Best Buy Regulates Game Sales

AFA JOURNAL, July — Retailer Best Buy has implemented strict policies to prevent sales of mature-rated video games to children and teens, according to the American Family Association's publication.

Following a 2004 sting operation in Illinois, which found that a 15-year-old boy was easily able to purchase two video games rated for mature audiences at a Best Buy, the chain has revamped its policy.

New provisions of the policy include: programming cash registers to prompt cashiers to ask for ID, and a “mystery shopper program” to monitor cashiers for compliance.

Christian Brothers Investment Services said that company's new rules may be the toughest policy in place among major U.S. retailers. Christian Brothers and other Catholic investment groups prompted the policy review by means of a shareholder initiative.

Pro-Life Activists Win One

THE PRESS-TELEGRAM, July 7 — Four pro-life activists illegally forced to abandon their position on a public sidewalk outside a high school in 2002 have won a rare victory. A California court has awarded the group $130,000 to be paid by the City of Long Beach and the local school district for the violation of their First Amendment free-speech rights.

The four are members of a Protestant organization that depicts the graphic and gruesome reality of abortion at school campuses throughout Southern California, reported the Long Beach daily.

In addition to violating the group's free-speech rights, the U.S. district court ruled that the school district and city had violated their freedom from unlawful arrest, and freedom from unlawful search and seizure.

Forced Abortion Thwarted

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, July 13 — A visibly pregnant Hong Kong woman — with her two children in tow — experienced the intensity of China's one-child policy during a recent visit to relatives on the mainland, where she found herself surrounded by hostile “family-planning” officers, reported the French news service.

Some eight officials stripped the 31-year-old woman of her travel documents and tried to force her to a Hunan hospital to abort her unborn baby, reported Hong Kong's The Apple Daily.

She was freed after Hong Kong immigration officials informed the family planning officials that, as a citizen of Hong Kong, the woman was not subject to the one-child policy and that their actions were illegal.

Court Okays Abstinence Content

THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 26 — Louisiana's abstinence program has not violated a court order designed to avoid an excessive entanglement between government and religion, a federal judge has ruled.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat, had previously defended the website of the Governor's Program on Abstinence (abstinencedu.com) as offering constitutionally protected “discussion of religious issues,” including links to other sites that promote prayer and repentance.

The suit was the second to be brought against the program by the American Civil Liberties Union.