Over 500 civilians died in US and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan last year, according to a United Nations report.

The report said that war-related civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased by nearly 40 percent, to 2118. 552 people, roughly a quarter, died as a result of US and NATO air strikes.

(Source: The Age)

 

Babies die in public hospitals during labour or shortly after birth at three times the rate in private hospitals, according to new research.

The study, led by Stephen Robson of the Australian National University, examined the outcomes of almost 790,000 births that took place over four years.

The neonatal death rate was one for every 1000 babies born in private hospitals, compared with three in 1000 in public hospitals.

The study also found that women who give birth in public hospitals are more than twice as likely to suffer tearing.

(Source: news.com.au)

 

Taking advantage of high rents, several men have placed online ads offering women a place to stay in exchange for sex.

Although there have been numerous complaints about the ads, websites such as flatmates.com.au and Gumtree have refused to remove them.

One ad for a Canberra unit offered "free accommodation in exchange for relationship."

A similar ad, for a Melbourne townhouse, offered a place in a Melbourne townhouse "for someone to help me with certain needs/requirements on a regular basis."

(Source: news.com.au)

 

Two American judges have pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from a privately-run youth detention centre, in return for giving excessive sentences.

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan admitted that they took more than US$2.6 million from PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare, between 2003 and 2006.

The more juveniles that were sentenced to a term in a PA Childcare facility, the more government funding the company was entitled to.

Teenagers who came before Ciavarella in juvenile court often were sentenced to detention centers for minor offenses that would typically have been classified as misdemeanors, according to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group.

The Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation in U.S. courts. But many of the juveniles appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney because they were told by the probation service that their minor offenses didn't require one.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, estimated that of approximately 5,000 juveniles who came before Ciavarella from 2003 and 2006, between 1,000 and 2,000 received excessively harsh detention sentences.

One 17-year-old boy was sentenced to three months' detention for being in the company of another minor caught shoplifting. Others were given similar sentences for "simple assault" resulting from a schoolyard scuffle that would normally draw a warning.

(Source: Reuters)

 

Liberal Party leader Brendan Nelson received a large donation from an American billionaire closely linked to the 'predatory lending' practices that triggered the global recession.

Peter Briger, chairman and director of the Fortress Investment Group, contributed $US50,000 ($AU76,000) to the Liberal campaign fund for the Opposition Leader's Sydney seat of Wentworth last year.

As well as its role in the subprime lending crisis, Fortress was criticised for profiting from Hurricane Katrina after its subprime lending arms launched foreclosure suits against dozens of victims of the storm.

Mr Briger was listed by Forbes magazine in 2007 as having a net worth of $US2.3billion. He is also a former partner at Goldman Sachs, the same company where Mr Turnbull made his millions as a merchant banker.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Underpayment of young workers is apparently routine in Australian workplaces, with 41 percent of employers audited being found to have underpaid their staff.

The Workplace Ombudsman recently audited 400 employers nationwide. They found that 165 employers had underpaid a total of about 1500 of their staff aged between 15 and 24.

Employers were forced to pay a total of $540,300, an average of $360 for each affected employee.

Ombudsman Nicholas Wilson said inspectors focused on industries that typically employed young people. Nearly nine out of 10 of the breaches were in retail, accommodation and food services.

(Source: The Age)

 

Religious belief is associated with higher rates of murder, abortion and suicide, according to new research.

The study, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries such as Britain, with the United States.

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies" the study said.

"The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so."

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world's only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional.

Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from "uniquely high" adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

(Source: The Times [UK])

 

Poor white people are discriminated against because of their accent, style, food, clothes, postcodes and even their names, but not because they are white, according to a new British study.

The report by the anti-racist think tank the Runnymede Trust, is called Who Cares about the White Working Class?. It rejects the idea that white working class communities have been directly losing out to migrants and minority ethnic groups.

It says that commentators who pretend that white working class disadvantage is ethnic rather than a matter of class does little to address the real and legitimate grievances that poor white people in Britain face.

"Britain remains blighted by class division, and economic background is still the best predictor of life chances. Class is central to how people see their place in Britain today. Returning to the issue of class inequality and social mobility is therefore long overdue," the report says.

Socially, Britain remains dominated by the same class divisions, with scorn for poor white people and their perceived culture not only socially acceptable but also rampant.

The study says that "the interests of the white working class are habitually pitched against those of minority ethnic groups and immigrants, while larger social and economic structures are left out of the debate altogether."

The researchers show, for example, that poor white working class boys being left behind at school are losing out to affluent white pupils, not minority ethnic pupils.

They say middle class commentators are happy to defend white working class interests against 'politically correct multiculturalism' but they simultaneously deride and ridicule the 'undeserving poor'.

"The white working classes are discriminated against on a range of different fronts, including their accent, their style, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the social spaces they frequent, the postcode of their homes, possibly even their names. But they are not discriminated against because they are white," it concludes.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

The St Vincent de Paul Society has lost over $150,000, after they removed one of their volunteers for not being a Catholic.

Linda Walsh had been a volunteer for the charitable society for six years, and was in charge of its operations helping refugees in Brisbane.

However in January 2004 the Society told her she had until June to become a member of the Catholic Church, resign her position or leave the society. Ms Walsh was a Christian but not a Catholic.

Over the next weeks Ms Walsh was forbidden to speak at a regional council meeting, and furniture stored at her house for refugees was taken away. She was promised an investigation into her treatment but nothing happened. The Society had no written requirement that its office-holders had to be Catholic.

The Society spent the next three years, and thousands of dollars, fighting a resulting discrimination complaint. They were represented at the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal by a former president of the tribunal, Walter Sofronoff, QC, plus a junior barrister and a team of solicitors. Ms Walsh relied on legal aid.

Ms Walsh's psychiatrist told the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal that after the ultimatum his patient reported "decreased sleep, altered appetite and decreased energy" and the dosage of her anti-depressant medication had to be increased. "More disturbingly, she has had two episodes of attempted suicide." A relationship also fell apart under the pressure.

After the Tribunal rejected the Society's argument that Ms Walsh's position was actually religious observance, and required "belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the seven Sacraments and devotion to Mary", they face total costs of over $150,000.

Peter Maher, the CEO of St Vincents in Queensland, said "I think Ms Walsh has used this incident to obtain a lot of publicity. I think that's a shame."

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)