Not The BBC News: 18 March 2017

1900 people in Vancouver have accepted Christ during an evangelistic crusade at which Billy Graham’s son Franklin Graham was preaching. This was despite Graham receiving a letter beforehand from church leaders claiming to represent over half the Christians in the city, urging organisers to withdraw Graham from the crusade because of his right-wing political views. The organisers responded that Graham was “not coming to incite hatred or violence but simply to preach the Gospel.”

Once again, Muslims from the Middle East have converted to Christianity and reported that they did so because Jesus appeared to them in a dream. Bishop George Saliba in Beirut has baptised at least 100 ex-Muslim Syrian refugees since the start of the Syrian Civil War. Also, two Middle Eastern pastors who were arrested after running an underground church for new believers were maltreated at first but then an official intervened. Eventually the official admitted that he had dreamed of Jesus who said, "My children are being tortured in your jail. I leave them before you. My children are the apple of my eyes." The official became a Christian himself, was baptised, and then released the men.

The US Government has started proceedings to reduce finding for abortion. It has saved $200 million by ceasing funding for abortion as part of foreign aid packages, and it also plans to remove all federal funding from America’s biggest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has frequently presented itself as a provider of sexual health and women’s health services in general – but when the US Government offered to continue to fund them if they stopped all abortions, Planned Parenthood declined.

Planned Parenthood has also been under fire for its ‘sex education’ which is funded from the ObamaCare programme. In a recent undercover investigation in Portland, Oregon, a 15 year old girl was advised to watch porn without her parents’ knowledge; to buy items from a sex shop (which is illegal at her age); and to engage in deviant sexual practices – the counsellor summarised their advice by saying, “In Fifty Shades these things were abusive because they were enforced, but if they are consensual then they’re absolutely fine.”

There has also been renewed criticism of one of Britain’s biggest abortion providers. A newspaper investigation into Marie Stopes found that some women were being signed off to have abortions after a brief conversation with a call centre worker – and the officially recorded reason for the abortion may bear no resemblance to what is said on the phone.

Two street preachers from Bristol have been found guilty of a public order offence after preaching from the King James Bible. The prosecutor said, "To say to someone that Jesus is the only God is not a matter of truth. To the extent that they are saying that the only way to God is through Jesus, that cannot be a truth." They were also accused of being homophobic after discussing the Bible’s views on homosexuality with hecklers. The magistrate agreed with the prosecutor and fined both men £300.

In the USA, the marriage registrar who was taken to court for refusing to sign certificates for gay marriages and instructing her staff not to do so has won her final court battle. Kim Davis’ case was settled some time ago; she was not required to sign certificates but was banned from instructing her staff to do the same as her. The final issue was legal costs which often far outweigh any fines issued; in the case the ACLU wanted her to pay their legal fees of $231,000 but the judge refused.

Anna Hayford, the wife of well known preacher Jack Hayford from the 10,000-strong Church On The Way in Los Angeles, has passed away after a battle with cancer. She was 83. Jack and Anna had been married for 62 years; Anna was a licensed preacher herself and they co-pastored for 60 years.

The NHS in the UK has issued new guidance under which doctors and nurses will be encouraged to talk to dying patients about their religious preferences. Malcolm Brown, the Church of England Director of Mission and Public Affairs, said: “People’s views and needs can change radically as the inevitability of death approaches and dying can be eased considerably if careful opportunities to express or discuss these matters are created.”

A former porn star in the USA is now a pastor. Crystal Bassette filmed her first porn film at the age of 21 and appeared in over 100 films over the next 10 years. She married a Pentecostal minister in 2015 and they now co-pastor a church in Fulton, New York state. “I never saw myself going to this extreme,” she said, “but God leads you in these directions. I regret my time in the industry but then I think to myself, ‘if I didn’t do these things, where would I be today?’”

In film news, “The Shack” has been released. Although criticised by some for its varied depictions of God, it has been described as ‘a parable’ and ‘one of the most powerful and best-quality Christian movies for a long time’ by others.

And finally, a 20 year old Norwegian woman has announced on YouTube that she was born the wrong species and that she self-identifies as a cat. ‘Nano’ claims to have realised this at the age of 16; to have a superior sense of smell; to be able to see in the dark; and to hate dogs. She hunts mice at night while wearing cat ears and a tail though she has not yet caught any.

Not The BBC News: 2 March 2017

Compassion International, which links Western sponsors with children who need schooling and associated needs in the developing world, has announced that it is to shut down its operations in India. The Hindu-dominated Indian government passed a law last year that prevented any organisation from receiving foreign funds unless it received permission from the Government, and Christian organisations are finding such permission almost impossible to get. Compassion currently schools and cares for 147,000 children in the country.

