All the News That Fits

Two men say there were refused entry to several Melbourne nightclubs because of their race.

The Indian and Sri Lankan men said they were humiliated and embarrassed when bouncers at K Bar, Red Love and two other city venues refused to let them in on the same night.

“I just felt awful,” said one of the men. “We were not drunk, we were willing to pay the entry fee. They were letting in other people, so why were we not allowed? That [race] was the only thing.”

Gautam Gupta from the Federation of Indian Students of Australia said it was common for young Indians to be denied entry to bars because of their race.

“It’s always been a problem and I don’t think that’s changed,” he said.

(Source: MX)

Two undercover British police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring,

In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers, whom they have not seen in decades, were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups. Both men have concealed their true identities from the children’s mothers for many years.

One of the spies, Bob Lambert, who has already admitted that he tricked a second woman into having a long-term relationship with him, apparently to give credibility to his false identity. He later vanished from her life, claiming to be in hiding from special branch.

Eight women have recently started legal action against police chiefs, saying they were tricked into intimate relations with undercover policemen, which lasted for up to nine years. Some of the men are said to have been married at the time and had children.

Police chiefs claim that undercover officers are strictly forbidden from having sexual relationships with the activists they are spying on. However undercover officer Pete Black said that sex was widely used as a technique to blend in and gather intelligence.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

Disabled Australians have the worst quality of life of disabled people in any country in the developed world, according to a recent report.

The report by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that disabled Australians had just over one third the employment opportunities of other Australians.

Nearly half of disabled Australians live in poverty or near-poverty.

The report places Australia 27th out of 27 OECD countries.

(Source: The Age)

Four files of evidence, which went ‘missing’ and caused the collapse of Britain’s biggest-ever police corruption trial, have been ‘found’ again, in their original boxes and in the possession of the police.

The investigation and prosecution of eight police officers and two civilians, for allegedly framing a group of innocent men for murder, had been carried out under the supervision of the Independent Police Complaints commission, by a dedicated team of police officers from the South Wales force and lawyers.

The most senior officer in the dock was a superintendent when he retired and two others were chief inspectors. Prosecutors alleged that they “moulded, manipulated, influenced and fabricated evidence” against Stephen Miller, a man with a mental age of 11, and four other men.

The men were all released after several years in custody. Several witnesses were convicted of perjury. The sentencing judge said that they “were seriously hounded, bullied, threatened, abused and manipulated by the police during a period of several months leading up to late 1988, as a result of which you felt compelled to agree to false accounts they suggested to you.”

The trial of the police officers collapsed after files of evidence were apparently shredded.

Two months later, the ‘missing’ evidence has been found, their original boxes within South Wales police.

(Source: The Guardian [UK], Wikipedia)

A 12-year old girl was strip-searched twice during a police raid on a home in Tasmania.

Police searched the girl while executing a warrant on a house in Rokeby, in Hobart.

Police say the law allows for children to be strip-searched.

Lawyers Alliance President Greg Barns said the case “confirms why Tasmania desperately needs a Human Rights Act to protect the rights of vulnerable people against these sorts of actions.”

(Source: ABC News website)

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney made more money in a day than the average American family earns in a year, but paid only 14 percent tax.

Mr Romney’s tax records showed that he ‘earned’ US$20.6 million in 2010, or $56,438 a day. The median US household income is $US49,445.

Mr Romney paid well below the top wage income tax rate of 38 percent because investment income is given tax breaks in the US.

(Source: MX)

Mentally ill people in Western Australia may be forced to sleep in tents due a critical shortage of accommodation.

Western Australian Health Minister Helen Morton says she is seeking State and Federal funding to build new accommodation for mentally ill people in Esperance to address a critical shortage.

A local mental health service group has warned mentally ill people in the area will have to be housed in tents because of a lack of accommodation.

Bay of Isles Community Outreach says the number of people needing mental health services has jumped by 50 per cent in the past seven months.

Spokeswoman Meredith Waters says the shortage of transitional housing means four mentally ill people currently in crisis care will have to be housed in tents at a caravan park or national park if something does not turn up in the next week.

“The lack of housing contributes to their unwellness so, if they are doing okay, they are doing okay, but it’s hard if you begin to get unwell,” she said.

“The added stress of having housing not available to you. They become more unwell, which makes [it] harder to even get housing.”

(Source: ABC News website)

Mother Teresa defended a child-abusing priest, and helped him return to the ministry where he committed his crime and where he offended again, according to new-found documents.

Donald McGuire was removed from ministry for sexually abusing a Bay Area boy in 1993. Mother Teresa apparently wrote to his superiors urging that she had learned of the “sad events which took [McGuire] from his priestly ministry these past seven months” and that “I understand how grave is the scandal touching the priesthood in the U.S.A. and how careful we must be to guard the purity and reputation of that priesthood,” but that “I must say, however, that I have confidence and trust in Fr. McGuire and wish to see his vital ministry resume as soon as possible.”

McGuire was allowed to resume active ministry. Eight additional complaints were lodged against him in the coming years by various families, leading to his eventual arrest on sex-abuse charges in 2005. He was convicted, and is currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence.

Mother Teresa died in 1997, and is likely to be made a saint by the church.

(Source: SF Weekly [US])

A leading candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination has been applauded for denying that he asked his first wife for an open marriage, in spite of the affairs that he maintained while married to his first and second wives.

Newt Gingrich received a round of applause during a Republican debate when disputing a claim by his wife Jackie Battley that he asked her for an open marriage.

Mr Gingrich is currently married to his third wife, Callista Bisek. He divorced his second wife, Marrianne Ginther, after a lengthy affair with Ms Bisek. He likewise maintained an affair with Ms Ginther while still married to his first wife, Ms Battley.

According to L. H. Carter, Gingrich’s campaign treasurer, Gingrich said that Ms Battley was “not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer.”

Ms Battley stated that in September 1980, Mr Gingrich and their children visited her while she was in the hospital, recovering from surgery related to her cancer, and Mr Gingrich wanted to discuss the terms of their divorce.

Mr Gingrich played a leading role in the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton.

At a 2011 appearance in Columbus, Ohio, Mr Gingrich said that “in America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.”

(Source: The Stranger [US], Wikipedia)

Violent sex crimes committed by active US Army soldiers have almost doubled over the past five years, according to an Army report.

Reported violent sex crimes increased by 90 per cent over the five-year period from 2006 to 2011.

There were 2,811 violent felonies in 2011, nearly half of which were violent felony sex crimes. Most were committed in the United States.

One violent sex crime was committed by a soldier every six hours and 40 minutes in 2011, the Army said, serving as the main component of an overall increase in violent felony crimes.

Violent sex crimes committed by US Army troops increased at a rate that consistently outpaced the national trend, a gap that is expected to continue to grow, the Army said.

The top five violent felony offences committed by soldiers in 2011 were aggravated assault, rape, aggravated sexual assault, forcible sodomy and child pornography.

Soldiers suffering from issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and depression have been shown to have higher incidences of partner abuse, according to the report.

Soldiers with PTSD are up to three times more likely to be aggressive with their female partners than those without such trauma, the report said.

The report also said family abuse cases are typically under reported.

As the largest branch of the US armed forces, the Army has done the bulk of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, including years of extended duty and repeated deployments.

(Source: ABC News website)