Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Brussels has been given the power to compel British courts to fine or imprison people for breaking EU laws, even if the Government and Parliament are opposed. An unprecedented ruling yesterday by the supreme court in Europe gives Brussels the power to introduce harmonised criminal law across the EU, creating for the first time a body of European criminal law that all member states must adopt. The judgment by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg was bitterly fought by 11 EU governments, including Britain, and marks a dramatic transfer of power from national capitals to Brussels. Diplomats said that it was political dynamite in many countries, but the European Commission welcomed the ruling, on a test case about environmental law, as a landmark that sets an important precedent.
Who is/are Generation Jones, and why do they matter this election? A new analysis of recent New Zealand political polling claims that the current voter vacillation is primarily driven by one demographic - Generation Jones, the large generation between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. US political analyst and consultant Jonathan Pontell, who conducted the study, said Generation Jones has the highest percentage of floating voters, which when combined with its huge size (29.8% of the electorate) is largely responsible for the volatility in the overall polling numbers. “Based on these new numbers, it seems clear that the winner on September 17 will be the party which is able to swing Jonesers to their side”, said Pontell. Jonesers also vote at higher rates (86% of all NZ Jonesers voted in the 2002 election, compared with 77% among all eligible NZ voters).
The surprising thing about New Orleans is not that the city should have been engulfed, but that it took so long for it to happen. Cities do not last. Those built in precarious places collapse. The rest are doomed to decay or suffer humanly induced destruction. It is only our historical myopia, which prevents most of us from seeing much of the past at once, that makes us think our cities are solid or enduring.
Nearly 20 years after the disastrous leak at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, it appears that the health outcomes have been far better than experts feared at the time. Fewer than 50 deaths have been directly attributed to radiation poisoning, although a report published recently by an international team of scientists estimates than abut 4000 may eventually die from radiation-induced cancer and leukaemia. The investigators found no evidence of decreased fertility and no increase in congenital malformations which can be attributed to the disaster.
A study published in the August edition of the Southern Medical Journal reveals that women who have abortions are at significantly higher risk of near and long term death than women who give birth. This contradicts the widely accepted opinion that abortion is safer than childbirth. Researchers discovered that women who had abortions were almost twice as likely to die in the following two years. They also discovered that the elevated mortality rate of aborting women persisted over at least eight years. This is the second large record-based study to find elevated mortality rates among women following an abortion. In 1997, a government funded study of maternal deaths in Finland sent a tremor of worry through family planning agencies when it revealed that in the first year following an abortion, aborting women were 252 percent more likely to die compared to women who delivered and 76 percent more likely to die compared to women who had not been pregnant. Many of the extra deaths were due to suicide.
And in Russian, where lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, women have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, according to the country's highest-ranking obstetrician. About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. ``Many more'' abortions weren't reported.
The following is so disturbing, I can scarcely bear to report it. "The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has demanded that Ukrainian authorities seriously investigate claims that newborn children are being stolen for adoptions or for their body parts. The PACE rapporteur, Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, says that she was concerned about the fate of more than 300 babies. Requests for information by family members have been thwarted by bureaucracy, incompetence and even threats of physical violence. Hospital authorities vehemently deny the allegations. The London Times has highlighted two cases in Maternity Hospital No 6 in Kharkov which newborns were taken away immediately after birth. Their parents were told that the child had been stillborn. However, there are many suspicious errors in the paperwork for these cases. When the hospital was forced to exhume the bodies of infants from a mass grave, it was discovered that many of them had had their internal organs removed. One possibility is that body parts are being sold for research into bio-products for medicine and cosmetics. Hospital authorities say flatly that there is no medical use for foetuses. However, the Times points out that the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kharkov advertises a vast range of human tissue for sale on its website. These include embyronic liver cells, foetal liver cells, ovary tissue, and cerebral tissue.
Who is/are Generation Jones, and why do they matter this election? A new analysis of recent New Zealand political polling claims that the current voter vacillation is primarily driven by one demographic - Generation Jones, the large generation between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. US political analyst and consultant Jonathan Pontell, who conducted the study, said Generation Jones has the highest percentage of floating voters, which when combined with its huge size (29.8% of the electorate) is largely responsible for the volatility in the overall polling numbers. “Based on these new numbers, it seems clear that the winner on September 17 will be the party which is able to swing Jonesers to their side”, said Pontell. Jonesers also vote at higher rates (86% of all NZ Jonesers voted in the 2002 election, compared with 77% among all eligible NZ voters).
The surprising thing about New Orleans is not that the city should have been engulfed, but that it took so long for it to happen. Cities do not last. Those built in precarious places collapse. The rest are doomed to decay or suffer humanly induced destruction. It is only our historical myopia, which prevents most of us from seeing much of the past at once, that makes us think our cities are solid or enduring.
Nearly 20 years after the disastrous leak at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, it appears that the health outcomes have been far better than experts feared at the time. Fewer than 50 deaths have been directly attributed to radiation poisoning, although a report published recently by an international team of scientists estimates than abut 4000 may eventually die from radiation-induced cancer and leukaemia. The investigators found no evidence of decreased fertility and no increase in congenital malformations which can be attributed to the disaster.
A study published in the August edition of the Southern Medical Journal reveals that women who have abortions are at significantly higher risk of near and long term death than women who give birth. This contradicts the widely accepted opinion that abortion is safer than childbirth. Researchers discovered that women who had abortions were almost twice as likely to die in the following two years. They also discovered that the elevated mortality rate of aborting women persisted over at least eight years. This is the second large record-based study to find elevated mortality rates among women following an abortion. In 1997, a government funded study of maternal deaths in Finland sent a tremor of worry through family planning agencies when it revealed that in the first year following an abortion, aborting women were 252 percent more likely to die compared to women who delivered and 76 percent more likely to die compared to women who had not been pregnant. Many of the extra deaths were due to suicide.
And in Russian, where lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, women have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, according to the country's highest-ranking obstetrician. About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. ``Many more'' abortions weren't reported.
The following is so disturbing, I can scarcely bear to report it. "The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has demanded that Ukrainian authorities seriously investigate claims that newborn children are being stolen for adoptions or for their body parts. The PACE rapporteur, Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, says that she was concerned about the fate of more than 300 babies. Requests for information by family members have been thwarted by bureaucracy, incompetence and even threats of physical violence. Hospital authorities vehemently deny the allegations. The London Times has highlighted two cases in Maternity Hospital No 6 in Kharkov which newborns were taken away immediately after birth. Their parents were told that the child had been stillborn. However, there are many suspicious errors in the paperwork for these cases. When the hospital was forced to exhume the bodies of infants from a mass grave, it was discovered that many of them had had their internal organs removed. One possibility is that body parts are being sold for research into bio-products for medicine and cosmetics. Hospital authorities say flatly that there is no medical use for foetuses. However, the Times points out that the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kharkov advertises a vast range of human tissue for sale on its website. These include embyronic liver cells, foetal liver cells, ovary tissue, and cerebral tissue.
