Canada's largest newspaper
Opinion
Our kids deserve equality
There is clearly a continuing public demand for Catholic schools and the same option should be available to other faiths
The Toronto Star, Reader OpinionJan. 31, 2005
By METROPOLITAN SOTIRIOS, AARON BLUMENFELD, M.D. KHALID AND RIPSODHAK SINGH GREWAL
With the recent flip-flop of the Quebec government on religious school funding, it's time to reconsider the issue in Ontario. Minority religious schools should be funded in Ontario not only to end the discrimination between Catholics and other religious groups, but also because our schools provide a necessary public service that public schools cannot offer.
In Western Canada and Quebec, faith-based schools receive substantial government funding. Read More ..
Canada's largest newspaper
One school system should satisfy all
Response letter to "Our kids deserve equality" opinion Jan. 31.
The Toronto Star, Opinion, Feb. 2, 2005
"Equalizing" the school system by awarding government funding to religious schools is as ridiculous as it is impractical. Such a policy is not only doomed to fail, it's just plain wrong. Where exactly would Archbishop Sotirios draw the line with regards to religious funding? How big does a religion have to be to receive government dollars? What of minor religions, super-cults, or non-religious secular humanists, who could all legitimately accuse the government of being marginalized?
Simply stating that this funding will not impact the public system does not make it so. Every dollar given to the Catholic school system is a dollar that could not be spent improving the public one. Read More ..
3 in 4 B.C. boys on street sexually exploited by women
VANCOUVER - Canada's largest study into the sexual exploitation of street kids and runaways has shattered some myths about who the abusers might be - with the most surprising finding being that many are women seeking sex with young males.
"Some youth in each gender were exploited by women with more than three out of four (79 per cent) sexually exploited males reporting exchanging sex for money or goods with a female," said Elizabeth Saewyc, associate professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia and principal investigator for the study conducted by Vancouver's McCreary Centre Society.
"I must admit it wasn't something we were expecting."
Mom drugged daughter to get her pregnant: police
Associate Press, U.S.A.
April 3, 2009
PITTSBURGH (AP) - A western Pennsylvania mother has been charged with giving her 13-year-old daughter drugs and alcohol so the woman's boyfriend could impregnate the girl without her knowing, police said Thursday.
Shana Brown, 32, is no longer able to have children but wanted to have a baby with her current boyfriend, Duane Calloway, said Uniontown Police Detective Donald Gmitter. The pair decided to drug the girl so Calloway, 40, could have sex with her, he added.
"There's some sick people on this case," Gmitter said.
Brown has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child, turned herself in Thursday and was being held in the Fayette County jail, police said. Brown's attorney did not return a call for comment.
Calloway faces several counts of attempted rape. He was arrested Wednesday and remains in jail. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney.
The three attacks occurred in Brown's home in Uniontown, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, according to the criminal complaint.
Affair led to mother murdering her own kids
Days after buying another woman Valentine's Day flowers, a Sydney father came home to find a trail of blood leading him to the bodies of his two young children lying next to their mother, a court has been told.
Australian Associated Press
Aug 24 2009
The woman had given the couple's three-year-old daughter and four-year-old son rat poison and an unidentified pink liquid before smothering them and killing them, court papers said.
She then tried to take her own life, the NSW Supreme Court was told.
Doctors agree the mother, from Canley Heights in Sydney's west, was suffering from "major depression" when she poisoned her children on February 19 last year.
She has pleaded not guilty to the two murders by reason of mental illness.
As her judge-alone trial began, the mother's lawyer told Justice Clifton Hoeben his client didn't think life was worth living after learning about her husband's affair.
American Psychological Association
Dating Violence Statistics in the United States
Nearly one in 10 girls and one in 20 boys say they have been raped or experienced some other form of abusive violence on a date, according to a study released Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Teen depression on the increase
More and More teens are becoming depressed. The numbers of young people suffering from depression in the last 10 years has risen worryingly, an expert says.
BBC, UK, August 3, 2004
Government statistics suggest one in eight adolescents now has depression.
Unless doctors recognise the problem, Read More ..uld slip through the net, says Professor Tim Kendall of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health.
Guidelines on treating childhood depression will be published next year. Professor Kendall says a lot Read More ..eds to be done to treat the illness.
Woman convicted of killing 3 kids after custody battle
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, USA, August 26, 2008
HELSINKI, Finland - A court in Finland has convicted a woman of murdering her three young children and has given her a life sentence.
The Espoo District Court says Thai-born Yu-Hsiu Fu was found guilty of strangling her 8-year-old twin daughters and 1-year-old son in her home.
She tried to kill herself afterward.
The verdict on Tuesday says the 41-year-old woman was found to be of sound mind at the time of the murders.
Court papers show the murders were preceded by a bitter custody battle with her Finnish husband who was living separately from her at the time of the murders.
A life sentence in Finland mean convicts usually serve at least 11 years in prison.