A Chinese “baby hatch” in Guangzhou city has been forced to
suspend availability after an overwhelming number of babies were abandoned
there. China has 25 “baby hatches” where parents can anonymously leave their
infant in an incubator and press an alarm button. However, the one in Guangzhou has received 262 babies since opening in January, and is unable to care for any more,
especially as every baby was found to be suffering from disability and/or
illness.
A UK Government minister has said that Christian weddings
should be stripped of their legal status. Speaking at the Liberal Democrat
conference, Simon Hughes proposed a system such as that in France or Belgium,
where church weddings and secular ceremonies are separate. In a newsletter
article last May, Hughes argued that church/state separation in weddings was a
necessary first step to complete equality of wedding/partnership ceremonies for
people of all sexualities. Hughes added that he has always supported
disestablishment of the Church of England.
A formerly atheist professor of criminology in North
Carolina who became a Christian is suing his university for discrimination
against him because of his beliefs. Mike Adams initially enjoyed a swift rise
up the academic ladder at UNC-Wilmington, becoming assistant professor in 1993
and associate professor in 1998. But after becoming a Christian in 2000, his
political and social views changed, and he failed receive any further
promotions despite an outstanding academic record. Last year, a federal court
decided there was enough evidence for a trial over whether the university had
breached his rights to free speech. This follows a precedent set in 2011 that
“no individual loses his right to speak as a private citizen by virtue of
public employment.”
The appeal by a jailed Pakistani Christian woman against her
conviction for blasphemy four years ago has been delayed, fuelling suspicions
that judges are reluctant to take on such an emotive case.
Fred Phelps, the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in
Topeka, Kansas, has died at the age of 84. Phelps and his church were notorious
for picketing funerals and other events with banners saying “God Hates Gays”
and similar; they also targeted Jews and the military (for “defending an
irreversibly corrupt government”), prompting Presidents Bush and Obama to pass
laws against picketing military funerals. Phelps’ own funeral arrangements have
not yet been announced, but social media suggests that a significant number of
people who oppose his views may picket the event.
At the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design
conference in Vancouver, a dance teacher performed publicly for the first time
since losing part of her left leg in the Boston Marathon bombing. She was
wearing a prosthetic leg designed by the Biomechatronics research group at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology media lab; unlike normal prosthetics,
this leg emulates lost muscles rather than drawing power from remaining
muscles. The research group’s professor has a personal interest; he lost both
his legs (above the knee) to frostbite after getting lost on a rock climb on
New Hampshire’s Mount Washington. The dance teacher hopes to dance in the next
season of “Dancing with the Stars,” the US equivalent of “Strictly Come
Dancing.”
And finally, thieves in Salford stole more than ₤80,000 from
a cash machine in a branch of Tesco by digging a 50ft tunnel from nearby waste
ground, and then escaping by the same route. Police say the tunnel must have
been dug over a period of months, and they are “looking for people acting
suspiciously, possibly covered in soil.”
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