From the [UK] Independent:

Advocates and officials held urgent talks in London last week to discuss the forced marriages of people with learning disabilities to foreigners seeking passports.

The Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit dealt with more than 80 cases of forced marriages involving people with learning disabilities last year, amounting to more than one in five of the total cases reported to the government. Experts fear the true scale of the problem is far worse.

Support groups attribute these forced marriages to the stigma of disability in some ethnic communities, the social and cultural isolation of people with disabilities, the fear of aging parents that their vulnerable children will not be cared for, and the view that people with disabilities are commodities.

Rape, domestic violence and abandonment are common consequences of such marriages, according to support groups.

From the Wall Street Journal (registration required), Reuters:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Italian prosecutors are preparing to file charges against four Google executives over a video that showed a teen with disabilities being taunted by peers.

The 191-second video, which was shown on the Internet provider’s Italian-language site, was shot in a classroom in Turin and showed four youths making fun of the teenager and hitting him in the head with a pack of tissues, according to legal documents.

The newspaper reports that prosecutors will press charges of defamation and violation of privacy against the executives for allegedly failing to adequately control the content of the site.

Stefano Hesse, head of corporate communications for Google in southern Europe, told the newspaper there is no basis for legal action aginst the four men because they had no involvement in the video incident. He said Google removed the video within hours of being notified of its existence in September 2006.

Canadian Press/Toronto Globe and Mail:

Canada’s national statistics agency reports that the percentage of people with disabilities who are finding work is growing faster than the percentage of those who don’t. People with disabilities were still far more likely to be jobless, however, than people without disabilities.

In its latest report, Statistics Canada found that the employment rate for people with disabilities rose from 49.3 percent to 53.5 percent between 2001 and 2006. Among people without disabilities, the employment rate increased from 73.8 percent to 75.1 percent over the same time period.

The nation’s economic health probably had much to do with the employment surge, said Andrew MacKenzie of Statistics Canada.

“As the labor market got tighter and it became more difficult for employers to be able to attract employees, we suspect that the employers became more open to being flexible in terms of the work arrangements that people with disabilities may need,” Mr. MacKenzie said Thursday from Ottawa.

Writing in the [London] Times, columnist Alice Miles analyzes a new UK proposal to get people off disability benefits. The proposal has generated a lot of enthusiasm, she says, but it won’t work unless real jobs are offered.

When people demand that the disabled - and I’m talking about the genuinely incapacitated here, not the malingerers - should work, they generally mean that they should do rubbish jobs for rubbish money. Fill the call centres with cripples. Dogsbody jobs for the deaf; boring ones for the blind, they can’t see anyway. But where are the decent job offers?

… few employers are prepared to offer decent jobs to the disabled. And it’s obvious why. They immediately become trapped in official rules that make a disabled person too big a risk for employers outside the public sector.

… we need a shift in culture and attitude, among the disabled and among those who could employ them: sticks and carrots for everyone. At the moment, the disabled seem to be taking a hell of a lot of stick.

From NPR:

The health care system of the Netherlands reflects what is described as the nation’s pragmatic and stoic social attitudes about birth and death. The Netherlands has legalized euthanasia, permitting doctors to help patients die by giving them a lethal dose of medication.

“You could say it’s very much accepted by the general population that people can decide at the moment you would like to take steps to die and that you could help them,” says Paul Schnabel, a sociologist at Utrecht University.

It’s acceptable for people with painful conditions, such as cancer, to decide when they want to step out of it rather than prolong their medical treatment, he says. Ultimately, the health care system ends up saving money.

From ESPN, a feature with video about Team USA, winners of the 2008 Canada Cup International Wheelchair Rugby Tournament and ranked number one in the world.

The sport, once called “murderball,” pits athlete against athlete in often violent and painful combat that relies on skills, coordination and timing. In the video, team members discuss the points they earn for their level of impairment, and bicker over which players are more valuable to the team. One thing is not in dispute: their dedication to winning in the Beijing Paralympics. The video features exciting game footage.

(Above: 18-year-old Joel Wilmoth is the youngest ever member of the U.S. wheelchair rugby team. ESPN photo)

From the [UK] Times:

The public has rallied to the cause of deaf athletes hit by funding cuts by raising £150,000 to help to send a 150-strong Great Britain team to the Summer Deaflympics next year.

As revealed by the [UK] Times last month, Britain’s leading deaf athletes faced missing out on the chance to represent their country after the government diverted their funding to the London 2012 Olympic Games.