

We Irish like to see ourselves as a touch more moral than other nationalities, an odd legacy of the popular policy of neutrality during the second world war married to an older belief that we are more spiritual and empathetic than the crass materialists to our west and east.We tut-tut about American police shootings of poor African-Americans, Israel’s heavy-handed treatment of Palestinians, Hungary’s inhumane attitude towards Serbian refugees, and get misty-eyed about three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body lying on a Turkish holiday beach.But Tom Connors is not an African-American, a Palestinian, or a Syrian refugee; he’s not someone else’s problem. And we don’t really give enough of a tut about him to face down the visceral hatreds in our midst and treat our own outcasts with decency.
Feminism isn’t dead, despite all the assassination attempts | Laura Bates
The proclaiming of the ‘end of feminism’ by the Spectator and others is merely an attempt to deflect blame for problems society has failed to tackle
Feminism is dead. Long live feminism. The front page of the Spectator and a spate of other articles would have us believe the battle is won and we can now “move on”.
I can’t be the only one who thinks this is wonderful news. We highly strung, hand-wringing, over-sensitive, perpetually offended wilting violets can hang up our suffragette-coloured hats, stop combing Twitter in desperate search of minor criticism to weep about and finally stop hating all the men for long enough to get boyfriends. Rejoice!
Love wins: first Kentucky couple rejected by clerk exchange vows
April Miller and Karen Roberts marry on Saturday and have one request for guests – do not mention Kim Davis
April Miller and Karen Roberts stood before a minister on Saturday night, hand-in-hand, and said the two words they fought for months to exchange: “I will”.
The people packed into the room around them jumped into a standing ovation. They all wore matching rainbow buttons that read: #LoveWins.
Exclusive: UK nuclear deterrent to cost 167 billion pounds, far more than expected
Baby rescued from sea by Turkish fishermen after refugee boat capsizes | World news | The Guardian
Muhammad is now in good health and has since been released from a hospital in the provincial capital Izmir after initial treatment in Kusadasi.The rescuers said they helped 15 other people out of the water, adding that most of those floating the water were women crying for help, including one woman who was pregnant. They said that the group had been in the water for about five hours before they were found by the fishermen who then alerted the coastguard.Muhammed was since successfully reunited with his mother, 23-year-old Lorin Halef, who said that the smugglers had promised them a bigger boat than the one they had been forced to take in the end.“They put 30 people on the boat. They had told us that we would be going on a bigger boat. But when we got there, we saw that the boat was small,” Halef told Turkish reporters. “But by then it was too late to do anything. We wanted to go to Greece. We lived through a huge panic. But [the fishermen] saved us, I cannot thank them enough.”She also said that her husband Ihsan was still in Syria.
Source: Baby rescued from sea by Turkish fishermen after refugee boat capsizes | World news | The Guardian
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Pope, ending synod, excoriates bishops with ‘closed hearts’ | Reuters
It was the latest in a series of admonitions to bishops by the pontiff, who has stressed since his election in 2013 that the 1.2 billion-member Church should be open to change, side with the poor and rid itself of the pomp and stuffiness that has alienated so many Catholics.In his final address, the pope appeared to criticize ultra-conservatives, saying Church leaders should confront difficult issues “fearlessly, without burying our heads in the sand.”He said the synod had “laid bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families”.He also decried “conspiracy theories” and the “blinkered viewpoints” of some at the gathering, and said the Church could not transmit its message to new generations “at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible”.
Source: Pope, ending synod, excoriates bishops with ‘closed hearts’ | Reuters
China indicates readiness to join US-led Pacific trade pact
An influential Communist Party newspaper has said China should join the US-led regional trade pact. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed earlier this month.
New health overhaul challenge reaching Supreme Court
WASHINGTON (AP) — Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul are taking yet another challenge to the law to the Supreme Court, and say they will be back with more if this one fails….
Migrant flow unabated as leaders gather for summit on crisis
BREZICE, Slovenia (AP) — The flow of Syrians, Afghans and others through the Balkans toward Western Europe continued unabated Sunday as European leaders were gathering in Brussels to try and work out a plan to deal with the massive influx of asylum-seekers….
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