One in 10 Canadians knows someone who has been offered assisted suicide for a treatable condition, and nearly one in five knows someone who has died while on a wait list for medical treatment.
That’s according to a new Leger survey commissioned by the think tank Second Street.
A randomly selected survey group of 1,500 Canadians was asked if they or someone they knew had been offered a assisted suicide for a condition they felt was treatable.
Slightly more than one in 10 (11 per cent) replied “yes.”
The same group was also asked if they knew “someone who has died due to a long healthcare waitlist.” To this, 18 per cent said “yes.”
Another 37 per cent also attested to personally knowing someone “whose condition permanently worsened due to a long waitlist for treatment.”
The new numbers add to a growing archive of poll data showing that Canadians no longer trust their health system to treat them should they suffer a medical setback.
The number of babies born in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level for any calendar half-year in nearly 50 years when the overall population was much smaller than today.
Figures published Friday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there were 287,236 live births recorded in the first six months of 2026, a decrease of 2,406 births compared to the first half of 2025, when there were 289,642 live births recorded – and the lowest number for any calendar half-year since 1977.
The decline follows a fall in annual births to 585,396 in 2025, which the ONS identified as the lowest annual number since 1977.
Last week also marked the 59th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act which introduced a radically permissive abortion regime.
Since then, 11,256,470 unborn babies have lost their lives to the procedure across the UK – that is one baby every two minutes; or 34 lives ended every hour.
There were 278,740 abortions in England and Wales in 2023, the most recent year for which statistics are available, an increase of 26,618 (10.56%) from 2022.
This was the highest number of abortions ever recorded in England and Wales in a single year.
A new Catholic progamme of Relationships and Sexuality Education for secondary pupils has received a warm welcome from scientist and former teacher, Dr Niamh Regan, who has been a vocal critic of previous RSE/SPHE programmes.
The Catholic Education Partnership (CEP), working with the Irish Bishops’ Conference, launched Living Love Senior, a new Leaving Cert SPHE/RSE programme for Catholic post-primary schools, in September 2026. ‘SPHE’ stands for ‘Social. Personal and Health Education’.
Developed specifically, but not exclusively, for Catholic schools, it meets the requirements of the new SPHE curriculum specification and is true to the Catholic ethos.
Reviewing it in Gript, Dr Regan, said its account of the human person is “biologically, factually, spiritually and religiously true. This programme is honest, respectful and worthy of the teenagers in our schools”.
She added: “I have a zero-tolerance approach to current SPHE offerings and have exercised my right to opt out for reasons numerous enough to fill a thesis, never mind an article. But even for someone like me, Living Love Senior is acceptable. I would not need to opt out of this”.
A bill to enable a person’s sex to be officially designated with an ‘X’, including on birth certs, rather than male or female has been defeated in the Dail by a vote of 87 to 63 after the Government opposed it.
The far-left, People Before Profit-Solidarity TD, Ruth Coppinger, suggested the change could be used by people who identify as ‘non-binary’ or who have both male and female, ‘intersex’ characteristics. It could also be used by parents when registering the birth of babies.
Minister for Social Protection, Dara Calleary, raised concerns that the lack of an age limit could mean, contrary to the law at present, children would be granted an entitlement to change their official gender.
More significantly, regarding the recording of births, he said the General Register Office identified a “fundamental difficulty” with parents determining the sex to be recorded, rather than relying on a medical determination.
The bill, he added, conflated two issues that need to be distinguished: “recognising a person’s gender for legal purposes, and recording sex within the State’s system of civil registration”.
Last year saw the highest number of people change their legally designated sex since the introduction of Gender Recognition Act in 2015.
The Act allows someone change their official sex from male to female or female to male, regardless of their underlying biological sex, and be issued with a new birth cert and passport to reflect their choice.
This is part of gender ideology which says that biological sex, and the ‘preferred-gender’ a person may ‘self-identify’ as, has no real relationship.
The Government records the figures for those who change their legal sex. It does not record the number of those who ‘socially-transition’, (change their name and how they present themselves) or those who ‘medically transition’, through hormonal or surgical interventions. The latter two can both be done without changing one’s official sex; and likewise, one may change one’s official sex without socially or medically ‘transitioning’.
Last year, 367 people changed their legal sex, the highest ever, and a total 2248 since 2015.
Nine people aged 16 or 17 changed their official sex, another high, up from just three over each of the previous three years.
