Friday, May 27, 2005
Judges have been told by Attorney-General Michael Cullen to point out deficiencies in law in their judgments rather than try to change the law through judicial activism. In his first big speech since becoming Attorney-General in February, he reasserted his view of the supremacy of Parliament over the courts, saying that their independence did not give them American-style powers to strike down legislation or alter it if it was found wanting.
Meanwhile, Stephen Franks says people don't realise just how far Labour has taken us down the road to undermining constitutional freedoms. The current constitutional inquiry is actually a smoke-screen to hide what is happening.
World leaders are ignoring the threat of an influenza pandemic that could infect a billion people and reach New Zealand within hours of an outbreak, scientists warn. International experts have outlined a disastrous scenario if the threat from the virulent H5N1 strain of Asian bird flu is not taken seriously. Global health officials fear it may mutate into a lethal strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 million and 40 million people. Such a pandemic could affect 20 per cent of the world's population, putting 30 million in hospital and killing a quarter of them, experts fear. It would also lead to the collapse of international trade, causing economic and social chaos.
Britain's government has re-introduced a controversial bill to bring in identity cards, legislation that had to be put aside earlier this year when Prime Minister Tony Blair called the May 5 election. The government also argues ID cards would help track terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime. But critics, including some Labour members of parliament, say cards pose a dangerous threat to civil liberties.
Europe is filled with angst and the Roman Catholic Church is in crisis, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said last night. In a lecture at Westminster Cathedral, the spiritual leader of more than four million Catholics in England and Wales said that the Church in Europe, in particular Britain, was in a time of crisis and of “dying and rising”. He described the modern European as a person of angst, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many liberties enjoyed in contemporary Western culture. He said that Europe would fall into anguish if it forgot God and lost touch with its Judaeo-Christian tradition.
The words appear on every dollar bill and US coin. They are displayed at the entrance to the US Senate and above the Speaker's chair in the House. But when local officials in North Carolina placed "In God We Trust" on the front of the Davidson County Government Center, they soon found themselves in federal court facing a complaint that they were violating the separation of church and state. The case is one of an array of church-state battles across the country seeking to establish a bedrock answer to a difficult constitutional question: To what extent may the government bring God into the public square?
The debate over the ethics of destroying human embryos took on a childlike face on Capitol Hill this week at a news conference featuring "snowflake" babies (children conceived from frozen embryos discarded at fertility clinics). The children appeared to persuade lawmakers to oppose legislation that would expand research conducted on stem cells extracted from the destruction of human embryos. (The bill still passed the House.) Since 1998, there have been more than 80 children born to parents who adopted snowflakes, and 15 more are due. More than 400,000 embryos live in cold storage across the nation.
Tail-out: Crusaders 26 - Waratahs 20. (Whoops, sorry - that's for Monday's Daily Briefing.)
Meanwhile, Stephen Franks says people don't realise just how far Labour has taken us down the road to undermining constitutional freedoms. The current constitutional inquiry is actually a smoke-screen to hide what is happening.
World leaders are ignoring the threat of an influenza pandemic that could infect a billion people and reach New Zealand within hours of an outbreak, scientists warn. International experts have outlined a disastrous scenario if the threat from the virulent H5N1 strain of Asian bird flu is not taken seriously. Global health officials fear it may mutate into a lethal strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 million and 40 million people. Such a pandemic could affect 20 per cent of the world's population, putting 30 million in hospital and killing a quarter of them, experts fear. It would also lead to the collapse of international trade, causing economic and social chaos.
Britain's government has re-introduced a controversial bill to bring in identity cards, legislation that had to be put aside earlier this year when Prime Minister Tony Blair called the May 5 election. The government also argues ID cards would help track terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime. But critics, including some Labour members of parliament, say cards pose a dangerous threat to civil liberties.
Europe is filled with angst and the Roman Catholic Church is in crisis, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said last night. In a lecture at Westminster Cathedral, the spiritual leader of more than four million Catholics in England and Wales said that the Church in Europe, in particular Britain, was in a time of crisis and of “dying and rising”. He described the modern European as a person of angst, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many liberties enjoyed in contemporary Western culture. He said that Europe would fall into anguish if it forgot God and lost touch with its Judaeo-Christian tradition.
The words appear on every dollar bill and US coin. They are displayed at the entrance to the US Senate and above the Speaker's chair in the House. But when local officials in North Carolina placed "In God We Trust" on the front of the Davidson County Government Center, they soon found themselves in federal court facing a complaint that they were violating the separation of church and state. The case is one of an array of church-state battles across the country seeking to establish a bedrock answer to a difficult constitutional question: To what extent may the government bring God into the public square?
The debate over the ethics of destroying human embryos took on a childlike face on Capitol Hill this week at a news conference featuring "snowflake" babies (children conceived from frozen embryos discarded at fertility clinics). The children appeared to persuade lawmakers to oppose legislation that would expand research conducted on stem cells extracted from the destruction of human embryos. (The bill still passed the House.) Since 1998, there have been more than 80 children born to parents who adopted snowflakes, and 15 more are due. More than 400,000 embryos live in cold storage across the nation.
Tail-out: Crusaders 26 - Waratahs 20. (Whoops, sorry - that's for Monday's Daily Briefing.)
