Not The BBC News: 2 Dec 2016

The death of Fidel Castro, long-time leader of Cuba has divided public opinion with some praising him for his long term left wing policies and others criticising his suppression of opposing voices. Armando Valladares, a former postal clerk in Castro’s Revolutionary Government revealed how he was jailed for 30 years on trumped-up charges after refusing to put a communist slogan on his desk at work. His first prison camp executed scores of men every night, and he would hear them shouting “Long Live Christ the King, Down with Communism!” He gave his life to Christ which enabled him to resist further attempts to break his spirit – eight years naked in a totally dark cell, then being told he could return to his family if he merely signed a document renouncing Christianity. He wrote poetry while in prison, using his blood as ink; he is now a painter.

Christian groups are already responding to Castro’s death. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association distributed 40,000 Bibles in Cuba last year, where it is not unusual for a whole church to have one Bible between them. They plan to deliver another 50,000 soon.

Friends of a murdered priest in Florida are lobbying against the death penalty for the murderer because the priest wrote and filed a letter 20 years ago requesting that “should I die as a result of a violent crime, I request that the person or persons found guilty of homicide for my killing not be subject to or put in jeopardy of the death penalty under any circumstance, no matter how heinous their crime or how much I have suffered.” Father Rene Robert became acquainted with his killer while working in prison ministry. State officials are currently seeking the death penalty for kidnap and eventual murder of 71 year old Father Robert.

The king of Jordan has called on Jews and Christians to unite with Muslims to defeat ISIS. He called on the world to take “a global, holistic approach” or “we’re never going to win.” Israel is already providing Jordan (and Egypt) with military intelligence.

A pastor from Clermont, Florida told his congregation that God had told him to sing the song “In His presence”. Jim Watson sang it and immediately died of a heart attack. Steven Halford, pastor of a church in Lee on the Solent near Portsmouth, said: He was a loving husband, father, brother, son, pastor and of course, friend. He took me in and loved me and gave me a chance when few others did. I love you, Pastor Jim. I'll be seeing you.”

Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe has said that Christians are facing increasing oppression and persecution in the UK. The former Home Office minister recalled that when she was recently in Gibraltar, a senior politician there told her that it was important for them “not to be like Britain”. Citing the judgment against Ashers bakery in Northern Ireland, he spoke of the need to protect freedom of religion and conscience in statute. Widdecombe argues that in the Ashers case, “the principle of not being allowed to express a view has been extended to being forced to affirm one – an infringement of individual liberty that would have been unthinkable not so very long ago.” She contrasts this with a judgment in 2012 when a Christian who was demoted at work for stating on his personal Facebook page that gay marriage was “an equality too far” won his case against his employer.

A teaching assistant for children with special needs at a school in Bodmin, Cornwall told a 14 year old autistic boy, in response to his questions, that she did not like the way the biblical rainbow symbol had been adopted as an emblem of gay pride and that she disapproved of same-sex relationships. She was disciplined by the school and given a 12 month written warning, She raised the case at an employment tribunal but the school settled the case and apologised to her shortly before the tribunal was due to begin.

A senior Anglican bishop is to preside at a LGBT Eucharist. Rachel Treweek, Bishop of Gloucester, will celebrate a ceremony set up by Inclusive Anglicans. A traditional Anglican liturgy will be used.

Planned Parenthood, the biggest provider of abortion services in the USA, invited Twitter users to describe them in one word. In the words of the Washington Times, the strategy hasn’t turned out exactly as planned […] unless responses like ‘deceitful,’ ‘barbarous,’ ‘villainous,’ and ‘scandal-ridden’ were what organizers had in mind.”

In sport, Nico Rosberg has retired from Formula 1 racing just five days after becoming World Champion. Rosberg, whose father Keke was also a top racing driver, said, “Through the hard work, the pain, the sacrifices, this has been my target. And now I've made it.” Team-mate Lewis Hamilton added that Rosberg wanted to focus on his family.

In technology news, a report into UK warehouse space found that more than a quarter of all UK warehouse space rented in the last year was rented by Amazon – and other online retailers took enough for 1 in 3 UK warehouses to be dedicated to online retail last year. A spokesman said that Amazon’s Prime Now service, which promises delivery within an hour, has meant the company needs to take more warehousing space in different places.

And finally, highway managers on New Zealand’s South Island were puzzled to find their road cones in odd places on State Highway 94 at the Homer Tunnel, the entrance to Milford Sound. When they checked camera footage from each end of the tunnel they discovered ground-dwelling kea birds dragging cones on and off the road. A video entitled “The Kea Movie” can be seen at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11757422

Not The BBC News: 25 November 2016

New figures on the abortion rate in the USA reveal a drop in the percentage of pregnancies that are terminated in 2013, the latest year for which data are available. The figures which cover 47 US states (three including the most populous, California, cannot or will not provide data) suggest that the US sees approximately one abortion for every five live births. That compares favourably with the 1980s when the rate was higher than 1:3.

The civil war in South Sudan has escalated since July and both sides are accused of serious human rights abuses by Human Rights Watch. Many of the abuses have taken place in the south-western city of Yei. HRW has called for the UN to ban arms sales to the country and set up a war crimes commission.

In Rwanda, the Catholic Church has issued an apology for its role in the 1994 genocide. Although the Church itself played no direct role, the communique said: "Even though the church sent no body to do harm, we, the Catholic clerics in particular, apologise, again, for some of the church members, clerics, people who dedicated themselves to serve God and Christians in general who played a role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi."

In England, large numbers of gypsies are turning to Christianity. Although traditionally Catholic, a Gypsy-led Pentecostal movement called ‘Light and Life’ claims that 40% of the gypsies in England now belong to it. One member of the group said, "I see a great shift among Gypsies today. We've gone from being professional liars - and I was one of them. Now, we don't want to live that life no more, because the Holy Spirit's inside us. We want to go 100% legal. That's what happens when you're born again." He and many others have also become teetotal, in response to alcoholism being a major problem amongst gypsies.

Following a drought in Israel, numerous forest fires have broken out across the country. Several are believed to have been started simultaneously by organised arsonists. Parts of Haifa, the country’s third-largest city just north of Mount Carmel, have been evacuated.

There have been several political moves for and against LGBT rights this week. In the United Nations, 54 African nations challenged the legality of the new UN bureaucrat with a responsibility to enforce LGBT rights, but the challenge was defeated in an amendment proposed largely by Latin American and Caribbean nations. In the USA, the website of #AnywherebutTARGET, which urges shoppers to avoid shopping at Target in protest at its transgender-friendly bathroom policy, has been shut down by its web service provider because of the provider’s commitment to inclusiveness and diversity. In Texas, the Attorney General has upheld his previous advice to schools to ignore federal rules on accommodating transgender pupils as unenforceable.

