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In the News

  • Times (£): Judges distressed by 'sheer depravity' of rising sex crimes
    November 18th, 2015
    Judges are becoming distressed by a rise in sex crimes as they are exposed to “horrific” pornography and depravity, the country’s most senior judge has said.
     
    Lord Thomas, the Lord chief justice, said that the numbers of sex offence trials was on the rise, and that could be a “problem” for judges unless their workload was varied. One in four crown court trials now involves a sex crime.
     
    Commenting after a trial judge broke down in tears last week as he sentenced the killers of Becky Watts, Lord Thomas said: “Few people have any idea of the sheer depravity to which people can sink and the judge often has material in front of him which cannot but distress people.”
  • Telegraph: Mass graves of women 'too old to be Isil sex slaves' - this is what we're up against
    November 17th, 2015
    In the desert dust of Sinjar, in north west Iraq, a walking stick lies on the ground.
     
    Strewn casually alongside it are a couple of pairs of scissors, some household keys and a shoe. Bank notes flutter in the dirt.
     
    But, if you look a little closer, the scene becomes a horror show. Clumps of hair and fragments of bone poke grotesquely out of the ditch. It is estimated that almost 80 women are buried in this mass grave, aged between 40 and 80-years-old. The bodies are of Yazidi women, murdered by Islamic State butchers.
     
    As the world prayed for Paris, more than three thousand miles east another atrocity was being uncovered.

    Last week Kurdish forces – backed by British and American air strikes – liberated Sinjar from Islamic State militants, along with 28 other villages.
     
    They discovered two graves. The first – containing the corpses of older women – was found west of the city’s centre, near the Sinjar Technical Institute. The second was ten miles west, and is believed to contain men, women and children. It is rigged with explosives and deliberately difficult to access.
  • Guardian: Terrorist killings up by 80% in 2014, fuelling flow of refugees, report says
    November 17th, 2015
    A surge in activity from Nigeria’s Islamist insurgency Boko Haram – now the world’s deadliest terrorist group – and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has driven an 80% increase in the number of people killed by terrorists in 2014, this year’s Global Terrorism Index showed. In total, 32,658 people were killed in terrorist attacks in 67 countries last year, according to the index, released on Tuesday by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
     
    The world is reeling from the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday, which killed at least 129 people. But the index showed that 80% of last year’s terrorist killings were carried out in just five countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.
     
    “We can see the trauma [terrorist attacks] create in the west, but think how much trauma they create in all these other countries in the world,” said Steve Killelea, executive chairman of the IEP.
  • Mail: Two teachers in 'Trojan horse' school face lifetime ban for feeding pupils 'diet of Islam'
    November 17th, 2015
    Two teachers from a school linked to the 'Trojan horse' scandal could be banned for life after a hearing found that they 'fed pupils a diet of Islam' which 'stifled their development'.
     
    Inamulhaq Anwar and Akeel Ahmed exercised 'undue religious influence' on children at Park View Academy in Birmingham, a disciplinary panel ruled yesterday.
     
    Pupils were never taught sex or relationship education, according to officials, and were 'immersed in orthodox Islamic doctrine' - which could leave them vulnerable to being groomed by extremists.
     
    Anwar, 34, and Ahmed, 41, were 'generals' in the campaign to enforce Islamic discipline in the school, according to the Birmingham-based panel.
     
    They were found to have implemented 'an undue amount of religious influence in pupils' education', and could now face being the first British teachers to be banned from the classroom permanently.
  • Guardian: How Nicky Morgan plans to steal schools from the church
    November 17th, 2015
    The government is currently passing a law that will require it to grab land from the churches. Not just allow it to, but require it. Once the land is seized, the government can parcel it out to its best buds – no questions asked. From what I can remember of history, such escapades almost always end badly.
     
    How have we ended up in this situation? And what does it have to do with schools? The education and adoption bill, currently working its way through parliament, will, if passed as expected, spit out some pretty important new laws. And perhaps the most controversial is that the education secretary will be compelled to force the 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.
     
