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Prisoners Win Gardening Competition & New Bathroom!

CitizenSugar — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:00:44 -0700

Prisoners in Cardiff may soon have a fancier bathroom to keep a good grip of the soap in - they've just won $2,000 of luxury bathroom goods in a gardening competition. After entering the Cardiff in Bloom competition - and coming in second place in the community building category - their entry was automatically put in a drawing to win the luxury bathroom fixtures. When their name was pulled as the winners, a ripple of laughter spread through the City Hall venue. No decision has been made on whether the prisoners will be able to claim the prize.

The prison community garden is a regular entrant in the gardening competition, and they've won their division several times. Cardiff prides itself on being a green city, and competitions like Cardiff in Bloom, according to the city council, is a way of "increasing a sense of civic pride and making Cardiff a brighter and better place to live and work."

Pending the decision on the prize, the prisoners have been sent a brochure to peruse to see if anything strikes their fancy.

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Sikh Student Wins Right to Wear Bangle in UK School

LibertySugar — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:00:08 -0700

After nine months of being barred from school for violating the no jewelry rule, the UK's High Court ruled that the Welsh and Punjabi Sikh teenager had a right to wear her religious bangle to school. The court said that the school unlawfully discriminated against Sarika Singh by not letting her wear her Kara (bangle), an essential symbol of the Sikh faith, different from other jewelery. Sarika is the school's only Sikh pupil.

An almost constant clash churns between school rules and religious expression. This is how other notable school and religious symbol cases have been decided in the UK:

In 2007, the High Court ruled that a girl suffered no discrimination when asked to remove her purity ring, which signifies her belief against premarital sex.
Also last year, a school told a Catholic pupil that she could not wear a crucifix on a chain due to safety concerns, but that she could wear it as a pin.
In 2006, a religious high school declared that non-Muslim girls had to wear headscarves while at school.

For more examples and pictures of the bangled pupil celebrating, read more.

In 2006 a teacher lost her discrimination suit after she was told she could not wear her headscarf during lessons.
In 2005 a school won an appeal, approving the school's policy against the jilbab, head-to-toe religious dress. Girls were allowed to wear the hijab headscarf.

Perhaps the difficulty of finding a universal standard makes some advocate for no religious symbols in schools at all. Should the law look for a bright-line standard, or assess the specifics of the situation on a case-by-case basis?

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Stranger Than Fiction: To Catch a Husband

TresSugar — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:00:32 -0800

Sitting in her living room in South Wales, Cheryl Roberts entered a chat room posing as a 14-year-old girl. Why, you ask? After finding suspicious messages on her husband's computer, Cheryl wanted to catch him in the act of trying to seduce young schoolgirls. Unfortunately, she succeeded.

Cheryl's husband David had no idea that as he chatted away in his study, he was really talking to his wife in the living room. Using a webcam, David filmed himself performing "acts of indecency" on himself and he thought he was broadcasting the images to a 14-year-old girl, but it was really his wife. Upon seeing this horrifying display, Cheryl called the cops, who then found a bunch of child porn on his computer. No word if Chris Hansen made an appearance.

David went on to face legal repercussions, and I think it's needless to say that the couple is now divorced. This poor woman!

Britain to Impose Booze-Ban on "Antisocial" Drunks

TresSugar — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Starting today, anyone who behaves "antisocially" while drunk can be banned from pubs, bars, and other public places in England and Wales for up to two years.

Many people in Britain believe that drastic policing like this must be used to change the culture of heavy drinking. But not everyone is on board with the latest crackdowns - or booze antisocial behavior orders (ASBO). One civil liberties activist says:

It will be jelly bean ASBO for sugared-up kids next. Surely it's time to call last orders on endless new legislation.

While this is the first time antisocial behavior orders will be handed out for public drunks, British courts have been using them to curb other bad behavior for some time now. So what else counts as anti-social behavior in the UK? Earlier this month, a man was given an animal ASBO after bees from his hives repeatedly stung the neighbors. The beekeeper was ordered to move his hives. And a magistrate judge gave another Brit an ASBO for throwing shopping carts outside a supermarket two or three times per week. The ASBO makes it criminal for the man to throw shopping carts going forward. That sounds about right.

Do you think this sort of targeted justice is the best way to solve societal problems like excessive alcohol consumption? Will telling a drunk that he can't go to pubs and bars for a couple of years change anything?

Teaching Five Year Olds Not to Beat Their Wives

TresSugar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:00:24 -0700

Their future wives, that is. In a proposed program generating buzz in the UK, students as young as five would be educated about the evils of domestic violence.

