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.