Not The BBC News: 13 December 2015

A High Court judge in the UK has ruled that the complete ban on abortions in Northern Ireland is incompatible with human rights legislation. Mr Justice Horner made the declaration for cases of where pregnancy has been triggered by rape or incest, or where the baby has a severe life-limiting condition. The ruling will be seen as a major victory by so-called pro-choice advocates, who have tried and failed to get abortion declared as a human right at European or UN level for several years. However, the judge did add that he saw no reason in human rights law to allow different abortion limits for disabled babies; at present, UK law allows foetuses to be aborted up to 24 weeks’ gestation, but disabled foetuses to be aborted at any time up to birth.

In a related story, a UK hospital has apologised for adding a “Do Not Resuscitate” order to a patient’s file, on two separate occasions, and including in the reasons, “he has Down’s syndrome and learning difficulties.” The order also stated that the family were ‘unavailable’, despite them visiting the hospital regularly. East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust has now admitted that it breached the man’s human rights

Another High Court case has ruled that humanism must be taught as part of the GCSE religious education curriculum, in order to provide a “pluralistic religious education.” The ruling is likely to be appealed, but if upheld, will inevitably lead to even less time being spent on educating schoolchildren about religion. A spokesperson said, “This ruling ignores the degree to which secular humanism dominates the rest of the curriculum.” However, there may actually be advantages if humanism is declared to be a legally equivalent to a religion, as it could not then be taught in any situations where religious teaching or opinions are currently banned.

There has also been a recent Inter-Faith Commission report that concluded that Britain is no longer a Christian country, and that there should be cutbacks in faith schools (because they are deemed socially divisive), Anglican bishops in the House of Lords (to be replaced by other denominations and faiths) and religious school assemblies. The report has been criticised for assuming that an inter-faith approach is better than a Christian foundation to society.

Meanwhile, an independent report into the workings of Sharia courts in the UK has stated that such courts degrade women and are incompatible with human rights legislation. For example, one woman said that she was interrogated “alone and for quite some time” about her sexual activities by two male judges.

Amid all the reports of ISIS horrors in the Middle East, two countries have had large numbers of people turning to Jesus following supernatural events. In Iran, many people are receiving dreams that lead them to study the Bible or discover Jesus; for example, one woman said, “I dreamed that The Light was speaking to me, as I am speaking to you now. It said, ‘Come to Me. I will save and rescue you.’’” And in Israel, 1000 people attended a lecture on the supernatural by a Christian in Tel Aviv, only for it to become a demonstration of words of knowledge and supernatural healing power instead. When a general invitation was made for anyone who wished to receive Jesus as their Saviour, nearly everyone in the room stood.

Also in Israel, a group of Orthodox rabbis have issued a public statement advocating partnership with Christians and appreciating the religious value of Christianity. This is the first such statement since the Second Vatican Council made a statement of affirmation and respect by Christians toward Jews, in 1965.

In TV news, a recent news article listed five well-known comedians who are (more or less publicly) known as Christians: Miranda Hart, Frank Skinner, Johnny Vegas, Sally Phillips, and Ian Hislop. Phillips said, “Having a son with Down’s Syndrome helps me to understand the topsy-turvy topology of the Kingdom of God where the rich are poor and weak are strong and interdependence matters so much and independence so little.”

In sports news, the goalkeeper for Augsburg FC recently apologised for deliberately scuffing the penalty spot while a decision to award a penalty to the home team, FC Cologne. was debated. He then saved the spot-kick as the striker lost his footing. He has now received a bill from FC Cologne charging him nearly ₤90 for repairs to the pitch. He has said he will pay, and will also make a donation to a children’s hospital in Cologne.

And finally, a US company has given each of its 1300 employees a Christmas bonus of $100,000 each. The Texas-based company had a particularly good year in its gas-fracking business.

Not The BBC News: 29 November 2015

There have been several news items relating to abortion recently:

A legal case is to be brought in Britain’s High Court accusing the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, of deciding not to prosecute two doctors who were caught offering to abort babies solely because they were female for political reasons. The case alleges that the doctors had clearly contravened the Abortion Act 1967 and that the DPP’s decision encouraged ‘abortion on demand’. One of the two doctors has since been struck off, for lying about the reason for the sex-selective abortions on an official form. Keir Starmer is now a Labour MP and the Shadow Cabinet’s spokesman on home affairs.

A man entered a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Colorado with a gun and shot twelve people, three of whom died. One of the dead was a Christian police officer who rushed to the building when he heard what was happening there. The alleged shooter was arrested; he is rumoured to have spoken of the “trade in baby parts” that Planned Parenthood has recently been revealed to be undertaking, although the exact details of the trade are still hotly disputed.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is suing five U.S. states who have reduced its funding from the Medicaid programme.

Two Irish film-makers based in Los Angeles, who decided to make a film about Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor who was jailed for murder and other types of malpractice, say that making the film has turned them against abortion. They said, “Anyone who has learned more about the reality of abortion… has come away with only negative feelings about the procedure.”

A Swedish court has ruled against a Christian midwife who was denied employment because she would not perform abortions. In the ruling, the District Court of Jönköping reportedly stated that the issue of freedom of conscience should only be looked at when a person is not religious. The midwife’s lawyer said afterwards that the court had not taken on board the European Convention on Human Rights with regard to freedom of conscience.

A pro-life couple from Kentucky photographed themselves holding a sign saying , “Please don’t Abort… We will Adopt your Baby!” and circulated it on the Internet. Their post went viral, and they say that hundreds of women have got in touch to say that they would prefer to give their baby up for adoption, rather than abort, but are unsure of how to do so.

In other news:

An Assyrian Protestant church has re-opened in Turkey after being in ruins for nearly 60 years. The church, in Mardin near the border with Syria, had been unused due to migration away from the village. Although this church was restored without state assistance, the pastor praised the Turkish government for its efforts to restore churches and to respect the rights of minorities over the past decade.

A BBC radio presenter who called a Christian solicitor a ‘bigot’ has resigned from his job. Iain Lee made the comment during a discussion about a prison worker who was sacked recently for quoting Bible verses about homosexuality. Solicitor Libby Powell said that the Bible is the word of God, and Lee responded by calling her a bigot, and by saying that the prison worker’s views were ‘obnoxious’ and ‘poisonous’.

An advert designed for cinema broadcast, featuring various people reciting the Lord’s Prayer, has been banned from display by the agency that handles cinema advertising. They claim that they have an existing policy against religious or political advertising. The Church of England has made a complaint of discrimination to the Equality and Human rights Commission, who have (infamously) ruled in the past that commercial policies that discriminate against gay people are against the law.

There are strong concerns among the governors of Church schools that the Education and Adoption Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords, requires the Education Secretary to take charge of any school deemed ‘inadequate’ by schools’ regulator Ofsted and to turn it into an academy. The governors are concerned that the religious ethos of their schools could be eroded by academy status; they also fear that their buildings and land would be effectively seized by the Government. Their concerns have been heightened by recent Ofsted inspections that downgraded schools that failed to teach LGBT+ issues in a positive light; as the Director of the Catholic Education Service put it, “there have been examples of inspectors with a personal agenda downgrading schools with implausible judgments at odds with the schools’ exam results.”

Also in education, a UK judge has ruled that humanism should be included in the GCSE curriculum for Religious Studies. Government lawyers argued that neither UK law nor European law require equal weight to be given to religious and non-religious views, and that a school’s curriculum is the responsibility of individual school authorities; but the High Court judge decided that there had been “a breach of the duty to take care that information or knowledge included in the curriculum is conveyed in a pluralistic manner”. A spokesman for the Christian Institute said, “This baffling ruling does not take into account that humanist ideas already dominate the rest of the curriculum.”

