Since there’s a magic box that can find anyone with just a bit of DNA…
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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The Psychology of Believing News Reports
People are more likely to discount information if they are suspicious of the motives behind its dissemination.
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Libel Laws Silence Critics
Did the Society of Homeopaths engage with these criticisms? No. They sent a threatening legal letter.
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Prayer Will Remain Legal: It Has no Truth Value
The Swedish government has announced plans to clamp down hard on religious education.
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Bhutto is Defiant
‘What are the militants saying? They are saying it is not safe for peaceful people to gather together.’
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Cold Spring Harbor Lab Suspends Watson
Now scientists can read all our DNA they can show there is no scientific basis for the concept of race.
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Lucky Dube Murdered in Johannesburg
One of the great reggae artists and one of the apartheid regime’s most outspoken critics.
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Ostracized Women
Each year, 100,000 women who give birth in poor countries develop obstetric fistula.
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Preventing Harm: Empowering Women
Helping women gain greater power and more options in life is key to improving reproductive health.
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Women Die to Give Birth
Around half a million women in developing countries die annually before, while, or soon after giving birth.
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Parents Cite Religion to Avoid Vaccination
Public health officials say it takes only a few unvaccinated people to cause an outbreak risking many lives.
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Muslim Secularism and its Allies
Suggest an Islam without political aspirations and people start defending Qutb and Mawdudi as if their lives depended on it.
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Girls Are Treated Differently
Birmingham leads the way in its handling of forced marriage, honour killings and domestic violence.
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TV Documentary on Family Murdered by Father
Caneze Riaz, 39, was killed along with daughters Sayrah, 16, Sophia, 13, Alicia, 10, and Hannah, 3.
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Women Resisting in Iran
Farahnaz Shiri, the first female bus driver in Tehran, has made her own little society in her bus.
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RSF Annual Index of Press Freedom
UK at 24, US at 48. China, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Turkmenistan, N. Korea, Eritrea last.
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Senegal: Editor Jailed for ‘Insulting the President’
Senegal’s president has a personal prisoner accused of attacking his apparently sacred status, RSF said.
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‘Moussa Kaka Must be Free’
African journalists, lawyers, academics try to convince President of Niger to free journalist.
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Report on Freedom from Religion Convention
At which Hitchens calls for more war.
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Martha Nussbaum Reviews The Lucifer Effect
Zimbardo concludes that situational features explain why people behave abusively to others.