The number of new cases seeking judicial intervention in the care of a child has increased by 46 per cent since 2019, new figures show.
Last year judges made care-related orders in respect of 14,985 incoming cases, a rise of 4,694 from four years prior and a rise of 791 since 2021.
New data from the Courts Service record consecutive annual rises since 2019 (the oldest available comparable year) in the number of new childcare cases.
The vast majority of the requests came before the District Court, but 71 were brought to the High Court.
Last year, the courts granted 201 emergency care orders sought by Tusla — the Child and Family Agency — for the removal of a child still at home or who was removed by gardaí. That was down from 233 the year before.
About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data.
The largest increases were seen in older adults. Deaths rose nearly 7pc in people ages 45 to 64, and more than 8pc in people 65 and older. White men, in particular, have very high rates, the CDC said.
Commenting on the news, sociologist Brad Wilcox pointed to family breakdown as a cause: “Dramatic declines in marriage, childbearing & community mean millions of Americans are disconnected from the social ties that protect us from ultimate act of hopelessness, he said.
Nearly 180,000 women got the morning-after pill or other ’emergency contraception’ on free drugs schemes during the past three years at a cost of nearly €15.5m, figures have revealed. The morning-after pill can have an abortifacient effect.
More than 60pc of those who availed of the morning-after pill were medical card holders, while 28pc received drugs and devices under the Drugs Payment Scheme (DPS). The remaining patients qualified under the Free Contraception Scheme.
Meanwhile, the Government faces growing pressure to roll out paid fertility leave for workers as it prepares to launch its first free IVF scheme next month. IVF works for only around 25pc of those who use it and costs about €5,000 per cycle in Ireland.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has announced full funding for one round of IVF or ICSI treatment from September.
A Department of Children spokesperson did not give a direct response when asked if new laws to entitle workers to statutory leave are being considered.
Due to the lack of a statutory entitlement, the Labour Party drafted a bill that includes a provision for up to 10 days’ leave for those seeking IVF treatment.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/calls-for-government-to-offer-fertility-leave-for-employees-undergoing-ivf/a414978123.html
There will be no requirement to give medical care to neo-nates who survive abortions in New Zealand after MPs rejected a special amendment to legislation.
The move came after news from Australia that 700 babies have been born alive and left to die after failed abortions in Queensland and Victoria from 2010 to 2020, according to data from Queensland Health, and Victoria’s Consultative Council on Obstetrics and Pediatric Mortality.
In New Zealand, National MP Simon O’Connor put forward to a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to amend Labour’s extreme Abortion Legislation Act 2020 that would have made it a legal requirement to provide “appropriate care and treatment” to a baby born alive after a failed abortion in NZ.
This proposed amendment was put forward to ensure that the question of what to do when babies are born alive after failed abortions in New Zealand was put beyond all legal doubt.
Simon O’Connor’s amendment was voted down by 80 to 37. Those who voted against the amendment included Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister.
The FBI’s targeting of some Catholics as “extremists” was not the work of a single rogue field office, as previously claimed, but involved multiple offices, according to an internal FBI document released by a Congressional committee on Wednesday.
Last February a whistleblower leaked a heavily redacted report from the FBI’s Richmond office: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”
The document defined “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as those who attend the Latin Mass and who allegedly frequently adhere to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Judiciary Committee in July that the report was “a single product by a single field office,” and he was aghast when he discovered it and ordered it withdrawn.
However, a less-redacted version of that Richmond document indicated that multiple field offices were involved, including Los Angeles and Portland.
The House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan, now wants more information from the FBI on how broad this investigation really was.
The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, visited the Christian community in Haifa on Wednesday in the wake of the recent intrusions of Jewish radical groups into Christian holy places and other incidents involving violence against Christians.
The Israeli President said, “in recent months, we have seen serious occurrences against Christian denominations in the Holy Land. Our brothers and sisters, Christian citizens, feel that they are under attack in their places of prayer, cemeteries, and streets. I consider this extremist phenomenon unacceptable in every respect. This phenomenon must be eradicated, and I am grateful to the police and other law enforcement agencies for taking this matter seriously.”
Many members of the Christian community in Haifa had taken to the streets to protest the attacks on Christians and Christian Holy sites. The Latin and Orthodox Patriarchs and Heads of Churches have been meeting with the Israeli police of Jerusalem to ensure the taking of necessary measures to prevent further incidents.
An army veteran has pled “not guilty” to breaking an abortion exclusion zone by praying silently near an abortion clinic in the UK.
Adam Smith-Connor was standing in silent prayer on Orphir Road, Bournemouth when he was questioned as to “the nature of his prayer”.
He said it was for those facing difficult decisions relating to abortion, as well as for the child that he lost to an abortion that he now regrets paying for.
Local authorities issued him with a fine.
Disputing the charges, Smith-Connor says he is being prosecuted “for a thought crime”.
“I am accused of breaching an abortion clinic buffer zone by praying for my son Jacob and other victims of abortion, for their families and for abortion clinic staff on Ophir Road Bournemouth. I did not approach anyone, I did not speak to anyone, I did not breach any one’s privacy. I simply stood silently. I am being tried for the prayerful thoughts I held in my head,” said Adam Smith-Connor upon exiting the court.
Luxury car brand Porsche is facing criticism after the company released an advertisement that edited out a massive statue of Jesus Christ that overlooks the city of Lisbon, Portugal.
The controversy mirrors an incident in 2017 when Supermarket chain Lidl apologised for airbrushing Christian crosses out of images of the island of Santorini’s domed blue churches on some of its Greek-themed food packaging.
The German car company launched a campaign last week celebrating six decades of its classic Porsche 911. It released a roughly two-and-a-half-minute ad depicting the evolution of the car.
About 44 seconds into a version of the video posted on the company’s website, a car drives across the screen against the backdrop of the bridge and river that the Cristo Rei statue overlooks, but the 92-feet-tall statue of Jesus was absent from atop the 269-feet-tall concrete pedestal that remains visible across the river.
Porsche subsequently apologised: “We are truly sorry and can fully understand the hurt this has caused. This film has been removed.”
On Sunday afternoon, Porsche uploaded a new version of the ad in which the statue is restored.
A Catholic priest in the Indian state of Goa has been granted “anticipatory bail” after police registered a criminal case against him for allegedly “hurting Hindu sentiments” in remarks he made about a Hindu king during a Sunday Mass in July.
Hindu groups had staged demonstrations in front of the police station calling for criminal charges to be brought against Father Bolmax Pereira, parish priest of St. Francis Xavier Church in Chicalim in the Archdiocese of Goa.
Pereira was quoted in the Mass posted on YouTube saying that 17th-century Hindu king Chatrapati Shivaji “was a national hero but not a god.”
Hindu nationalist groups demanded his arrest for offending their “religious sentiments.”
Anti-Christian hatred and attacks are becoming more and more common in Israel, as some are calling the levels of violence a “crisis” for the conservative government led by Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop and soon-to-be Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, has spoken out regarding the growing anti-Christian attacks in Israel in a recent interview with Vatican News.
“Let us say that these clashes, these spats, these accusations, these insults, are not new. But the exponential increase in these phenomena, especially in the Jerusalem area, in the Old City, has become a matter of concern and an issue on the agenda that worries both the Christian community and the Israeli authorities,” Archbishop Pizzaballa said.
He noted that while authorities in Israel have publicly condemned the rise in anti-Christian attacks, their promises to act have yet to yield much in the way of real results.