In Karachi, Pakistan, the office of a Christian cable TV channel was burned down this week. Employees believe the attack was carefully planned; door locks were cut, computer hard disks were stolen, and a security camera system was destroyed in the fire.

In Vietnam, the number of Protestant Christians has increased hugely in the past 15 years, despite strong Government opposition. Official figure put the number of Christians in the country at 410,000 in 1999 but 1 million today; church leaders say the figure is closer to 2 million. The growth is particularly strong amongst ethnic minorities. This comes despite most forms of evangelism being illegal and the church frequently being banned completely by local authorities, especially in the north of the country.

In sport, the new heavyweight champion of the world, Tyson Fury, is an outspoken (and sometimes controversial) Christian. One of his quotes is: “Jesus was a man’s man. He was a carpenter. He worked every day, he went out and spread the word of God and wasn’t afraid of dying.”

And finally, the happiest music video of the year may well be “Bye Bye Ebola,” made to celebrate the day when the country of Sierra Leone officially became Ebola-free. The video shows schoolchildren, health care workers, faith leaders and people all across the country dancing to a well-known Afrobeat song with new words.

Not The BBC News: 4 November 2015

The Northern Irish Assembly has voted against legalising same-sex marriage in the province, for the fifth time in three years. Nationalist MLAs have repeatedly raised the issue, and the margin of defeat has been narrower each time. On this occasion, the vote was 53 to 52 in favour of same-sex marriage, but a special procedure was invoked that required both main political parties to vote in favour of it, which did not happen. A spokesman for the Christian Institute linked the vote against the motion to the recent legal case against Asher’s Bakery, saying that changing the law “would have a damaging effect on civil liberties in Northern Ireland.”

Meanwhile, Asher’s Bakery have appealed against their conviction for discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation for refusing to bake a cake that said, “Support Gay Marriage” on it. Such an appeal had been widely expected after the judge made her decision on some unexpected applications of legal principles. The appeal will be heard in February.

A doctor from Edgbaston who agreed to perform a sex-selective abortion, despite admitting that it was tantamount to “female infanticide”, has been struck off for three months. Dr Palanniapan Rajmohan was filmed making the offer during an undercover investigation by the Daily Telegraph. A medical tribunal found him guilty of lying about his reasons for offering the termination; he had written “too young for pregnancy” on the form.

China has ended its official one-child policy, as a response to the growing elderly population. The policy was held responsible for forced abortions for people who already had one child; other parents paid large fines. However, the policy has frequently been bypassed in recent years by various methods, such as shipping children off to be raised by childless relatives or grandparents. A two-child rule is still in place, however.

Islamic State militants are disguising themselves as refugees at some UN-operated refugee camps in Jordan where they are killing people and selling girls, according to the charity Christian Aid Mission. However, one such militant, from a strict Salafist region of Jordan, has abandoned jihad and become a Christian after witnessing the love that Christians showed in the camps. The charity’s director said he had to restrain the man from telling so many people about his new faith, because he was receiving death threats from other jihadists.

Archaeologists believe that they have found the remains of the city of Sodom, at Tall el-Hamman in Jordan. One of the most intriguing pieces of evidence is that the city appears to have been destroyed by an extremely hot and powerful catastrophic event; archaeologists found trinitite, which is normally only found at the site of atomic bomb explosions, and a zircon bubble which can only form at extremely high temperatures. They theorise that the city was destroyed by a meteor air burst explosion, similar to the one that occurred in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. This could have produced a vortex that sucked up and then rained down “brimstone and fire”; and, when the shock wave reached the Dead Sea, it could easily have splashed and then instantly vaporised water over every nearby object, leaving it both dead and encrusted in salt.

A café in Kfar Vitkin, Israel, is offering a discount of 50% to Jews and Arabs who eat at the same table. The Humus Bar also offers free refills of hummus to any customer.

A café in Blackpool has been ordered by the police to stop displaying Bible verses on TV screens in the café because doing so is “insulting or offensive” and therefore breaches Section 5 of the Public Order Act. The owner of Salt and Light coffee house, who played videos that displayed entire books of the Bible with the volume turned down, said “What’s next? The police going into churches and saying you can’t say this or that?” However, the police said that a customer had complained that the verses were homophobic.

Lilian Ladele, the Christian registrar who took her council employers to the European Court of Human Rights over their insistence that she register same-sex civil partnerships against her will, has died of natural causes at the age of 54. Ms Ladele originally won her case at an employment tribunal, but that was overturned on appeal; the ECHR eventually decided that she had been mistreated by her employer, who could have made the requested ‘reasonable accommodation’ for her beliefs, but still ruled against her. A spokesman for the Christian Institute expressed satisfaction that support from the Institute’s Legal Defence Fund enabled Ms Ladele to pursue her case as far as she wished.

There has been a major corruption scandal at a mega-church in Singapore. The pastor and five other leaders of City Harvest Church were convicted of fraudulently spending around ₤23 million to support the pop / gospel singing career of the pastors’ wife, Sun Ho. The church is known for a preaching a “prosperity gospel.”

The first female bishop in the House of Lords, Rachel Treweek, has been quoted by the Observer newspaper as saying that God is neither male nor female. She said, “If I am made in the image of God, then God is not to be seen as male.”

In science news, a 65 year old woman from Perth has demonstrated, to the satisfaction of university researchers, that she can smell Parkinson’s disease. Joy Milne said she first noticed a ‘subtle, musky’ smell on her husband about six years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, but she only made the connection when she joined the charity Parkinson’s UK and met other sufferers from the disease. There has been some previous success in training dogs to recognise the odour given off by cancerous cells, but it is highly unusual for a human to have such a sensitive sense of smell.

And finally, the city of Grenoble in France has come up with a (literally) novel way to help people pass the time in public places. Short story dispensers have been introduced where people can freely obtain good quality literature in a choice of three-minute, five-minute, and possibly other sizes. The initiative has been put in place by a publishing company and the city’s Green Party mayor.

Not The BBC News: 17 October 2015

The UK Conservative government is facing its first rebellion from its own MPs, because some Christian MPs are opposing its plans to extend permitted hours of Sunday trading for shops. The rebels have complained that this was not mentioned in the Tories’ election manifesto. About 20 Tory MPs have threatened to rebel, which would be enough to defeat the measure if the SNP decides to vote against it; since the measure does not affect Scotland, the SNP has not yet stated how it will vote.

Asia Bibi, the Christian Pakistani woman who has been awaiting trial on charges of blasphemy for nearly six years, has been moved to solitary confinement after ‘genuine’ threats to her life. Blasphemy against Islam is a very sensitive topic in Pakistan; the Supreme Court recently passed a death sentence on another man who killed a politician because that politician sought to reform the law on blasphemy.

A British Christian nurse who was executed by a German firing squad in World War 1 for helping Allied soldiers escape has been commemorated on the 100th anniversary of her death with a service at Norwich Cathedral and her face on a ₤5 coin. Edith Cavell had worked in Belgium prior to the war, and returned during the war, even though it was under German control, where she nursed soldiers from both sides. She spoke of her hope in the resurrection in her final hours.

