Friday round-up

From the AAP, Australia (July 25, 2009) - The mother of a 7-year-old autistic girl who died of starvation on November 3, 2007, has been found guilty of her murder by a NSW Supreme Court jury. The same jury found the child's father guilty of manslaughter after a week of deliberations. The girl weighed just 9kg at the time of her death and had the bone development of a five-year-old.

From the Journal News, White Plains, New York (June 24, 2009) - In an opinion-editorial, Esther Gueft says people with disabilities constitute one of the nation’s largest minority groups, yet their needs are consistently overlooked.

From The Independent in the United Kingdom (June 23, 2009) - Cari Loder, a multiple scleroris sufferer who pioneered a treatment for the disease, has committed suicide in her home near Godalming, Surrey, using a "helium based suicide kit." In the days before her death, Ms Loder, aged 48, researched ways to kill herself as her health rapidly deteriorated, leaving her permanently housebound and unable to travel to a euthanasia clinic abroad.

From the Associated Press and the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina (June 23, 2009) - North Carolina unveiled a roadside marker yesterday representing the state’s decades-long eugenics program, which was intended to keep thousands of people considered mentally disabled or otherwise genetically inferior from having children.

From the Contra Costa Times in Contra Costa, California (June 23, 2009) - Columnist Kate Scannell says Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan to cut services to people with disabilities will only create bigger and more costly problems.

From the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press (June 22, 2009) - In a 6-3 ruling decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a family who argued that their child’s special education costs should be paid by their local school district even though he had not first received special education services in public school.

From ProPublica/St. Louis Post-Dispatch (June 22, 2009) - Ten years after the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling intended to help people with disabilities move out of institutions, hundreds of thousands of people who want to leave institutions to live on their own are still waiting to be released from nursing homes, rehab centers and state hospitals.