A senior geneticist and a bioethicist warned on Friday that they fear “rogue scientists” operating outside the bounds of law, and agreed with a US intelligence chief’s assertion this week that gene editing technology could have huge, and potentially dangerous, consequences.
In the News
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February 12th, 2016
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February 12th, 2016
Bobby Lopez, a professor of English and the Classics at California State University, describes his mother’s lesbian partner as “everything that was warm and caring.” But when he was 19 and his mother passed away, his mother’s partner moved out to focus on her biological children. Until then, Bobby never had a relationship with his father, and after his mother passed away, he felt like he had no one to turn to.
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February 9th, 2016All practising Christians are now a "minority" in Britain like persecuted Roman Catholics during the Reformation, according to two of Britain's most senior Anglican and Catholic clerics.
The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, and Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said the churches must set aside centuries of division and recognise they have a "common agenda" in a more secular age.
The two prelates were speaking at a unique event at Hampton Court Palace, which served as the backdrop to the tumultuous events of Henry VIII's break with Rome.
In a step hailed as hailed as a landmark in reconciliation between Anglicanism the Catholicism, they joined in a service of vespers in the Chapel Royal. -
February 9th, 2016The Government's overhaul of snooping laws has been rushed and is full of holes, a powerful Commons committee said today.
The Intelligence and Security Committee said the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill had 'failed' in its task of drawing together all of the laws allowing police and security services access to communications data.
The legislation does not cover all of the intelligence agencies 'intrusive' abilities to monitor phone calls, emails and internet traffic and, in the view of the committee, represents a 'missed opportunity' to make the law clear.
The powers outline when the 'data' of a communication - such as where and when it was made, the format and who was involved but not the content - can be secured.
The Government drew up the new laws following the exposure of GCHQ's Tempora programme and the scandal over American agencies' intrusive surveillance revealed by whistle blower Edward Snowden. -
February 9th, 2016The same judge who ordered Kentucky clerk Kim Davis to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has now rejected a motion filed by the ACLU that would have forced her to issue the licenses with her name and title on them."There is absolutely no reason that this case went so far without reasonable people respecting and accommodating Kim Davis’s First Amendment rights," said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. He continued;"From the beginning we have said the ACLU is not interested in marriage licenses. They want Kim Davis’s scalp. They want to force her to violate her conscience."According to Liberty Counsel — which is defending Davis — once Davis was released from jail and returned to her elected post as county clerk, she removed her name and her title as Clerk of Court from all marriage licenses. The ACLU, however, objected, demanding that her name and title remain on the licenses. Davis objected to her name being on the licenses because same-sex marriage is against the beliefs of her Christian faith.
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February 9th, 2016The government has been accused of hiding the real results of a consultation on its plans to extend Sunday trading hours for large shops in England and Wales.Ministers have published the outcome of its process to find out what the public thought about the proposals but unions and Christian campaigners are not satisfied.Shop workers trade union USDAW said the government had "not only failed to listen to the retail industry, but has gone out of their way to ignore the views, research and evidence of everyone".Under the proposals included in the Enterprise Bill local authorities would be able to relax current laws which prohibit large shops to just six hours trading on a Sunday.The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said it had received 7,000 responses to the consultation from a number of groups including Christian organisations.
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February 8th, 2016Minority parties in the Northern Irish legislature are trying to open the door to abortion on demand by slipping amendments into a government omnibus bill and giving the legislature only two weeks' notice for a vote. A pro-life group calls the maneuver both "anti-democratic" and a "mockery of the legislative process."The amendments come from the Alliance and Green Parties and would permit abortions of unborn babies conceived by rape or incest, or who are seriously disabled.In December, a court ruled that the country's de facto criminalization of abortion except when the mother's life is threatened violates the European Union's human rights laws, but the government is appealing. What is more, the judge's decision does not bind the government.Liam Gibson, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children's Northern Irish organizer, said that by introducing the amendments on January 29, February 1, and February 3, the pro-abortion MLAs were attempting to avoid the "analysis and painstaking scrutiny" that any measure ought to undergo before being voted on. As well, it precludes much of a response from the public. In legislative terms, "these amendments really are last-minute."
Not only is the SPUC calling on all Northern Irish pro-lifers to lobby their MLAs against the amendments, but for the first time, it is also appealing to Northern Irish around the world to contact their families and friends back home and urge them to do the same. The tactic, Gibson told LifeSiteNews, is designed to get around the pro-abortion news media, who "are not reporting the real seriousness of these bills." -
February 8th, 2016
Parents could lose their right to take their children out of sex education classes, if the Welsh Liberal Democrats get their way.
They backed a motion to bin the current legal right for a pupil to be taken out of any part of Sex and Relationships Education (SRE).
Lib Dem activist Cadan ap Tomos introduced the motion by warning about rates of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.The policy motion – named “let’s talk about sex” – appears to have been the reason the Welsh Lib Dems' website was blocked by Senedd public Wifi last week.
It led to the party's conference programme containing the word “sex” or “sexual” 18 times - meaning it was banned by a filter classing it as "adult content". The block has since been lifted.
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February 8th, 2016Another euthanasia scandal in Belgium. Two sisters have complained on a television program, Terzake, about the euthanasia of their sister. Tine Nys was 38 at the time and had broken up with her live-in boyfriend. On Christmas Eve 2009 she announced that she was going to be euthanased.After interviews with doctors, she was given a lethal injection on April 24, 2010, with her mother and father and her two sisters, Lotte and Sophie, at her bedside.Belgium allows people to request euthanasia if they have unbearable psychological suffering, not just a terminal illness. Tine was obviously a troubled woman and 15 years before she had been seeing a psychiatrist regularly. But she was recovering from a love affair, not suffering unbearable mental anguish.Three doctors were supposed to concur that she met all requirements: a psychiatrist and two other doctors. This time a psychiatrist casually made a diagnosis of “autism”. The sickness from which euthanasia candidates are suffering is supposed to be incurable. Autism may not be curable, but Tine was functioning adequately. None of the doctors made an effort to treat her – but they were willing to kill her.What horrified her sisters was their callousness and how little interest they took in persuading her to live.
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February 8th, 2016Growing up in a single-parent household should be treated as a form of “poverty”, the think-tank founded by the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has suggested.
Parents mired in personal debt or children achieving low scores in primary school tests are also among potential “life chance risks” which should be taken into account when assessing whether families should be classed as living in poverty, according to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).