An Iranian Muslim woman has told her story of how she gave Jesus one week to prove himself, before she killed herself. She and her mother were devout Muslims, but her mother had multiple sclerosis, and the daughter became depressed and suicidal too. They decided to commit suicide together, but just beforehand her mother phoned a Christian television programme. When the daughter took over the phone call, the pastor said, “You said yourself, ‘Allah has done nothing for you.’ Give Jesus one week and, if he does nothing, you can kill yourself next week.” The woman decided that it would honour Allah when she phoned the programme next week, announced that Jesus had done nothing for her, and killed herself live on air – so she agreed, and prayed to Jesus, and went to bed. The next morning, her mother’s MS had disappeared – the doctors at the hospital pronounced it a miracle – and she and her mother are now helping the underground Christian church in Iran.

In Cleveland, Ohio, two female priests – one Episcopalian and one United Methodist – joined together to conduct a service of blessing over an abortion clinic. The Methodist preacher, Laura Young, said “Christianity, like most faiths, is founded on love. Watching protesters shouting judgment and hate based on what they call religion is horrible.” She said that the goal of the blessing service was to “encourage those relying on the clinic’s services and protect the clinic from ‘preachy’ protesters.”

A major scientific breakthrough has been claimed in predicting why people become homosexual. The study looked at sets of identical twins, many of whom included one twin who was homosexual and one who was not. They claim that the key factor in determining homosexuality is epigenetics – tiny changes to DNA that are triggered by environmental factors after birth. The study claims that, by monitoring epigenetics, it can predict whether someone will be gay with an accuracy of 70%, which is much higher than any other current method.

There has once again been criticism from Israel of biased coverage of violent incidents in the country. When a Palestinian terrorist killed two Israeli parents with a knife, in front of their children, and was then killed by police, the initial headline used by BBC Online was “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two.” Al-Jazeera has been similarly criticised.

After a draft of the UK government’s counter-extremism proposals were leaked, and included setting up an ‘approved’ list of ministers, imams and rabbis who had undergone ‘approved training’, the Government has backtracked. It now says it has no plans to set up any ‘watchlist’ of ministers.

In film news, the release of “The Martian” starring Matt Damon has led someone to set up a fundraising page to ‘rescue Matt Damon from Mars.’ The page has so far received $76 towards its target of $99 million.

In sport news, the new manager of Liverpool Football Club, Jurgen Klopp, is a Christian who regularly alludes to his Christian beliefs. It remains to be seen whether this will affect his team’s performance.

And finally, a pizza delivery driver in Pickerington, Ohio, got a very pleasant surprise when she delivered a pizza to a church. The pastor brought her up on stage and asked her what the biggest tip she had ever received was. ‘Five dollars’, she said. He then announced that the congregation had taken up an offering for her and gave her $1.046. She hugged him and said it would help a great deal.

Not The BBC News: 19 September 2015

In Tyler, Texas, a local Muslim man walked into a Baptist church last Sunday, armed and wearing camouflage gear, and started ranting about "how his god had authorized him to take lives" and that it was okay for him to kill "infidels." The pastor, who is a former parole officer, got between the man and the door, asked him to calm down and offered him a prayer and cool drink. When the man was eventually captured, he left a note thanking the church for their kindness.

Meanwhile, in Germany, hundreds of Muslim refugees are turning to Christ. The Evangelical Trinity Church in Berlin has swelled from 150 to 600 members in just two years, and many are Muslims fleeing Iran and Afghanistan. Some commentators have taken a cynical view that converting to Christianity reduces the chances that the refugees will be deported, but the pastor said that only about 10 per cent of those he baptises do not return to the church afterwards.

A UK Appeal Court judge has ruled that a child molester who abused two Asian girls was rightly given a longer sentence than if his victims had been white because Asian sex crime victims suffer more. The original judge said that the victims’ Asian ethnicity had been factored in as an "aggravating feature" when passing sentence, because of the “particular shame they suffer in their communities, and because the girls' future prospects for arranged marriages might be damaged.” The appeal court agreed. However, a spokesman for the NSPCC said, “British justice should operate on a level playing field and children need to be protected irrespective of cultural differences.”

Following last week’s article comparing (and contrasting) Jeremy Corbyn with the Pope, a US conservative evangelical pastor is now comparing Bernie Sanders, the old-left challenger to Hillary Clinton whose popularity is rapidly growing, with John the Baptist. This followed a speech that Sanders gave at traditionally Republican/Christian Liberty University in which he focussed on the need for society to help the poor, immigrants, and those in prison. The pastor wrote: “I follow the teachings of Christ: to care for ‘the least of these.’ And I believe that just as John the Baptist once cried out in the desert for justice, […] Bernie Sanders now stands in front of us, wild-haired and hoarse-voiced, and he now declares justice for the poor.”

The UK Government’s Psychoactive Substances Bill is designed to end the sale of so-called “legal highs” which are hard to control under existing legislation. However, a recent study showed that frankincense commonly used in some religious services “activates channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression,” and there are fears that church incense may inadvertently be banned by this Bill, partly because it is hard to define exactly what the phrase “psychoactive substance” refers to.

A church in Elberton, Georgia, USA has banned one of its members from attending services – despite the fact that she is 103 years old. Genora Biggs (and other members of the congregation) have been in dispute with the minister for the past six years because he has attempted to introduce a more “charismatic” style of worship. Biggs said, “A couple of years ago, he invited some of his denomination members to come and they came. And during the service they start falling out on the floor, rolling on the floor, and we don't do that." She added, "He is a Holy Sanctified [Pentecostal] minister and he is trying to turn my church into that, but I told him that we are Baptists and that's what we ought to stay." Despite the ban, she said, "Of course I am [going back]. That's my church where I have been all my life. I joined there when I was 11 years old and I can't leave it now. I intend to die right there from that church." She also said she felt disrespected by the pastor, whom she taught when he was a child in first grade.

On the Isle of Man, a petition has been started that calls on the island’s Lord Bishop and his Archdeacon to step down, following accusations of bullying. However, it has recently emerged that some of the 200 names on the petition may have been added fraudulently. The pastor of a charismatic fellowship on the island has said that such petitions are not the way to settle church disputes.

The country of Mozambique has declared itself free of land mines following 20 years of work, spearheaded by a charity made famous by Princess Diana. The Halo Trust has cleared 171,000 mines from 1,100 minefields in the country, and has finally cleared the last known landmine, according to the country’s foreign affairs minister.

In a recent biography of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, it is claimed that Cameron referred to opponents of gay marriage as “Neanderthals” before the 2010 General Election. However, he eventually he accepted advice to omit a commitment to gay marriage from his General Election manifesto.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, an LGBT group decided to protest outside a church which is attended by Michael Brown, a well-known commentator who is conservative on issues on marriage and sexuality. However, on learning of the group’s plans, the church sent them messages of welcome and invitations to dinner. When about 10 protesters showed up on Sunday morning, the church offered them water and snacks and invited them in; they left after a few minutes, explaining that the church was too nice and loving to deserve such a protest.

At an elementary school in Toronto, parents have mounted a 30-day protest against the government’s sex education policies. Parents in the predominantly Muslim community are keeping children out of school and instead teaching them in the local park. About half the children in the school are taking part.

The satirical TV show “South Park” has broadcast an episode which criticises those so-called liberals who want to silence those who oppose their views on LGBT issues. The show focussed on the Bruce Jenner/Caitlyn Jenner transgender debate, with a new school head teacher, PC Principal, first giving detention to a student who says that Caitlyn Jenner is not a hero, and then violently attacking the student’s father for referring to Jenner as “he.” The principal and his politically correct associates continue to be violent towards those they disagree with until eventually the student gives in and describes Jenner as “a hero and brave.”

