group based on racial hatred.

The page for the Facebook group "Mate speak english, you're in australia now" features a picture of the Australian flag with the words "Fuck off we're full."

The group includes students from Scotch College, Melbourne Grammar, Geelong Grammar, Trinity Grammar, Lauriston, Mentone Grammar, Ivanhoe Grammar, Camberwell Grammar, and Haileybury as well as a number of Victorian government schools.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

A father found by a Family Court judge to pose an "unacceptable risk of abuse" to his two young daughters after his semen was found on the older child's bedsheet was nevertheless ruled entitled to see his children regularly, and the mother faced arrest for contempt of court orders after she moved her children and refused to return them to the state where the father lived.

The full bench of the Family Court, in a decision released just before Christmas, found the mother's case needs to be reconsidered by another judge of the Family Court.

Justice Rodney Burr described a police video of one of the couple's two daughters, then six years old, as "a totally believable and persuasive account of inappropriate sexual behaviour by her father."

He also accepted the evidence of a child psychiatrist who concluded that the evidence was "highly suggestive of the father having sexually abused at least [the older girl] and thereby having placed [the younger daughter] also in a situation of risk of future abuse."

However he found in his decision in October last year that the children loved their father and needed a regular relationship with him through supervised visits. He did not trust the mother to facilitate contact if she was allowed to move the children to New South Wales.

"I am satisfied that her open defiance and blatant disobedience of previous court orders is not confined to the past" he wrote.

He also ordered the children to attend a protective behaviours program to learn how to protect themselves from unwanted sexual touching and other dangers.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Australian household debt is now higher than the entire Australian economy earns in a year.

Reserve Bank figures show mortgage, credit card and personal loan debts now stand at $1.2 trillion, up 71 per cent from five years ago and equating to $56,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

(Source: Sunday Telegraph)

 

An Australian shipping company will not face legal action for breaching United Nations sanctions by transporting weapons from North Korea to the Middle East.

A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman said yesterday an investigation had indicated that the ANL Australia was chartered to a company based in the Bahamas when it was carrying the contraband cargo.

This means ANL Container Line has not fallen foul of domestic legislation 'enforcing' UN sanctions against the export of weapons from North Korea.

United Arab Emirates authorities boarded the ANL Australia in Sharjah on July 22 this year and found containers packed with weapons and military hardware believed to be bound for Iran.

It has been reported that the cargo included small arms, more than 2000 detonators for short-range rockets, electronic circuitry and solid-fuel propellant for rockets.

(Source: The Age)

 

Senior executives of the authority that manages Victoria's public sector superannuation were awarded some of the highest bonuses ever paid in the state, despite huge falls in the value of the funds they were managing.

A government inquiry has found that executives of the Victorian Funds Management Corporation should never have received the bonuses, and that they were awarded in breach of government guidelines.

However executives will be able to keep their bonuses. The board of the Corporation will also escape punishment.

Premier John Brumby ordered a top-level review of VFMC remuneration practices in October, after the fund's annual report revealed six executives shared more than $1.2 million in bonuses last financial year. One executive, believed to be chief investment officer Justin Pascoe, was paid more than $1 million in wages and bonuses in the 12 months to June 30.

In the two years to June 30 the value of the funds the VFMC manages for about a dozen institutions, including the National Gallery of Victoria and the Royal Children's Hospital, fell from $41 billion to $31 billion.

Treasurer John Lenders said that board members would not be punished because they "clearly did not understand the full implications of the Government framework...that bonuses must be commensurate to the performance of the fund."

The VFMC reports to Mr Lenders through the Department of Treasury and Finance.

It has also recently been revealed that executives and staff at VicUrban, the state government developer in charge of Docklands, were paid more than $1 million in bonuses last financial year, while the organisation lost $8.74 million.

(Source: The Age)

 

American police officers covered up the fatal assault of a Mexican man, and engaged in extortion and kidnapping, according to federal investigators.

In July 2008, six teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania assaulted Luis Ramirez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, while yelling "fucking spic", "go back to Mexico" and "tell your fucking Mexican friends to get the fuck out of Shenandoah."

As they gathered at one of their homes after the attack, according to court documents, the mother of assailant Brandon Piekarsky arrived to tell them they needed to "get their stories straight" because she had heard from her boyfriend that the victim might die. Before they left the house that night, they allegedly agreed not to tell police that Piekarsky had kicked the man or that they had attacked him because of his ethnicity.

The mother's boyfriend was Jason Hayes, a Shenandoah patrolman who had stopped several of the attackers as they fled.

According to the indictment Piekarsky's mother was also friends with Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor and had vacationed with him. In addition, Lieutenant William Moyer - who, along with Patrolman Hayes, stopped the attackers after the assault - had a son who played on Shenandoah's high school football team with the assailants.

The indictment gives the following account: After the assault, Piekarsky accompanied police officers Hayes and Moyer to the park and told them about the attack. While at the crime scene, Piekarsky used his cell phone (which Hayes had given him and paid for) to call Donchak with the news that he had told police about the beating of Ramirez. He then went to Donchak's home, where the assailants agreed to lie about what had happened that night.

The next morning, Moyer showed up at the house of an assailant who is not named in the indictment and told him to speak with the other attackers so they could all give the same account to police, the indictment alleges. During the week after the assault, Moyer contacted the parents of a second unnamed participant with the suggestion that they get rid of the sneakers their son wore on the night of the attack.

Shortly before July 24, 2008, he went to that participant's home and, in an attempt to absolve Piekarsky, told the parents that their son "should take full responsibility for the assault."

In another effort to conceal Piekarsky's involvement, Moyer and Hayes mischaracterized a witness's account in an official report to make it appear that the second unnamed participant had a greater role in the attack than he actually did.

Moyer also allegedly falsely reported that an eyewitness who called 911 from the park that night did not identify any of the attackers and said there was a man wielding a gun. In fact, the 911 caller had identified Piekarsky, Donchak and other attackers to Moyer and Hayes. After stopping the assailants identified by the 911 caller, Moyer and Hayes released them. All three police officers deliberately wrote false reports in connection with the investigation, the indictment said. In addition, when a Shenandoah official recommended that the police department recuse itself from the investigation because of its ties to the suspects, the police chief refused.

In a separate indictment Chief Nestor and his second-in-command, Captain Jamie Gennarini, were charged with multiple counts of extortion and civil rights violations. In one incident described in the indictment, Nestor and Gennarini drove to the office of a local businessman, where they proclaimed that "this is the way we are going to do business in Shenandoah!" They then drove the businessman to the police station while Gennarini demanded money from him. After placing him in a holding cell, Nestor threatened to formally arrest him unless another individual brought $2,000 in cash for the two police officers. That person, who is not named in the indictment, told Nestor she needed to go to the bank. Nestor told her he would be getting paperwork ready for the businessman's arrest while she made the trip. He then called her on her cell phone to ask why it was taking so long, the indictment said. After accepting the money, Nestor and Gennarini wrote "vague and misleading entries" in the department's logbook to cover up the businessman's detention.

(Source: Southern Poverty Law Center)