Australian medical students are carrying out intrusive procedures on unconscious and anaesthetised patients without gaining the patient’s consent.

The unauthorised examinations include genital, rectal and breast exams, and raise serious questions about the ethics of up-and-coming doctors, Madison reports.

The research, soon to be published in international medical journal, Medical Education, describes – among others – a student with “no qualms” about performing an anal examination on a female patient because she didn’t think the woman’s consent was relevant.

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The absent primates do not approve of the US church’s ordination of actively gay bishops or its same-sex blessings.

Defending Bishop Orombi, Archbishop Williams, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, emphasised that, as with other relevant Anglican primates, Bishop Orombi’s position concerned “exclusion from ministry on grounds of behaviour, not orientation”.

He continued that Mr Kato had been “named in this rotten, disgraceful Ugandan publication” ”“ the Rolling Stone newspaper in Kampala ”“ in which “effectively, his murder had been called for.”

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More than a third of the worldwide leaders of the Anglican Church failed to attend last week’s primates’ meeting in Dublin.

The senior bishops or archbishops of all 38 provinces were invited to the six-day meeting at the Emmaus Retreat Centre in Swords, but only 24 turned up.

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The Archbishopp of Canterbury has acknowledged that there remains a “critical situation” in the Anglican Communion. He was speaking at a press conference at the close of the Primates’ Meeting in Dublin.

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Of the 38 primates who could and should be in attendance at a legitimate Primates’ Meeting, we understand some 15 are absent. The GAFCON primates AND Presiding Bishop Mouneer Anis and Archbishop John Chew are among those with more important things to do than attend a meeting and be manipulated by procedural rules that Dr. Williams will dominate. More important, because Rowan Williams structures the meeting to control the primates and disempower them from taking any action that he doesn’t wish, and when their photographs are taken together, the Anglican Communion Office (ACO) uses that photo to announce that all is well in Rowanland.

Many of the primates have made their reasons for being absent very clear in public and private correspondence to Dr. Williams, who is the convener. However, the Anglican Communion Office, headed by Canon Kenneth Kearon, has concocted reasons for some of them that are simply disingenuous. Most of the primates have made it clear to Dr. Williams why they are absent and why they are frustrated and disappointed in his leadership. With this fact in mind, there is a question that begs to be asked; “Is Dr. Williams competent to lead the Communion?” You would be surprised if you polled liberal revisionists and orthodox conservatives to find that many on both sides would answer NO. It is time to acknowledge before the world that the emperor has no clothes, and the Archbishop of Canterbury has no competency to lead the Communion.

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Quietly at first but less so now, Germany is breaking out of its postwar identity ”“ the assumptions and understandings that held it in place for 60 years. Germany is shedding the past, busting old taboos and being more assertive. What an evolving Germany will look like in 20 or even five years is unclear, but will have profound consequences for Europe and the West. Much of the recent breakout is due to a rising German industrial base achieved by elbow grease, niche market savvy, and, as is often said here, by “doing our homework.”

Germans have looked around lately to find they have the preeminent world-class export economy in Europe. No one else comes close. German precision tools are coveted in Asia and Russia like Fabergé eggs. Germany is building much of the Summer Olympic and World Cup facilities in Brazil. The next generation of Eurostar trains linking the Continent and Britain will be made by Siemens of Germany, not, as they traditionally have been, by Alstom of France ”“ a blow to French pride.

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[KATHY] LOHR: During the State of the State address, the governor said he would eliminate some 14,000 vacant jobs. He’s also calling for state agencies to reduce budgets by an average of 7 percent. That means cuts to higher education, Medicaid and services for the elderly. But Deal says there’s no other way.

Mr. [NATHAN] DEAL: Our state’s fortunes do not rise or fall on the size of state government.

LOHR: Georgia has been cutting its budget for years. Since 2009, the size of the budget has shrunk by 15 percent.

Alan Essig with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute says that’s caused a kind of budget fatigue here.

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Tens of thousands of people have gathered in central Cairo for a seventh day of protest, calling for a general strike.