In sports news, England began the Rugby World Cup with an unconvincing win against Fiji. England must beat at least one of Wales or Australia to progress from the group stages to the knockout stages.

And finally, a man has been convicted of attempted bank robbery, and branded one of the dumbest criminals ever, after he entered a bank branch in Rainham, Kent, held a knife to the neck of the cashier, and demanded that she give him 500 pounds … by bank transfer to his own bank account. 61 year old Paul Neaverson claimed afterwards that he needed the money to book a flight to Corfu, where he had an interview for a job as a golf coach.

Not The BBC News: 16 September 2015

Kim Davis, the US marriage clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue licences for gay weddings, has returned to work. She has indicated that she will still refuse to issue such licences, but if her deputies choose to issue the licences, she will not use her authority to stop them doing so. Meanwhile, UK Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith has said that, “Nobody should feel they have to choose between their faith and their job … and, certainly, nobody should be harassed, bullied, or intimidated at work because of their religion.” He made the comments at the launch event for a guide to help employers understand their beliefs and the needs of Jewish staff; and he added that the guide could make “all the difference” if companies made “straightforward adjustments” to accommodate religious beliefs.

Naguib Sawiris, an Egyptian Christian and billionaire, has announced he is hoping to buy an island to help resolve the massive refugee crisis hitting Europe. “I cannot just sit like that and just do nothing, you know, and pretend it's not my problem,” he told CNN. He has sent letters to the prime ministers of Greece and Turkey asking them to sell him an island so he can house and employ 100,000 to 200,000 refugees. "This war is not going to end in weeks or in months. It may be years even," he said. "So what do we do with these people meanwhile?” If his plan materializes, Sawiris said he will name the island after two year old Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian refugee who recently drowned in the Aegean Sea.

A (leaked) draft of the UK Government’s new counter-extremism legislation contains a proposal that all faiths will have to “maintain a national register of faith leaders” and that the Government will set a “minimum level of training and checks”. A spokesman for the Christian Institute said, “This would mean that Christian leaders invited to speak to a university Christian Union would be required to go on a Government approved training scheme before being allowed to speak to students … This is a truly sinister proposal more in keeping with China or North Korea than a democracy built on the freedoms of Magna Carta.”

The magazine Christianity Today has published an article comparing newly-elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with the Pope. Ruth Gledhill wites, “Corbyn and the Pope share social thinking; both are bringing trouble [through] their uncompromising refusal to succumb to the lures of hypocrisy; and both are massively popular with their membership.” But she distinguishes them on their attitude to secular authority: “[The Pope is] prepared to render unto Caesar as well as unto God. This accommodation between the Bible fundamentals and the world makes it possible for the Pope to do serious business with President Barack Obama, the UN, Fidel Castro, and his own Catholic hierarchy. Corbyn, on the other hand, is not prepared to compromise his own secular faith to sing the National Anthem.”

Actress Angelina Jolie, speaking to a British parliamentary committee, has accused ISIS of using rape and sexual violence “in a way we’ve never seen before”. She said, “They have made rape a policy … as a way of destroying communities and families and attacking, destroying and dehumanising,” and she has called for stronger legal intervention. In fact, ISIS are not the first military group in recent years to make rape a policy, but they are one of the most open about it (with a “price list” available for girls as sex slaves), and are also unusual in trying to reconcile this policy with Islam (they claim that any captured woman has her marriage immediately annulled, and that Islam’s restrictions on adultery do not apply to infidel women).

In film news, a trailer has been released for a major Christian-themed film coming in January. “Risen” stars Joseph Fiennes as a senior Roman military commander at the time of Jesus’ death, who is sent on a manhunt to find Jesus’ body.

In TV news, a semi-retired Anglican minister, who appeared in several well-known TV shows, has died in Ireland when his car was swept away by a flash flood. Roger Grainger, 81, had appeared in ‘Emmerdale' as a vicar, 'Heartbeat' as George Walker and Dan Rowles, and had a regular role in 'Last of the Summer Wine' as Man With Dog.

And finally, a couple in their mid-30s from Hyde near Manchester, who hurriedly arranged a wedding when they discovered the groom had terminal cancer, were overwhelmed to be given a dream wedding through the kindness of strangers. A local charity called Gift Of A Wedding agreed to advertise their wedding on its Facebook page, and gifts that were provided included a magician, candy cart, cupcakes, the venue dressing, a DJ, a florist, chocolate, favours, photography, invitations, videography, a wedding dress, a seating plan & name cards, hair/make up and nails, wedding cake, a professional singer, a string quartet, a ring cushion, a toastmaster, a photo-booth and a wedding car. The bride said, “My friends and family couldn't get over a charity like this even existing”; the founder of the charity said, “It always reconfirms that I did the right thing setting up the charity when merely promising to send an application form [to be considered by the charity] sparks such happiness.”

Not The BBC News: 12 September 2015

The UK Parliament has rejected a Bill to legalise euthanasia by a majority of three to one. Impassioned arguments were presented on both sides of the debate. However, one of the weaknesses in the proposal was that it suggested that doctors should not be allowed to assist someone to die unless two doctors and a High Court judge agreed – but similar restrictions placed on abortion by the 1967 Abortion Act have proved largely ineffective in practice.

A judge in Milton Keynes has ordered that a disabled boy be removed from the care of his disabled mother because her own disability “renders it impossible for to meet his developing needs”, and the cost of providing local authority support for the boy would be too high. The judge said the boy needed a “permanent substitute family”, but rejected accusations that he was indulging in social engineering.

A county clerk in Kentucky refused to issue licences for gay marriages, despite the Supreme Court deciding that gay marriage should be legal throughout the USA. She was taken to court where a judge ordered her to issue the licences; when she still refused, he jailed her, before releasing her after a few days. The issue has provoked emotive comments from her supporters, who have suggested that licences for gay marriages issued by her deputies in her absence might be ruled invalid (which is unlikely), and that a lesbian judge in Texas who refused to perform heterosexual marriages for 4 years should also have been disciplined (she probably should). However, the most pertinent comments to the overall issue came from a gay rights group, who called for the clerk to be freed from jail because they didn’t want her to become a martyr to the cause of conscientious objection to gay marriage.

A pastor in Northern Ireland who said in a sermon, “Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell”, and then made the sermon available online, is being prosecuted under the 2003 Communications Act. A large number of people are supporting him, including an atheist journalist who said, “Freedom of speech isn’t only for polite persons of mild disposition airing their views within Government-policed parameters”.

Further news has emerged of the underground Christian revival in the Middle East. The number of Christians is now believed to be in the millions in Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan; about 220,000 in Iran; and around 100,000 in Iraq, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and even Saudi Arabia. Many of these people have become believers in the past 15 years, and many are converts from Islam.

In Missouri, a high school’s policy of respecting transgender students was severely tested when 150 students walked out of classes in protest against a transgender student who wanted to use the girls’ changing room for PE classes. The 17 year old student was born male and has had no operations to change his gender; he simply wears a wig and a dress, and now claims to be transgender. having previously identified as homosexual. The school board said that the student could use the girls’ changing rooms, based on advice from legal counsel, but three members of the school board have since resigned.

In film news, the best attended film over the long Labor Day weekend in the USA was a low budget Christian film. “War Room” describes how a couple’s failing marriage is rescued by regular prayer. It was shown in only 1500 cinemas but still outsold new releases like “Transporter Refueled” and blockbusters a few weeks old such as “Mission Impossible”.  It was strongly criticised by film critics but even more strongly praised in audience reviews. 

