Not The BBC News: 26 April 2015

In Iraq, Islamic State have seized Quaragosh, the largest Christian city in the country. The usual appalling atrocities and exterminations against Christians have been reported. Up to a quarter of Iraq’s Christians are now believed to be refugees.

It has also emerged that one of the 28 Ethiopian Christians decapitated by ISIS in a recent video shot in Libya was not in fact a Christian; he was a Muslim who offered himself as a hostage because he would not leave his Christian friend. It is possible that Jamal Rahman hoped his presence in the group might win them better treatment; instead, ISIS decreed him to be apostate and killed him too.

In Northern Ireland, the Justice department has recommended a weakening of the abortion law to permit abortions in cases of “fatal foetal abnormality.” This was done despite the public consultation being massively against changing the law – just 0.7% of responses were in favour.

Also in Northern Ireland, there is to be yet another vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly on legalising gay marriage in the province. Despite the motion having been rejected in each of the past three years, four Sinn Fein MLAs have tabled the motion again … but this time, they have also dropped the clause that supported “freedom of religion” for those who oppose gay marriage.

The Guardian newspaper has claimed in an editorial that Christians’ concerns about marginalisation in the UK are “hysterical”, “morally distasteful” and “groundless”. It argues this on the grounds that there is more severe persecution of Christians overseas, so Christians in the UK shouldn’t complain about their own “lesser” problems. It also called Christian evangelism “obnoxious” and “embarrassing”. A Christian spokesman replied, “Why are Christians the only people the Guardian thinks should keep quiet when they are mistreated?” And he added, “The editorial seems to equate ‘civilised society’ to ‘endorsing homosexual relationships’.”

A court in New York has granted some human rights to chimpanzees. The animals are to be transferred to a Florida animal sanctuary, but a lobbying group known as the Nonhuman Rights Group brought a lawsuit on the same basis as the rules that apply to unlawfully detained human prisoners – and the judge ordered lawyers to respond to the suit rather than throwing the case out.

A church in Farnham, Surrey has taken an unusual approach to getting the whole church involved in service: it had dropped all its rotas. Instead, there are numerous cards with jobs written on them, and anyone can take a card on arrival at church and do that job. Many of the jobs are suitable to be done by children. For each overall area, there is a Host whose task is to put the box of cards out, and to do anything that requires preparation (e.g. bring the biscuits for coffee). The vicar says, “I never know who is going to step up to do a reading or to help me serve at the altar! But it has made the church more inclusive and even zanier. I would encourage every church to try it for their All-age services.”

In media news, rock star Alice Cooper has spoken out about his Christian faith. When he first sought help from Christian counsellors for his alcoholism and his marriage, he said to the pastor, "I can't be Alice and a Christian. He replied that God doesn't make mistakes. He said that God had put me in an unusual situation for a reason and now I should let my lifestyle do my talking for me and my beliefs. It wasn't the answer I was expecting." He now sees himself as “a rock star who happens to be a Christian; someone who doesn’t sing much about the light, but does sing about what I see because of the light.” For example, a recent album contains a song called “Sideshow” about a young man’s struggle to see the truth through the distractions of the modern world. And for Christians who find his stage show too violent, his response is, “Would it be OK if I was up there playing Macbeth? Because that’s about four times as violent as my shows are.”

In film news, “War Room” is a new Christian film about a couple who seemingly have it all together; but in fact their marriage is a war zone and their daughter is collateral damage. Then the wife discovers the power of prayer. It will be released in the USA later this year.

In technology news, a man in Colorado has been charged for killing his uncooperative computer with a handgun. He apparently became fed up with fighting his computer, so he took it outside and fired eight shots into it, effectively disabling it. But Colorado Springs has a law against discharging firearms within city limits. He told officers he did not realise he was breaking the law, and will be sentenced later.

And finally, a serial burglar who posed as a maintenance engineer at Birmingham University was captured by police because he left behind his rucksack at the scene of a crime … and it contained a police charge sheet with his name and address on it. Heroin addict Ricky Woolaston was swiftly arrested, and students identified him as the man responsible for four other burglaries. In court, he asked for five further burglaries to be taken into account.

Not The BBC News: 18 April 2015

A court in the USA has awarded a judgment of $330 million for wrongful death – against the government of North Korea. The payment is for a South Korean (but American resident) missionary who was kidnapped from China in 2000 and tortured to death in a prison camp. Defence lawyers had argued that it could not be proven that the government of North Korea was responsible for his death, but in a landmark judgement, the court decided that it was the government who had the burden of proving that he had not been murdered. The judgement includes $15 million for each of two surviving relatives and $300 million in punitive damages.

There has been no news yet on the verdict on the Northern Irish bakers who refused to bake a cake supporting gay marriage. In the USA, however, the legal decision making in similar cases has reached new heights of hypocrisy. A pastor in Arizona contacted a lesbian baker and requested a cake printed with a message opposing gay marriage. She refused – he recorded the conversation and posted it on YouiTube. She demanded he remove the video (which he did), but she then contacted the FBI to demand that the pastor be charged with a hate crime for recording the telephone call – and she herself re-posted the pastor’s video on YouTube as evidence.