In Canada, a judge in Ontario refused a parent’s request to be notified in advance when homosexuality and abortion were to be taught in his child’s school so that he could withdraw his child from those lessons; the judge decided that selective withdrawal of children from such classes “was antithetical to the legislative mandate […] favouring inclusivity, equality and multiculturalism.” Canada is also considering a Bill to make it a hate crime to refuse to use gender-neutral pronouns to transgender people; and after judges in Alberta decided that a year old boy should not be permitted to go in public dressed as a girl (which his father object to but his mother wanted), a local psychology professor called for the judges to be ‘re-educated’. Also in Toronto, there have been protests against police setting up a sting operation in a public park that resulted in 71 charges of indecent exposure and engaging sexual activity, including catching a registered sex offender breaching the requirement that he stay away from children while wearing only a T-shirt and masturbating. A politician from the New Democratic Party called for all 89 charges to be dropped immediately “before more lives are ruined”.

Back in the USA, several dress designers have refused to design clothes for the incoming First Lady, Melania Trump. However, there have been questions raised whether it is legal for them to refuse, given that Christian wedding cake makers have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide cakes for gay weddings.

The Polish Catholic Church has declared Jesus Christ to be the king if Poland. Christ has actually been given the honour twice before, at ceremonies in 1997 and 2000. But both were much smaller affairs, and did not have the official endorsement of the president. The decision also marks a change of heart by Poland's church hierarchy, who in 2008 said that naming Christ as Poland's king was 'inappropriate and unnecessary' (and repeated this statement in 2012). In January this year, however, they decided that 'recognition by the native community of the rule of Jesus Christ is theologically acceptable'.

Kim Clement, a prominent Christian ‘prophet’ from South Africa, has died of pneumonia at the age of 60. Clement’s ministry has been somewhat different to some other prophetic’ people; the focus of the outreach that he ran, initially in Detroit and now throughout the USA, is to “uplift wounded people”; and his meetings generally include a great deal of music from Kim himself as well as spoken words. One of Clement’s more notable prophecies, given in April 2008 in the last year of George Bush’s presidency, was that God would sway a political primary election in favour of Barack Obama because “there is an element of righteousness inside him to reach out to Jesus.”

Tullian Tchividjian, Billy Graham’s grandson who lost his wife and his church leadership position after confessing to an affair, has remarried and was recently invited to preach at a non-denominational church in California. Tchividjian preached that “God loves train wrecks and broken people because train wrecks and broken people are all that there are,…Until we see how bad we are we will never see how good God is. Grace will become nothing more than white noise to us unless we recognize just how desperately we need it."

In technology news, Black Friday discounts have spread even to the criminal marketplace of the dark web. Discounts available included 20% off knuckle-dusters; 15% off tasers; 12.5% off marijuana plants; and discounts on bundles of financial data.

And finally, an Iragi teenager has taken it on himself to recreate historic Assyrian artifacts destroyed by Islamic State over the past two years, especially from the city of Nimrud. He has recreated at least 18 Assyrian sculptures and one mural over the last year. "They waged a war on art and culture," 17 year old Nenous Thabit told CNN. "So, I decided to fight them with art." He added, “In Iraq, there are people who are killed because they are sculptors; ISIS view them as apostate," he added. "So, continuing to sculpt is a message that we will not be intimidated by those devils."

Not The BBC News: 18 November 2016

There is a major Christian revival going in in Iran. Twenty years ago the number of Christians in the country was estimated at 2-5,000; now it is between 300 and 400 thousand. Two hundred Iranians and Afghans were recently baptised just outside the country (the penalty for being baptised as a Christian inside the country is death). A ministry leader said, “Many people are tired of iron-fist government and are ready to find the truth. Iranians are spiritual people and it is natural to look for truth in Jesus.”

Pakistan’s television regulator has banned all 11 of the Christian TV channels airing in the country and has arrested some cable operators who were broadcasting the channels. Religious TV channels are not licensed by the media regulator but the Christian channels have been operating for 25 years alongside numerous Muslim channels. There is hope that the channels will still be available through the Internet.

Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, the Christian couple who have produced various faith-based programmes such as the recent film Ben Hur, are to start a faith-based TV network in the USA. “Light TV” will appear on networks in a dozen cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The 24-hour schedule will include ‘wholesome’ films such as Rocky and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Cliff Barrows, the music and program director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has died at the age of 93. Barrows has been with Billy Graham since 1949, and Graham’s crusades often began with spiritual solos from George Beverley Shea backed by a choir co-ordinated by Barrows. They also recorded Graham’s radio program, The Hour of Decision, for 64 years. When Graham (who is now 98) wrote his biography, he said of Barrows: “All of that talent is not the secret of Cliff’s effectiveness. It is his humility and his willingness to be a servant, which spring from his devotional life and his daily walk with Christ.”

The legal case regarding Ashers’ bakery in Northern Ireland may continue despite the Court of Appeal finding against the bakery. The Attorney general of Northern Ireland has the right to refer cases to the UK Supreme Court, independently of the normal appeals process, and is strongly considering doing so in this case. Meanwhile the BBC;’s legal correspondent, Joshua Rozenberg, has described the judgment as “possibly influenced by the belief that gay people are discriminated against in the province” and that such a view was “not legally sound.”

Pope Francis has issued a new Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, on matters of morality, and it is causing considerable confusion with different bishops and cardinals interpreting it differently. A group of cardinals recently wrote to the pope asking him to clarify five ‘yes or no’ questions regarding the document. Francis’ reply was that “Some, as with certain responses to Amoris Laetitia, persist in seeing only white or black, when rather one ought to discern in the flow of life."

Two by-elections have been held for the Provincial Parliament of Ontario in Canada. One was won by a 19 year old homeschool graduate who campaigned on a pro-life and pro-family platform. Sam Oosterhoff received the highest vote percentage in the last five elections. The ruling Liberal party in the province are proposing a ‘radical sex curriculum’ for schools; Oosterhoff says he will “never waver in support of parents as primary educators.”

And finally, an Iowa lawmaker plans to launch a bill in January that will penalise universities if they spend state funds offering grief counselling to students upset at the Presidential election result. Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican, is calling the bill the “Suck it up, buttercup” bill; it also seeks to criminalise any protest that blocks a highway. However, several universities in the state claim they are not spending any additional state funds on such counselling; and where such counselling has been offered by universities in other states, the reaction from students and faculty has sometimes been very negative.

Not The BBC News: 18 November 2016

There is a major Christian revival going in in Iran. Twenty years ago the number of Christians in the country was estimated at 2-5,000; now it is between 300 and 400 thousand. Two hundred Iranians and Afghans were recently baptised just outside the country (the penalty for being baptised as a Christian inside the country is death). A ministry leader said, “Many people are tired of iron-fist government and are ready to find the truth. Iranians are spiritual people and it is natural to look for truth in Jesus.”

Pakistan’s television regulator has banned all 11 of the Christian TV channels airing in the country and has arrested some cable operators who were broadcasting the channels. Religious TV channels are not licensed by the media regulator but the Christian channels have been operating for 25 years alongside numerous Muslim channels. There is hope that the channels will still be available through the Internet.

Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, the Christian couple who have produced various faith-based programmes such as the recent film Ben Hur, are to start a faith-based TV network in the USA. “Light TV” will appear on networks in a dozen cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The 24-hour schedule will include ‘wholesome’ films such as Rocky and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Cliff Barrows, the music and program director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has died at the age of 93. Barrows has been with Billy Graham since 1949, and Graham’s crusades often began with spiritual solos from George Beverley Shea backed by a choir co-ordinated by Barrows. They also recorded Graham’s radio program, The Hour of Decision, for 64 years. When Graham (who is now 98) wrote his biography, he said of Barrows: “All of that talent is not the secret of Cliff’s effectiveness. It is his humility and his willingness to be a servant, which spring from his devotional life and his daily walk with Christ.”

The legal case regarding Ashers’ bakery in Northern Ireland may continue despite the Court of Appeal finding against the bakery. The Attorney general of Northern Ireland has the right to refer cases to the UK Supreme Court, independently of the normal appeals process, and is strongly considering doing so in this case. Meanwhile the BBC;’s legal correspondent, Joshua Rozenberg, has described the judgment as “possibly influenced by the belief that gay people are discriminated against in the province” and that such a view was “not legally sound.”

Pope Francis has issued a new Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, on matters of morality, and it is causing considerable confusion with different bishops and cardinals interpreting it differently. A group of cardinals recently wrote to the pope asking him to clarify five ‘yes or no’ questions regarding the document. Francis’ reply was that “Some, as with certain responses to Amoris Laetitia, persist in seeing only white or black, when rather one ought to discern in the flow of life."

Two by-elections have been held for the Provincial Parliament of Ontario in Canada. One was won by a 19 year old homeschool graduate who campaigned on a pro-life and pro-family platform. Sam Oosterhoff received the highest vote percentage in the last five elections. The ruling Liberal party in the province are proposing a ‘radical sex curriculum’ for schools; Oosterhoff says he will “never waver in support of parents as primary educators.”

And finally, an Iowa lawmaker plans to launch a bill in January that will penalise universities if they spend state funds offering grief counselling to students upset at the Presidential election result. Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican, is calling the bill the “Suck it up, buttercup” bill; it also seeks to criminalise any protest that blocks a highway. However, several universities in the state claim they are not spending any additional state funds on such counselling; and where such counselling has been offered by universities in other states, the reaction from students and faculty has sometimes been very negative.

Not The BBC News: 8 November 2016

A UK Christian couple who fostered two young children for almost a year were barred from adopting the children because, according to social workers, their views that children need “a mummy and a daddy” were ‘concerning’ given that a gay couple had also recently applied to adopt the children. The couple were also told their three-bedroomed home was too small. The couple told a newspaper, “We are Christians and we expressed the view that a child needs a mother and a father. We expressed our views in modest, temperate terms based on our Christian convictions.” They added, “We have not expressed homophobic views unless Christian views are, by definition, homophobic.”

A Middle Eastern country has elected a Christian president. Michel Aoun is now president of Lebanon, after 45 failures by the government to agree a new leader over two and a half years. The 81 year old former general opposes the government of neighbouring Syria; he led a “War of Liberation” against Syrian forces in 1989, but was forced into exile in France where he lived for 15 years.

The US election has dominated the headlines for the past week or two, with abortion being a major issue, especially amongst Catholic voters. In Poland, however, where abortion is illegal in most circumstances, the government has just passed a law to give a cash grant to the parents of any baby which is born with a disability. The grant of approximately $1,000 is intended to complement the current state aid for disabled children of around $300 per month.

The BBC has come under fire once again for its liberal bias, from a journalist who worked for the BBC for 25 years. Robin Aitken wrote, “Feminism is never challenged; atheism is celebrated; ‘human rights’ trumps all (unless it is rights for the unborn).” Perhaps the most substantive criticism comes from the BBC’s News Style Guide, which instructs staff to describe pro-choice campaigners as ‘pro-choice’ and ‘favouring a woman’s right to choose’ but says that pro-life campaigners should be described as ‘anti-abortion’. The BBC has also been criticised for making a programme about transsexualism called “Just a Girl” aimed at 6 to 12 year olds.

In Uganda, a group of Muslims led by an imam attacked Christians who were harvesting rice, shouting ‘We are fighting for the cause of Allah’. 27 Christians were injured, 16 of them seriously; police have made several arrests. The root cause seems to be that the rice plantation is a project funded by churches from three denominations which helps the community in times of food shortage and also sells rice to pay school fees for needy children – and as a result, 21 Muslims have become Christians in the space of six months.

A young man from South Sudan who was snatched from his mother at the age of six and forced to become a child soldier, before being helped to escape by his older brother to Kenya and then to Australia, has won New South Wales’ award as “Australian of the Year”. Deng Adut said he was ‘shocked’ to receive the award, even though he has now qualified as a criminal lawyer; runs a law group which fights for members of the Sudanese community; and is studying for his second Master’s degree.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has appointed a new chaplain and has chosen a woman -- the Revd Isabelle Hamley, currently a tutor at St John’s College, Nottingham. The chaplain’s responsibility is to develop the Archbishop’s priority for prayer and the renewal of religious life.

And finally, a group of Beliebers (fans of the singer Justin Bieber) in Rio de Janeiro have started queueing to get a good spot at his next gig – which is five months away. A group of around 100 take it in turns to occupy the two tents outside the Sambadrome where Bieber is due to play on 29 March. "I'm not put off by sleeping rough," said one fan. "I absolutely love Justin Bieber. He inspires me and touches my heart."

Not The BBC News: 26 October 2016

The verdict on the appeal by Asher’s Bakery in Northern Ireland has finally been delivered. The case concerned the bakers’ refusal to bake a cake that said ‘Support Gay Marriage’. The bakers were convicted at first trial following some tortuous reasoning about ‘indirect discrimination’ from the judge which avoided addressing the key issues of whether the beakers were objecting to the customer being gay (equality law) or to the message on the cake (freedom of speech). The appeal failed on the grounds that, although the bakers did not discriminate against the customer because he was gay, a refusal to bake a cake with such a slogan was ‘direct discrimination’ – despite an earlier intervention from the Attorney General of Northern Ireland who was worried that a guilty verdict in the case might be seen as ‘coerced speech’. There have already been calls to change the law as it could easily lead (as argued by the prosecuting lawyer in the first trial) to Muslim T-shirt printers being guilty of discrimination for refusing to print cartoons of the prophet Mohammed (unless their terms of business refused to print any cartoons), or to a gay baker being forced to bake a cake saying ‘Gay Sex is Sin’.

There have been reports from Aleppo that local Christian workers/missionaries have been crucified by ISIL. Apparently the missionaries were given opportunities to recant their faith and convert to Islam but refused to do so.

The first arrest of a Christian leader in Russia under the new anti-evangelism law has taken place. Controversially the man arrested, Sergei Zhuravlyov, was a member of the Ukrainian Reformed Orthodox Church who was charged with ‘fomenting negative attitudes towards the Russian Orthodox Church’ and of having ties to a Ukrainian political party which is banned in Russia. Zhuravlyov has been released on bail.