Three people requested their change be revoked so they could revert to their original sex. There have been 13 since 2015.
More than 60 people have been killed in a major attack on Christians in Ethiopia’s Oromia region.
A statement from the country’s Orthodox Church said that 20 houses were burnt to the ground in the attacks.
Eyewitness told BBC Amharic that five of those killed were children.
A church official described the attacks on three areas in the Shirka district as a “massacre”, saying security forces arrived at the scene but were unable to stop the assault.
Meanwhile, in Jordan, nine people have been killed in an attack on a funeral.
At least 32 others were injured as gunmen opened fire on a church in Hmoud, in the Karak governorate in central Jordan on Friday.
Three men suspected of carrying out the attack were arrested in Karak after a gunfight on Monday.
Jordanian military also launched airstrikes in southern Syria, against what it said were “terrorist organisations” responsible for the funeral attack.
However, it subsequently emerged that three children were among seven people who died, five of whom were from one family.
Prominent Christian voices in the Middle East had expressed appreciation for the words of empathy from fellow Arabs, but deplored the additional shedding of innocent blood.
Fury erupted across social media and the phones of RTE’s Liveline yesterday as grandparents reacted to an advert by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) depicting the hugging of grandkids without consent as a matter of opprobation.
The video ad which depicted a young girl being uncomfortable receiving a hug from her grandparents was criticised by both Government and opposition voices, and also received blowback in international media.
Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said the advertisement was “both inappropriate and demeaning” to grandparents and has been removed by the DRCC following engagement with his officials.
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill stressed the video “is not a Government campaign” and the Government “does not support” it.
Speaking in the Dáil she said there is “a broader question around consent, which is important”, but “that does not extend to this ad or to grandparents in any way”.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said “for anybody to equate sexual relationships between people, and a grandparent hugging their grandchild, is absolutely inaccurate and completely wrong”, he said on RTÉ Radio 1’s David McCullagh show.
“Is the State now looking for grandparents to second-guess themselves before they hug their grandchildren or show affection to their grandchildren?”
Family life is exhibiting fragility with marriage and birth rates down, according to the Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin.
The Archbishop had been in Rome last week at the international assembly called by Pope Leo XIV to mark ten years after Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
He said the assembly heard about the huge cultural shifts which have had a major impact on family.
“We recognised much brokenness in families, the decline in birth rate and marriage rate, and the increased ease of divorce. Rates of cohabitation are also on the rise, and the seeming avoidance by young people of life-long commitment”.
He asked specifically how the Church can “encourage young people to embrace a vocation to marriage”.
Ireland’s ageing demographics will place increasing pressure on the health service and on public finances, with thousands of extra hospital beds needed, tens of thousands of long-term residential care beds, and hundreds of extra GPs and practice nurses.
That’s according to the latest report from the ESRI.
Ireland’s fertility rate is now only 1.5, well below the replacement level of 2.1. The ESRI report assumes a fertility rate of 1.65 going forward for reasons not explained.
The Institute previously estimated that by 2040 Ireland will require an additional 5,091-7,780 public hospital beds, 20,695-27,207 long-term residential care beds, 943-1,211 General Practitioners (GPs) and 761-868 General Practice Nurses (GPNs) to meet growing demand arising from a growing and ageing population.
The latest report brings together evidence on projected demand, capacity and expenditure requirements, and considers what the system might need to remain sustainable.
It notes that even though Ireland’s population is relatively young, it already has one of the highest proportions of health and social care spending in Europe. Yet, expenditure requirements “are expected to increase significantly in the coming years”.
Report author Sheelah Connolly said while Ireland has begun to plan for higher health and social care demand, “demographic change will require sustained action”
A new Bill would enable a person’s sex to be officially designated with an ‘X’ rather than as male or female.
The law already allows people change their official sex from male to female, or female to male, regardless of their underlying biological nature, but does not allow them to be legally recognised as ‘non-binary’ which means neither male nor female.
On Newstalk Breakfast, the author of the bill, Ruth Coppinger of far-left party, People Before Profit-Solidarity described the issue as a matter of choice and said the State should not “force” people to choose a sex they feel inherently uncomfortable identifying with.
The Bill would also allow parents of newborns to declare the sex of their child as ‘X’ on birth certificates.
Deputy Coppinger suggested this could be used for babies who are intersex, that is, born with the biological characteristics of both sexes.
Dáil Éireann will debate the legislation this week.
