News Bits

Los Angeles loses iconic filmaker Sydney Pollack. Mr. Pollack died Monday of cancer at his home in Los Angeles. He was 73. Pollack was best known for directing The Way We Were, Out of Africa, Tootsie and Three Days of the Condor, among many other movies. He was also a very popular character actor, as well, having had bit parts in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and Michael Clayton, with George Clooney, just to name a few.

While attending a literary festival in Britain, Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Sunday he expects Democratic superdelegates (himself included) to finally belly-up their choice for presidential nominee after the final primary in June. That's when, he opines, Hillary Clinton will then have to quit the race. Wait a minute... a literary festival? I bet Jimmy hasn't read all the books Dubya and Rove have since 2006.

Well what then for Senator Clinton? Senator Edward Kennedy has some insights as he reminisces on losing the Democratic nomination in August 1980. Clinton, Kennedy says in an interview conducted before his cancer diagnosis, must decide where her heart lies. "She's got great capacity -- she was a good senator before, and she can be a great senator in the future," he said. The question, he said, is "what she does with this experience."

When "Humanitarian Relief" is anything but: Save the Children UK is reporting that humanitarian relief workers and United Nations peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children as young as 6, in war-ravaged and food-poor countries.

Children as young as 6 have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday. After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity said it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.

Save the Children says almost as shocking as the abuse itself, is the "chronic under-reporting" of the abuses. It believes that thousands more children around the world could be suffering in silence. According to the charity, children told researchers they were too frightened to report the abuse, fearful that the abuser would come back to hurt them and that they would stop receiving aid from agencies, or even be punished by their family or community.

"People don't report it because they are worried that the agency will stop working here, and we need them," a teenage boy in southern Sudan told Save the Children. The charity's research was centered on Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, but Save the Children said the perpetrators of sexual abuse of children could be found in every type of humanitarian organization at all levels.

While I've come to the conclusion long ago that this world will never ever really be safe for all children, I didn't know humans (in the name of Humanitarianism) could be so truly vile. I guess it takes all kinds.

Breaking News

CNN is reporting that the Texas 3rd District Court of Appeals has ruled that the State should not have removed the more than 460 children it took from a polygamist sect's ranch. The Court found in favor of 38 women who had appealed the removals, as well as a decision last month by a district judge that the children will remain in state custody.

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the three-judge panel said.

The state's Department of Family and Protective Services "did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty," the judges ruled.

The mothers of the children argued the State should have proved that the children's health or safety was in danger; that there was "an urgent need for protection" that required immediately separating the children from their parents; and that the State made "reasonable efforts" to avoid removing the children.

Because the State failed to provide such proof, the mothers further argued, the District Court -- which backed the department's seizure of the children -- "was required to return the children to their parents and abused its discretion by failing to do so."

You can read the ruling here. (warning: pdf file)