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Raft
By Howard Goldenberg
Hybrid Publishers, 2009
225 pages, $29.95 (pb)

When it comes to closing the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health, Howard Goldenberg's new book, Raft, could be just what the doctor ordered.

Goldenberg is a Melbourne-based medic who also works as a locum, stepping in for doctors in some of Australia's farthest-flung communities. Raft is his account of those experiences.

As debate over the travel ban on US citizens visiting Cuba continues in the US Congress, many US citizens remain afraid of visiting their largest Caribbean neighbour.

The article below is abridged from Aporea.org. It has been translated by Kiraz Janicke.

“We are human beings, why are we ignored?”, a Tamil refugee inside the Christmas Island detention centre told Green Left Weekly on the night of January 28.

A global temperature rise of 2° Celsius — the target set at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December — is a death sentence for Tuvalu.

On January 13, Rupert Murdoch’s US network FoxNews claimed that while the US “was leading [the] international relief effort in Haiti”, Cuba was “conspicuously absent from the roster of helping hands”.

Since the balance of forces within the Coalition shifted rightwards with the one-vote win by “mad monk” Tony Abbott over Malcolm Turnbull for leader, the media have been wondering whether his line of frenzied warfare against the Rudd Labor government can succeed where the millionaire merchant banker failed.

In a disgraceful dismissal of the findings of a six-month parliamentary inquiry, the New South Wales Labor government will continue the legal ban on same-sex couples being able to adopt children.

The December United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen ended without achieving any binding agreement to cut carbon emissions. Extreme actions were taken by Denmark to ensure that protests were stifled and voices not heard.

On December 16, the Victorian state government passed the Summary Offences and Control of Weapons Acts Amendment Bill 2009.