QUEBEC
GATINEAU - A judge has overruled a father’s refusal to allow his 12-year-old daughter go on a school trip in punishment for her unruly behavior.
ALBERTA
CALGARY - The Alberta Human Rights Tribunal has forbidden evangelical pastor Stephen Boisson from expressing his moral opposition to homosexuality and ordered him to pay $5,000 “damages for pain and suffering” and apologize to the activist who filed the complaint.
CHILE
SANTIAGO - The Constitutional Court of Chile has voted 5-4 to outlaw the distribution of the morning after pill. The final text of the ruling has yet to be released, as the justices are wrapping up their opinions.
SOUTH AMERICA
BOGOTÁ - The Colombian daily El Tiempo has reported that the high tensions between Colombia on the one side and Venezuela and Ecuador on the other de-escalated after President Uribe of Colombia had a rosary said in the chapel of the Presidential Palace. The prayer specifically implored the protection of Mary as patroness of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador.
AUSTRIA
VIENNA - Sixty percent of Austrians want a referendum on the new EU constitutional treaty according to an OGM poll. 85 percent believe they have not been properly informed about the treaty. 47 percent expressed dissatisfaction with the EU, compared to the 44 percent who are happy with the EU.
Not a single head of state who has faced trial for his political actions has ever been acquitted, writes John Laughland introducing his new book, A History of Political Trials from Charles I to Saddam Hussein, over on Brussels Journal.
It makes me feel like a traitor to write this. The Second World War was my religion for most of my life. Brave, alone, bombed, defiant, we, the British, had won it on our own against the most evil and powerful enemy imaginable, writes Peter Hitchens at The Mail on Sunday.
He got rubbed out of history as being no longer desirable or fashionable to the modern world. And who rubbed him out? His supposed best “comrade”, the Socialist Left - that’s who! So writes Tribunus at Roman Christendom.
The Republicans (and the Democrats) have made the great error of believing their own propaganda, as well as relying on stereotype in stead of reality, writes Daniel Larison at Eunomia.
Not enough money has been spent on the Speaker’s house at the Palace of Westminster, while whole wings and corridors of rooms have been done up like those of a five-star hotel: dead in feel and execrable in taste. So writes Christopher Howse at the Daily Telegraph.