The birth date of former Primate of Hungary and one of the most important Churchmen of the 20th century, the Venerable Cardinal József Mindszenty fell last week on March 29. He was a key figure in the resistance of the Hungarian people to Nazism and socialism over more than 50 years and an inspiration to […]
If you’ve only been reading the Irish media, there’s a very good chance you won’t be aware of the mounting row in Brussels over whether or not the EU should issue so-called “Eurobonds” to help countries like Italy (and Ireland, indeed) get through the Covid-19 crisis. There has been some coverage, but not a vast […]
A senior Republican politician from Texas sparked a media firestorm this week after suggesting that older people should consider sacrificing their lives for the economy in the face of the coronavirus crisis. Dan Patrick, a former radio talk show host who is now Lieutenant Governor of Texas, made the comments on Monday night while talking to […]
People over 60 are more affected by the coronavirus and most deaths have been of people over 70. With this background, a new study on perceptions of the elderly in the UK makes interesting reading. Attitudes to ageing are overwhelmingly negative, according to a new study by the Centre for Ageing Better, with older people subject to […]
Italy isn’t singing on the balconies anymore. As time in quarantine goes slowly on, marked by the ticking of our family clock, we are receiving fewer and fewer coronavirus jokes, funny videos, invitations to sing or clap our hands or whatever our fellow countrymen’s fantasy suggested in the first quarantine days. There is very little […]
Wednesday was the last day of comparative normality for a little while for us here in New Zealand. At midnight the “Level four” lockdown commenced. Those not working in essential services (healthcare, food supply chain etc) are meant to stay home for the next four weeks and only venture out into their local area to exercise and […]
This time last year, if someone had told me that I would soon see a pandemic sweep through the world, that I myself, and several of my friends, would contract the virus, and that citizens would be instructed to stay at home for weeks on end, with the exception of essential trips to the supermarket […]
Coronavirus is not the flu. It’s much more infectious.
There’s a sense in the country, and in the wider world, at the moment, that this is the time for everyone to pull together, and that old divisions don’t really matter in the face of a genuinely existential threat to human life. In so far as possible, therefore, we’ve tried not to dole out any […]
In an interview, Sir David Attenborough says the Corona virus is not the worst danger we face, but the state of the environment: ‘Even the worst outcomes of the Covid-19 pandemic are nothing on the scale of what is eventually feared will be the catastrophic implications of climate change’ (Joe Shute, “‘This will be serious, […]
An Argentine court has upheld the criminal conviction of a gynaecologist who refused to abort the child of a rape victim in 2017. Dr Leandro Rodriguez Lastra was sentenced to a 14-month suspended jail term, plus 28 months of disqualification from holding public office. Dr Rodriguez Lastro will appeal. The victim was a 19-year-old in her fifth […]
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson garbled his government’s coronavirus strategy. The media reported that the UK (and the Netherlands) were adopting a “herd immunity” approach to combatting the disease. The chief scientific adviser to the government, Patrick Vallance, suggested that the UK would allow millions of Britons to be infected, boosting eventual herd immunity. “Our aim is […]