A middle-aged couple in Jharkhand state, India were forced to stand for 17 hours up to their necks in freezing water because they would not renounce Christianity and return to their indigenous tribal religion. Ten couples in the village had become Christian but seven reverted under persecution, and there had been increasing persecution of this couple in the last 3 years. The husband died after the experience and the villagers would not even let him be buried on their land.

A 14 year old Christian girl in West Africa who was attacked by Muslim radicals and later died in hospital has been raised from the dead and healed ‘by Jesus’, in her words. ‘Lydia’ is the daughter of an ex-Muslim Christian missionary who boldly proclaimed her faith at school. She was attacked on her way home from school, subjected to female genital mutilation, and left in a coma. After six days two doctors pronounced her dead; but an hour after they did so she threw off the sheet covering and announced that she had met Jesus and he had healed her completely. She said Jesus said to her, “I cannot turn back from the prayers of my children. So I give you your life back … You go, and be my witness." She left hospital without even having a thorough check-up.

In Rasht, Iran, three Christian converts found drinking wine at a Communion service were charged with ‘acting against national security’ and ‘consumption of alcohol’ and sentenced to 80 lashes each. Consumption of alcohol is legally forbidden to Muslims but permitted to other religious groups. An appeal is pending shortly. Two other Christians who have been held and interrogated for weeks without charge have gone on hunger strike to obtain medical attention but so far it has been refused.

Sudan has ordered the demolition of at least 25 church buildings of various denominations in north Khartoum state. The authorities say the churches are built on land zoned for other purposes; church leaders say it is part of a wider crackdown on Christianity.

Two Christian street preachers have been arrested in Bristol for quoting the words from the King James Bible that say that Jesus is the only God, and the only way to God is through Jesus. The prosecutor argued that “just because the words preached appear in a 1611 version of the Bible, this does not mean they are incapable of amounting to a public order offence in 2016.” He did not comment on the fact that the same claim is made in almost the same words in modern Bibles.

A Christian florist in Washington state, USA has lost an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court against a fine for refusing to provide flowers to a gay wedding. The fine is $1,001 but she may be bankrupted because she has been ordered to pay the gay couple’s legal fees as well. She had previously been offered the opportunity to pay a token fine, but she refused, saying that it was not the money that she objected to but the principle. Her lawyer said, "This case is about crushing dissent. In a free America, people with differing beliefs must have room to coexist … Freedom of speech and religion aren't subject to the whim of a majority; they are constitutional guarantees."

Also in the USA, Donald Trump has rescinded Barack Obama’s executive order that required schools and public buildings either to provide toilets for transgender individuals or to allow them to use the bathroom of their choice. States, however, will still be entitled to create such requirements in their own laws. Obama’s order proved highly controversial, not least because of cases of violation of privacy by men in women’s bathrooms – one man was caught mounting a camera, another taking photos of a woman who was changing her clothes. The media in the US and elsewhere appears as divided on the issue as ever, with some reporting that Trump removed federal ‘protection for transgender people’ while others phrased it as removing ‘guidance on transgender bathrooms’ or ‘enforcement of transgender rights’. However, the American College of Pediatrics has stated that transgenderism in children amounts to child abuse: in a statement they said “Facts – not ideology – determine reality.”

The USA has seen a record number of arrests for sex trafficking this year – over 1500 in the first two months, compared with 400 in the entire year 2014. 178 arrests were made at the Superbowl, and in California 474 arrests were made on a single day and 28 sexually exploited children were rescued.

Donald Trump’s Presidency continues to be stranger than most, and now a group of witches have announced that they will hold a mass occult ritual designed to oust Trump from the White House. Anyone who wishes to participate, once a month on a Friday at midnight, is instructed to use various images and items and to invoke certain demons.

Norma McCorvey, better known by the pseudonym ‘Jane Roe’ in the infamous Roe v Wade legal case that first permitted abortion in the USA, has died at the age of 69. She never did have an abortion and became ardently pro-life in her later years, seeking to reverse the effects of the legal decision that bore her name.

France has passed a law that makes it a criminal offence to “spread misleading information” about abortion, with a maximum penalty of two years in jail and a fine. The law specifically targets “electronic” and “online” means of spreading information with the intention of dissuading women from ending their pregnancy. The upper house of the French Parliament repeatedly tried to make the wording of the law less severely restrictive but was eventually overruled. The law is the latest in a series of increasingly harsh laws against pro-lifers; under a previous law, an elderly man was fined heavily for having given knitted baby boots to a woman he spoke to in the public stairway of the building where Planned Parenthood has its Paris offices.

