Not The BBC News: 23 February 2015

The Nigerian town of Dikwa has been recaptured from Boko Haram by the army from Chad. In contrast to the Nigerian army which is allegedly under-equipped, the Chadian troops were able to begin with an air attack and follow up with a ground assault. The fighting was intense but in the end Boko Haram were driven out, and are now being pursued to the village where they keep all the livestock they have stolen, in specially dug holes in the ground. A coalition of four nations is now fighting Boko Haram, whose main operations are in an area that borders three countries.

In the USA, President Obama came under fire for condemning the murder of the 21 Egyptian workers by ISIS but without referring to the workers as ‘Christian’, despite this being the reason why they were selected for kidnap. Obama has also given a speech in which he argues that “Islam has been woven into the fabric of our nation from the very beginning”; this is despite the first mosque in the USA not being built until 1929, with much of America’s previous involvement with Islam coming from Barbary pirates.

The Jewish Standard online newspaper has published pictures of Muslims standing outside synagogues, holding signs saying that they are there to protect the synagogues from attack. The hashtag for this campaign is‪#‎IGoToSynagogue‬. On Friday night, a group of Muslims in Oslo formed a “ring of peace” around a local synagogue to protect it, following the attacks in Denmark.

The Labour party have called for their MPs to vote against the banning of sex-selective abortion. Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, has asked Labour MPs to oppose the amendment on the grounds that she believes sex-selective abortion is already illegal; because it might lead to the banning of abortion for gender-specific abnormalities; and because the amendment uses the phrase “unborn child”, which she fears might undermine other abortion legislation because “a wide range of protections are available to children.” She has asked MPs to vote instead for her own amendment which asks for a “strategic plan to promote cultural change” and to support vulnerable women. One Labour MP called Ms Cooper’s intervention “scaremongering” and said “there has been far too much intervention from the front benches on what should have been a free vote.”

The Government have passed a bill to grant married couples an extra tax allowance if one partner’s wage is below the tax threshold (in practice, this usually means one spouse doesn’t work). David Cameron said it was being done because “stable families are the bedrock of society.” The scheme is the first time marriage has been recognised by the tax system since 1999. Some have criticised it as a pre-election stunt – and it is true that will only start to apply a month before the General Election, and will be worth much less than the old marriage tax allowance was – and Labour have already promised to rescind it if they are elected. However, pro-family groups have given it a cautious welcome.

There are rumours in Pakistan that Asia Bibi, the mother who has been in jail for five years awaiting trial on a blasphemy charge, may soon be freed. Her family are making plans to escape from Pakistan.

A grandmother in Washington state, USA, who refused to make floral arrangements for a gay wedding has been found guilty of discrimination by a court. She has already lost her business and may now lose her house and life savings.

A Christian paediatrician in Michigan who refused to care for a baby girl who was adopted by a lesbian couple has been criticised by the couple. The couple had chosen him out of the available paediatricians because of his good reputation. “As far as we know, our 6 day old baby does not yet have a sexual orientation,” they said. “And we are not his patients, our baby is”. Unlike Washington state, Michigan does not have a law that criminalises refusal to serve LGBT couples.

In film news, this year’s Oscars have been awarded. The biggest shock was probably that Best Picture (and several other Oscars) went to “Birdman”, a tale of a redemption-seeking actor who once played an iconic superhero, rather than to one of several worthy real life stories. As far as films with a Christian theme go, the award for Best Original Song went to “Glory” from the film “Selma” – which is mildly ironic given the controversy over the Christian song nominated and then excluded from last year’s awards. The best foreign language film, “Ida”, also has a loosely religious theme; a young novitiate nun discovers a family link to the Holocaust and questions what she believes in. However, the biggest Christian award ‘winner’ of the weekend, on the night before the Oscars, was Kirk Cameron’s “Saving Christmas”, which ‘won’ the most Golden Raspberry awards given for the worst films of the year.

And finally, a politician in Iowa has come up with an ingenious idea to leverage some of the restrictions on renewable energy with providing aid to the poor and needy. Solar panels produce much more electricity at some times than others, and every house with solar panels will be subject to similar peaks and troughs. If the excess electricity can’t be used on site, the local utility company buys it, often for very little money (because supply is much higher than demand). Iowa already has a scheme to subsidise energy costs for poor households, which always runs out of money before the end of the winter; so when state representative Mary Mascher was enquiring about getting solar panels on her own house, she had the idea of proposing a bill to make utility companies donate the cheap electricity to households who were in arrears on their energy bills. Mascher said, “The legislation doesn’t contain too many specifics; we’ll be talking to stakeholders about that. But If I overproduce, I’d like it to go to the people I want it to.”