    To the sort of mind that writes laws from an ivory tower, this smash-and-grab plan sounds great. “We have failing schools,” the policymaker thinks, “so we’ll just go in and take them away from the poor management, and give them to other managers who are more effective.” Yes, sure, taking things from people without their consent is sometimes called “robbery”, but this is all about public money and all in the name of a good education for kids, so let’s just call it a job well done and get off to the pub early.
  • Federalist: Husband Of 9/11 hero returns 'Woman of the Year' award, attacks Caitlyn Jenner for accepting it
    November 16th, 2015
    The husband of a 9/11 hero who was awarded “Woman of the Year” in 2001 has returned the award to Glamour magazine in protest of their decision to award Caitlyn Jenner the same honor.
     
    James Smith, husband of Moira Smith, said he was angry the magazine couldn’t find a woman more deserving of the award than Jenner, a man who first gained notoriety as Bruce Jenner for winning a gold medal during the 1976 Olympics. Jenner re-emerged into the limelight as the patriarch on the reality TV show “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” and announced earlier this year that he was undergoing sex-change operations and would change his name to Caitlyn.
     
    Moira Smith was a police officer on duty during the 9/11 attacks who repeatedly ran into the south tower as it was collapsing to rescue others still trapped inside. During one of these rescue attempts Moira Smith lost her life at 38 years old, leaving behind her husband, who is also a police officer.
  • Sunday Times: Assisted suicide 'risk to disabled'
    November 15th, 2015
    A disabled playwright will challenge the director of public prosecutions in the High Court tomorrow over the law on assisted suicide.
     
    Nikki Kenward will argue that Alison Saunders liberalised the policy last year by reducing the likelihood of prosecution for doctors in assisted suicide cases. Kenward and her husband, Merv, are seeking a judicial review of the policy.
     
    Kenward said: “This may appear a subtle change but it is substantive and highly significant. It makes it less likely that doctors and other healthcare workers would be prosecuted if they encourage or facilitate suicide and that places people at risk.
     
    “Disabled people, the elderly, the terminally ill and others who are vulnerable need to be able to trust that doctors are there to protect life not to assist death. This change undermines that.”
  • CNN: Supreme Court to hear major abortion case
    November 14th, 2015
    The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear a challenge to key parts of Texas' 2013 abortion law that supporters of abortion rights say is one of the strictest in the nation.
     
    The court has not heard a major abortion case since 2007, and its decision will likely come down sometime next spring or early summer in the heat of the presidential campaign. If the justices uphold the lower court's decision and allow two provisions of the law to go into effect, the number of available clinics in the state is expected to fall to about 10.
     
    While supporters of the law argue it's meant to protect women's health, opponents say it has nothing to do with health and safety, but instead is a disguised attempt to put an end to abortion. Other states have similar legislation percolating through the lower courts.
  • Mail: LA restaurateur to get nine years in prison for 'killing his unborn child'
    November 14th, 2015

    A popular restaurateur with establishments in Los Angeles and Miami is expected to be sentenced to nine years in prison for allegedly killing his unborn child.

  • Guardian: Judge's reversal over same-sex couple's foster baby may be temporary – officials
    November 13th, 2015
    A Utah judge reversed his decision to take a baby girl from her lesbian foster parents and place her with a heterosexual couple after his ruling caused widespread backlash, but child welfare officials say the change could be temporary.
     
    In an order released on Friday, Judge Scott Johansen allowed the nine-month-old baby to stay for now with April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce, a married couple from the city of Price.
     
    It comes after Johansen said in court on Tuesday that the baby should be removed from the couple’s home within a week. Utah officials and the couple filed court challenges demanding he rescind the order.
     
    Ashley Sumner, spokeswoman for the Utah division of child and family services, said the agency is cautiously optimistic and relieved. But Johansen’s decision still leaves open the possibility that he could order the child removed at a 4 December custody hearing, she said.