David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham has died at the age of 94. Jenkins became infamous for describing the resurrection of Jesus as a ‘conjuring trick with bones’; his views placed him at odds with the evangelical wing of the Church of England, even though his ideas were less radical than many of his former academic colleagues. When he was consecrated in York Minster and the building was struck by lightning three days later, rumours of divine retribution swept the media and the country.  He was also outspoken on topics of social injustice and against economics that relied on markets as the balancing/correcting factor.

A pastor of a megachurch in Nashville, Tennessee has resigned due to burnout. Pete Wilson and his wife planted Cross Point church in 2003 and it has grown to hold over 7000 people. Wilson announced to the congregation, “We’ve said that this is a church where it’s okay to not be okay, and I’m not okay. I’m tired. And I’m broken and I just need some rest.”

The trial of Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who is on death row for alleged blasphemy after she drank from a bucket of water used by Muslim women and allegedly insulted the prophet Mohammed, has been delayed yet again. The case has inflamed tensions so much that various lawyers acting for Bibi and judges in the case have received death threats, at least one of which has been carried out. Bibi, a mother of five, has now been imprisoned without trial for seven years.

The Polish Parliament recently considered a bill to ban all abortions in the country. It passed its first vote but was withdrawn after a protest march took place to oppose it. Meanwhile there have been calls to remove funding from Amnesty International for openly promoting or lobbying for abortion in several North African countries, Nepal, El Salvador and Ireland.

Abortion services at the UK’s biggest abortion provider, Marie Stopes International, were suspended for a few months after a surprise inspection by the Care Quality Commission. The Commission’s report raised concerns about ‘consent’ and about ‘training and competence in sedation and anaesthesia’. Services have now resumed.

A sardonyx stone that was given to a Knight Templar around 1000 years ago and has been handed down through the family since is believed to be one of the gems from the breastplate of the High Priest in Jerusalem. These stones are historically mysterious since then Bible describes them as ‘Urim and Thummim’, terms which have never had an agreed translation but which the book of Samuel describe as a form of divine communication; the Talmud claims that when a question was put to the High priest, the stones would light up to spell out the answer. What is clear is that the stone has been cut in a hemisphere, a technology that was believed to be beyond ancient capability; it has no markings suggesting it was set in a ring or a necklace; and most intriguingly, it has two inscriptions inside the stone, one of which appears to be the Hebrew letter B in a form that was used around 3000 years ago, the other of which is either a wolf or the Hebrew letter K.

And finally, a 28 year old Russian woman whose boyfriend Roman Mazurenko died after being struck by a car in Moscow has decided to ‘resurrect’ him using artificial intelligence. She has combined his past text messages with a neural network that has learned his patterns of speech, and can reply electronically to queries. If the program can use Mazurenko’s actual speech, it will; if not, it falls back on an extensive language database. A friend of Mazurenko’s who tested the program said, “There are questions I had never asked him. But when I asked for advice, I realized he was giving someone pretty wise life advice. And that actually helps you get to learn the person deeper than you used to know them.”

Not The BBC News: 13 August 2016

World Vision, one of the largest Christian charities in the world, has discovered that the director of its branch in Gaza (in Palestine/Israel/the Gaza strip) has been diverting large amounts of aid funds to the terrorist organisation Hamas. He was ordered to infiltrate World Vision by Hamas in 2005; he was selected because his father (who has also recently been revealed as a Hamas member) worked for the UN. Once he became director he set up fictional agricultural projects and also put out tenders which were rigged, with the ‘winners’ being aware that a large proportion of the money was going to Hamas. 60% of World Vision’s annual budget for the region – just over $7 million per year – has been diverted since he became the director.

There have been numerous incidents of persecution of Christians in several countries recently. In China, a 67 year old church elder from Jinhua in the east was sentenced to seven years in jail for “subversion, damaging national security and harming social stability” after protesting against the Chinese government's removal of hundreds of church crosses around the country and the imprisonment (in unknown locations, without trial) of hundreds of Christians and lawyers representing them. In Nigeria, a Christian church was attacked by Boko Haram; any Christian who refused to renounce their faith was immediately doused in fuel and burned alive. And in Russia, the new law that prohibits evangelism anywhere has led to the cancellation of at least one major evangelistic crusade. However, a local church planter has said, “It's not going to stop us from worshipping and sharing our faith. The Great Commission isn't just for a time of freedom."

Meanwhile in Paris, police broke down the doors of a Catholic church where a traditional Mass was taking place and (illegally) fired teargas inside to help them remove all participants. The Mass was organised to protest against the sale of the century-old church building to a property developer.

Also in France, a legal issue has arisen against a Muslim halal supermarket which mirrors the pressure placed on Christian bakers and other service providers in the USA and UK. The local authority in the Colombes district has told the supermarket that it must start selling alcohol and pork, or it will be shut down. The halal supermarket replaced a previous supermarket and local residents have complained that they now have to travel some distance to purchase non-halal products. The supermarket’s owner says he is merely catering to the demands of his customers. The authority is seeking to terminate the supermarket’s lease; the case goes to court in September.

Peter Bull, the co-owner of the guesthouse in Cornwall which was the first Christian establishment in the UK to be subject to a legal case for not providing equal facilities for gays, has died at the age of 76. He and his wife have run guesthouses according to their Christian principles for 30 years.

The ‘revival’ in Burlington, North Carolina has come to an end. It started with a week-long event on Mother’s Day 11 weeks ago and continued with regular meetings in a huge rented tent. However, the owner has now ended the lease for the tent as he needs it for something else. More than 1250 people have accepted Christ in the course of the revival.

The High Court in Ireland has ruled that unborn children have all the rights of “born” children under the Irish constitution and law. Justice Richard Humphries made the ruling during a tangled deportation case; a Nigerian man whom the Irish government is seeking to expel wanted his unborn child to be factored into his request for a judicial hearing because the baby’s rights would strengthen his case to stay in the country. But the government resisted on the grounds the child was unborn and had only one right — to be born. Humphries ruled differently, stating that the controversial Eighth Amendment to the constitution protecting “the unborn” meant that an unborn child had rights under both statutory and common law that were “significant” and went “well beyond the right to life alone.” He ordered the government to give the case a judicial review.

In Kawaguchi, Japan, an ex-mobster has become a pastor of a church largely populated by other ex-mobsters. Tatsuya Shindo joined the yakuza at the age of 17 – “I was a child, I didn’t think too deeply,” he explained. He was arrested seven times and went to prison three times, beginning at 22. By the time he was 32, he had been excommunicated by the yakuza after spending about 8 of 10 years as an inmate. He found God while reading the Bible in solitary confinement. He studied and became a preacher after his release more than a decade ago. Now he says of his congregation, "Before, we were in rival gangs, firing guns. Now, we're praising the same God."

In sports news, Fiji have won their first every Olympic medal, gold in the rugby sevens. The country declared a public holiday to celebrate. The team celebrated their win by singing a traditional Fijian hymn on the pitch.

And finally, a Swedish church plans to use drones to drop thousands of miniature solar-power electronic Bibles into ISIS-controlled Iraq. “The Bibles are the size of pill boxes,” a spokesman said. The operation will be organised by another group who the church declined to name.