Not The BBC News: 19 February 2015

John Paul Jackson, well known prophetic minister and founder of Streams Ministries International, passed away on Ash Wednesday. Jackson had recently survived major cancer surgery, but while he was recovering he developed an obstruction in his breathing; the lack of oxygen eventually caused his major organs to fail. Jackson, who was in his early sixties, was best known for not only receiving detailed messages from God that he often used to encourage people, but also for teaching many others how to hear from God for themselves, with a particular focus on Bible-based dream interpretation. Daystar TV (available in the USA or on the Internet) is currently in the midst of broadcasting a series of TV programmes where he teaches some of his key principles.

Sex-selective abortion may shortly be banned in the UK, as Conservative MP Fiona Bruce has proposed in Parliament an amendment to the Serious Crimes Bill, in the section which deals with outlawing female genital mutilation, to outlaw the practice. The amendment has considerable support from MPs of all parties. The Government believes that sex-selective abortion is already illegal, but the British Medical Association refused to pursue action against two doctors who performed it because they thought the legal position was unclear, and Britain’s biggest abortion provider BPAS has stated that, in their view, it is legal. The amendment’s first debate could take place within a week; supporters of the amendment are being urged to lobby their MPs.

The tension between “equal rights” and “free speech” in the UK has reached a new low, with Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay rights campaigner, being criticised and threatened for publicly supporting free speech on the issue of transsexual rights. Tatchell and 129 others signed an open letter criticising universities who ban speakers whose views are deemed to be “transphobic.” However, Tatchell says he has received more than 5,000 messages attacking his stance, including some which were threatening. Other signatories of the letter have also been subjected to similar treatment.

Floods in Mozambique have killed dozens and badly disrupted the lives of tens of thousands of people, says Christian relief organisation Tear Fund. Northern Mozambique is subject to flooding during the rainy season, but this year the intense rains have flooded houses and fields, and the floods are not expected to recede until the end of the rainy season some time in March. 11 million people are also without electricity. Both the national government and international groups have swiftly sent response teams, but further aid and prayers are requested.

In Kansas, the state’s Governor, a Republican who promised to support equal rights, has upset gay rights groups by using a dictionary definition of “equal.” He has rescinded laws passed by the previous liberal Governor that provided special protection to gay, lesbian and transgender state employees. A gay rights group called the move an “outrage”, but the Governor said, “This Executive Order ensures that state employees enjoy the same civil rights as all Kansans.”

In sports news, a Belorussian league match between FC Slutsk and Shakhter Soligorsk might not seem to arouse great interest, even if underdogs Slutsk did overcome a 1-0 deficit in the last five minutes to win 2-1. Both teams published on their websites full match reports – which were entirely fake, since the game never took place. The ‘ghost game’ was discovered during an investigation by a sports magazine into organised bookmaking fraud. A man who previously worked for a data-gathering firm, relaying incidents from the match to bookmakers, is under suspicion; Shakhter have blamed a hacker for publishing a report of the game on their website; and FC Slutsk are also under suspicion as one UK bookmaker contacted the club for confirmation that the game had taken place and received a positive reply.

In technology news, two new sources of malware have been identified that can fool the digital certificate mechanism that is used to keep the Internet secure. One relies on remote access to the computer, and had yet to be deployed when it was discovered; the other was found to have been shipped with all new Lenovo computers for the past months or even a couple of years, and could thus intercept secure communications “in the middle”, which is easier to perpetrate. Anyone who has purchased a Lenovo is advised to take steps to remove the “Superfish” software immediately.

And finally, the huge snowfall in New England has led to some unexpected pastimes. Some residents who opened their doors to find the doorway completely filled with snow have cut snow-caves or beer fridges in the snow; children have been seen tobogganing down the roofs of houses; and adults have used snow mounds as tees for golf driving practice. Others have had some difficulty finding their cars under the snow. And the mayor of Boston has appealed for people to stop trying out a new craze: jumping out of first floor windows in their underwear to land on a mountain of cleared snow.

