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.
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