A senator in Mexico who claims to be Catholic has introduced a bill that is intended to force Christian doctors to refer women for abortions and Christian doctors to perform them. Doctors can currently claim religious exemptions but the bill would remove these. The senator justified his Bill by saying that the Bible doesn’t say that abortion is wrong.

A similar Bill in Queensland, Australia was withdrawn because it faced certain defeat in the state’s Parliament. It proposed to decriminalise abortion; prohibit peaceful assembly within 50 metres of abortion clinics; and force doctors and nurses to perform ‘emergency abortions’. 83 per cent of public submissions opposed the Bill.

The General Pharmaceutical Council in the UK is currently asking for comments on a proposed change to its own wording ion religious exemptions which could lead to Christian doctors being forced to perform abortions in this country. Currently, doctors are required to “Tell relevant health professionals, employers or others if their own values or beliefs prevent them from providing care, and refer people to other providers”; the new wording would require them to “Take responsibility for ensuring that person-centred care is not compromised because of personal values and beliefs”. If you wish to comment in this submission, go to https://www.pharmacyregulation.org/…/gphc-consults-religion…

Another consultation that is open at the moment concerns new prenatal genetic tests for Downs Syndrome in foetuses. Given that many such foetuses are aborted despite the high quality of life that people with Downs syndrome can expect with modern medical care, pro-life groups are opposing the introduction of such tests. To sign the petition, go to http://stopdiscriminatingdown.com/sign-the-petition/

The world’s largest chain of Christian bookstores has announced that it is going into liquidation and closing all its shops. Family Christian has 240 shops in 36 US states. It blames competition from online bookstores.

Bethel church in Redding, California, a current centre of charismatic revival, has offered to pay $500,000 to help maintain the city’s police department over the next two years. Councils all over California are suffering under new rules on benefits and increased pension payments due to a lowering of the expected value of current pension savings. The city’s fire department is also at risk of being eliminated.

In sports news, Ireland rugby international Andrew Trimble, part of the team that beat the All Blacks last year, has given interviews about his Christian faith and his work to help refugees. "Pope Francis says they're all created in the image of God,” he said. “They're just like you and me, they're no less special. It's a real shame that they're forgotten about because they're considered less important."

And finally, a workmen’s café in Bourges, central France was suddenly overwhelmed with customers a couple of weeks ago, after it was accidentally awarded a Michelin star. Le Bouche à Oreille, which serves homemade lasagne and beef bourguignon for 10 euros, shares its name with a more upmarket café near Paris. The mistake was corrected on Michelin’s website after a couple of days. The café’s owner said, “My son phoned from Paris; he was laughing his head off.”

Not The BBC News: 8 Feb 2017

A long-running US House of Representatives investigation into alleged selling of baby body parts by abortion provider Planned Parenthood has finished and delivered its report. The report concludes that some branches of Planned Parenthood did indeed sell foetal tissue to universities and other research groups. Other apparent violations of the law include breaches of privacy law (passing ion persona information with tissue); failing to keep proper records; failing to monitor compliance with laws; destroying documents; and in one clinic, killing infants born alive when partially outside the birth canal. These allegations were first made by an undercover pro-life researcher, David Daleiden, who was the subject of a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood about unfair information gathering practices; this lawsuit has now been dropped.

Meanwhile, the United Methodist church in the USA which has supported abortion since it was legalised has now officially reversed its position. It has also severed its connection with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith organisation which it co-founded that supports abortion with no restrictions at all.

A controversial element of ‘Obamacare’ which was due to take effect on January 1st has been blocked nationwide by the attorney general of Texas. The law required taxpayers to fund transgender reassignment surgeries and abortions; its rationale for the former was that sex was just a “state of mind”.

President Obama made another controversial decision on his last day in office; he released $227 million in ‘foreign affairs funding’, of which $1.25 million went to the United Nations; $4 million to climate change programmes; and $221 million to the Palestinian Authority. Congress blocked the Palestinian release but the President is allowed to override such a decision; however, with the change of government, the State Department decided to freeze the transfer until the appointment of a new Secretary of State to replace the departing John Kerry.

In the UK, the Government’s “integration tsar”, Dame Louise Casey, has claimed that opposing same-sex marriage is ‘un-British and homophobic.’ She accused opponents of same-sex marriage of using religious conservatism as a cover to hide their ‘anti-equality’ views and compared the support of Roman Catholic schools for traditional marriage to the extremism exposed in 2015 at Muslim schools in Birmingham.