Not The BBC News: 16 February 2015

A plot to assassinate the Pope during his recent visit to the Philippines was foiled by police. Philippine police received information from abroad that “Marwan”, an expert Islamic terrorist bomb maker who was based in the Philippines, was planning to plant several bombs at the location of a Mass that would be held during the Pope’s visit. Marwan, who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for training several terrorist groups in bomb making, was known to specialise in IEDs triggered by mobile phones; so police mounted a huge security operation, including shutting down the local mobile phone network for the entire day of the visit. Following the largely trouble-free visit, Special Forces attempted to locate and kill Marwan; they succeeded on January 25, although the battle with Marwan’s two Islamic terrorist groups was so intense that 44 special forces soldiers were also killed. There is currently heightened security in Manila in case the terrorist groups try to exact retribution for Marwan’s death.

The 21 Egyptian Christian workers who were kidnapped in Libya by groups affiliated to Islamic State have been murdered. Islamic State has released a statement saying that this was done in retaliation for the torture of two Christian women who converted to Islam. Although the two women were reported as having been tortured on Islamic websites, the truth seems to be that both women had domestic disputes with their (Coptic Christian priest) husbands, one in 2004 and the other in 2010; both temporarily disappeared, during which time Muslims claim they voluntarily converted to Islam; and when both returned to Christian premises (one returned home after 5 days, the other – who wanted a divorce – was temporarily sequestered in a convent), there were street protests from Islamists claiming they were being held against their will.

Italy’s top court has rejected a legal case to legalise same-sex marriage, saying there is nothing in Italy’s constitution to require the Government to redefine marriage. However, the court did say that same-sex couples should have the same rights as unmarried couples.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has finally agreed to take action over the much abused and much criticised blasphemy law, which is often used to settle personal scores. It has agreed to fast-track 50 cases of alleged blasphemy. However, all 50 cases involve Muslim defendants, despite the fact that Christians are disproportionately accused of blasphemy against Islam. One Christian mother, Asia Bibi, has been in jail awaiting trial for more than 5 years now, after being accused of blasphemy by drinking from a water bucket that was later used by a Muslim woman; her trial has been repeatedly delayed because of death threats – one of which was carried out -- to any lawyers who are involved.

In film news, “Fifty Shades of Grey” opened in the USA to the second-biggest ever box office takings for a February weekend; perhaps ironically, the only film that bettered it was “The Passion Of The Christ.” Audience reviews have been very poor, however; reviewers on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) gave it an average score of 4/10. Meanwhile, “Old Fashioned”, described as a Christian alternative to Fifty Shades of Grey, opened the previous weekend with the third highest per-cinema takings of the week, and an IMDb rating of 7/10. However, it was only shown in 3 cinemas, which meant that its total takings were very low.

Also in film news, a postgraduate student researching religion in prison for his sociology dissertation was so impressed by what he found that he ended up making a documentary about it. He discovered that the only way to get the prisoners’ trust was to stay in prison himself, and he found an “experimental prison” near Rio de Janeiro where there were almost no prison guards inside the prison – the inmates enforce their own code of conduct. He stayed there for several weeks, and discovered that Pentecostal Christianity was having a major impact in the prison. He discovered that the vast majority of prison volunteer helpers were Pentecostal; that the church within the prison provided an alternative to gang culture that was recognised by the gang members; that the worship services were very intense; that it was impossible to live as a part-time Christian when church members could observe you 24 hours per day; and that Christianity provides people who are treated as expendable with a way to live moral and dignified lives. The documentary is called, “If I Give My Soul.”

In technology news, an artificial intelligence program has been developed that can “watch” videos and tag them in a way that helps people understand their content. For example, a video of a woman stroking a puppy would be tagged with ‘female’, ‘dog’, ‘eyes’ and ‘cute’. One of the aims of this technology is to be able to search through videos automatically to find the moment at which something interesting happens, and jump to that point.

And finally, a senior schoolboy from Oklahoma decided that he wanted to make sure none of the girls in his school felt ignored on Valentine’s Day, so he sent each of them an anonymous card and some sweets. However, there were over a thousand girls in his school, so he had to work all the previous summer to raise enough money for his gifts. In an interview with the local radio station, he said, “To know somebody out there cares about them; that’s one of the best feelings in the world, I think.”

