The Northern Ireland Assembly has passed an anti-human trafficking bill that is effectively the strongest anti-slavery legislation passed in the UK in 200 years. The law introduces independent guardians for trafficked children; a statutory support service for victims; and a stay of prosecution on victims for all but the most serious of crimes committed while they were being exploited. The same Bill criminalises the purchase of sex; only Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Canada currently do this. In Sweden the legal change, coupled with support services for ex-prostitutes similar to the ones mandated by the Northern Irish law, has been very effective at reducing prostitution (and human trafficking for prostitution).
Also in Northern Ireland, the Assembly is holding a consultation on whether to weaken the Province’s current total ban on abortion in cases of sexual crime or fatal foetal abnormality. However, a Government-funded quango has decided that a consultation isn’t enough, and has launched legal action to try to force the Assembly to legalise abortion on human rights grounds. And the Assembly’s private member’s Bill to amend equality legislation with a conscience clause has been attacked by Sinn Fein, which claims the clause will “undermine equality” – even though Sinn Fein’s own commitment to equality has been severely undermined by recent revelations of how it has deliberately used equality law as a weapon against its enemies.
The World Health Organisation has announced that deaths from malaria have halved in the 21st century compared with the years beforehand. This is apparently due to preventative measures (whereas 3% of those affected had access to mosquito nets in 2004, 50% do now); increased diagnostic testing; and better access to medicines.
A former sex worker who became a Catholic priest in Quebec entered politics in 2006. He proved to be a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-euthanasia candidate, and publicly attacked Catholic leaders who supported traditional doctrine on those subjects. He was told to choose between being a priest or a politician in 2008; he chose to return to the priesthood, but was removed as a catechist (official teacher of doctrine) in 2010. He blamed this latter demotion on a pro-life website, saying they had described him as “pro-abortion” when he was in fact “pro-choice,” and sued them for half a million dollars. Sadly this story has no winners; four years after the suit was launched, the priest died of lung cancer, and the website is now fundraising to meet their legal bill of $260,000.
A heterosexual couple from London have announced they are to pursue legal action against the Government to allow them to enter a civil partnership. Their argument for not getting married is that marriage has “sexist trappings.” While both Christian groups and the majority of the public opposed heterosexual civil partnerships, the Government is on shaky ground because of equality law; its main reasons for disallowing such partnerships is not the principle but the huge cost, with the cost in public sector pension rights alone being estimated at ₤3-₤4 billion.
President Obama quoted the Bible in support of his immigration reforms in this week. Unfortunately, he combined an accurate quote (“take the log out of your own eye”) with a common English proverb (“don’t throw stones in glass houses”). He has previously correctly quoted Bible verses about “welcoming the stranger among us” when discussing the subject of immigration.
At the State Capitol building in Florida, visitors can see a nativity scene, Christmas trees, a Hannukah menorah – and a model of an angel falling into a lake of fire put up by a Satanist group. The group was banned from creating a display last year on the grounds that it would be “grossly offensive” but threatened to sue if they were banned again this year. The Capitol also features presentations from the secular Freedom From Religion foundation and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
In technology news, watches powered by human kinetic energy have been available for some time, but an industrial designer from Jerusalem has gone one step further by creating jewellery that obtains power from the body’s autonomic processes. One uses sharp gold connectors to harvest energy from the electrical signals sent along the spinal cord; another includes a tiny hydro-turbine to collect energy from flowing blood; and the last derives energy from blinking. The jewellery is intended as a proof of concept – and a philosophical talking point -- rather than for sale, and some doubt whether it can generate enough power to do anything useful. However, there is a current [no pun intended] research project from two American and one Chinese universities to develop a pacemaker that obtains its power from the human heartbeat, thus avoiding the need to change the battery every 6-10 years.
And finally, an academic study in New Zealand has researched a question which has baffled many people: why are the magazines in doctor’s waiting rooms always out of date and boring? The researchers placed a selection of magazines in 87 waiting rooms and planned to monitor the situation for two months. However, the study was terminated after 31 days when it became clear that theft by patients was the problem. “Gossipy magazines are much more likely to disappear than non-gossipy ones,” the lead author said. The practices lost an average of 41 magazines in the month; if this is multiplied by the average cost of a magazine and the number of NHS surgeries in the UK, the total value comes to more than ₤12 million.
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