Hollywood’s best-known Christian couple, Mark Burnett and
Roma Downey, have started a campaign to raise $25 million to provide food, shelter
and other aid to Iraqi and Syrian refugees displaced by ISIS. Many of the refugees
are Christians; the aid will be available to any refugee, but much of it will be
channelled through the Orthodox and other ancient church organisations in the
region. The initiative has strong support from the (Muslim) King Abdullah II of
Jordan, who has publicly said that Christians are integral to a Middle Eastern
identity. The United Nations estimates that 800,000 people are currently in
need of shelter, and 2.8 million need food.
Chinese provincial governments have continued to tear down
crosses from church buildings, and sometimes to damage and demolish churches,
over the last six months. The reason given is usually that they were ”illegally
constructed” – though the forcible demolitions are usually carried out at
night, which is itself illegal according to the state-run TV service. In one
coastal county in Zhejiang province, with a population of about 850,000 people,
only one church still retains its cross – and the authorities have decided that
that cross, too, needs to be removed. Over a hundred believers are currently
guarding that church building.
An American who was imprisoned in North Korea for missionary
activities has been released and is returning to the USA. Jeffrey Fowle was
arrested nearly 6 months ago for leaving a bilingual Korean-English Bible, with
his name and contact details inside, in a nightclub. US negotiators are working
to secure the release of two more Americans who are being held for similar
reasons.
The Christian school which has been threatened with
downgrading by Ofsted inspectors for not meeting new standards requiring
schools to “actively promote religious harmony” has written to the Education Secretary
asking for the standards to be changed. The school, which has been named as
Trinity Christian School in Reading, said that it had last been inspected in November
2013 when its “spiritual, social, moral and cultural development” was rated “excellent”
by the inspectors; so why were the same procedures no longer even “satisfactory”?
The school also complained that the recent inspection focussed almost entirely
in the new standards; “at no point were
any questions asked about other aspects of the curriculum or about the quality
of teaching assessed through lesson observations.”
The reported ceasefire and prisoner release with Boko Haram
in Nigeria is beginning to look like wishful thinking/spin doctoring in the
part of the Nigerian government. No news or promises of the release of any prisoners
have been issued by Boko Haram.
A member of a pro-life group is to bring a private prosecution against two doctors who
agreed to perform sex-selective abortions during an undercover investigation. One
doctor was filmed saying, “I don’t ask questions; if you want a termination,
you get a termination.” The other said, “It’s like female infanticide, isn’t
it?” The Crown Prosecution Service decided last year that there was enough evidence
to charge the two doctors, but that it would not be in the public interest to
do so, a decision that was widely criticised. The private prosecution will
charge the two doctors with breaching the Offences Against The Person Act 1861
and the Abortion Act 1967.
In technology news, Google have announced a new email app
called Inbox. New features allow emails to be ‘snoozed’ until a more convenient
time; automated sorting of emails into ‘bundles’ (e.g. travel itineraries, promotional
emails); displaying only selected highlights of emails until clicked on; and
adding useful links (e.g. a restaurant reservation email will have a link to a
map added). It’s currently available by invitation only, but anyone can request
an invitation (by email, of course).
And finally, a woman in Deltona, Florida called police to
say that her boyfriend was drunk, nude, and acting abusive. However, when
police arrived to arrest him, they discovered that was also 500lb (227kg/36st)
in weight. He put on some clothes but then decided to resist arrest by simply sitting on the ground and
challenging police to move him. They managed to drag him to the patrol car but
found he would not fit inside it; a police transport van was eventually called
to take him away.
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