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.”

Not The BBC News: 1 July 2015

Last week’s decision by the US Supreme Court to make gay marriage legal nationwide has generated a lot of reaction on both sides. Many of those in favour of gay marriage have agreed to “celebrate pride” by displaying a rainbow picture. On the other side, a typical headline is Rick Joyner’s “The Supreme Court versus The Supreme Being” – although a more earthly criticism came from Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, who criticised the President for lighting the White House in rainbow colours. Graham called such obvious partiality a “slap in the face” for opponents of the measure.

Meanwhile, some states are busy passing “freedom of conscience” laws that are intended to prevent those to who object to gay marriage from having to be involved with it. Texas passed a law that says that pastors cannot be forced to conduct a gay wedding; Michigan passed measures that say that religious adoption agencies are entitled to refuse adoption/fostering to gay couples; and, most controversially, Texas (again) issued ‘opinions’ to state agencies that exempt marriage registrars from granting licences for gay marriages if doing so goes against their conscience. It remains to be seen if these laws will stand up to the inevitable legal challenges.

The Catholic church has also officially come out in opposition to the ruling and recommended exercising freedom of conscience. A recent “Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith” document said, “In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”

The National Organization for Marriage is even bidding to get the Supreme Court’s ruling overturned, on the grounds that the Supreme Court is not competent to rule on something it did not create. They cite an infamous case from 1857 when the Supreme Court decided that the government was powerless to reject slavery because African Americans could never become citizens of the USA. In practice, even if their argument is accepted, such overturning could only be done by the President, and Barack Obama and the Democratic challengers for the 2016 election are unlikely to oblige; so it may become a key topic amongst Republican election challengers.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, a gay couple have been granted leave for a judicial review on the Province’s ban on gay marriage. The Northern Ireland Assembly voted against gay marriage for the fourth time in four years recently, but a judge has granted the couple a judicial review because they argue that gay marriage is a human right.

In Lakewood church, Florida, well-known pastor Joel Osteen was heckled by six members of another small church during his sermon last Sunday. They stood up one by one and called out “Shame on you, Joel Osteen!” All six have been arrested, and Lakewood have said they are likely to press charges. Osteen has been criticised by some for preaching an overly positive gospel message.

In Attingal, in the Indian state of Kerala, a church service of 400 Christians many of whom are converts from Hinduism, was attacked by 200 Hindu radicals. The pastor was beaten and received severe internal injuries; the congregation were then attacked inside the church, and attacked again outside as they fled. One 40 year old woman said she was lucky to escape with only a broken finger after dodging a huge blow from a motorcycle helmet. The communion elements were desecrated and the communion table, pulpit, microphone and cables were damaged. One member of the congregation ran to the nearby police station to report the incident, but the police took 30 minutes to arrive. Kerala has been largely free of Hindu-against-Christian violence until now, because its population is 40% Christian.

A Kurdish Muslim man from Turkey went on a pilgrimage to Mecca in a desperate bid to get his life straightened out—and met Jesus. A wife-beater who was addicted to alcohol, Ali Pektash was on a visit to the famous shrine when he fell asleep under the sun. Jesus twice appeared to him in a dream, telling him to leave the area and spread the Gospel, and touched him on the chest; the hairs on part of Ali’s chest turned white, apparently in the shape of a handprint. Ali told his story to delegates of a conference in Manchester designed to encourage Christians from all over the Middle East, and showed them the mark on his chest.

Sir Nicholas Winton, the “British Schindler” who saved 669 Czech children from probable death in Hitler’s gas chambers, has died at the age of 106. Winton was a diplomat who spent three frantic weeks (of ‘summer holiday’) at the start of the war persuading British families to promise ₤50 towards the cost of fostering a child, which was the condition for Britain to allow them in, and then organising paperwork to ship the children out of Prague by rail and Vienna by various means. When his last trainload was stopped by the Nazis and turned back to Prague, Winton closed down his operation and returned to the UK. It was 50 years before he told anyone what he had done, and just two years ago, BBC’s “That’s Life” organised an emotional reunion between him and a large group of the children he’d saved.

A new ‘viral tattoo’ that many people are having inscribed on their bodies is a semi-colon mark. The mark is a symbol of hope; it indicates that the person was once suicidal but has chosen to continue their life. The semi-colon is used because it represents a point where a writer could choose to end a sentence, but decides not to.

In sport, the unthinkable happened in the Women’s World Cup – Germany missed a penalty. The USA were then awarded a penalty despite the initial offence being outside the penalty box, and duly scored on their way to a 2-0 victory. They will play the winners of England and Japan in the final.

And finally, a single mother of 6 from Camden, New Jersey, was so proud of her son for graduating from high school that she sent him congratulations … on a billboard. Ovella O’Neal’s son AJ was “shocked but happy”” to see the poster. Ms O’Neal described AJ as a ‘super kid’, and described how he spent Saturday nights babysitting while his mum worked instead of going out to the local youth club.