In technology news, it has been revealed that members of Islamic State, who were allegedly plotting to attack the Queen, had hacked into the email accounts of Government ministers from where they could have found out the Queen’s schedule. The hacks happened several months ago but were not publicised while the investigation into the plot was under way.

Also in technology news, Google has invented a new miniature sensor that uses radar technology to capture the motions of fingers at 10,000 frames per second. This means it should be possible to interact with a device without ever actually touching it. The biggest potential of the sensor is for devices that are too small to use easily by touch, such as smart watches.

And finally, a Dutch student discovered archive documents in 2013 which showed that the city of Amsterdam charged 240 Jews, who had survived concentration camps, for rent arrears for their properties when they returned to Amsterdam after the war. The charges applied even if the houses had been occupied by Germans, or by collaborators, or had been destroyed by bombing. The city of Amsterdam has now offered to issue refunds to any relatives of these Jews who ask for reimbursement; the average sum is around 1800 euros.

Not The BBC News: 28 August 2015

One of the more controversial policies introduced by the previous Coalition government in the UK, and continued by the current Conservative government, concerns the new system for rating whether people will get disability benefit, or are deemed fit for work. It recently emerged that, over a three year period, more than 2000 British people deemed fit for work died less than six weeks after their assessment. Some had even appealed unsuccessfully against the decision.

Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn has proposed introducing women-only carriages on British trains, if he wins a position of authority in the next Government. Such a policy already exists in India. Fellow candidate Yvette Cooper has strongly criticised Corbyn’s suggestion, saying that women should not have to “hide themselves away.”

Two South Sudanese pastors who were arrested in December after going to preach in a church in (largely Muslim) Sudan have been released. They faced charges of espionage and waging war against the State, but were released after an international outcry. They were prevented from boarding an aeroplane under the orders of the Sudan’s security services, but somehow managed to leave the country by another route, and are now back in their country’s capital, Juba.

An Egyptian Christian who was arrested for handing out Bibles in a Cairo shopping mall has had his detention extended, and faces charges of “inciting sectarian strife”, “harming national unity” and “insulting religion”. A journalist said, “They use pre-trial detention as a punishment. There is no reason for his detention.”

In Pakistan, a young woman who converted from Islam to Christianity was threatened with death by her family. She and her young Christian husband fled to a town 37 miles away, but were found, abducted, beaten up and shot; her husband was killed and she was severely injured, with two bullets in her abdomen. After the incident, Muslim mobs chanting anti-Christian slogans surrounded the hospital where she was being treated and the police station, and have also threatened her attorney unless she drops the case.

In Auburn, Alabama, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is demanding the resignation of the University chaplain, Chette Williams, because he has initiated a revival in the university’s gridiron team; more than 50 players have been baptised in the past 15 years. Neither Williams not the university have responded to the demands.

A new Christian film has been hailed by reviewers for being “actually quite good.” The film “Captive” is a crime drama, based on a true story of a violent escaped prisoner (played by David Oyelowo, whom played Martin Luther King in “Selma”) who takes a drug addict hostage in her own home. It has been praised for examining the complexities of the feelings of the two main protagonists as well as for covering the Christian content in a natural and unforced way.

In technology news, further details have emerged from the data from the Ashley Madison affair-seeking website that was leaked by hackers. A staff member has claimed she was asked to create so many fake profiles of female members of the website that she suffered from repetitive strain injury, and analysis of active accounts (i.e. those who ever checked their e-mail inbox, suggesting they were actually interested in an affair) shows a massive preponderance of men active on the site over women; there were around 20 million active profiles for men, but fewer than 1,500 for women. Other evidence suggested that around 12,000 women had visited the site in the past, but had paid to have their data deleted; their data had not been removed from the database.

And finally, a formerly homeless man in Johannesburg has found a (literally) novel way to make money: he sells used books to passing motorists, but only after he’s read them first. Philani Dladla gives his customers a book review, and sells them at prices ranging from one dollar for books he dislikes to six dollars for his favourites. He credits motivational books with breaking his drug habit, and uses the money to buy food for other homeless people. He has also started a “Pavement Bookworm Book Readers Club” in a local park where children can come and read books until their parents get home from work.

Not The BBC News: 22 August 2015

The Hilton hotel chain has decided to remove all pornography channels from its televisions in all countries. Such channels are usually pay-per-view and can make big profits for hotels, but a recent email campaign saw Hilton executives getting up to 1000 emails per week calling for the removal of these channels; also some conferences and conventions chose not to use Hilton because of the availability of these channels. A spokesman for the campaign said, "They realized it didn't make sense to be against the use of their hotels for sexual exploitation while promoting pornography, which is so closely connected to it.” Hilton did announce the new policy to guests alongside another announcement that made it clear that unfiltered material was still available through the hotel wi-fi.

Following the arrest of a street preacher in Manchester, the Christian Institute asked a city councillor to clarify whether street preachers would be arrested in future, and if so on what legal basis. The councillor replied, in the Manchester Evening News that “They’re perfectly entitled to talk about Jesus and the word of God, but not to make anyone feel insecure or threatened … I do not think it right if they are talking about morality, and talking about sexual orientation is not proper at all.” He did not provide a legal basis for his comments, except to comment that street preachers were also sometimes “noisy”.

A UK judge has described attempts by Muslim parents in Tower Hamlets to indoctrinate their child to believe that Islamic State is a wonderful organisation to have caused psychological and emotional harm “as bad as in child abuse cases.” Their 16 year old daughter attempted to travel to Syria last December, after which she was made a ward of court and her parents appeared to cooperate with social workers. But a recent search of the family home uncovered a mass of pro-Islamic State propaganda on electronic devices. She will now be removed from the parental home.

Australia is debating whether to make gay marriage legal, but the pro gay marriage cause has been attacked for an unusual reason – that it is illiberal. Gay marriage is usually seen as a liberal cause, but a magazine editor being introduced on the ABC network’s Q&A programme said, “Anyone who opposes gay marriage is demonised, harassed. We’ve seen people thrown out of their jobs because they criticise gay marriage.” The comments follow the refusal of Australia’s Foxtel network to broadcast a ‘moderate’ advert opposing same sex marriage, which tried to make the point that same sex marriage was “the tip of an iceberg”.

A gay Anglican lay preacher, who preaches in six churches around Howden, East Yorkshire, has been told by the Archbishop of York that he will lose his preaching licence if he marries his gay partner. He has decided to go ahead with the wedding, and also says he no longer feels he has a place in the Church of England.

Slovakia has announced that it will accept refugees fleeing from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, but it will not accept Muslims. “We have no mosques in Slovakia,” said a spokesman, “so how are Muslims going to be integrated if they do not like it here?”

Wadi al Nasera in Syria literally translates as “Valley of the Christians”, and lies between the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. It consists of about 40 villages, most of which are Christian, but a few of which house Alawite Muslims – who are considered even more heretical than Christians by radical orthodox Muslims. Although the village suffered shelling, sniper attacks and night raids from the Syrian rebels, its population is about the same as it was before the recent conflict; around 25% of the people have left but their places have been taken by refugees from Homs and elsewhere, of all faiths. Also, a group of nuns who were captured and then released in a recent prisoner exchange have established a temporary orphanage at a monastery in the valley until they are able to return to their home convent. The valley is currently relatively peaceful and aims to establish a Christian population that works together with Muslims.

A statue has been erected in the Chinese city of Tianjin to commemorate Olympic athlete and Christian missionary Eric Liddell, for his dedication to the Chinese people. Liddell, who died in a prisoner of war camp in China in 1945 of a brain tumour, is also to be commemorated in a new film – “The Last Race”, starring Joseph Fiennes – which will focus on the second half of his life, as a missionary. Liddell’s daughter Patricia said, “I find it extraordinary that a statue has been raised – it’s not something the Chinese normally do.”