Also in the UK, an investigation by the Care Quality Commission has found that one abortion clinic, BPAS Merseyside, has had 16 serious health incidents in the past 3 years. The investigation revealed numerous health and safety breaches and staff who were unaware of procedures or responsibilities.

A 26 year old Polish Catholic missionary has been stabbed to death in Bolivia. Helena Kmiec was working at a shelter for children which was robbed, and she died from a knife wound inflicted by the robbers.

Lion Hudson, a major Christian publisher of books such as “The Heavenly Man”, “the Lion Handbook to the Bible” and “the Vicar of Baghdad” has filed for administration. Two-thirds of its 53 staff have been made bankrupt. An expert in Christian publishing said that if Lion Hudson went bankrupt, it would be a major blow for the whole Christian community; but the company had struggled with debts for several years and so was unlikely to attract a buy-out.

The election of Donald Trump has dominated newspaper headlines. The fact that there were some Christian prophecies pointing towards his Presidency has also inspired further ‘prophecies’ regarding what will happen next. At least some of these ‘prophecies’ are somewhat wacky; one of the strangest asserts that Donald Trump is the “last trump” referred to in the book of Revelation. A Biblical expert pointed out that the New Testament was written in Greek and that particular play on words does not exist in that language.

A doctor in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is legal, has been investigated after asking a grandmother’s family to hold her down while he administered the injection. He was cleared of wrongdoing by the panel who concluded that he had ‘acted in good faith’.

A pastor in Florida who recently authored a book on godly manhood was forced to flee naked from a parishioner’s house after he was discovered in bed with the parishioner’s wife. The man threatened to kill Jermaine Simmons and went to another room to find his gun, but decided against shooting him because his 6 year old son had arrived at the house with him. Simmons has recently announced that he won’t resign because God has already forgiven him.

A Christian former barrister has admitted administering violent beatings to boys in the 1970s and 80s, some of whom he met through the highly-regarded summer camps run by the Iwerne Trust. John Smyth told the boys that it wasn’t enough to repent of their sins; they had to be purged by beatings, some of which were repeated many times over. The beatings came to light when one of the boys later attempted suicide. Smyth said in his defence that he was addicted to sleeping pills at the time.

An Irish psalter dated to around 800 AD, discovered in a bog at Faddon More, has been revealed to have papyrus inside its leather cover that probably came from Egypt. Some scholars believe this shows evidence of links between Irish Christianity and the Middle Eastern Coptic church.

In technology news, a hacking group affiliated to Anonymous recently managed to hack into a server of the ‘dark Web’ that hosted child pornography websites. The “.onion” server was disabled, taking around 10,000 websites offline; email addresses of more than 380,000 users were obtained; and around 74Gb of files were copied.

And finally, an elderly man from Saskatoon, Canada, built a machine using sewer tubing that could knit a tube of wool at over 90 stitches per second after a dare from a friend. When Bob Rutherford’s wife died, he took to knitting every week (some wool was donated, his son fundraises for the rest); then he and three retired friends cut the tubes into short lengths and stitch one end to make socks. Bob is now 88 and the team have made 10,000 socks which they send to shelters across Canada.

Not The BBC News: 6 Jan 2017

One of Barack Obama’s final acts as president of the USA has been to depart from a tradition of pro-Israel foreign policy that he has followed for the past eight years. A motion was put to the United Nations Security Council to call for Israel to immediately halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (which the resolution refers to as ‘occupied Palestinian territory’); the US representative failed to veto it as has been the practice in the past, abstaining instead. In response, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the diplomatic stakes considerably by alleging that the Obama administration not only failed to veto the resolution but actually had a major role in drafting it; Netanyahu says he has concrete evidence of this but will wait until the new administration takes charge before presenting it. It has been suggested that the change of policy lies with US Secretary of State John Kerry who wants Israel and the Palestinians to adopt his proposed two-state solution; UK Prime Minister Theresa May has rebuked Kerry for calling the current Israeli government the “most Right-Wing in history”, calling his remarks “inappropriate”.

Meanwhile UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, has adopted a resolution criticising Israel for attempting to restrict Muslim access to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The resolution referred to the Mount by its Muslim names of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Haram Al-Sharif and defined it as a Muslim holy site of worship; it made no mention of its importance to other religions. Netanyahu has described the resolution as a “theatre of the absurd.”