Police have been ordered back to the streets, to positions they abandoned on Friday, but it is not clear whether they are returning to central Cairo.

The demonstrators are also planning a huge march to take place on Tuesday.

Protesters want President Hosni Mubarak to step down after 30 years in power. He has promised political reform.

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Cheers and spontaneous dancing broke out as the first official announcement of results from South Sudan’s independence vote was made in the oil-rich region’s capital by members of commission that organized the referendum held earlier this month.

“The vote for separation was 99.57 percent,” said Justice Chan Reec Madut, head of the southern bureau of the Referendum Commission, after reading the vote tallies for “unity” and “secession” for each of the south’s 10 states. Mr. Madut was referring to the results for the south, while Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, the head of the Commission, announced the results from polling in northern Sudan and in eight countries that held voting for South Sudan’s far-flung diaspora population.

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From here (requires subscription) in an earlier [24 January] London Times story:

Speaking to The Times, Archbishop Gregory Venables, who retired in November as archbishop of the Southern Cone, but is chairman of the Primates’ Council for the GAFCON conservative group, said: “There are two main reasons a significant number are not going. “There has been no real consultative preparation. In the past, we have been given a paper five minutes before a meeting and told to discuss it. The other reason is that there has been no responsible carrying out of what was decided in the past.”

He said that the meetings, which are closed to the press, did not lend themselves to open debate, adding: “You go to these meetings and there is a kind of gagging gas in the atmosphere. It is almost like trench warfare. The gagging gas comes down, and it is as if people are unable to speak.”

This is significant in that it accords with what Bishop Mouneer Anis said; note that neither agrees with what Kenneth Kearon says about their reasons for conscientious non-participation–KSH.

Holy God, we offer thanks for the vision of Samuel Shoemaker, priest and co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous; and we pray that we may follow his example to help others find salvation through knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Lord, who alone art God, the gracious and merciful; who commandest them that love thy name to cast away all fear and care, and to lay their burden upon thee: Receive us under thy protection, and give us now and evermore that everlasting rest which thou hast promised to them that obey thy Word; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.

–Galatians 4:4-7

While I recognize that support for “democracy and freedom” is substantial, within each Arab national society — that the middle class is not a nothing; that each economy depends on it — I doubt this “faction” can prevail. Worse, I think we are watching its final, hopeless bid for power.

The key fact, in Egypt (paralleled in Yemen and elsewhere), is that the Muslim Brotherhood has not declared itself. The Islamists could put vastly more people on the street. They could subvert the loyalties of policemen and soldiers, who already resent the moneyed middle class. They could generate just enough heat to make large districts of Cairo and Alexandria, now simmering, boil over.

But instead, they are playing neutral, watching those policemen and soldiers put the demonstrators down, while most of Egypt remains quiescent.

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A local pastor is leaving the 30th largest church in America for the sixth largest church in America — to help make the bigger church bigger.

Geoff Surratt, pastor of ministries at Mount Pleasant-based Seacoast Church, will join Rick Warren and Saddleback Church in Southern California as director of church planting, according to a news release.

Surratt will spearhead one of the key initiatives in Saddleback’s “Decade of Destiny Campaign,” which includes the launch of a new church planting center later this year. Part of Surratt’s responsibility will be to develop Warren’s vision for planting churches through that center and other programs, according to the release.

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Two Christian churches included Jewish and Muslim readings in their services Sunday to demonstrate respect for other faiths and to counter recent religious conflicts.

The Rev. Denise Yarbrough, pastor of Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 1360 Lake Ave., was joined by Nathan Jaschik, a member of Temple Beth El, who read from the Micah 6:1-8, in the Old Testament, and Abdurrauf Bawany, the Muslim chaplain at Rochester Institute of Technology, who read from the Quran.

At Lake Avenue Baptist, 75 Ambrose St., the Rev. Gordon V. Webster, the pastor, was joined by Paul Duberstein, a member of Temple Beth El, and Farzana Islam, a member of the Islamic Center of Rochester who is on the staff of the Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue at Nazareth College.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams said that the outcomes of the Primates’ Meeting in Ireland had met his “chief hopes” for the week.
Speaking at a press conference Dr Williams explained that when inviting the Primates to the meeting he had indicated what things might be considered there. These included decisions about an effective Primates’ Standing Committee, reflections on primacy itself, and expectations of the Primates’ Meeting.
“My chief hope was to emerge with greater clarity and agreement about what we expect of the Primates corporately and how best we can realise our expectations,” he said.

