ACL compiles a daily media monitoring service of stories of interest to the Christian constituency relating to children, family, drugs and alcohol, marriage, human rights, religious freedom etc. Visit the ACL’s website each day to see what’s of interest in the news. Please note that selection of the articles does not represent ACL endorsement of the content.
Bioethics
Stem cells vulnerable to cancer
Andrew Trounson – The Australian
Up to 25 per cent of human stem cell lines grown in the laboratory develop genetic abnormalities that are potentially cancerous, highlighting the need for effective screening techniques. But the incidence of abnormalities is also a warning of the dangers of so-called “stem cell tourism” in which desperate patients can be lured to try unproven and untested treatments promoted on the internet out of places like China, India and Mexico.
ACL editorial note: If you read the article carefully, you see that Adult Stem Cells are NOT in the frame for ‘cancer risk’ as the title implies.
Children & Family
It’s not a game – no hitting pause on good parenting
Tracey Spicer – The Daily Telegraph
Pathological internet misuse can be summed up in two words: Lazy parenting. It has been reported experts are considering labelling video game addiction as a mental disorder. What next? Chronic inability to eat your greens? Post-traumatic stress disorder from washing the dishes? Existential angst about avoiding exercise?
Facebook is taking over Australian teenagers, psychologists say
Evelyn Yamine – The Daily Telegraph
Teenagers are becoming addicted to Facebook and are allowing the social network site to “take over” their lives. Psychologists have told The Daily Telegraph they receive regular requests for help from parents whose teens are so consumed by Facebook that it dramatically interferes with their school work and sleep.
Classification
Violent video games DO make people more aggressive
Stephanie Darrall – Daily Mail
Violent video games can alter the brain in just one week and make players more aggressive, according to researchers. A study has found that key areas in the brain suffer reduced activity, and leave it physically altered. The findings will fuel the debate over the impact that violent games have on regular players and links to anti-social behaviour.
Drugs & Alcohol
Police unite to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence
Herald Sun
Police across the country will start cracking down on boozed-up hooligans this weekend in a national campaign called Operation Unite. The trans-Tasman blitz, which will be launched on Thursday, is aimed at stopping alcohol-fuelled violence and will run from 6pm until 2am on Friday, Saturday nights. A teenager who was bashed unconscious by a group of drunken thugs and left to die helped the NSW police commissioner launch Operation Unite.
Sending your kids to play in a hard school
David Penberthy – The Daily Telegraph
It says a lot about Australia’s binge-drinking culture that an event such as Schoolies Week – where drunken violence, date rape and death by misadventure is relatively commonplace – is regarded as a routine rite of passage for young people who in most cases aren’t even legally old enough to drink. I still have about eight years up my sleeve but I am dreading the day when my son or, especially, daughter comes to me and says: “Dad, can I go to Schoolies?”
Environment
Greens threaten to pull plug on Murray-Darling Basin plan
Lauren Willson – The Australian
The Greens have thrown Labor’s $8.9 billion bid to save the ailing Murray-Darling Basin into doubt, threatening to scuttle the basin plan when it reaches parliament unless environmental outcomes are significantly strengthened. The threat came hours after Murray-Darling Basin Authority chairman Craig Knowles released the blueprint, which seeks to restore the basin to health by diverting 2750 gigalitres of agricultural water to the environment by 2019 through a mix of voluntary buybacks and infrastructure projects.
Marriage
Julia Gillard courts Right faction
Sid Maher and Milanda Rout – The Australian
Julia Gillard has appealed to a handful of right-wing MPs for their support to avoid a humiliating defeat on the floor of this week’s ALP national conference over same-sex marriage. Having staked her leadership on keeping an election promise not to change the laws surrounding traditional marriage, the Prime Minister was forced yesterday to lobby individual ALP delegates as the Right faced defeat on the issue by as many as 10 votes.
Christians to target pro-gay Labor MPs
Brisbane Times
A Christian group will campaign against Labor MPs who support the same-sex civil unions bill to be debated in Queensland parliament this week. The Australian Family Association will letterbox drop in the electorates of Labor MPs who they believe will vote for the bill in a debate expected on Thursday. Labor MPs have been given a conscience vote, and if six vote against it, it will be sunk.
Prostitution & Sex Trafficking
Editorial: Sex-trade dilemma
The Advertiser
South Australia’s regulation of prostitution is complex and dysfunctional. The fact that brothels are allowed to flourish in otherwise ordinary suburban streets, not just in commercial roads and red-light districts, is ample proof that not enough direction is imposed on the industry by regulators. If someone began selling discount fuel from their garage in Parkside, the business would be shut down within hours, and rightly so. But brothels can be the subject of complaints from nearby residents for many months before they are shut down.
Religious Freedom & Persecution
Egyptian Australians demand democracy
Gareth Boreham – SBS
Egyptian Australians have marched on consulates here demanding a swift end to military rule and a smooth passage to democracy through this week’s elections. Local Coptic Christians have also conducted church services to pray for an end to the bloodshed in Cairo. And the Copts know only too well the heavy price that’s been paid on Egypt’s rocky path to democracy. Last month, 27 of their own were killed in Cairo protests.
Refugees
Strains on legal system as people-smuggler cases set to double
Paul Maley and Brendan Nicholson – The Australian
The collapse of offshore processing threatens to strain law enforcement agencies to breaking point, with Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Chris Craigie warning that his office is bracing for a doubling in the number of cases it is expected to try.
Sexualisation of Society
Germaine Greer and gay exploitation
Matthew Holloway – Eurekastreet
It is commonly thought that men represent the main producers and the main consumers of pornography. But earlier this year feminist firebrand Germaine Greer alluded to an important and often forgotten fact: men are also its victims. ‘Pornography’, Greer said on a September episode of ABC1′s Q&A, ‘also exploits boys, men and children, but most of all, it exploits the consumer of pornography.
Schools clamp down on pupils using cosmetics
Elissa Doherty – Herald Sun
Primed preps, plastered with lipstick and eyeshadow and wearing skimpy clothes, have forced a crackdown by schools. Some girls have been banned from wearing make-up and are even having cosmetics confiscated in the classroom. It comes as a parent of a prep girl has revealed his shock at seeing a gaggle of six-year-old girls at a school disco last week with fully made-up faces.