The potential lessons are part of a broad national initiative aimed at reducing violence against women and teaching kids how to maintain healthy relationships without resorting to violence. Here's more:

The lessons will be part of the National Curriculum and are likely to be taught in personal, social and health education classes, which are attended by children from the age of five.

Teachers will also be given new guidance on tackling "gender bullying."

Opponents of the plan argue that men are twice as likely as women to become victims of violence, and because 25 percent of the violent crimes in England and Wales are committed by women, why should boys be singled out?

Whether they're male or female, I don't think it hurts to educate kids about finding nonviolent ways to solve their problems. And though it seems a bit counterintuitive to teach boys how to treat their wives at an age when they still think girls have cooties, I don't think five is too young to start, either. What do you think about this idea?

Meet Bluey, the Transsexual Fish

TresSugar — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:28:21 -0700

Inquisitive, trusting, and friendly, New South Wales' favorite fish, the Blue Groper, has another trait that makes it special: the females can turn into males!

When a male Blue Groper dies, the largest and most dominant female will turn into a male fish to stabilize the population. "If you take a lot of males out," says Bob Harcourt, associate professor at Macquarie University, "then the females have to spend a lot of their time turning into males, which means they can’t breed and they can't lay eggs." This is getting to be a problem, because although they're protected, people are starting to overfish them illegally. Here's to hoping marine biologists figure out a way to protect Bluey and her/his kind!

Oh Snap! Wedding Dreams Come True in Blue Hawaii

TresSugar — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:20:31 -0700

Award-winning Elvis impersonator Steve Caprice married his fiancée in a re-creation of the Blue Hawaii wedding scene. The wedding went down in Porthcawl, Wales, a town that hosts the largest annual Elvis Festival in Europe.

A quick Google search reveals that chapels in Las Vegas offer Blue Hawaii wedding packages. So you too can have an Elvis-inspired wedding!

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Quiz Nation! Are You an Informed Citizen?

CitizenSugar — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:00:10 -0700

This week Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall took a trip to Brazil. Find out if you know what else went down!

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Britain's Libel Laws Take Piss Out of Freedom of the Press?

CitizenSugar — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:45:37 -0700

Are the British aiming to squash free speech? Robert Murat, an official suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, has settled his libel case against several British newspapers for overconnecting him to her disappearance with headlines like "Sex Secret of Madeleine Suspect: Briton ‘Shared’ the Wife of Pool Cleaner at Villa." His pay out is thought to be close to $1 million. Murat lived close to location where Madeleine disappeared and was named the first formal suspect though he's denied any involvement in her disappearance last May.

Some consider the decision great.

Murat was libelled. Not once, but many times over. Scores of reports, and many headlines too, defamed him . . . he was often treated not as a suspect by papers but as a culprit . . . papers have been pushing at the boundaries of the British contempt rule for years. More is published about British crime suspects in advance of their being charged (and sometimes afterwards) than was ever the case 20 years ago. Why? Because they have got away with it.

Seems reasonable right? Accuse a guy of killing a little girl in the papers, pay a fine? Well, this free speech and freedom of the press issue doesn't stay on UK soil - British libel laws have a passport. To see how, read more.

Here's the other side of the coin:

Perhaps you don't live in England or Wales, so you think this has nothing to do with you. You're wrong. English libel law now applies to everyone on earth. Make any accusation, anywhere in the world, and if the subject can demonstrate that a single person in England or Wales has read it, you could be sued for every penny, cent, rouble, rupee, or renminbi you possess. The Internet and the global nature of publishing ensure that these medieval laws have become the most powerful extraterritorial legislation ever drafted.

Even Sens. Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter voiced concern over the reach of the libel grab in the WSJ, saying: "Individuals with alleged connections to terrorist activity are filing libel suits and winning judgments in foreign courts against American researchers who publish on these matters."

Maybe Richard Jewel would have had something to say on the matter? Where's the line between libel and freedom of the press?

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The Mission's a Rap! NASA Produces Song About Science

LibertySugar — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:00:23 -0700

Making up rap about science is cool. It can be used as a learning tool. That's what NASA thought when it asked graduate student Jonathan Chase from South Wales to write a rap about astrobiology for NASA's magazine. Here's a taste of what he came up with:

What about planet x?
Better leave that alone
The further from the heat source
The colder the home
Study life on earth
Then you do with biology
But in space, it’s called Astrobiology

Chase's degrees are in aerospace engineering and science and science fiction, but they might as well be in funk and rhythm. He's been known to use hip-hop as a way to make science more accessible. To see the music video, read more.

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