A German doctor with a son who has Down syndrome has won his fight to stay in Australia, after earlier being told to pack up and leave. Bernhard Moeller had been on a temporary visa since arriving in Australia in 2005 to work at a rural hospital. But the immigration department decided that the public cost of treatment for his 13-year-old son, Lukas, would be too high. Just hours after Dr Moeller lost his final appeal, however, immigration minister Chris Evans intervened and used his powers to grant permanent residency, saying that the Moeller family were making a valuable contribution to Australia.

Dr Moeller and his wife and three children came to Australia under a special visa scheme to fill vacancies in the rural health system. The family’s difficulties with the immigration authorities have won them support from all over Australia and they say they are “really happy” with the outcome.… click here to read whole article and make comments

Do laws protecting homosexuality also threaten freedom of conscience? You bet they do. And, sadly, not everyone will be prepared to pay the price of defending their freedom. eHarmony, Inc, the company behind the internet matchmaking website founded by an Evangelical psychologist and initially targeted to the Christian community, has decided to launch a new matchmaking website for homosexual singles rather than fight a nearly four-year-old complaint in court.

The company, still popular among Christian singles, announced last month it had reached a settlement with the New Jersey attorney general, which began an investigation early in 2005 when a homosexual man filed a complaint with the state, alleging that the company’s policy of matchmaking only opposite-sex couples violated New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law, which covers “sexual orientation”.

According to the settlement, eHarmony will launch a new website aimed solely at homosexuals. As part of the settlement, eHarmony, Inc. will advertise… click here to read whole article and make comments

Good news and bad news in the matched and hatched statistics from Ireland. Marriage and birth rates soared during the economic boom years of 1995 to 2006 -- but so did extra-marital births and cohabitation. And while there are more three-child families in Ireland than practically anywhere else in Europe, families on average are getting smaller. There was a 77 per cent rise in one-child households, and a 59 per cent drop in four-child households, between 1981 and 2006. Professor Tony Fahey of University College Dublin said the increase in births in recent years suggested the state of the economy and the labour market may have a bigger impact on childbearing than the level of government support. Overall, births were up 46 per cent.

The surge in marriages over the past decade has been partly driven by the growth in numbers of people in the 20- to 40-year age bracket, and… click here to read whole article and make comments

A baby born in Belgium during the summer but sold by its parents to a Dutch couple over the internet is now in the care of Dutch authorities while his future is decided. According to media reports the baby was sold on eBay for thousands of euros. The Dutch couple denies buying Baby J, saying on Dutch TV that they only paid the costs of pregnancy incurred by the parents.

A Dutch court said the couple had broken the laws for adopting foreign children, and had to hand the baby over to child welfare authorities. According to the Dutch television programme Netwerk, the Belgian couple -- who already had one child -- decided to sell the baby because they could not afford to raise two children. The Belgian couple are now said to feel bad about their decision and to want their baby back. Both couples are being investigated.

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If family organisation is not your strong point, it just got easier -- or so one million members of Cozi.com seem to think. The free web service, launched in 2006, is a mini-command centre for the family, with communally visible calendars for every member (babies too), plus centralised shopping lists that can be accessed on your PC, by text, or via cell phone. No more double bookings, no more “it’s not my turn for that chore”, no more forgetting to pick up the milk. All courtesy of a bunch of tecchies who take the family seriously.

“People have accused us of being fanatically family focused, and you know what? They're right,” says their website blurb. “From our very beginning in 2005, we've been all about families. When we started Cozi, we were just a small group of Microsoft, Expedia, and Amazon veterans—all with kids of our own—looking for a way… click here to read whole article and make comments

Academics do not all fall into one camp when it comes to the creation-evolution debate. Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.

"The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children's minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose," he says. "If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God."

In one study, six and seven-year-olds who were asked why the first bird existed replied "to… click here to read whole article and make comments

A Muslim couple granted a marriage annulment by a French court have had it cancelled by an appeals court -- but they can get a divorce. The couple married in 2006 but the husband quickly sought an annulment after discovering that his bride had lied about her virginity. The lower court granted the annulment, saying the woman “acquiesced” in the suit. Now they are effectively married again and must seek a divorce if they want to separate.

The controversial case pitted France’s secularism against the traditions of its growing immigrant communities. Justice Minister Rachida Dati (pictured) who was born in France of North African parents, ordered a review of the verdict, and feminists claimed the decision was unjust because a woman would not be allowed to cancel her marriage if she thought her husband was not a virgin. Prosecutors argued that the annulment discriminated against women.

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The choice of Sidwell Friends School for their girls, Malia and Sasha, gives President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle the benefit of a vaguely religious tradition and institution with values that sit well with the contemporary world: peace, diversity and environmentalism, to name the most prominent. The school’s website says, among other things:“Sidwell Friends School is an educational community inspired by the values of the Religious Society of Friends and guided by the Quaker belief in "That of God" in each person.

“Sidwell Friends School is committed as an institution to the ideal of diversity with regard to age, economic background, ethnicity, gender, physical disability, political affiliation, race and sexual orientation in its student body, faculty and staff.

“We cultivate in all members of our community high personal expectations and integrity, respect for consensus, and an understanding of how diversity enriches us, why stewardship of… click here to read whole article and make comments

Researchers studying the sexual behaviour of adolescents in Wisconsin, USA, have stumbled on a great new insight -- the importance of parents’ influence in restraining early sexual activity. Watching a lot of television, having low self esteem and not doing well at school all go together with having sex before the age of 15, but having a poor relationship with one’s parents also showed up as a risk factor for both girls and boys in the study. Living with a single mother or step-parent further raised the risk for girls.

Having three or more of these risk factors increases the odds of early sex considerably, and the researchers suggest that intervention programmes should target a combination of factors. But they also recommend that “preventive measures should not be left up to teachers and counsellors alone, but might include parents”. (Might!) They add that “positive influence from parents, coupled with comprehensive education… click here to read whole article and make comments

Changing attitudes to people with Down’s syndrome seem to be encouraging more parents to bring affected babies into the world, a British survey has shown. After the widespread introduction of pre-natal diagnosis of Down’s in the UK in 1989, the number of babies born with the condition each fell from 717 to 594 in the year 2000. Research has shown that as many as 90 per cent of those pre-natally diagnosed were aborted. Since then, the birth rate has increased again, reaching 749 in 2006.

The Down’s Syndrome Association, in conjunction with the BBC, conducted a survey of 1000 of its members to find out why so many were choosing to have Down’s children despite the availability of pre-natal screening. The findings are being aired in a BBC Radio 4 documentary this week. They show that while religious or pro-life beliefs counted in around one third of cases, many parents felt… click here to read whole article and make comments