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First step- giving them casinos.
Newly elected Australian leader Kevin Rudd renewed a commitment Monday to apologize to indigenous Aborigines for past indignities.
The issue of apologizing for policies that helped make the continent’s original inhabitants its most impoverished minority is a highly divisive one in Australia.
The policies included the forcible removal of indigenous children from their families on the premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and saving the children was a humane alternative. The practice did not end until the 1970s.
The Labor Party leader said he would offer the apology on behalf of the nation early in his first term — suggesting a timeframe of next year.
Outgoing Prime Minister John Howard angered many of Australia’s 450,000 Aborigines and their supporters by steadfastly refusing to offer an apology, arguing this generation should not be made to feel guilty for mistakes of the past.
Hard to believe he has a heart.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who has a history of heart problems, experienced an irregular heartbeat Monday and was taken to George Washington University Hospital for evaluation.
The condition was detected when Cheney was seen by doctors around 7 a.m. at the White House for a lingering cough from a cold. He remained at work throughout the day, joining President Bush in meetings with Mideast leaders.
‘‘During examination he was incidentally found to have an irregular heartbeat, which on further testing was determined to be atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm involving the upper chambers of the heart,’’ said spokeswoman Megan Mitchell.
She said Cheney went to the hospital around 5 p.m. She said that if necessary, he would be receive cardioversion, a procedure that involves the delivery of an electric impulse to the heart.
President Felipe Calderon said Monday said that despite the passage of anti-discrimination laws, millions of women suffer from workplace bias and physical and psychological abuse due to an enduring ‘‘culture of machismo’’ in Mexico.
‘‘As a citizen, as a husband, as a father, as president, I am worried and indignant over the mistreatment millions of Mexican women still receive,’’ Calderon said during an event on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Last year alone, the president said, more than 30 million Mexican women suffered some type of violence, while more than 80 percent of women who were murdered were killed in their own homes.
Earlier this year, Mexico enacted a law obligating federal and local authorities to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women. Yet only a handful of states have formally adopted it, Calderon said.
At fault? A culture still dominated by ‘‘the false premise of subordination, submission and even inferiority of women with respect to men,’’ he said. ‘‘This is a cultural obstacle that we have to reverse.’’
A British teacher was arrested in Sudan for allegedly insulting Islam by naming a teddy bear Muhammad, taken as a reference to Islam’s prophet and founder, the Sudan Media Center said Monday.
The teacher, who wrote the name on the bear, was being interrogated Monday, the semiofficial center said. She was arrested Sunday after the Ministry of Education filed a complaint, acting on behalf of a parent of one of her students.
The British Foreign Office identified her as Gillian Gibbons, 54, and said her 7-year-old students named the bear when she asked them to. It was not clear whether Gibbons intended to name the bear after the prophet. Muhammad is a common name in the Muslim world.
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