Not The BBC News: 28 July 2016

The UK Supreme Court has declared the Scottish Government’s “Named Person” proposal to be (partially) incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The proposal was that every child should have a single person who would be the first point of contact for any issue that arose (whether related to health, social work, the justice system, or whatever) rather than having different disconnected agencies dealing with these issues. But the Supreme Court ruled that the information-sharing provisions of the proposal were incompatible with the human right to a private family life, not least because the range of information that would be shared with other agencies was dependent on the judgment of the named person. One of the Court’s comments was, ‘The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way.’ "

It has been reported by the British Medical Association that Christian doctors in the UK who refuse to perform abortions have been and are being denied promotion, and are also being denied the ability to work in some specialist fields of medicine. The All Party Parliamentary Pro Life group of MPS is calling ion the Government to ensure that the conscience-based exemption clause in the 1967 Abortion Act is upheld without discrimination.

A female tribal chief in Malawi is using her authority to reverse the practice of child marriage (of girls) in her country. In the past 3 years, she has annulled 850 such marriages and sent the girls back to school. She is also trying to abolish “sexual initiation camps” to which girls as young as 7 years old are sometimes sent.

In Bristol, four street preachers were arrested in front of a cheering crowd. A local man was preaching outside a shopping centre and three others were holding gospel signs or engaging passers-by in conversation. According to recorded footage, the preacher was approached by a police officer who ordered him to leave the area because he was “causing a disturbance and was not welcome.” The preacher continued with the next line of his sermon – which was John 3:16 – and was arrested along with the other three men. All four were charged with violating Section 5 of the Public Order Act. The same street preacher was arrested in 2014 and convicted by a Muslim judge who told him he should have chosen a less offensive section of the Bible than Leviticus 12:13; but the preacher claimed he had never preached from Leviticus in the first place, and was released due to insufficient evidence.

The forthcoming US Presidential election appears to be becoming more and more polarised. It is widely accepted that supporters of Donald Trump are unhappy with the level of ‘political correctness’ in the country; but instead of dialling down on political correctness to tempt the centrist voters, Hillary Clinton is running the most pro-abortion campaign in American history, after the Democratic Convention adopted a 55-page document that pledges to “stand up” for Planned Parenthood, fund abortion nationwide and around the world; vows to “overturn” state and federal restrictions on abortion; proposes cracking down on pro-life sidewalk counsellors; and affirms abortion as “core” to people’s “health and well-being.” The election also promises to be unusual because the Parties behind the two candidates are both suffering major blows to their reputation; the Republicans were very reluctant to support Donald Trump as their candidate and even tried a procedural trick at their Convention to avoid doing so, while the Democrats’ inner workings are currently being exposed by Wikilieaks revealing hacked emails. So far, the emails have shown that the Democratic party lied about offering equal support to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (it favoured Clinton), and that it illegally accepted cash in return for access to President Obama.

Also in the US, one of the Christian bakers who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, and was subsequently fined and ordered to do so, is to take his case to the Supreme Court. No judgment has yet been released in the similar UK appeal case involving Ashers’ bakers, which ended two and a half months ago.

There are reports from Egypt of a story similar to that of Moses leading to a miracle similar to one described in the book of Daniel. Law student El Shafie came from an influential family of lawyers and Supreme Court justices; but when he found out about injustices in the Egyptian legal system, including the imprisonment of 7000 people whose only crime was being Christian, he had an awakening which led to him becoming a Christian himself. He founded a pro-Christian legal aid organisation and wrote a book to help fellow believers. He was recently arrested, tortured, and thrown into the notorious Abu Zaabel prison in Cairo – where the police let a pack of savage dogs into his cell. But he was unharmed; he said, “These dogs are trained to listen to their masters; there is no higher master than God.”

Tim LaHaye, one of the two authors of the phenomenally successful “Left Behind” series of Christian novels which has sold a total of 62 million books, has died at the age of 90. “Tim was one of the most godly men I have ever known,” said David Jeremiah, LaHaye’s successor at the San Diego church he led for 25 years. “Almost every conversation I had with him ended with his praying with me and for me. He wrote me extended letters of appreciation for what God was doing in our church.”

For the first time, archaeologists have discovered a Philistine cemetery at the coastal city of Ashkelon. So far the excavation has uncovered the remains of 210 skeletons; noted that the bodies were undisturbed after death (in contrast to Israelite practice, which was to let the body decay in a cave tomb and then to collect and bury the bones); and observed that the Philistines had some physiological differences from the Israelites, supporting the theory that they arrived from across the sea rather than being native to the area. DNA analysis is planned.

And finally, a 28 year old Florida woman who drove through a stop sign, across a lawn and into the wall of a house told police that she had been praying with her eyes closed at the time. No-one in the house was hurt. Much of the subsequent commentary on social media debated whether admitting what she had done displayed honesty or stupidity. 

Not The BBC News: 7 July 2016

Evangelicals in Russia are fasting and praying after the country’s Parliament passed anti-terrorism laws that also include severe restrictions on evangelism. The law prohibits evangelism anywhere outside a church or religious site – including private homes. Offenders will be fined; foreign offenders will be deported.

The Christian charity International Justice Mission has reported that one of its lawyers in Kenya has been abducted and killed along with his client and their taxi driver. Willie Kimani, the lawyer, had just lodged a complaint against a police officer on behalf of the client. An autopsy showed that Kimani had been tortured before his death. The Law Society of Kenya has called on all lawyers to boycott courts this week; nationwide protests have also been organised.

Canon Andrew White, known as the “Vicar of Baghdad”, has been suspended from his own charity by the Charity Commission while they investigate allegations that he mis-used charity funds to buy back sex slaves. Canon White says the case is due to some inaccurate statements that he made relating to funding, and that he has never paid money to terrorists; the Commission says it will not comment on active cases, but has added that the incident “seems to stem from a genuine desire by White to help others.”

A church of 400 in California that undertook to build a school in Pakistan had an unusual mission trip recently. On previous visits to the country, church members had discovered that every brick factory in the country was manned by Christian slaves, because Muslims will not do that kind of work; officially they were indentured servants, but it was common for factories to force children to work or to chop off fingers of workers who did not produce enough. The church started buying the slaves’ freedom at a cost of $600-$700 per family. On the most recent trip, a Taliban leader who owned 28 brick factories was being pressured by the government to close them down because of atrocities reported there, and the church raised $96,000 which bought freedom of a total of 4500 people. The sealing of the deal was fraught, but the turning point came when the Taliban leader and the mission trip leader realised they were both 73 years old – and the Taliban leader asked the Christian to pray for his failing kidneys. A local pastor then organised an evangelistic outreach for the next day; 6000 people turned up including 11 Shi’ite Muslim clerics, there were some dramatic healings through prayer, and hundreds became Christians including two of the clerics.

Another well-known Christian ‘prophet’ has spoken out about Brexit, although unlike the last report I gave, he did not claim to have heard from the Lord on the subject, but rather spoke from his understanding of the Bible. Rick Joyner’s opinion was that the EU was a trade network that had gone beyond its permitted boundaries to take over some of the functions of national governments and national judicial systems, and so the UK was better off out of it.

