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In the News

  • Guardian: MS sufferer should be allowed to die, says judge in landmark ruling
    November 20th, 2015
    A woman in the end stage of multiple sclerosis has been granted the right to die, in a landmark legal ruling.
     
    The woman’s daughter had told how her mother was “completely incapacitated” and had asked Mr Justice Hayden to allow doctors to stop providing “clinically assisted nutrition and hydration”.
  • Church Times: C of E in talks on safeguards for school character
    November 20th, 2015
    The Church of England is attempting to clarify its rights over church schools when the Education and Adoption Bill becomes law next year.
     
    At present, there is uncertainty over the position of diocesan boards of education when, under a provision in the Bill, an inadequate school can be forcibly transferred to academy status under a different provider.
     
    The Government has strongly resisted amendments to the Bill, which is intended to speed up the improvement of schools that are giving cause for concern. This will be achieved, the Government argues, by giving Ministers the right to force failing schools to become academies, and circumvent local consultation and objections that have hitherto delayed the process.
     
    Instead of being secured in legislation, the Church’s position will be set out in a Memorandum of Understanding associated with the Bill.
  • Times (£): Transgender prisoner found dead in all-male jail
    November 20th, 2015
    A transgender prisoner who lived as a woman has been found dead after being sent to an all-male jail.
     
    The body of Vicky Thompson, 21, was found at Armley prison in Leeds, it emerged last night. An investigation by the prisons ombudsman has begun.
  • Mail: Christian father-of-six set upon by thugs with pickaxe handle because he converted from Islam
    November 19th, 2015
    CCTV has captured the moment a father-of-six was brutally set upon by hooded thugs with a pickaxe handle outside his home because he converted from Islam to Christianity. 
     
    Nissar Hussain, from Bradford, suffered a broken kneecap, a fractured forearm and a concussion in the attack on Tuesday.
     
    The 49-year-old is currently in Bradford Royal Infirmary following surgery after the unprovoked assault outside his home in Manningham.
     
    The episode was caught on Mr Hussain's home CCTV and is being reviewed by West Yorkshire Police, who have confirmed they are treating it as a religious hate crime.
  • Guardian: Young female suicide bombers kill 15 in Nigeria market attack
    November 19th, 2015
    At least 15 people have been killed after two female suicide bombers, one said to be aged as young as 11, blew themselves up at a busy mobile phone market in north-east Nigeria, a day after more than 30 were killed in a bomb blast.
     
    Two explosions ripped through the Farm Centre market in northern Nigeria’s biggest city, Kano, shortly after 4pm on Wednesday. One of the bombers was said to be aged just 11 and the other 18.
     
    The Islamist terror group Boko Haram has previously used young girls as human bombs in its six-year insurgency in north-east Nigeria, which has left at least 17,000 dead and made more than 2.6 million homeless.
  • Mail: Jewish teacher is stabbed on Marseille street by 3 'ISIS supporters'
    November 19th, 2015
    A Jewish history teacher has been stabbed on a street in the southern French city of Marseille by three men who professed their support for ISIS.
     
    The men, who were riding on two scooters, with one wearing an ISIS T-shirt, approached the teacher, named tonight as Tziyon Saadon.
     
    The 57-year-old victim, who was wearing a kippa, was attacked outside his home, a short distance from the school and synagogue complex, a source close to the investigation said.
     
    They showed him a picture on their mobile phones of Mohamed Merah, a homegrown Islamist militant who killed seven people in a series of attacks in southern France in 2012, including three schoolchildren.
     
    Mr Saadon, named by the Jerusalem Post, was then stabbed in the arm and leg but his condition is not said to be life threatening.
  • Independent: Inspectors fail 500 schools due to poor running by governing bodies
    November 19th, 2015
    Inspectors have failed 500 schools in the past year because they are poorly run by their governing bodies, chief schools inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has disclosed.
     
    Failings include governors who try to alter the character of a school to fit in with their own ideology - as in the case of the Birmingham “Trojan Horse” schools where they tried to enforce a hard-line Islamist ethos - and boards that have agreed “wildly excessive” remuneration packages for headteachers.
     
    Sir Michael, chief executive of education standards watchdog, wants ministers to consider paying heads of governing bodies and to insist that all governors should receive mandatory training.
     
    He said the role of governors was far more important nowadays with free schools and academies running their own affairs.
     
    Often, the worst examples of weak leadership are in “standalone” academies who do not have the support a multi-academy trust to help them run their schools.
  • Christian Today: Christian refugees discriminated against by US and UK governments
    November 18th, 2015
    Christian refugees are being unintentionally discriminated against by the US government's refugee scheme, new figures suggest.
     
    New statistics reveal that only 2 per cent of Syrian refugees accepted by the US since the conflict broke out in 2011 are Christian. By contrast, over 96 per cent are Muslim, according to US state department statistics.
     
    The US government rely on United Nations refugee camps and application processes to decide which refugees to accept. The majority of refugees considered for resettlement in the US and in the UK are referred by the UNHCR.
     
    However sources in Syria and Iraq say that Christians fleeing persecution deliberately avoid UNHCR refugee camps because they are afraid they will be targeted there. Instead they are housed in local churches and Christian houses and are therefore not processed through the UNHCR scheme.
     
    Only 53 Syrian Christians have been accepted by the US since the conflict broke out in 2011. This is compared to 2,250 Muslims out of a total of 2,216. The Syrian population is made up of more Muslims than Christians – 87 per cent and 10 per cent respectively – but the figures still represent a significant disparity.
  • Christian Today: We are a big player in education and we are not dead yet, says CofE
    November 18th, 2015
    The Church of England's education chief has countered warnings that struggling faith schools risk being taken over by  the government and turned into academies.
     
    Rev Nigel Genders, the Church's chief education officer, said: "Our schools are about far more than the land or the buildings we own, they are about the education we provide for the whole child. We are a big player and any reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated. We look forward to continuing discussions with Government."
     
    Columnist Laura McInerney wrote in The Guardian that the Education and Adoption Bill currently going through Parliament will require the government "to grab land from the churches" under measures that compel the education secretary to force a takeover of schools rated by inspectors as inadequate.
     
    "No discretion will be allowed. If the school is not yet an academy, it will be pushed into becoming one," she wrote.
     
    There are currently more than 4,500 Church of England, more than 2,000 Catholic, more than 30 Jewish and more than 11 Muslim state maintained schools, a third of the total. There are also few Hindu, Sikh and other faith schools. The Roman Catholic Church ruled out opening any new Catholic academies because of a cap on faith-based admissions. The faiths own the land and the buildings of these schools.
  • Guardian: China accused of trying to 'co-opt and emasculate' Christianity
    November 18th, 2015
    A secretive conference to examine the future of Christianity in China is due to take place in Beijing this week amid rapid growth of the religion, which many believe has more Chinese adherents than the 87-million member Communist party.
     
    An official at the government-controlled Institute of World Religions, which is helping to organise the conclave, declined to provide details of its agenda.
     
    But Yang Fenggang, director of Purdue University’s centre on religion and Chinese society, said many Chinese Christians believed the conference was part of a government push to create a more “submissive” church. “It is clear that the top leaders feel unease with Christianity,” he said.
     
    One underground pastor said officials would consider ways to “strengthen management” of what is a tightly controlled church. “I don’t believe the government will close the church but I do believe they want to manage it,” said the pastor, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I don’t think they will control the doctrine. The government has no interest in what you preach. They are just worried about if you are against the party.”
     
    The conference, The Sinicisation of Christianity, is expected to be attended by religious affairs officials, academics and members of China’s official church.