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Evident Preoccupation with Issues of Anglican Crisis: The four current emphases of IASCUFO indicate that issues arising from the Anglican crisis are dominating the group’s attention. The definition of church and the related question whether the communion is a church or a communion of churches constitute an issue that is, yes, fundamental but also a bit elementary for a group purporting to be advancing the theology of the communion as a whole. The reason is probably a pervasive of sense of crisis and disintegration. The second topic of the Anglican Covenant is obviously crisis-related, as is the third on the Instruments of Communion and their inter-relations. The first half of the fourth topic, the reception of the work of the instruments and of the ecumenical dialogues, is also crisis-related, with only the second half indicating a nod to the complex and diverse ecumenical dialogues. Ecumenism is likely to get short shrift, most unfortunate in light of Anglicans’ historic role in catalyzing ecumenical relationship and work. Theology and doctrine are likely to be marginalized altogether as managing and responding to the crisis take center stage. The Anglican crisis is full-blown, I have criticized efforts to minimize it, and it deserves the kind of attention it has been receiving. It is simply unfortunate that this conflation of commissions appears to suck all other theological and ecumenical air out of the room. The health of the communion depends partly on other kinds of work moving forward and receiving support ”“ and it may well be that this unfortunate conflation has occurred mainly for financial reasons.

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The compound effect of all these online relationships ”“ the massive global interconnectivity so loved by the cyberutopians ”“ is that “networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone”. The quality of the interaction is the emotional equivalent of junk food; it may fill you up but it hardly nourishes.

Such a danger might have been acceptable when social networks were self-selecting in their membership: the only people capable of getting on to a bulletin board in the mid-1980s had already followed a steep learning curve and weren’t limited in their social lives to the online world. But today, the network is everywhere, and our children are “Digital Natives” who are continually online.

So [Sherry] Turkle rails against what she sees as the falsely consoling effect of cyberspace ”“ whether it is the quality of online relationships or the emotional crutch provided by the scope for endless self-reinvention….

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Newcastle Anglican Bishop Brian Farran has been called to give evidence in the NSW Supreme Court after controversial church disciplinary hearings in December against four clergy, including retired Newcastle Dean Graeme Lawrence.
Solicitors for Father Lawrence and Cardiff priest Graeme Sturt have advised the bishop to be available for cross-examination at a Supreme Court hearing set to start on Thursday, after the court granted the priests an injunction in December following professional standards board determinations against them.

Solicitors for the diocese are expected to seek an adjournment in the court today and Bishop Farran, who is overseas, is not expected to return to Newcastle until later this month.

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From the ACNS preamble:

At todays press conference the panel comprised of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, The Most Revd Bernard Ntahoturi, Archbishop of the Province of Burundi & Bishop of Matana, The Most Revd Dr John Walder Dunlop Holder, Archbishop, Church in the Province of the West Indies & Bishop of Barbados and The Most Revd David Robert Chillingworth, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church & Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane. They were welcomed by The Most Revd Alan Edwin Thomas Harper, Primate of All Ireland & Archbishop of Armagh

Dr Rowan Williams said the outcomes of the Primates Meeting had met his “Chief hopes” for the week. He explained that among other letters and statements agreed by the Primates there were two outlining the scope and purpose of the Primates Meeting and its Standing Committee. His address was followed by a question and answer session with members of the media.

Listen to it all (just over 34 minutes).

On the final day of the Primates’ Meeting in Dublin, Primates discussed the content of final documents that had been prepared over the week. They began with reviewing the first draft of a working document on the proposed purpose and scope of the Primates’ Meeting. They then reviewed other documents””letters and statements””covering a range of international issues.

Read it all and please note that this includes a link to six different pdf’s all of which need to be considered.