A Christian dating website in California has been told by a court that it must allow gays to use the site. The site has now changed its opening menu from “I’m a man seeking a woman” or vice versa to “I’m a man” or “I’m a woman”.

In Ontario, parents who seek to exempt their children from school lessons with LGBTQ content have been told by the provincial government that this is not possible, because it might make LGBTQ children in the class feel less valued, and because the topic is embedded in all subjects and grades.

A bill before the Irish government seeks to make an exception to the restrictions on abortion for foetuses with certain life-limiting conditions, such as anencephaly or Trisonomy 13. The bill argues that such babies should not be granted the protection of life that other foetuses get because they “have no life to protect”.

Ann Furedi, head of the BPAS, the biggest abortion provider in the UK, wrote an article in the Daily Mail in which she said, “Abortion may be an act of killing – but it kills a being that has no sense of life or death, and no awareness of itself as distinct from others.” Her article did not comment on whether she believes the same rules should apply to adults with severe mental disability or Alzheimer’s disease; nor did it comment on clinical studies that show that babies in the womb feel pain.

The Supreme Court of Mexico has rejected a legal challenge that would have legalised abortion on demand right up to birth. Mexico currently allows abortion on demand in the first trimester only. The reason given for the legal challenge was that abortion protects women’s “free development of personality.”

Charges have been dropped against the pro-life investigator in the USA who exposed Planned Parenthood’s selling of organs from aborted babies. David Daleiden had been charged with using illegal methods to gather his data, but in fact his methods were similar to many other undercover investigations by journalists.

In technology news, researchers at City University, London claim to have developed an algorithm, to spot lies in online conversations. They compared large numbers of truthful messages with lying messages, and found that truthful messages use more personal prom=nouns (“I, me, mine”) while messages with lies in use more adjectives such as “brilliant” or “sublime”. Other clues to lying include linking sentences to each other so that thoughts appear to be connected, and mirroring the sentence structure of the person they are communicating with. The algorithm spotted 70% of lying messages in tests, whereas human testers managed only 54%.

And finally, a preacher in Toronto found a novel way to hand out leaflets during a gay pride march in his city. Instead of standing at the side and offering leaflets, Bill Whalcott registered a group called “Gay Zombie Cannabis Consumers Association”; then he and five others dressed in skin-tight green bodysuits with rainbow-coloured clothing and participated in the march. “If you try to give people a Gospel pamphlet,” said Whalcott, “they swear at you and throw slushies at your forehead. But give them some wackadoodle thing that looks like a condom and call it ‘Zombie Safe Sex’ and they can’t grab it fast enough. I had three thousand out in 20 minutes.” The leaflet contained a message about the dangers of homosexuality that included pictures of anal warts and AIDS.

Not The BBC News: 1 July 2016

The news agenda in the past week has been dominated by the UK’’s vote to leave the European Union, and the consequences of that. A respected Christian ‘prophet’ who has a track record of giving accurate prophecies has spoken out about it. She says that the impression that she received from God, while she was praying and fasting, was that this event is a “merciful severe course correction” for the UK. She also suggested that more nations would leave the EU, robbing the EU of much of its power, but that a remnant of nations would band together and be strong. She said nothing about which countries would comprise the United Kingdom in the future.

All five of the candidates of the leadership of the Conservative Party – and hence the position of Prime Minister -- have claimed to have Christian faith in the past. Stephen Crabb seems to have the strongest Christian credentials; he worked for some time for the Christian charity CARE, and has been quoted as saying that “to speak openly as a Christian politician about praying is really asking for trouble.”

The US Supreme Court has overturned a Texas law which forced all abortion clinics to have hospital-level surgical facilities and also to have admission rights at local hospitals. On the surface, the law protects women having abortions against infection and other complications; in practice, it forced most of the state’s abortion clinics to close. The Supreme Court decided that it was unlawful to restrict access to abortion to that extent. In effect, the Supreme Court has declared abortion to be a civil right, and maybe even a human right. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has publicly welcomed the decision, even though it makes it likely that abortion opponents will vote for her rival, Donald Trump, in November's presidential election.

One of those long-delayed government inquiry reports has finally been issued, and it does not make comfortable reading for the current US government. The report concerns the ISIS attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, when the ambassador and three other Americans were killed. In short, the report says that three rapid reaction US military units were ordered to Benghazi by a general to help protect the embassy, but none of them ever took off because the orders were overridden by officials in Washington who were concerned about upsetting the Libyan government. The Secretary of Defense at that time was Hillary Clinton.

The former Pope Benedict, who resigned his post in 2013, has published memoirs in which he tells of a ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican who sought to influence his decisions. He says he managed to ‘break up this power group’. There were rumours when he resigned that he had done so under pressure from a group of gay clerics who sought to discredit him. The current pope, however, has offered an apology to homosexuals for the way that the Church has treated them.

In sports news, the Euro 2016 football tournament has thrown up several surprises, including England being beaten by Iceland; Wales reaching the semi-finals; and Portugal reaching the semi-finals without winning any matches inside 90 minutes. Wales will play Portugal for a place in the final.

And finally, a Florida couple have been arrested by police for selling ‘golden tickets to heaven’ to hundreds of people for $99.99. The husband said, “I do not care what the police say. The tickets were solid gold. Jesus gave them to me behind the KFC and told me to sell them so I could get some money to go to outer space.” Police confiscated around $10,000 in cash; drug paraphernalia; and a baby alligator.

Not The BBC News: 4 June 2016

Some of you may have noticed that it’s been a long time since I published my Not The BBC News blog. The reason is that most of the news was bad news (as is the case with most news bulletins), and I grew tired of focussing so much on what’s wrong with the world.

However, I do want to provide some updates on long-running stories that I featured, and also to mention on or two new ones.

Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to grant marriage licences to same-sex couples on the grounds of conscientious objection and was jailed for contempt of court after being ordered to do so, has effectively won her case to be exempted from issuing such licences. She is not allowed to prevent her deputies from issuing the licences, but she decided to remove her own name from the licences that were issued, and the governor of Kentucky swiftly dealt with this by ordering that all clerks’ names should be removed from marriage licences issued in the state.

Asia Bibi, the Christian woman who was arrested in Pakistan in 2009 and sentenced to death on a charge of blasphemy because she drank from a cup that was normally used by Muslim women, remains in jail. The Supreme Court suspended her death sentence (again) in June 2015 and promised a hearing in March 2016. Hearings in this case are regularly delayed by death threats against lawyers representing Mrs Bibi.

The latest unlikely venue for a Christian revival is a coal-mining town in West Virginia. A three-day revival event led by an evangelist called Matt Hartley ‘just kept going’ and is now into its 6th week of near-daily meetings. On a recent Wednesday night, 650 people turned up and 10 became Christians; on Saturdays, the numbers have swelled into thousands. The revival began in a high school, and meetings were held in the school’s auditorium, and then the school’s football stadium, until the Freedom from Religion Foundation complained that promoting religion using school facilities was unconstitutional.

