The film “Heaven Is For Real”, a true story about a four
year old boy’s descriptions of a brief visit to heaven whilst on a hospital
operating table, has had a very successful opening weekend in America, taking
$22.5 million at the box office and easily beating Johnny Depp’s new
blockbuster. The boy’s father initially dismissed his son’s
stories as drug-induced hallucinations until the boy started describing real
life events that he had no knowledge of, such as his mother’s previous
miscarriage (he described a “sister who had died in mummy’s tummy”) and
recognising his great grandfather from a photograph. The boy is now 14 but
still occasionally makes comments about Heaven that surprise his father. His
opinion of the film is that it’s good, but the scenes showing heaven don’t
quite match his memories: “They do a good job, but Heaven is just so much
better than that.”
For the third time in 18 months, the Northern Ireland
assembly has voted against introducing gay marriage. The BBC website quoted the
head of Amnesty International who said that “politicians in Northern Ireland
are like latter-day King Canutes, trying to hold back the tide of equality.”
However, a spokesman for the Christian Institute said, “After three votes in less
than two years, those pushing for gay marriage should take the hint. Just
because politicians in Westminster have ridden roughshod over the opinions of
hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens and redefined marriage, doesn’t mean
Northern Ireland needs to follow suit.”
David Cameron has rejected the introduction of civil
partnerships for heterosexual couples in England and Wales, against the wishes
of the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg. The move was rejected because it
might be seen as introducing a “two-tier” marriage system; because it might
cause further dissent amongst Tory MPs; and because it would cost the
Government an estimated ₤3bn in public sector pension rights if all unmarried
heterosexual couples chose to become civil partners.
A Christian woman in
South Sudan is facing a possible death penalty because she is pregnant.
She was born a Muslim but converted to Christianity and married a Christian.
However, Islamic law does not recognise her conversion or her marriage, and
therefore considers her to be pregnant outside wedlock.
The British model who had planned to have an abortion so
that she could have a chance of appearing on TV’s “Big Brother” says she has
changed her mind after feeling her baby kick and watching videos of late term
abortions.
Max Clifford, the publicist who helped many celebrities
overcome or play down accusations of sleazy behaviour, and also invented a
number of celebrity “kiss and tell” stories, has himself been convicted of
eight counts of indecent assault against teenage girls over a 20 year
period. He apparently used stories of
his connections with high flyers in media and entertainment, real or imagined,
to persuade young women to perform sex acts in return for introductions.
A long-running case of political score-settling in America
over the issue of abortion has finally ended. Phil Kline was Attorney General
of Kansas under a Republican administration; he investigated two abortion
providers for carrying out illegal late term abortions and for failing to
report possible child sex abuse if they carried out abortions on girls under
15. However, when a new State government under Democrat Kathleen Sebellius was
voted in, Kline’s investigation was stopped; evidence showing one of the
abortion providers had filed false documentation (after Kline’s investigation
began) was shredded; the law requiring abortion providers to report consensual
under-age sex was repealed; and Kline himself was prosecuted, first for “illegally
accessing private medical records” (he was entitled to, and was granted, the
records in redacted form) and later for deceiving state agencies in order to
obtain information for abortion investigations (which he admitted). The State
Supreme Court decided Kline’s case after an unprecedented five of the seven
members recused themselves for conflict of interest; the verdict was that Kline
was “overzealous”, had “dishonest and
selfish motives” and had “failed to take responsibility for his misconduct.” Kline’s
law licence was suspended indefinitely, and this week the US Supreme Court
decided not to accept his appeal. Kline is now a university professor in
Virginia; Kathleen Sebellius is now U.S.
Health and Human Services Secretary; and the head of one of the two abortion
clinics involved was “assassinated” in 2009.
In sport, the semi-finals of football’s Champions League pitted
two of Europe’s most famous teams against each other. Bayern Munich were trailing Real Madrid by
1-0 from the first leg in Madrid, but had high hopes of overturning the deficit
at home. Instead, Real won 4-0 to book their place in the final, with Cristiano
Ronaldo scoring two goals to become the all-time top scorer in a single season
of the competition.
And finally, the owners of a Hertfordshire cottage decided
that the ornate wooden pot that they had been using as a doorstop should be
taken to an antiques specialist to be valued. It turned out to be an 18th/19th
century Chinese Zitan artwork, and is expected to sell for ₤100,000.
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