Not The BBC News: 13 February 2015

Tristram Hunt, who is the UK Labour Party’s shadow education secretary, managed to land himself in a second public controversy this week. Shortly before his announcement that Labour will, if elected, make sex education (including “equality act” sex education) mandatory in schools starting at age 5, Hunt appeared on BBC 1’s Question Time. When another participant said that her “most inspiring teachers were not out of teacher training college, and taught real values, not British values”, Hunt replied, “They were nuns, weren’t they? … There is a difference between having a state education system with qualified teachers and nuns.” When he later appeared on the Andrew Marr show, Hunt was challenged by Marr to say if he thought nuns could be good teachers. Hunt repeatedly avoided answering the question and Marr kept asking it again and again, until on the seventh time of asking, Hunt grudgingly (and rather narrowly) replied “I’m sure there are brilliant teachers who are nuns who are doing a fantastic job.”

Last year, two Catholic midwives who asked to be exempted, under the conscience clause of the Abortion Act, from supervising staff who performed abortions were told by the Supreme Court that, because they did not participate in abortions in a hands-on way, the clause did not apply to them. While Christian groups remain disappointed by the decision, further analysis of it reveals some rays of hope. Firstly, the conscience clause exempts those with moral objections to abortion from “participating” in “treatment” leading to abortions. The midwives sought a broad interpretation of both “participation” and “treatment”, while the Royal College of Midwives (which opposed them in court!) sought a narrow interpretation of both terms. The Supreme Court decided on a narrow definition of “participation” but a wide definition of “treatment”, including care before and after the abortion. And secondly, the Supreme Court made it clear that their decision was based only on the Abortion Act, and advised the two midwives that their employer ought to make “reasonable adjustments to accommodate their beliefs” under either the Equality Act or the Human Rights Act. This is the first time that a Supreme Court decision has applied the concept of “reasonable adjustments” to religious belief.

A Buddhist woman from a slum in Cambodia, who did an hour of Buddhist worship every day, became a Christian after experiencing a dramatic miracle. She and her family moved to Phnom Penh to find work, but her husband died of typhoid, so she took her three children to live in a slum “full of taxis, vegetable sellers, drug addicts, prostitutes, robbers and bad people.” She contracted a mysterious illness and was sent home to die by doctors who could not find a cure. A Christian woman came visiting and told that Jesus could save her; if she believed in Him she would go to heaven when she died; and He had the power to heal her. She reacted strongly against this: “Jesus is an American god, a foreign god!” But that night she prayed to be healed, and woke up the next morning with no trace of the disease. Her son is now a youth pastor, and described how God gave him the ability to love others, even those who falsely accused him, or those who burned down all the slum homes one day in an attempt to buy the land for redevelopment.

There are a number of stories emerging from Malaysia of Christian school students either being forced or tricked into converting to Islam. The trick involves getting them to join in the general prayers but then including some declaration that officially -- and irrevocably – declares them to be Muslims. An MP is calling for schools to take action against the wardens of the hostels where many of these students live.

A bishop of underground Catholic churches in Hebei, China, who spent a total of 54 years in prison, and has been imprisoned with no contact with his family since 2001, has died at the age of 93. However, the authorities, who never told the family where he was being held, continue to deny any official knowledge of his death or to release his body for burial. His family believe that the authorities are afraid of mass demonstrations at his funeral (since he was held without charge for 14 years), or that he died from starvation or torture, or both.

The BBC recently aired a programme in which participants from the Aetherius Society and the British Union of Spiritist Societies participated in a serious debate about whether Jesus and Buddha were aliens. The Aetherius Society believe that Jesus and Buddha came from Venus, Sri Krishna from Saturn and Saint Peter from Mars. Two Christians – a scientist and a bishop – were also present, and unsurprisingly they disagreed with the other participants. The “Big Question” program was broadcast as part of the BBC’s religious output.

The fact that politicians sometimes say what people want to hear rather than what they believe may hardly be news to many people. However, one such incident was considered newsworthy this week – because the offender was Barack Obama; because the incident was reported by his former top political advisor, David Axelrod; and because Axelrod claimed that Obama consciously lied rather than bending the truth or changing his mind later. The issue was Obama professing opposition to gay marriage, particularly when the audience included members of black churches, when he sought election in 2008. Obama has disputed Axelrod’s account, but his public statements in support of traditional marriage in 2008, and claiming he had “always been in favour of gay marriage” in 2012, are on public record.

