Japan has seen a dramatic drop in the number of second level students engaged in sexual activity for the first time since the 1970s, according to a new survey. The research, conducted by the Japanese Association for Sex Education (JASE) that 15pc second level boys had had sex compared to 27pc in 2005, a 50pc...
A federal U.S. court has ruled that a Hawaiian law which defines marriage as between a man and a woman does not violate the U.S. Constitution. The ruling by Judge Alan. C. Kay on Wednesday broke a string of court losses by advocates for traditional marriage on the subject of same-sex marriage. It comes before...
Forbidding discussion of public values in the name of ‘pluralism and tolerance’ is “a formula for tyranny” Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George (pictured) has said. In his blog this week, Cardinal George warned that the context in which discussion of controversial issues such as abortion and marriage takes place often narrows very quickly and dangerously. He...
The death of an Indian girl who had been donating eggs only two days before she died is set to shine a spotlight on the use by wealthy Western couples of eggs from young women from the developing world. The girl, Sushma Pandey, who was 17, died two years ago today. Hospital records also indicate...
Ireland has experienced a big fall in the number of people who describe themselves as religious, and has one of the highest percentages of atheists in the world, a new international poll has claimed. The survey was commissioned by Gallup, and carried out in 57 countries throughout the world. Red C carried out the poll...
Renewed efforts must be made to build strong marriages, which serve as the foundation of any healthy society, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan (pictured) of New York has said. He said that Catholics believed that “the best way to get a hint of how God loves us now, and in eternity, is to look at how...
A law in the US state of Minnesota which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman does not deny same-sex partners the “benefits of marriage,” including the right to inherit each other’s assets. The ruling, handed down last Wednesday, doesn’t set a precedent because it upholds a lower court’s ruling, but it...
Childcare costs have shot up for many families, according to a new survey by the Irish Independent. However, figures from the Central Statistics Office from 2009 show that demand for childcare is less than usually assumed. And in 2010, it emerged that 30,000 children eligible for a Government scheme to provide a free pre-school year...
Cohabiting couples in America are having more children, according to new US government figures. The number of births overall to cohabiting women increased from 14pc of all births in 2002 to 23pc in 2006-10, according to the first US government report since 1990 on intended and unintended births. Data released last month by the National...
A senior UK Government advisor has compared evangelical Christians to “totalitarian Muslims”. In an article in the Daily Telegraph, Alan Judd, an advisor to the Secretary of State for Education, was commenting on recent free school applications by Evangelical Christians. Mr Judd wrote: “To ban believers from setting up free schools would be to exclude...