In sports news, plaudits are being offered to Doncaster Rovers manager Paul Dickov for his sportsmanship. Close to the end of a recent match against Bury FC, a Doncaster player was injured. Bury sportingly kicked the ball out of play to allow the medics time to treat the injured player, and Doncaster player Harry Forrester then passed the ball back to the Bury goalkeeper after the restart – but he hit it too firmly and it sailed over the keeper’s head and into the net. Dickov tried to persuade officials that the throw-in should be re-taken, and when that failed, told his players to allow Bury to walk the ball into their goal unopposed for an equaliser. Forrester said afterwards, “Totally accidental. I haven’t got that placement from 40 yards, I assure you.”

In technology news, mathematician Kurt Gödel famously published a mathematical proof for the existence of God, commonly known as the “ontological proof”. Two German computer scientists have now verified Gödel’s theorem as mathematically correct using higher modal logic, processed by a computer, to represent and reason about Gödel’s statements of modal logic. Their published paper is called, "Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Gödel's Proof of God's Existence."

And finally, a group of architects have launched a crowdfunding campaign to help them build a replica of the city of Minas Tirith from the Lord of the Rings books. However, not only has their campaign raised only 3% of the required funding, but they now face a challenge from another crowdfunding campaign to raise an Orc army to destroy Minas Tirith. One bit of good news is that, despite donors being told that “your gold will buy many pointy and shiny things that we can stick humans with”, the total raised by the latter campaign has yet to reach single figures.

Not The BBC News: 10 August 2015

Islamic State fighters have abducted a large number of people, many of whom are Christian, from the Syrian town of al-Qaryatain, which they have recently captured. Many Christians had fled there after their own towns were captured.

The Pope has announced that divorced Catholics who re-marry are not to be excommunicated from the church. He said, “The Church knows well that these situations contradict the Christian Sacrament” but also insisted that excommunication was wrong. He said, “How can we recommend these parents do everything to educate their children in the Christian life, giving example of a committed and practiced faith, if we distance them from community life?”

The UK TV programme “Songs of Praise” has filmed an episode inside the makeshift church in the Calais migrant camp, and plans to broadcast it on Sunday August 16. The priest and congregation are mostly Ethiopian or Eritrean. However, the priest has withdrawn permission for him to appear in the episode, as have the congregation, for fear that the episode will be seen by the governments they have fled from and lead to repercussions for their families.

Another Pentecostal snake handler has died after receiving a venomous snake bite. Snake-handling is practised amongst a small group of churches, most of which are in the Appalachian mountains in the USA, who believe that the they should regularly demonstrate the truth of the verse at the end of Mark’s gospel that says, “they shall pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it shall not hurt them.” The Kentucky coal miner who was bitten by a rattlesnake refused treatment and died four hours later. Reports say that he had other health conditions too, and that he is the second person to die of a snake-bite in the congregation this year.

A Christian street preacher has appeared in court in Northern Ireland for making strongly anti-Islamic comments in a public sermon. But an atheist blogger has written, “He did not ‘incite hatred or encourage violence against any Muslim’, he expressed his view about Islam … Freedom of speech isn’t only for polite persons of mild disposition airing their views within Government-policed parameters.”

A young man who is a worship leader and singer at the Hillsong church in New York City has announced that he is gay, and he plans to marry his boyfriend. The announcement was made some months ago, but Hillsong only responded publicly after the announcement went viral on social media. Senior pastor Brian Houston wrote that gays are welcome to attend, worship and "participate as a congregation member" at Hillsong churches. However, Houston added that gay worshippers cannot "take an active leadership role", and that he believed the young man in question had not been involved in worship leading since his announcement.

The new host of flagship US TV programme the Late Show, comedian Stephen Colbert, is an active Christian who teaches (adult) Sunday School in his church. Colbert says “If Jesus doesn’t have a sense of humour, I’m in huge trouble”, but refuses to participate in comedy that he considers blasphemous. He decided to become a comedian because, “humour is an antidote to fear and a sign of joy.”

In sport, England have defeated Australia to win back the Ashes trophy. The series has swung spectacularly, with Australia scoring record high Test batting scores in the second test (they won by over 400 runs) and record low scores in the fourth (their first innings score was 60). One wag wrote a spoof advertisement after the fourth test for “Australian Cricket Bats. Hardly Used!”

In technology news, a pair of US computer hackers have discovered how to reduce the effectiveness of a Wifi-enabled rifle. The gun uses software to improve aiming, and also uses Wifi to allow the view seen through the targeting scope to be streamed to a nearby phone. The hackers found they were able to cause the gun to miss its target by providing fake data about wind conditions or the weight of the bullet; disable the computer; and turn off or permanently change settings on the scope. They emphasised, however, that they cannot hack the act of pulling the trigger.

And finally, a 20 year old man in Texas who appeared in court on a charge of punching his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend was given an unusual choice of sentence by the judge: either marry your girlfriend within 30 days and copy out some Bible verses, or serve 15 days in jail. His 19 year old girlfriend, who was in court when the order was announced, said she “went very red” but agreed to marry. The man was also ordered to undergo counselling.

Not The BBC News: 31 July 2015

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman on death row for an alleged offence of blasphemy, has had her sentence suspended by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. Her full appeal will now go to court. Her lawyer described the case against her as “below the standard of evidence required to prove this offence”; it turns out that the heart of the case, Bibi’s question to her Muslim fellow villagers, saying “My Christ died for me, what did Mohammed do for you?” is not even a verified fact, but was merely reported to a local cleric by the Muslim women.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the schools inspectorate Ofsted have been accused of ignoring anti-Christian bullying. A Christian group has written to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, pointing out that when the “Trojan Horse” schools scandal in Birmingham was investigated, the official reports contained several examples of anti-Christian bullying by Muslims against Christians in those schools, but the Ofsted reports on the same school contained no such reports. The letter also complained about the recent behaviour of Ofsted inspectors investigating the teaching of gay marriage and gay rights in Christian primary schools.

The argument over Planned Parenthood apparently selling body parts from aborted babies is escalating. The pro-life group has now released four videos which appear to show senior Planned Parenthood staff going beyond their organisation’s official policy (of seeking payment to cover their costs) and trying to make a profit. Meanwhile, the California company that purchased many of these body parts, Stem Express, went to court to prevent the release of further videos that implicated them, on the grounds that the videos were recorded illegally. However, the pro-life group confidently denied this, and  the judge only granted a limited injunction that temporarily prevents release of further videos showing Stem Express staff covering the case, but does not prevent release of other videos, not enables Stem Express to withdraw relevant documents from any future legal case.

A British man is to serve a 12 year prison sentence after he became a Christian and decided to confess to a shooting 10 years ago. Merice Brown was involved in an altercation with a man he did not know in London, and after a shouting match, he shot the other man in the face four times. The other man survived but Brown was never caught. But having become a Christian, Brown handed himself in to the police in March.

There are continuing concerns for Iranian-American pastor Saeed Abedini who has been held in  jail in Iran since 2012. Despite President Obama recently meeting Abedini’s wife, there are no signs that the recent softening of relations between America and Iran will include Abedini’s release.

