Australia
CLOSE to half a million Queenslanders are living in poverty, new statistics from the St Vincent de Paul Society reveal. On the cusp of its Winter Appeal launch, Vinnies' Queensland state president Dennis Innes said the effects of poverty were becoming far-reaching in the state, causing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
Nick Holt explores the music world of dimly lit bars concealed off Wiltshire Boulevard in Santa Monica's promenade district, Los Angeles.
WHEN Shamiran Merkhaal and her family fled Iraq because of persecution of their Christian faith, she could barely speak English. Ten years later, Ms Merkhaal now teaches disadvantaged students in Melbourne's western suburbs. "I've been teaching for 11 months. It's still new. I still have my bad days and my good days," Ms Merkhaal said.
IN the town of Yendi in northern Ghana, children who are born with birth defects are said to be evil. They are "bad omens", and when tragedy strikes the village, it's the unhealthy children that are blamed. They are banished, thrown on the street, fed poison and left to die.
SUICIDES of Aboriginal Australians as young as 11 are placing enormous financial burden on the indigenous community, Murri Ministry co-ordinator Ravina Waldren said. "There are huge costs associated with burying our loved ones," Ms Waldren said. "We're looking at around $9000 every time some of our young people are suiciding, and families are grieving already ...
L.A four-piece Warpaint have had a bevy of noteworthy members come through the turnstiles - including Hollywood actress Shannyn Sossaman. Six years on from its formation, the group has created a family-like environment with the existing members and recently released the critically acclaimed, The Fool, bumping them into our hot list for 2011.
CELEBRITY atheist and author of the top-selling novel The God Delusion Richard Dawkins said faith was "the great cop-out". The "great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence". Professor Dawkins is notorious for avoiding sophisticated theological debate on faith and reason, and he rarely engages in public discourse with Catholic religious.
ON January 26, 1788 the British flag was erected on Australian soil. The First Fleet had reached its final destination. One year earlier, more than one thousand convicts, civil officers, crew members and marines had departed England, destined for a new land. It was the land Captain James Cook discovered a decade earlier.
RELIGION is one topic that should never be discussed at the dinner table, so the old maxim goes. And, for years, atheists and Christians have been considered poles apart on this topic. According to Australian Catholic University's Professor David Newheiser, this caricature is based on a false premise.
CLAIMS of male privilege should fall on deaf ears after recent data demonstrates a heartbreaking trend among Australian men. In 2017, the number of deaths from suicide in Australia was more than 3000. Of those deaths, three-quarters were men, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.