A recent High Court case has found that a tax debt of one spouse can be shifted to another during a divorce property settlement, which lawyers say is unprecedented and could leave the richer spouse with the debts of their former partner.
www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-21/what-is-mine-is-yours-until-taxes-do-us-part/10726020 [category Aust, inequity]
Pope Francis said on Tuesday that the Roman Catholic Church had faced a persistent problem of sexual abuse of nuns by priests and even bishops, the first time he has publicly acknowledged the issue.
Catholic nuns have accused clerics of sexual abuse in recent years in India, Africa, Latin America and in Italy, and a Vatican magazine last week mentioned nuns having abortions or giving birth to the children of priests. But Francis has never raised the issue until he was asked to comment during a news conference aboard the papal plane returning to Rome from his trip to the United Arab Emirates.
www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/world/europe/pope-nuns-sexual-abuse.html [category global, sexual violence]
“I had to report a passenger who grabbed me while I was driving,” said Zuwena Belt, a Lyft driver in Portland, Oregon. Ms Belt runs a Facebook group for female ride-share drivers.
“After ending the ride, I placed a call to Lyft’s critical response team and the police. While [Lyft] were on the line, they refused to share information with the officer on scene.”
Lyft said it worked closely with law enforcement and had a process for providing passenger information but in almost all cases a warrant was required.
Several drivers told BBC News how both Uber and Lyft’s “lost and found” function – where passengers can get in touch directly with drivers to recover things left in the car – were being abused by those seeking to have more contact with drivers well after a trip had ended
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46990533
[category global, sexual violence, sexual harassment, workforce discrimination]
Like so many New York City parents, Ms. Goodson faced a familiar but perilous challenge: hauling her stroller and daughter down the steps of a station that, like most stops in the city’s creaking subway system, had no elevator.
As Ms. Goodson made her descent, she fell, tumbling down a flight of stairs and onto the subway platform at the Seventh Avenue station, at 53rd Street, officials said.
Her daughter survived the fall. Ms. Goodson did not.
A lawsuit filed in 2017 against the transit authority, which operates the subway, described New York’s subway system as one of the least accessible in the country and accused the agency of violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act.
[ed: and it is also a form of sex discrimination that disadvantages women with children.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/nyregion/mom-subway-stairs-death-malaysia-goodson.html
[category global, reproductive rights, inequity]
A common IVF treatment marketed as a fertility booster and costing hundreds of dollars is useless and clinics should stop offering it, experts say.
The procedure known as ‘endometrial scratching’ does not offer women a better chance of taking home a baby after IVF, found the largest and most comprehensive trial of the treatment.
Professor Mol, who wrote an accompanying editorial, said it was “great news” to discover the procedure didn’t help.
“The concern is that there are many more of these add-on therapies that are offered without a sound scientific base, and many of these will turn out not to be effective once properly evaluated,” he said.
He pointed to a British evaluation of 38 IVF add-ons that found a lack of evidence for all but one treatment.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/snake-oil-the-popular-ivf-therapy-that-has-just-been-proven-useless-20190122-p50syu.html
[category global, reproductive rights]
New guidelines from the Faculty of Sexual And Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) state there are no health benefits to having 21-day cycles on the combined pill, despite the fact they’re the norm and the packaging reflects we should. (Most combined pills are only packaged to have 21 hormonal pills per pack.)
And, now for the real kicker aka the reason why sugar pills were even a thing in the first place…
No, it’s not because our bodies ‘need a break’.
They were invented to persuade the Pope to approve the Pill.
https://www.mamamia.com.au/pope-placebo-contraceptive-pill/?
[category global, reproductive rights]
