Fiction's most famous orphan since Annie is doing it again.

Daniel Radcliffe, the 18-year-old who's been film's version of Harry Potter since he was eleven, is playing another orphan in a family drama called "December Boys". An Australian story based on a novel by Michael Noonan, it's about four orphaned boys on holiday and the tension created when it appears that one may be close to being adopted.

Demanding compensation for ruined childhoods, an organization in Israel, Children and Orphan Holocaust Survivors, is preparing a class action lawsuit against the German government.

There are reportedly about a quarter of a million holocaust survivors that were children at the time ... over 1.5 million children were murdered under Nazi rule ... and although some have taken individual action, there has never been a combined push for recompense.

"Among other things we intend to sue them for the orphanhood we suffered, these are people whose childhoods were abruptly and cruelly severed and their development suffered as a result. Many were unable to rejoin society after the war and found it difficult to provide for themselves and their families," said Yochanan Ron, a senior official on Yesh's board.

And if thoughts of the Holocaust aren't disturbing enough this morning, , this story from Zimbabwe will certainly turn a stomach or ten.

Seems some orphaned girls who managed to garner themselves a break by being allowed to attend South African universities thanks to the "Presidential Scholarship Fund" ... the President being Robert Mugabe, of course ... have appealed to said Pres. to put the brakes on the government minister he sends around to 'visit' the girls, since the minister apparently includes rape in his visits.

The girls, students at Fort Hare, Venda and KwaZulu Natal universities made their appeal to a rights campaigner, Betty Mokoni, burt she's just been arrested and accused of " working with American film producers to discredit the government."

"We wish the president could hear this. So many ladies are willing to come out and speak against this minister's shameful acts," the girls said in their petition.
"Every year, girls at Fort Hare fall victim to his sexual abuses. The minister has abused many of us and threatened to withdraw us from the scholarship programme."

Word has it that Mugabe has indeed heard the message, but it doesn't look likely that he much cares.

Disgusting.