London mayor Boris Johnson is to be investigated over claims
that he banned a bus advertisement from a Christian group for political gain.
London buses had run a pro-gay ad which stated “Some People are Gay. Get Over It.”
A Christian group then paid for adverts that said “Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post Gay
and Proud. Get Over It,” but were banned from displaying them. A recent High Court
case found that the decision was solely that of Transport for London’s media
chief and was lawful; but since that case, evidence has emerged of email
exchanges, including one from the media chief which read: “Boris has just instructed TfL to pull the
adverts and I’ve briefed The Guardian. Who will break that news in next half
hour”.
The lady in Texas who was being kept on life support for the
sake of her unborn baby has been removed from life support following a judge’s
decision. Texas law forbids the removal of “life-sustaining treatment” from
pregnant women until the baby can be born; however, the judge ruled that the
woman was dead and so the law did not apply. The court accepted that the lady
had stated verbally that she did not wish to be kept on life support. Her
husband, who was arguing for life support to be removed, also claimed the baby
had been damaged by the treatment used in an attempt to resuscitate her, and
produced evidence that the baby appeared to have deformed lower extremities.
The House of Lords debated a Labour-sponsored amendment to
the Children and Families Bill that would make sex education, including lessons
on same-sex relationships, compulsory in state-funded primary and secondary
schools. Parents would be allowed to withdraw children aged 15 or younger from
the lessons, but would have no such rights once the children reached 16. However,
the amendment was defeated by a wide margin. The Coalition government’s
response has been to instruct all schools to publish details of their sex
education syllabus on their school’s website.
Also in Parliament, the Coalition government has accepted
the Lords’ amendment to the newly proposed Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and
Annoyance, replacing the test of “causes nuisance or annoyance” with “causes
harassment, alarm or distress.” However, the original test is being retained
for anti-social behaviour “in a residential setting.” The Government
acknowledged that the strength of support in the Lords for the amendment had
influenced its decision.
Two Twitter users have been jailed for sending menacing
messages to a journalist who campaigned to have prominent women displayed on
English banknotes. The ‘dozens’ of abusive tweets included threats of rape and
death. A man and a woman, both from Tyneside, were jailed for eight weeks and
12 weeks respectively, and ordered to pay ₤400 each to the journalist.
Another American state is suffering controversy over a
democratically-defined definition of marriage. Virginians voted to define marriage
as between one man and one woman in the state constitution in 2006. However,
the controversy in Virginia is heightened because opposition to this provision
comes from the state’s own Attorney General, who says he “cannot and will not
defend laws that violate Virginians’ rights.” A spokesman for the National
Organization for Marriage has described the A-G’s behaviour as “not only a
disgrace, it’s an impeachable offence under the constitution.”
In technology news, a massively multiplayer online space game
has just had a truly massive multiplayer online battle. It started when one (American-led)
faction of players in EVE Online, who paid for defences using in-game currency,
missed a payment and was attacked overnight by a faction with a large Russian contingent. More than 4,000
players became involved in the battle which lasted for many hours. The cost to
the American faction (i.e. the cost of paying the game real world money to
replace all their losses, rather than rebuilding their ships by investing time
in the game) was around half a million dollars.
And finally, an explosion in a cowshed at a German dairy
farm is being blamed on 90 flatulent cows. Police believe that the explosion
was due to a build-up of methane in the structure, followed by a static
electrical spark. One cow was injured and the roof of the cowshed was damaged.
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