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)