In technology news, blunders where emails are sent to the wrong person are nothing new, but there was a particularly egregious example this week from St. Andrew’s University. An email that was intended for a handful of students who have already been offered a place at the university, inviting them to visit, was accidentally sent to 760 Scottish applicants who were waiting to hear if their applications were successful. An apologetic retraction was emailed out just half an hour later, but even that included a hint of inability to organise the data sensibly; a spokesman said “The emails were sent by alphabetical order; we believe that only applicants whose first [sic] name begins with the letters A to D were affected.”

And finally, a woman from Salisbury (and sister-in-law of a friend of mine) has created a highly unusual work of art – a copy of the Magna Carta on top of a cake. Christine Jensen wrote all 4,000 words of the mediaeval Latin document in food dye on fondant. It will now go on display at Salisbury Cathedral alongside one of the four surviving original copies of the document. Christine said, “One of the things I really love doing is making a cake that accurately tells a story. The only way I would do that in this case was literally writing it all out word for word.”

Not The BBC News: 7 February 2015

As the UK General Election approaches, the Liberal Democrats recently announced that, if they hold power after the election, they will make lessons on sex and relationships compulsory in all schools, starting at key stage 2 (age 8). The Labour party have just announced a similar policy, but starting at key stage 1 (age 5). The aim of these policies is to prevent “homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying”. However, a spokesman for the Christian Institute said, “This is the wrong solution. For three decades the cry has been that we must have more sex education, of a more explicit nature, at an ever younger age – and look where it has got us.” He added, “We should end the defeatism that says all children will inevitably be exposed to pornography and engage in underage sexual activity. It is a counsel of despair.”

The chief inspector of OFSTED has hit back at those who criticised his inspectors for their inappropriate questions about sexuality to children. In an article in the “Independent” newspaper, he claimed that critics are “creating a smokescreen for their own palpable weaknesses of leadership and management.” He also said that “the idea that this is a sinister attempt to force a particular metro-liberal, politically correct orthodoxy on the nation’s schools is simply wrong.” His first statement suggests he hasn’t heard of the truism that, in any public argument, the first person/group to make a personal attack on the other person/group is effectively admitting that they have the weaker case.

Reliable reports and photographs suggest that Boko Haram has captured the town of Gwoza in north-eastern Nigeria and has killed almost exactly 1,000 of the Christian population, many by horrific methods. Nigerian military forces who were defending the town were reported to have fled rather than fight; this may well be true, as there are also reliable reports that the wives and relatives of Nigerian soldiers have been demonstrating for days outside army camps. The wives are demanding that their loved ones should not be sent to fight Boko Haram or to recapture towns, as the equipment they have is so poor that the wives believe such missions would be suicidal.

Having reported recently on persecution of Christians across South East Asia, I will use this bulletin to report on the work of St. Stephen’s Society, a Hong Kong based Christian mission agency. St. Stephen’s originally became established in Hong Kong as a group that prayed for healing for heroin addicts, and often helped them to withdraw from the drug without pain; “missionary evangelism” consisted largely of asking ex-addicts if they’d like to hear about the Person who healed them. St. Stephens now runs several activities that combine prayer for divine healing with practical aid for those in poverty. They hosted several Christmas parties across Hong Kong, and have sent a team to the Philippines to help those who lost their homes in the recent typhoon. In the past couple of weeks in the Philippines, a fire destroyed a further 500 homes close to the mission centre, and 141 people were given temporary housing in the centre.

A man from New Zealand whose Armenian wife gave birth to a son in her homeland was faced with three major shocks in rapid succession. The first was that his son had Down’s syndrome; the second was that his wife had already accepted the hospital’s suggestion that the baby be quietly euthanized. When he said he wanted to keep the baby, she gave him an ultimatum: if he kept the baby, she would divorce him. Despite the cost, he chose to keep the baby; his wife duly left him; and he is raising funds to take himself and baby Leo back to New Zealand.

The famous/infamous atheist Richard Dawkins tweeted recently that a good approach to dealing with rigid theocracies such as ISIS would be to flood their airwaves with erotic videos. He added that this would be “loving, gentle, and woman-respecting.” After a few minutes of mockery, the tweet was deleted.

As Valentine’s Day and the release of the film “Fifty Shades of Grey” approaches, the pastor of a megachurch from Texas says he will publicly baptise copies of the book in Texas, Florida and London to raise awareness about the perversion in the story. “God isn’t anti-sex, and he isn’t grey when it comes to relationships,” he said. “[The book/film] is a pathetic distortion of a more powerful reality about relationships … Relationships drive so much of our lives. You show me your friends and I’ll show you your future … Are your desires fulfilled in a sexual fantasy, or a relational reality?”