Recent advances in technology have enabled archaeologists to read an ancient scroll that was completely burned. The parchment scroll was inside the Holy Ark at the synagogue in Ein Gedi, Israel, a settlement that was burned during the Byzantine period. It was scanned using a micro-CT scanner; new digital imaging software was then used to virtually “unroll” the scroll. It proved to contain the first 8 verses of the book of Leviticus, and is therefore the oldest Torah scroll ever found  apart from the Dead Sea scrolls.

A former communications director of the Church of God, who was based at the denomination’s headquarters in Tennessee, appeared in court charged with embezzling $100,000 from the church … and admitted to stealing nearly $1 million. Troy Scot Carter stole most of the  money by presenting the church with false invoices for services that were never performed, by companies he owned. Church officials have been cleared of any knowledge of the crimes, and say that they expect to recover most of the money as they had an insurance policy against fraud.

In technology news, two computer hackers have demonstrated how they were able to take control of most of the driving systems of a Jeep Cherokee via the car’s wireless entertainment system. They forced the car to blast cold air, play music, wipe the windows, and slow down, and later disabled the brake so it drove into a ditch. The same hackers showed off similar hacks two years ago by wiring a computer into the onboard diagnostic system of two cars, but wireless access is new. The car company has issued a recall for Jeeps to upgrade them to safer software, and a Bill to require computer security in automobiles is likely to be introduced into the US Senate.

And finally, a 94 year old woman from Tennessee decided that she had done everything she needed to do in life except one thing. Shirley Batchelder bought five seconds of TV commercial time so that she could broadcast a 3-word message. The commercial showed her saying it twice, once with film of her face, and once displaying the words themselves. The words were, “Love one another”.

Not The BBC News: 22 July 2015

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who was sentenced to death and jailed 6 years ago on a charge of blasphemy after she proclaimed “My Christ died for me, what has he done for you?”, has finally been granted an appeal date by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. Bibi, who has five children, has been seeking an appeal for years but numerous death threats to any lawyer or some judges involved in the case (some of which were carried out) meant that the case never came to trial. 50 year old Bibi has apparently been kept in isolation for most of her 6 years in jail, and has also been beaten and gang-raped there. Her case has become a worldwide focus for criticism of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

The Christian bakers in Oregon who were fined $135,000 for refusing to provide a cake for a lesbian wedding, and were forced to close down, have raised $352,000 from crowdfunding. The amount is a record for crowdfunding site Continue To Give, which the bakery started using after its original crowdfunding page on GoFundMe was closed down after pressure from gay activists. The ex-bakers are both currently out of work, but have promised to give any excess monies to charity.

There has been a storm of controversy surrounding the recently reported undercover video of a senior Planned Parenthood staff member apparently offering body parts from foetuses for sale. Planned Parenthood has accused the pro-life reporters of editing the video deceptively; the pro-life organisation has responded by releasing a similar video in which a second Planned Parenthood senior member discusses baby body parts and money, asking at one point “How much would you expect to pay?” The summary of the discussion so far is that the pro-life organisation originally accused Planned Parenthood of (a) harvesting body parts from aborted babies (b) doing so following (illegal) partial birth abortions (c) transferring these body parts to other in exchange for money (d) doing so in a way that broke federal laws on trafficking body parts and (e) making profits from these exchanges. Planned Parenthood have strongly denied that (e) is true, but in doing so they have effectively admitted that (a) and (c) are true. There have been calls for an official Government investigation.

Meanwhile in the UK, there is confusion over the recent report that an abortion clinic in London is to close after pro-life campaigning outside. Local BPAS representatives deny the clinic is closing, and when an enquiry was made to BPAS, the response was that the name of the clinic “would not be in the public domain any time soon”. There are suspicions that the clinic may not exist, and that the story is part of BPAS lobbying to change the law to keep anti-abortion protesters away from their clinics.

There are also stories from the Christian organisation Jubilee Campaign that in Uganda, young children are being kidnapped and having their body parts harvested by witchdoctors who claim the body parts can cure impotence or boost fertility. The campaign has quoted several survivors of the procedures.

A long-running US court case regarding nuns and abortion-inducing drugs has been decided against the nuns. The recent “Obamacare” health policy requires employers to pay for certain medical treatments for employees, including contraceptives and “morning after” pills. A convent objected to such payments on grounds of conscience, but was not granted a religious exemption because they serve and employ people of all religions, not just Catholics. The Government’s solution was to tell the nuns they didn’t have to pay for such drugs, but they had to sign employees up to a Government program that would pay instead. The nuns claimed that even this ‘exemption’ made them complicit in abortion, but a Colorado appeal court today rejected their claim, even though this went against the reasoning behind a Supreme Court decision last year.

Well-known charismatic worship leader Darlene Zschech recently performed at a Catholic charismatic renewal event in Rome, and met the Pope. Zschech received a lot of criticism for her involvement, and responded: “I was not there to judge, I was not there to become a Catholic, I WAS there to lift up the name of Jesus. And I witnessed … a God who is not defined or intimidated by denomination, liturgy, age or preferences.”

In Russia, one of the most senior officials in the country, Nikolai Patrushev, gave an unusual interview to a Russian business newspaper. It was unusual because he quoted (in apparent seriousness) a statement from Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, that turned out not to be a quote from Albright at all – instead it was from a Russian psychic, Georgy Rogozin, who served as deputy to a KGB general in the 1990s, who claimed to have reached inside Albright’s consciousness and extracted the statement. The BBC Russian service recently verified that Rogozin claimed to be able to communicate with Albright, by tracking down and interviewing one of Rogozin’s former subordinates. There are concerns among some Russians that high-level belief in several such psychic-sourced quotes might lead them into an unnecessary conflict.

A woman in South Carolina ate at a seafood restaurant and sat at her table for nearly four hours before being asked to pay her bill and leave. She explained that she had no money and that she was waiting for Jesus to come and pay her bill. She was arrested, and there has been no word of anyone coming forward to pay bail money for her.

A recent survey has rejected the long-accepted message that the divorce rate in the USA is 50%, and that Christians divorce at the same rate as non-Christians. The actual divorce rate for first-time marriages is between 20% and 25%, and for Christian marriages it’s between 10% and 18%. Also, a commonly accepted statistic that only 30% of marriages are happy also proved to be false; in this survey, it was around 80%.

In sport, Novak Djokovic has credited his marriage and family life for providing the ‘balance’ that allows him to play well. Djokovic won the Wimbledon title on his first wedding anniversary.

In technology news, another major US website has been hacked with the hackers threatening to leak sensitive data from it. This time, the website is an online dating website specifically designed for married people to cheat on their spouse. The website claims to have 37 million members, with the majority in the USA – if this is true, that’s about 10% of all Americans. The website allows members to pay $19 to have every piece of data about them on the website removed, but the hackers claim to have retrieved such ‘deleted’ data. Unusually the hackers are not demanding a ransom; instead they have threatened to release the data unless the website is permanently closed down.

And finally, an Australian schoolteacher who won $20,000 in a game show has decided to spend the money on 200 new pairs of sturdy shoes for all the children in her school. The winters in Ballarat, which is in the old gold fields two hours north of Melbourne, were described as “long and cold”. The teacher said, “The whole school has given me a hug and said ‘thank you’.“

Not The BBC News: 15 July 2015

Pro-life campaigners in the UK are celebrating a victory after an abortion clinic in Blackfriars, London, announced that it was closing down due to regular anti-abortion protests outside. This clinic was particularly controversial with pro-lifers because it was in the same building as a doctor’s surgery, and protesters argued that healing and killing should not be co-located.  Ann Furedi, president of BPAS who ran the clinic, announced that she planned to lobby MPS for US-style “buffer zones” to keep protesters away from abortion clinics.