The ‘transgender bathrooms’ issue in the USA is brewing into a major clash of the ideologies of equality and freedom. The key problem is identifying those who truly have transgender tendencies (but have not yet completed surgery, or started cross-dressing) rather than men who simply declare themselves to be transgender because they feel that way today, or they want to be peeping toms in the women’s toilets, or the men’s toilet is too far away. Some large stores (notably Target) have declared their toilets are open to anyone; Macy’s too has fired an employee who refused a man entrance to the ladies’ room. Various celebrities and businesses have declared a boycott of the state of North Carolina which was the first to pass a law against transgender toilets; such groups have been called hypocrites for doing so in the light of recent prosecutions of Christian bakers, wedding planners and so on. And the Department of Justice issued an order to North Carolina to rescind its law, but that order has been mired in controversy over whether the DoJ has the authority to make such a demand. On the other side of the coin, some states have passed laws making it an offence to admit men into women’s restrooms (or vice versa), and there is a growing boycott of Target. 

Meanwhile New York City, whose mayor is radically supportive of such issues, has released a list of names for genders that employees in the state must be allowed to describe themselves as; the list contains not two genders, or three, or four, but thirty-one different labels. Businesses can be fined up to $125,000 for not referring to an employee by their chosen label or pronoun.

President Obama has entered the debate on the side of the transgender bathrooms; he attempted to quote Scripture by saying his views were based on the Scripture that “children should be treated with kindness.” Obama has also declared that hospitals that refuse to perform abortions or gender reassignment surgery will be denied federal funding. These actions have led to some Christian leaders to refer to him as “tyrant-in-chief”.

In the UK, the most important legal case on equality versus freedom of conscience is the Asher’s bakery case, which had its appeal heard recently. The appeal focussed on the question of whether Ashers’ reason for not baking a cake with a pro-gay-marriage message was their opposition to the message (as Ashers’ managers claim) or discrimination against the gay customer (which the original judge deemed had occurred, although unknowingly). The appeal also touched on freedom of speech, with the judges asking the prosecutor whether fining a business for refusing to make or support a particular statement is ‘forced speech’. Judgment was reserved, but should be issued in the next month or so.

It has emerged that Antonin Scalia, the heavily conservative Supreme Court justice who died a few months ago, was found dead alone with a pillow over his face. There has been considerable criticism of the failure of the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into his death, especially in the light of the efforts expended to determine how the entertainer Prince died.

There have been further arrests of Christians in Iran. A pastor from the Church of Iran and three of his congregation were arrested after raids on their homes in Rasht in the north of the country. The pastor was released the same day but the other three were detained. It is not clear what the charges are. The pastor has previously spent three years in prison on a charge of evangelising Muslims; one of the three church members has previously received 80 lashes for drinking alcohol during a communion service and for possessing a receiver and satellite antenna. In the USA, in contrast, the first Muslim woman to win Miss USA (in 2010), Rima Fakih, has reportedly converted to Christianity, triggering protests from some Muslims on social media.

Two American missionaries have been murdered in Jamaica. The two men were last seen heading into a remote area of the island to check on the foundations of a house that they planned to build for a local woman. The motive for the killing is not clear.

In mid-April, 125 Ethiopian children were kidnapped from the Gambela region by South Sudanese militia. 32 of these children were recovered two weeks later.

And finally, an 87 year old woman who lived in an assisted-living home in Cincinnatti, Ohio, swallowed a piece of meat and started to struggle to breathe. A 96 year old fellow resident used the Heimlich manoeuvre to dislodge the meat from her throat and to save her life. The man was Dr. Henry Heimlich, who invented the manoeuvre and had demonstrated it many times, but this was the first time he had used it for real. “That moment was very important for me,” he said.

Not The BBC News: 31 January 2016

Two pastors in Nigeria have been kidnapped by gunmen, and a third was injured. The attacks took place in southern Nigeria, many miles from the northern provinces where the Muslim terrorist group Boko Haram regularly operates. A female US missionary was kidnapped in the same state a year ago, and was held for two weeks before being released.

A grand jury in Texas has given judgment in the case where Planned Parenthood had sued the maker of undercover videos where their executives described ethically questionable practices that Planned Parenthood carry out. The verdict controversially cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing but sent the two film-makers for trial on charges of creating a fake human-tissue company, creating fake Government IDs, and tampering with Government records. While the latter charge is a felony, the general opinion is that the investigators used methods similar to those that undercover journalists have been using for years, and any successful legal case against them would raise major issues in media law.  The investigators are also trying to find out if one of the city’s assistant District Attorneys, who sits on Planned Parenthood’s board, had any influence on the case.

The annual March for Life in Washington D.C. went ahead despite a predicted winter blizzard (which arrived a few hours after the march ended.) The numbers on the march were lower than in previous years but were considerably higher than the “hundreds” reported by the New York Times; around 40-50,000 people completed the entire march, including actor Kelsey Grammar.

There have been further accusations of anti-Israeli bias in the UK media. In Beit Horon (biblical Beth-Horon, north-west of Jerusalem), two Israeli women shopping in the market were stabbed by two Palestinian men. One woman, 24 year old Shlomit Krigman who was visiting her grandparents in the town, died before reaching hospital. The Palestinians were shot dead by a community guard and were later found to be carrying pipe bombs. The headline in the Guardian newspaper reporting this story was, "Two Palestinians shot dead after knife attack in West Bank shop", though they later amended the headline in their website to "Israeli woman dies after Palestinian knife attack." Krigman was the second woman to be stabbed to death in the town within a week; the last was a mother of six.

Three teenage Christian girls in Pakistan rejected the sexual advances of a car-load of Muslim men; but when they walked away, one man shouted, “How dare you run away from us? Christian girls are only meant for one thing. The pleasure of Muslim men.” The men then drove their car into the girls; two suffered broken bones and one, who was thrown up onto the bonnet and then crashed to the ground after an emergency stop, died from internal bleeding within minutes. The girls’ families say the police forced them to pay a bribe even to file a report, and that the men are wealthy and so are unlikely to face trial.

A woman in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, who has worked as a nurse, lost a mentally ill sister in an accident, and suffered an autoimmune disease, has found a new calling in life – adopting babies from hospices who have such low expectancy of life or capability that their families cannot cope. Their first baby, Emmalynn, who was born without either hemisphere of her brain, was adopted at two weeks and lived for 50 days with eight brothers and sisters; their second, Charlie, is coming up to the age of two and has had his breathing resuscitated ten times in the past year. She said, “What a gift it is to be able to ease their suffering, to cherish them and to love them, even though they can’t give anything back.”

Schoolchildren in Brighton have been given a survey by the council that asked them to select their gender from a list of 25 options, including “tri-gender”, “intersex”, “genderqueer”, “gender-fluid” and “non-binary.” The question has been criticised as “profoundly confusing.” A spokesman at the office of the Children’s Commissioner for England, which created the survey, said a clerical error had led to a draft survey being sent out and that the final survey will have the question on gender withdrawn.

