Schoolboy helps mum deliver baby sister in Queenland

AAP

February 26, 2010 5:38pm

• Boy helps mum through labour
• Takes instructions over the phone
• Delivers baby girl

AN 11-year-old Queensland boy has delivered one of his mother's premature twin babies.

Rohan Townsend delivered one of his sisters with instructions from a paramedic over the phone early this morning after his mum went into labour 12 weeks early at their Sunshine Coast home.

An ambulance crew took mum Amanda Sullivan and the new arrival to Nambour General Hospital after being called to the the family's Bli Bli home at 6.50am (AEST), the Department of Community Safety said.

Ms Sullivan's second daughter was delivered at the hospital and both girls have since been transferred to the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

Australian Medical Association (AMA) Queensland president-elect Dr Gino Pecoraro said Rohan had performed an amazing feat for such a youngster.

"What an amazing young man," he said.

"How difficult and scary it must be for an 11-year-old to come face to face with his mother having twins and not only twins, but early twins.

"He certainly should be congratulated as are at least our emergency services people who guided him through that on the phone."

Dr Pecoraro said he'd be happy to help Rohan become an obstetrician.

"When he finishes high school and grows up and does medicine if he wants to be an obstetrician get him to give us a call and we will get him on the training program," he said.

Ms Sullivan, who checked out of Nambour Hospital yesterday, is in on her way to Brisbane to be reunited with her daughters.

Internet porn? We don't look at it, say Aussies

By Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter

From:news.com.au

February 11, 2010 11:18am

• Australians say they don't look at porn
• The majority also support web filtering
• But not the way the Government plans

MOST Australians say they don't look at online porn and support the idea of an internet filter, a survey has found.

Just one in five respondents admitted to looking at legal but sexually explicit material on the internet – less than the number of people who said they had stumbled across it by accident.

Sixty per cent – including almost half of those aged 18 to 29 – said they had never seen it, in the survey conducted for ABC program Hungry Beast.

However the numbers may be skewed by modesty, with at least four major porn websites among the Top 100 visited by Australians as ranked by web traffic monitor Alexa.

All four adult sites were more popular than the official sites of Qantas, the Yellow Pages and the Australian Open, according to the list.

Only 6 per cent of people said they had deliberately looked at material online they thought would be refused classification under the Federal Government's internet filter.

A further 24 per cent said they had seen such material accidentally.

Support for filtering

The survey also canvassed opinions on the Government's plan to create a mandatory internet filter for all Australians.

Eighty per cent of respondents said they supported a system to block access to material that is refused classification, such as child sexual abuse, bestiality, fetish porn and instructions on drug use.

Nineteen per cent were not in favour.

However, even more overwhelming was the number of people who thought the system should be transparent.

Ninety-one per cent said they thought the community should be told which websites had been placed on the filter blacklist.

Under the Government's current plan, the blacklist would be secret.

The results echo the thoughts of web filtering proponent Clive Hamilton who last year told news.com.au he believed the current plan was too secretive.

"One of the problems with the Government's approach has been the lack of transparency in the process and that has raised concerns," he said.

"It all seems to be done in secrecy. And the policy, if they went ahead, would have a great deal of secrecy attached to it."

The research was conducted by phone by McNair Ingenuity Research and included 1018 adult respondents.

Oh, my God - atheist convention sells out

BARNEY ZWARTZ

February 2, 2010

AN ATHEIST convention in Melbourne has sold out six weeks before it opens despite no aid from any level of government, organisers said yesterday.

Convention organiser and Atheist Foundation of Australia president David Nicholls said the state government had ''stabbed the people of Victoria in the back'' by not helping, forcing organisers to hire smaller venues.

The Global Atheist Convention, at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on March 12-14, features a stellar line-up of presenters, including the world's best-known atheist, Richard Dawkins.

''We think this is a turning point for secularism in Australia, and it will be looked at by the rest of the world,'' Mr Nicholls said. ''We will see it happening more through the free planet, and our aim is to make the whole planet free.''

He said more than 2500 tickets had been sold, about half to Victorians and the rest to interstate and international visitors.

But he said that only the last day, with Richard Dawkins, would be in the 2500-seat auditorium. Because organisers ''could not afford to gamble'', they had hired smaller auditoriums for the first two days.

''We were very annoyed that all three tiers of government refused to assist us,'' Mr Nicholls said.

He said Canberra bureaucrats said such funding was not part of the portfolio responsibility of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd or his deputy, Julia Gillard, and provided no other advice.

The Victorian Government raised hopes, then suddenly told him ''the event has been secured, so you're not getting the money'', he said.

The Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Melbourne in December, received $2 million from the federal government and the state government.

Mr Nicholls said if the organisers had been able to afford a bigger venue and advertising, many more people might have been able to attend.

Other speakers include philosophers Peter Singer and A.C. Grayling, American commentator P.Z. Myers, former evangelist Dan Barker and broadcasters Phillip Adams and Robyn Williams.