In the USA, an undercover investigation video revealed that some parts of US abortion organisation Planned Parenthood sell baby body parts after performing “partial birth” abortions, for between $30 and $100 each.  Both “partial birth” abortions and trafficking in body parts are felony crimes in the USA.

An Iraqi lawyer has revealed that he and a network of informants have rescued over 500 women and girls who had been captured by Islamic State.  Around 3,000 women and girls were captured during the siege of Mount Sinjar last August, and the town is now divided with a new border running through it. The lawyer said that ISIL is not the impenetrable force it once was, and he has many contacts inside ISIL territory, who smuggle phones to women; guide the women to safe houses and give them false IDs; wait up to 10 days for the local fighting to die down; and then spend up to 48 hours walking across the border. Asked about his own situation, the lawyer said, “Of course my life is in danger. But I’m not afraid because I’m no better than all my people who were killed by ISIL.” (Three of his men have died so far). “But I try to protect myself because I have many of my people in ISIL jails waiting to rescue me.”

A gay man in Michigan has filed a $70million lawsuit against two Bible publishers, claiming that the Bible versions that they publish, which refer to homosexuality as a sin, violate his constitutional rights and cause him emotional distress. He is representing himself because the first judge to see the case refused to appoint a lawyer for him, because of doubts over “the nature and efficacy” of these claims. [Update: I have been informed that this story is true, but seven years old; it was recently re-circulated. The case was thrown out by the courts]. 

In South Africa, a Christian student has been ejected from her position as acting president of the University of Cape Town’s Student Representative Council because she wrote a post criticising gay marriage on her personal Facebook page. She was also personally threatened; had homosexual porn posted on her Facebook page; and had her office vandalised, with Scriptures that she had hung on the walls being replaced with signs that said, “get out of here”.  She said, “Being an SRC member in my view does not mean that you need to abandon your Christian convictions and faith”; but the University’s Vice-Chancellor said it was right for the SRC to decide “the extent to which an elected SRC office bearer should balance the expression of personal beliefs with the constitutional rights of students who are elected by the SRC.”

The shooting of nine members of a black church at a Bible study in South Carolina last month has triggered strong feelings and actions on both sides of the racial divide. Lawmakers have moved to ban the sale and display of the Confederate flag, which was pictured in the home of killer Dylan Roof, and is increasingly seen (by some) as being linked to white supremacist movements. And a large number of black churches in the southern USA have been burned recently; of eight churches to burn in ten days, three have been ruled as arson, one as due to an electrical fault, and four more are still under investigation because lightning has not yet been ruled out as a cause.

The UK government has relaxed laws that restricted retail trading on Sundays, despite a written assurance just three months ago that it had “no current plans” to do so. Local authorities and mayors will now be able to decide how long shops can open for on Sundays. The move was opposed by the Church of England and by the shop workers’ union, but praised by the (female) Small Business minister who said that Sunday used to be “the most miserable day of the week.”

In sports news, Wimbledon has finished with Serena Williams winning the women’s title, Novak Djokovic winning the men’s title, and Lewis Hamilton being banned from attending after refusing to wear a tie. And football’s Champions League qualifiers have already started, with all Welsh and Irish teams expected to be eliminated by the end of the second round, and one Scottish team (St Johnstone) surprisingly losing in the first round.

In technology news, Russia has often been accused of releasing official reports containing doctored photos, and forensic image specialists have now proved this is true in Russia’s report of the downing of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17. Most countries blamed the incident on Russian-backed rebels but Russia blamed Ukrainians and released photos that supposedly proved their case.  But careful analysis of some, and a simple reverse image search on Google of others, has revealed that the photos were either taken at least a month before the incident, or have had military vehicles added to them. Russia has so far declined to comment on this analysis.

And finally, a New Zealand man has built a church entirely out of trees. Brian Cox, who owns a company that does exterior design by re-planting whole trees, said he selected trees with stone-coloured trunks for the sides, and used trees with sparse foliage elsewhere to allow sunlight in. 

Not The BBC News: 5 July 2015

The Church of England has sold its stake in Soco International, a UK oil company, saying it has failed to address allegations of bribery, corruption and human rights abuses, and that it has also failed to rule out drilling in the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Soco told shareholders that a review by lawyers Clifford Chance had found the bribery allegations (detailed in an Oscar-nominated documentary called “Virunga”) to be “substantially inaccurate” but refused to publish the report. This is only the third time that the CofE has disinvested from a company on ethical grounds, and it only did so after 20 months of active engagement with the company. Other shareholders are calling for the company’s chairman to be replaced.

In Kukawa, northern Nigeria, Boko Haram fighters have shot dead 97 people praying in mosques, and also broke into homes and shot women and children. Boko Haram often attack mosques that they deem too moderate.

In August 2013, dozens of churches in Egypt were torched, and homes, schools, businesses and vehicles were destroyed. In April 2015, an Egyptian court convicted and sentenced 71 people to life in prison for their role in attacking one of those churches.

Iceland has abolished its blasphemy law, which was passed in 1940. The bill to abolish it was raised by a minor party in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. The country’s churches were split on the issue; most of the (Lutheran) Church of Iceland supported the abolition, but Catholics, Pentecostals and the Church of Iceland’s remote eastern province opposed it.

In Montana, an ex-Mormon man who was excommunicated for polygamy and now lives with two women has applied for a marriage licence to legally enter a polygamous relationship. He said, “It’s about marriage equality; we’re not even asking for acceptance just for tolerance.” His words echo those of some of the Supreme Court justices who opposed gay marriage; in their arguments, they asked what grounds would be cited to reject polygamous marriage, or to refuse to recognise polygamous marriages performed abroad, if same-sex marriage was permitted.

In Oregon, a “Christian bakers and gay cake” legal case has reached the stage of sentencing, and the sentence determined by Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian appears unduly harsh. As in Northern Ireland, the issue was the baker’s refusal to make a cake that promoted gay marriage, though in this case it was a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. The Commissioner rejected the argument that the bakers were acting against the message rather than the couple, and awarded $135,000 in damages for emotional distress to the couple (because one of them “was so depressed she spent the next two days in bed”, and because the bakers posted some court documents on Facebook, which included the plaintiffs’ address – I believe these documents were officially publicly available but can’t confirm that). However, his most controversial act was to ban the bakers from any further quoting of the Bible verse, “We must obey God rather than men”.

In sports news, there have been or will be three international football finals in the past week. Sweden won the men’s under-21 European championship; Chile won the Copa America (Americas championship); and the final of the Women’s World Cup between USA and Japan takes place this evening (England beat Germany in the third place play-off). And in the Pacific Islands under-23 championship, Micronesia have set an unwanted new record; they have played two games so far, against Tonga and Fiji, and have conceded a total of 68 goals.

In technology news, a university in Lima, Peru, a city which is built in the desert, invented a billboard that condenses water out of the air. It uses electricity to run a reverse osmosis system and water purifiers, while the billboard itself serves as the large condensation area needed by such systems. The billboard produces more than 1000 litres of drinkable water per month, and it is available on tap to anyone who wants to collect it.

And finally, an Indonesian teenager, who lost his mother and two brothers in the 2004 tsunami when he was six and was found wandering on the beach in a Cristiano Ronaldo football jersey, has been signed to Sporting Lisbon’s youth academy. After Martunis’ photo appeared in several newspapers, Ronaldo himself flew to meet the boy, and helped finance his education, and the Portuguese Football Association donated money in 2005 to help rebuild his house. Martunis said, “This club makes my dream possible.”