International Day of Support for Victims of Torture

Torture: the terror of 'enhanced interrogations'

Prisoner can sue on torture memos. "Among other things, the defense alleges that [Jose] Padilla was held for 1,307 days in a 9-foot-by-7-foot cell, isolated for days or weeks at a time, physically assaulted and threatened with execution and other violence, kept awake with lights and noises, and forced to take mind-altering drugs, possibly PCP or LSD."

Solitary confinement as psychological torture

Some recent Australian news

Australia will no longer charge immigration detainees for their own imprisonment

School of hard knocks still follows tradition, say parents: claims that bullying continues at Farrer high school, despite policy changes and a half million dollar payout to a severely traumatised former student.

Anti-abortion group barred from NSW schools

Girls not taught skills to resist sex pressure

Podge Update

Nine out of 10 Australian women have regular "fat days" and most are miserable about their bodies

Big fat lies and damned statistics: "The new report tells us 68 per cent of Australian men are overweight or obese. But it's ridiculous to lump overweight and obese people together. Do the maths. If you stand 1.83 metres like me, then you enter the overweight zone at 84 kilograms and you remain there until you hit 117kg. That's a huge range."

Gentlemen prefer real curves: "Ironically, the decrease in hip size and weight of models during the past 40 years has been a trend away from the body type that appeals to men, the researchers noted in the study, published in the journal Behavioural Ecology." (You can read the abstract online - at right is a link to a "lay summary" in RTF format.)