In technology news, researchers from Aberystwyth and Cambridge have developed an artificially intelligent robot scientist to help in the process of discovering new drugs to tackle parasite-carried tropical diseases. Robots are already available that can perform mass screening – trying out tens of thousands of different drugs and compounds to see if they defeat certain parasite proteins. Eve, however, learns from early trials to select drugs and compounds that are more likely to succeed, thus greatly reducing the average length of time to find an effective drug. It has already discovered that a certain anti-cancer drug inhibits a key molecule of malaria. The robot is called Eve because it is the second robot that the team has produced; the first was called Adam.

And finally, anyone who has suffered through too many sermon jokes might like to let their pastor/priest know that this week’s Christian Resources Exhibition includes a class called Comedy for Clergy. The teacher is a priest’s son who later studied neurolinguistic programming (mirroring the mannerisms of those to whom you want to relate). He now provides evaluations of voice, body language, and the sermons themselves, before using an alter ego (the rapping reverend Rupert) to mirror back the attitudes he is seeing from the participants. He said, “There are so many priests striving to be modern today — I see them in class with their Sex Pistols T-shirts and the odd tattoo. The priests who crowded into our house when I was growing up weren’t modern, but they were raconteurs who knew how to work a crowd. I try to pass on the essence of their ability to entertain.”

Not The BBC News: 6 February 2015

There has been continuing persecution against Christians in East Asia. A mob of 300 armed Muslims attacked a Christian boys’ school in Bannu, northern Pakistan in response to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, despite Christian groups publicly condemning the cartoons; four people were injured. In New Delhi, a protest march by Christians against the recent burning of several churches in the capital led to hundreds of arrests as the police said that the march was an “unlawful assembly”. And in China, a Hong Kong journalist who travelled to Wenzhou to interview Christians about the campaign of church demolition and removal of crosses from churches was arrested briefly; “they didn’t hold me for very long,” she said, “they just stopped me from interviewing people.”

The UK Government has responded to concerns over the effect of its proposed Counter-Terrorism Bill on free speech in universities and elsewhere by altering the Bill to include free speech among the “specially protected” characteristics to be promoted. The Government is also trying to make the guidance attached to the Bill clearer.

The Christian bakery in Oregon that declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding has been found guilty of discrimination and ordered to pay $75,000 to each of the two complainers. The owners say the fines may bankrupt them. The bakery itself closed just over a year ago after boycotts, threats, harassment, and being shunned by other wedding vendors as a result; their lawyer has called the harassment against them “economic terrorism.”

A pastor from a Seventh day Adventist church in California, who decided to spend “a year without God”, has completed his year and announced that he is now an atheist. Ryan Bell says, “The world makes sense to me as it is; there’s no need to postulate a divine being to make it even more complex.” Bell is critical of those atheists who believe that science answers all the problems that religion purports to address, but also says that he wishes Christians realised that atheists are not all moral nihilists; many have searched for God but have “genuinely hit a brick wall.” However, Christian film producer Darren Wilson comments that he’s not surprised that Bell emerged as an atheist: “I have experienced God. I know He’s real, I know He’s there. I can’t imagine spending an hour without him, never mind a year.”

A 2,500 year old collection of clay tablets from Babylonia have been shown to confirm some of the Biblical account of the 70 year exile of the Jews in Babylonia. The tablets, written in cuneiform and each about the size of the palm of a hand, record administrative and business transactions from the period. They refer to a village of the Jews by the river Chebar (mentioned in the book of Ezekiel), and also include three names of Jews who are named in the Bible as being active shortly before or shortly after the Exile: Hanan, Shaltiel and Gedalyhu. Other relatively recent archaeological discoveries that back up Biblical accounts include locating and excavating the Pool of Siloam (which had stepped sides) and finding a tomb holding the body of a man who had been crucified, with the shin bones broken.

In technology news, a collection of formerly top secret documents, written by the wartime codebreakers at Bletchley Park in England, have been discovered and will shortly go on view in the site museum. All such documents were supposed to be destroyed, but the working conditions at Bletchley were primitive and poorly heated, and it seems that the codebreakers used all sorts of waste paper to block up holes in the ceilings and floors of the uninsulated huts. The documents, discovered during renovation in 2013, include the only surviving examples of Banbury sheets, used as part of the Banburismus technique for decoding the German’s Enigma machine.