There has been continuing persecution of Christians by Muslims in various parts of the world. 29 Syrian Christians, including at least 10 children were killed by a rocket attack in Aleppo on the Syrian church’s Good Friday; the daughter of a Ugandan pastor who ignored Muslim threats to stop worship services has been gang-raped and now needs hospital treatment; a 15 year old boy in Lahore, Pakistan was approached by two men who asked his religion, and when he said ‘Christian’, they chased him, doused him in kerosene, and set him on fire; ISIS has captured hundreds of Assyrian Christians and is demanding six-figure sums to ransom each of them; and Italian police have arrested 15 Muslims on a migrant ship from Libya, because of reports that they threw 12 Nigerian and Ghanaian Christians overboard to their deaths during the trip. The BBC produced a documentary about Christianity in the Middle East today, which was broadcast over Easter, and is simply called, “Kill The Christians.”

There are reports that a skin disease known as “Rose of Jericho” because of the red sores it produces is spreading quickly amongst ISIS fighters. The disease is spread by sandflies and encouraged by pollution and poor hygiene, and apparently some jihadi fighters have refused treatment which makes it spread even faster. If left untreated, the disease causes permanent scars, and eventually attacks the liver and spleen, causing death in most cases within 2 years.

Dutch Catholics are preparing for a mass closure of Catholic churches in the country; about 1000 or the country’s 1500 Catholic churches are expected to close. The perceived causes are that, in the famously liberal Netherlands, the Dutch Catholic church has also become liberal; and a strong trend towards individualism in the national psyche has led to the vast majority of Catholics not attending Mass, with only 5% of all Dutch Catholics (1.2% of the whole population) attending Mass regularly. A recent Papal visit was cancelled for fear of hardly anyone turning up.

In legal news, a man in New York has been granted permission to serve divorce papers to his wife via Facebook, on the grounds that is the only way he has of contacting her.

In sports news, Jordan Spieth, the 21 year old winner of the US Masters golf with the joint lowest score ever recorded, has revealed that he has a sister with special needs, who keeps his feet firmly on the ground. “I really love it when she’s able to be out there,” he said. “It’s humbling to see her and her friends and the struggles that they go through every day that we take for granted.”

In technology news, IBM’s Watson supercomputer has been programmed to create new food recipes. It examines existing recipes to see which tastes go well together, then generates brand new ones. Among the offerings in its cookbook are an apple and pork kebab cooked with mushrooms, strawberries and curry powder; plum pancetta cider; and a dessert made from buttermilk, porcini mushrooms, bacon, raisins, honey, dried figs and walnuts.

And finally, a restaurant in Oklahoma is being praised because it put a notice in its window saying, “To the person going through our trash for their next meal: You’re a human being and worth more than a meal from a dumpster. Please come in during operating hours for sandwich, veggies and water; no questions asked.” The offer has yet to be claimed.

Not The BBC News: 11 April 2015

A Muslim terrorist group has attacked a university in Kenya and killed 147 people. Christians at Garissa University College – in a region previously considered one of Kenya’s safest -- were specifically targeted. 147 people were killed, including the four attackers; that’s 11 times as many as in the similarly-targeted Columbine High School massacre in Denver, Colorado. Kenya has been so outraged by the attack that it has bombed Al-Shabaab training camps in nearby Somalia. The attack has been condemned across the world, but President Obama of the U.S.A. has been criticised by some for failing to mention that the victims were Christian. Obama suffered the same criticism after the kidnapping and execution of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya earlier this year.

There has been a major argument in the U.S. state of Indiana over a law designed to provide freedom of conscience for religious reasons to businesses. Some other mayors and states, including the Mayor of San Francisco, saw this as an attack on same-sex marriage and associated issues and started a boycott, banning all state-funded travel to Indiana; and pressure was put on businesses and major conferences to avoid the state. The Governor of Indiana has now relented and amended the law. However, even members of the gay community are now getting fed up of the “activism” that is being pursued in their name; a pizzeria in Indiana that refused to cater for a gay wedding was shut down after receiving threats through social media that caused police to step up security. But a fund to support the pizzeria owners raised $800,000 , including a donation from a gay woman who wrote, “We are outraged at the level of hate and intolerance that has been directed against you.”

I reported a while ago that the fastest growing Christian population in the world is in Iran, where a large number of ex-Muslims report that they became Christians because Jesus appeared to them in dreams or visions, often unbidden. A new report suggests there may be as many as 350 million Christians, who have converted from Islam, living secretly in Muslim countries (that’s about one sixth of the worldwide Muslim community).Some have suggested that this is the real reason for increased attempts by some Muslim groups to persecute Christians or to impose strict Muslim law.

In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron published an Easter message in which he (again) described Britain as a Christian country. However, his message was described as “curiously sanitised”; he said that, “Easter is all about remembering the importance of change, responsibility, and doing the right thing for the good of our children.” A journalist in the Spectator responded, “Generally the heart of the Christian message is considered to be a man called the son of God dying in agony on a cross and then rising from the dead, saying he was taking a punishment that men deserved”.

A Coptic Christian woman, known as the “Mother Teresa of Cairo”, has helped educate children from 30,000 low-income families in Egypt over the past 20 years.  Maggie Gobran has said that seven of the 21 Coptic Christians executed by Muslims recently went through her schools, and she knew five of them by name.

In technology news, Google has patented an acronym designed to solve a very 21st century problem – that of seeing spoilers on social media. For example, if you type in the names of contestants in a reality show, or characters in a drama series that has been shown elsewhere in the world, the acronym would block you from seeing posts containing those names until you turned the filter off.

And finally, a Girl Scout in San Francisco, given the annual task of selling cookies to raise funds, had the bright idea of setting up her stall outside a dispensary for medical marijuana. She sold 208 boxes of cookies in 2 hours.