A US Senate Judiciary Committee that was set up to investigate allegations that abortion provider Planned Parenthood sold body parts from foetuses has concluded its investigation and published its report.  It has referred the Planned Parenthood Federation and several associate companies to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges, because its investigation found that foetal body parts were being sold to associate companies who then re-sold them at a higher price; that Planned Parenthood had a policy to make sure such sales/transfers complied with the law, but when they discovered breaches of the policy in 2011 they cancelled the policy rather than trying to amend the breaches; and that the cost analyses for the various transactions were under-documented, too broad and too vague, and in many cases only produced long after the events when requested by the committee.

In the UK, abortion provider Marie Stopes has been condemned for numerous failings after inspections by watchdogs. Allegations include a risk of infection from terminated foetuses left in open bins; doctors signing abortion consent forms in bulk rather than investigating each patient’s circumstances; and one case where a woman with learning difficulties was being pressured into having an abortion to such an extent that inspectors intervened. There are also allegations of poor risk management and limited clinical oversight.

Meanwhile, the law that was passed by politicians in Ohio to prevent abortions once the baby’s heartbeat can be detected has been vetoed by Republican governor and failed presidential candidate John Kasich. Kasich argued that the law would only be vetoed by federal authorities anyway and it wasn’t worth wasting the State’s money on the legal process.

Back in the USA, President Obama has signed a law that extends protection against religious persecution to atheists. Despite this, a Christian watchdog that publishes an annual list of nations where Christians suffer the worst persecution has added the USA to the top 12 for the first time. The list categorises countries as the “worst of the worst” (North Korea, Nigeria, Iraq and Syria); “core countries of persecution” (India, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt); and “new and noteworthy” nations – the USA, Mexico and Russia. On the inclusion of the USA, the group said, "Christians in the U.S. are facing constant attacks in the media, where they are portrayed as bigoted, racist, sexist, and close- minded," and "In essence, the courts are deciding that you only have full religious freedom and expression in the church and your home. In the public domain, your religious views and thoughts must be restrained and controlled."

A thousand year old Bible has been discovered in Turkey after smugglers tried to sell it to undercover police. The Bible has many pages missing but retains several religious motifs formed from gold leaf.

Helen Roseveare, who spent a large part of her life as a missionary in the Congo, has died at the age of 91. She established a 100-bed hospital in 1955 which was the only medical facility for 150 miles; was arrested by rebels, beaten and abused during the civil war of 1964; and returned to establish a larger hospital in 1966. She wrote several books, the most famous of which was “Give Me this Mountain,” and also spoke regularly on why God allows suffering and on the privilege of sharing in some of God’s sufferings.

The Catholic church in the USA is to hold a major summit on missionary strategy in July this year in response to the Pope’s exhortation for the faithful to share their faith in today’s world.  Six years in the planning, the gathering of 3-4000 invited attendees will be the first national gathering of Catholic leaders for 100 years.

A 17 year old boy from Fort Worth, Texas who had a heart attack during gym class a couple of weeks ago was legally dead for 20 minutes before paramedics detected a pulse. He woke up three days later with few apparent ill effects and said he met a man who he recognised as Jesus. He says that Jesus put his hand on his shoulder and told him everything would be alright and not to worry; he also said he heard angels singing in the background.

A mega-church in Georgia has been evicted from its premises by a Christian credit union over an unpaid debt of $22 million. The church which once boasted 10,000 members started to decline in membership a few years ago when its pastor divorced his wife while she was battling cancer then swiftly remarried and asked the church to accept his new wife as the ‘first lady’ of the church. The pastors’ first wife said she was ‘truly saddened and very heartbroken’ at the news of the foreclosure.

In science and technology news, an Irish surgeon has discovered a new organ in the human body. The mesentery, which connects the intestine to the abdomen, was depicted as a single organ in the days of Leonardo da Vinci but was classified as a disjointed group of separate parts in 1885. Calvin Coffey, a professor at the University of Limerick, has just proved that it is in fact a contiguous organ. "Whether the mesentery should be viewed as part of the intestinal, vascular, endocrine, cardiovascular or immunological systems is so far unclear," he said, "as it has important roles in all of them."

Also in technology news, a new kitchen gadget has been unveiled; a wifi-synced waste bin that scans products as they are discarded and adds them to your online grocery list. The Genican currently sells for about $125.

And finally, a Scottish man who borrowed a friend’s BMW to drive to a Stone Roses concert in Manchester in June 2016 parked the car in a multi-storey car park and forgot which one. He spent five days trying to find the car before giving up. Police responded to a report of an abandoned car last week and contacted the owner to say they had found it, six months later. “We can’t imagine what the ticket machine is going to say when they finally put the ticket in”, Manchester police tweeted.

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.