The T.C. Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland was established by a £20,000 donation from Thomas Charles Beirne, a devout Catholic businessman and Papal Knight who was warden of the University from 1928 to 1941. The vast tract of beautiful riverside land on which the university sits in St Lucia was donated by pioneering doctor […]
Perhaps it is an age thing but one of the most irritating, vacuous songs considered to be a rock classic must surely be Imagine written by John Lennon with the assistance of the deeply weird Yoko Ono. It will be 50 years old next year. Lennon was a key part of the then contemporary zeitgeist […]
The term International Child Abduction is generally used to describe situations where one parent (the abducting parent) removes a child from the state where the child usually lives to another state without the consent of the child’s other parent or in breach of a court order. It is a phenomenon that afflicts families right across […]
President Putin moves to support traditional marriage by adding it to the Russian constitution and, predictably, the UK’s ‘impartial public service broadcaster’ paints it in as negative a light as possible. Apparently unable to accept that another country might hold different values from their own, the BBC insist it cannot be to do ‘with reflecting current values […]
A professor of economics at the University of Exeter, England, has been accused of transphobia after tweeting that “only female people menstruate”. The conflict began when Dr. Poen responded to a tweet which said: “Not everyone who menstruates is female. Not everyone who is female menstruates. Let’s shift our language.” Dr. Poen replied by saying: […]
In Australia, as elsewhere in the developed world, doctors and parents are perplexed about an epidemic of young people, mostly teenage girls, who want to change gender. Back in August the Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, asked the The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) for advice on how to treat gender dysphoria in children […]
When it became clear that the novel coronavirus coming out of China was destined to be a pandemic, international concern quickly zeroed in on how countries with weak health systems, most of which are in Africa, would be affected. It was feared that they would be quickly overwhelmed by the virus and left reeling. The […]
No voluntary organisation in the world does more work in the fields of education, healthcare, poverty relief, etc. than the Catholic Church, led in many cases by the Church’s religious orders. Amidst all the criticism of the Church, this basic fact is often forgotten. Cara, a research body at Georgetown University in the US, compiles the […]
What are the relationships between the judges of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and leading non-governmental organisations, and what should the Court be doing about them, particularly in cases in which doubts as to the judges’ impartiality might arise? This is the topic of this post, which is worthy of interest and needs […]
The ugly spectre of China’s grim illegal organ trade reared its head again this week with the publication of the final judgment of the London Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting in China. This coincided with front page headlines in most national world newspapers on Tuesday trumpeting China’s first double lung transplant on a coronavirus victim. The patient, […]
As we usher in the 2020s with a coronavirus outbreak and massive wildfires, one feels tempted to make forecasts for the upcoming decade with a glimmer of hope amidst the gloom. However, when it comes to demographics for East Asia, there is no silver lining. Through comparing the present to what might happen in 2030 […]
This year is a big year for the USA. What happens in 2020 will shape the course of the country for years to come with far-reaching political and economic effects. Of course, I am talking about the decennial census which is being held this year. Although the official “Census Day” (I wonder if they make […]