The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said he will carefully examine the implications of the High Court judgement backing his Government's tough line on asylum seekers.

But he said his Government is resolute in protecting Australia's border.

The Anglican Dean of Brisbane, Peter Catt, has declared the city's cathedral a sanctuary for those who have suffered trauma and risk abuse if they are returned to Nauru.

"This fundamentally goes against our faith, so our church community is compelled to act, despite the possibility of individual penalty against us," Catt said.

Paediatricians have detailed their concerns to the ABC about the child and the wellbeing and safety of about 160 other children held in Australia's detention centres.

Paediatrician Karen Zwi, speaking despite the threat of jail, said the young child suffered serious mental health problems after the alleged sexual assault.

She said the child's greatest fear was returning to Nauru.

A second paediatrician, Dr Hasantha Gunasekera told the ABC a report of a sexual assault among refugees held on Nauru is made every 13 days, most of the alleged victims being children.

Nauru police commissioner Corey Caleb rejected the reports, claiming "refugees regularly fabricate allegations of assault and sexual assault".

In statement released on Tuesday, Commissioner Caleb lambasted "friendly Australian journalists who have a political agenda" for publicising the "lies".

"They tell us they have been assaulted but their stories seldom add up," he said.

He accused journalists of encouraging false reporting, adding that the refugees would be charged with making a false complaint had the allegation been made in Australia.

Source

• abc.net.au
• radionz.co.nz
• channelnewsasia.com
• Image: stuff.co.nz

I have heard a sad story about a little girl who was in the kitchen using a new toaster, and asked her father: "Do I put the slice of bread in portrait or landscape?"

Our brain is susceptible to everything. It is not as though we have a fixed brain and that going on an "evil" computer changes it. Technology is neutral. But because it is very sophisticated, people think that it leads us when, really, we are the masters. We should be asking how we are going to use technology to enhance our lives, as well as what we want it to teach our children.

For that, we need to be in the driving seat. We should talk about it and decide collectively, as a society, what we want to do. We need to involve parents, to find out what they think, because, at the moment, evidence is purely anecdotal.

Evidence of a link between spending too much time staring at computer screens and physical changes in the brain that lead to attention and behaviour problems is accumulating. As with cancer and smoking in the 1950s, you start off by seeing a trend, and that is what makes you suspect that there might be a causal link.

A recent study by Wei Qin Kai Yuan from Xidian University, in China, found brain structure abnormalities in adolescents with internet addiction disorder. While one study is not enough to prove the link, it is cause for concern.

However, we cannot afford to wait 10 or even 20 years to monitor the changes to a child's identity, to their attention span, to the way they think, to the way they reason. Many of us have perceived a change in the way children today empathise with others. Studies among American college students have found a trend of decreasing empathy during the same time that social networking has risen to prominence. It is a mighty suspicious coincidence.

In Britain, a shocking case reflects this decline of empathy among the young. Schoolgirl Rebecca Aylward was murdered by an ex-boyfriend who had made a bet to kill her in exchange for a friend buying him breakfast. After battering the 15-year-old to death with a rock, Joshua Davies, 16, updated his Facebook page to say he was "chilling" with friends.

— Baroness Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford.
-Telegraph Group and Dominion Post

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