And finally, a 99 year old woman from Iowa who learned dressmaking in her younger years is keeping herself busy by making dresses for little girls in Africa – at the rate of one dress every day. “I start each dress in the morning, take a midday break, then finish it in the afternoon”, she said. “It’s just what I like to do. I learnt how to do it and I thought, why not put it to good use?” The dresses are distributed by a Christian charity called Little Dresses for Africa. The lady aims to make her 1,000th dress on her 100th birthday in early May.

Not The BBC News: 3 February 2015

A healing evangelist from Australia recently had one of his meetings covered by Australian TV’s “A Current Affair” programme; they had covered him before, but seemed unconvinced by the healings that had taken place in the first meeting.  A member of the Australian Sceptic Association was secretly present in the audience. The meeting resulted in a number of people being healed, including the sceptic. He is now in trouble with members of his Association for saying that evangelist’s claims may be true after all.

British MPs have voted in favour of allowing “three parent babies”, where genetic material from a third individual is spliced into an embryo in an attempt to avoid the baby having inherited disorders. The UK is the first country in the world to legalise this technique. There have been numerous objections to the technique, centering around two themes; the fears that the technique is not yet well enough understood to ensure the health of resulting babies, and criticisms largely from Christians groups that the scientists are playing God (and with permanent effect, on the children and their descendants).

More details have emerged about the Christian school in Durham that is being closed down following a negative OFSTED report. Durham Free School, a school with 94 pupils aged 11-13, was a flagship for the ‘free school’ policy instituted by previous Education Secretary Michael Gove, and therefore was funded directly by the Department of Education rather than by the local authority. The school had been rated ‘successful’ following a DoE review in June last year, but was rated “inadequate” by OFSTED under the controversial new criteria in November. The school accepts some of OFSTED’s criticisms – there was a change of head teacher in October — but says others “bear no resemblance to reality”. The process by which the school is being shut down can best be described as “railroading”: the head teacher was given two weeks’ notice of the withdrawal of funding on Monday January 19, a few minutes before it was announced in Parliament (giving the school no chance to inform parents before they heard through the media); the local authority (who had presumably been informed well in advance) sent out letters on Tuesday inviting parents to choose an alternative school by the following Wednesday (even though the free school theoretically had two weeks to appeal); and parents who had not made their choice by Wednesday 28th  January were phoned by the authority on Thursday and “aggressively” pursued to choose another school. One parent said, “The local authority are desperate to get their hands on these children.” The free school is attempting to have the full OFSTED documentation, including instructions given to inspectors, released.

The Croatian government has decided to cancel the debts of thousands of its citizens. Citizens who earn less than 40% of the average wage, rent their homes, and cannot pay their debts will have debts cancelled up to a limit of roughly one year’s average wage. About 60,000 out of the country’s 4.4 million people are likely to be affected. The aim is to kick-start the economy out of recession by getting bank accounts unfrozen.

Another Bible-based film is to be released in April. “David and Goliath” is described as a big-budget film with a script that is Bible-based. It lacks well-known stars but, judging from the trailer, does have music similar to that of “Lord of the Rings.” Meanwhile, Oscar-nominated “Selma” about the life of Martin Luther King opens in the UK this week.

In sport, Andy Murray reached the final of the Australian Open tennis and faced Novak Djokovic. Murray often gives his fans a nail-biting performance, but in this game he uncharacteristically collapsed. He managed to break Djokovic’s serve in the third set to lead 2-0, after the pair had shared the first two sets, but Murray then lost twelve of the next thirteen games. Murray’s reaction at the end of the match was to throw his racquet down so hard that he broke it – and then he repeated the action with two more racquets.

And finally, a man from Detroit who commutes 23 miles each way to work has to walk 21 of those miles after cutbacks to the city’s bus services – and he has never missed a day of work. James Robertson’s job in an injection moulding factory pays more than minimum wage, but it’s not enough to purchase, fuel and insure a car in Detroit. He says he gets his determination from his family, and speaks with pride of his father’s military service. His boss uses him as an example to other workers who say they’re having trouble getting to work, and the boss’ wife makes him a hearty dinner halfway through his 2-10pm shift.

There is a heartwarming postscript to this story. Following the recent publicising of Robertson’s commute, he has been offered a brand new car for free by a local dealer. Also, someone created a “justgiving” page aiming to collect a few hundred dollars for him, and the total pledged so far is over $42,000.