Also, the newly installed provincial government in Alberta, Canada, has banned the use of the words “mother” and “father” in school “forms, letters, websites and other communications.” The New Democratic Party  also insists that “self-identification is the sole measure of an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression”

Meanwhile, a woman in Norway claims that she is a cat trapped in the wrong body. The 20 year old woman says she realised this when she was 16. She hisses at dogs, hates water, and purrs at windows when she wants to go out. She also claims to have superior hearing and night vision.

In film news, “A United Kingdom” is a BBC film charting the cross-racial love and marriage between Seretse Khama, the King of Botswana, and a white office girl from London. They married in 1948, just as South Africa was about to introduce apartheid, and so came under immense political pressure which eventually led to Seretse being exiled from Botswana. When he was invited back by political supporters in 1956, he gave up all rights to the kingship, and instead held the country’s first democratic elections – and was chosen as the country’s first President. He is often referred to warmly in the book series “The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency.” The film has been completed but no release date is yet available.

And finally, police in Amsterdam were called to a house by a neighbour who heard a man screaming loudly, and thought he was suffering violent domestic abuse. Police arrived and heard what sounded like screams of agony from inside the house; after knocking and getting no reply, they kicked a hole in the door and broke in. They found a solitary man, wearing headphones and singing along to an opera. “I didn’t hear the police at the door because of the headphones,” he said.

Not The BBC News: 22 January 2016

The recent terrorist attack by Muslims against hotels and a cafe in Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso killed seven missionaries among the 29 casualties. Six were Canadians from near Quebec City who were on a three-week mission trip to work at orphanages and schools in remote villages. The seventh was an American long-term missionary; Michael Riddering, a founder of the International House Of Prayer in St. Louis, worked with local women and children alongside his wife, and had counselled families and dug graves during the recent Ebola crisis. Riddering and his wife had two adult daughters in the US, and an adopted teenage daughter and toddler in Burkina Faso.

A Christian couple whose two adopted sons were taken away from them by social workers have been given leave to challenge the ruling. The brothers, who had traumatic backgrounds, lived with the couple and their two natural children for four years until an incident occurred at exam time when the younger boy reached for the car’s steering wheel on the way to school. His mother pushed him back, whereupon the boy told schoolteachers a list of fabrications which led to the case in family court. The court case itself was very troubling because, in the couple’s words, “The opinions of social workers were taken as truth by the judge. Objective evidence is not required in these courts. The social workers exhibited no clear understanding of Christianity, and our parenting methods were criticised. The objective evidence of the boys' progress over years seems to have been dismissed; the primary reason the judge gave for refusing to return the children to their adoptive parents was that a psychologist's report didn't recommend the children's return.” Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Centre described this case as “the tip of an iceberg of gross injustice that we are unable to expose because of the secrecy surrounding family courts.”

In the USA, a former Catholic altar boy whose graphic testimony of serial rape by priests led to three priests and one senior supervisor being jailed, has been accused of lying by Newsweek after a review of the case. Daniel Gallagher changed his story nine times during cross examination, and when confronted, either refused to answer or blamed his poor memory on drug use in schooldays – even though his mother claimed that he never served as an altar boy at early morning Mass. He also admitted to lying to prosecutors about his medical history. Yet the grand jury report blamed changes in his personality on the alleged abuse rather than on drug use. There has been criticism of the courts for being too ready to believe his story, especially in the light of a lurid article publicising his alleged abuse. Three of the priests remain in jail; the fourth died there after being denied a heart operation.

In the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, twelve people have been arrested for converting from Hinduism to Christianity. Religious conversion in the state is illegal without permission of the (Hindu) government. Seven were released from jail on bail; five remain incarcerated.

Geroge Weidenfeld, the head of the publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicholson, famous for publishing “Lolita”, has died at the age of 96. Weidenfeld, a Jew, escaped from Austria to Britain in 1938 on a ‘Kindertransport’ train and became a British citizen in 1947. He was a tireless worker for Jewish causes, and a Labour peer until he left the Labour Party in 1981. He credited Quakers and Plymouth Brethren with saving his life, and tried to repay that debt last year by setting up a fund to evacuate Syrian Christians from that country. 150 Syrian Christians were flown to Warsaw last July with funding from Weidenfeld, and were also awarded 12-18 months of paid support. The fund aimed to help 20,000 Syrian Christians.

The United Methodist church in the USA has banned a group arguing for Intelligent Design from exhibiting at their annual conference. The denomination’s official website calls on Christians to embrace the theory of evolution rather than creation, but the official reason for refusing the stand was that it “conflicted with our social principles.”

Similarly, the (evangelical) InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s annual conference denied an application from a pro-life student group to exhibit there. The Exhibits Manager said, “It does not align with one of our key criteria, which is to have advancing God’s global mission as the vision and purpose of the organization.”

There has been further activity surrounding the undercover videos which exposed Planned Parenthood’s selling of baby body parts. Planned Parenthood has decided to sue the film makers, claiming that the videos were recorded illegally. Meanwhile, a pro-life group has made Dr Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood their 2015 Pro-Life Person of the Year, saying that her comments in the videos did more for the pro-life cause than anyone else’s words in that year.

The US Stata of Indiana has introduced a Bill to make abortion illegal once the foetus has a detectable heartbeat. Such a Bill appears to be an attempt at defining life as beginning when the heart starts beating. Such a move is controversial because a foetus’ heart usually starts beating at around six weeks’ gestation, which would be a very short time after many women discovered that they were pregnant.

There have also been two medical reports on pregnancy and abortion. One, from Chile, is designed to counter a document that claims that ‘post abortion syndrome does not exist’; it is signed by over 200 psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors and gives case studies of post abortion “damage to mental health of women”. The other showed that unborn babies, at 16 weeks’ gestation or later, respond to music by moving their mouth and tongue in specific ways; it was previously thought that babies could not hear until 26 weeks’ gestation.

There has been widespread condemnation from MPs of several parties of the suggestion by the head of OFSTED that Sunday schools, Scouts and similar organisations should be monitored by OFSTED. The Prime Minister has stepped in and said that such organisations will not be required to register with OFSTED.

In music news, Christian rapper Jahaziel has renounced his Christian faith because of, among other things, "the brutal nature of [the Bible's] God, [the Bible's so-called] second class view of women, [and Christianity's] financial corruption." He claims he has not renounced God, though, just religion.

In film news, “Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus” proposes a new theory regarding the Israelites’ time in Egypt. It has long been thought that the Israelites were in Egypt around the 13th century BC, at the time of Ramses II, because the Bible says that the Hebrews built the city of Ramses. However, the new theory places the Hebrew population some four hundred years earlier, in the Hyksos capital of Avaris – and one of the pyramids in Avaris contains a painting inside of a man in a multi-coloured robe.

And finally, a high-speed police chase in New Zealand was only ended when the suspects found the road blocked by a flock of sheep. The chase had begun near the town of Alexandra and had sped through central Otago, despite the suspects losing one tyre to road spikes, over many miles, until they were stopped by the sheep. Ironically, the sheep belonged to a police officer; none were hurt in the line of duty. Two men aged 19 and 23 were charged with car and petrol theft and reckless driving; two passengers aged 14 were charged with car and petrol theft.