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In the News

  • Education Business: Half of radicalisation referrals come from schools, figures show
    November 9th, 2015
    Schools Week is reporting that the number of referrals made by the education sector to the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme, Channel, has dramatically increased from 20 in 2012/13 to 424 last year.
     
    However, experts are warning that an ‘uncomprehensive’ roll-out of training means teachers lack an understanding of when pupils should be referred. Since July, teaching staff have been legally bound to ‘take steps to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. 
     
    Zafar Ali, chairman of governors at IQRA Slough Islamic Primary School, in Berkshire, said: “There is little training given to teachers about what forms of radicalisation there are, and what the signs are. So you are getting this knee-jerk reaction because schools are so scared that if they don’t make a referral, they will be found wanting.”
     
    Ali is responsible for providing radicalisation safeguarding training in schools. He said: “The lack of knowledge and understanding of radicalisation [in schools] is . . . stifling freedom of speech to dangerous levels now.”
     
    The Channel programme was activated in 2012, in a bid to provide early support for people identified as being vulnerable to radicalisation. Once referred, referrals are assessed by a board of Channel officers who decide if specialist intervention support, such as de-radicalisation sessions are necessary. 
  • Life News: Germany passes bill allowing doctors or relatives to kill people in assisted suicides
    November 9th, 2015
    The German Bundestag approved assisted suicide for altruistic reasons in a similar manner as the Swiss law except that they banned the commercialization of assisted suicide.
     
    The fact is that the Swiss law permits assisted suicide for altruistic reasons, but the groups that facilitate assisted suicide actually developed over time, rather than the law simply permitting it. Therefore now that Germany officially permits assisted suicide, the question is how will it develop over time. The German RT news reported:
     
    "MPs in Germany have rejected a bill that would have made commercial assisted suicides legal, instead passing a new law punishing such practices with up to three years imprisonment, even if doctors perform the procedure to relieve suffering.
     
    "The bill, which was upheld with 360 out of 602 votes, criminalizes organizations that assist patients in terminating their own lives for profit. It is meant to prevent the commercialization of the procedure as a “suicide business.”
     
    "However, single instances of suicide assistance – by a doctor or relative – do not contradict the new law."
  • Mail: Catholic schools to ban Islam from religious GCSE studies
    November 8th, 2015
    The Roman Catholic Church is at the centre of a row after ordering its schools to teach Judaism alongside Christianity in GCSE religious studies – ruling out Islam or other faiths.
     
    The edict was described as ‘very disappointing’ by senior Muslim leaders. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the decision undermined Pope Francis’s message of greater tolerance between the faiths, and urged Catholic leader Cardinal Vincent Nichols to think again.
     
    The Church’s move follows last year’s reforms to the GCSE exam. Under the new rules, schools are required to teach two religions rather than one.
  • Christian Today: Obama administration orders schools to let transgenders use bathroom of their choice
    November 7th, 2015
    The Obama administration, through the U.S. Department of Education, has ordered a school district in Illinois to allow a transgender student to use the girls' locker room or it will force the school district to do so.
     
    Township High School District 211 in Palatine, Illinois may lose its federal funding if it does not follow the order of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) under the education department to allow the male student, who identifies himself as female, to use the girls' facilities.
     
    In its letter to Superintendent Daniel Cates, the OCR said it found "by the preponderance of the evidence that the District is in violation of Title IX for excluding Student A from participation in and denying her the benefits of its education programme, providing services to her in a different manner, subjecting her to different rules of behavior, and subjecting her to different treatment on the basis of sex," LifeSitenews reported.
     
    Title IX is a law signed in 1972 that "prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education programme or activity," according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
     
    Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom said, "A federal court in Pennsylvania recently rejected a similar lawsuit filed by a transgender student seeking access to restrooms at a college ruling that 'separating students by sex based on biological considerations ... for restroom and locker room use simply does not violate the Equal Protection Clause.'"
  • Telegraph: Experts worried pre-natal blood test might lead to sex-selective abortions
    November 6th, 2015
    Government officials are concerned that a blood test for Down’s Syndrome could be used by women who want to find out the sex of their baby and then abort the foetus.
     
    A Department of Health review into “sex selective” abortions found that a simple blood test for genetic abnormalities is being used to determine a baby’s gender and needs to be monitored because it may be used by women who may wish to terminate a pregnancy because of the foetus’s sex.
     
    Until recently, women at high risk of having children with conditions such as Down’s Syndrome were offered a procedure in which a needle is inserted into the womb, which could cause a miscarriage.
     
    The review, which was carried out as part of an assessment of abortions because of the sex of the foetus, found that the blood test — known as NIPT — has become “the main technological development enabling women to learn the gender of their foetus”.
     
    The report said “the emergence of NIPT tests underlines the need for us to continue to monitor birth ratios and abortions by ethnicity to assess the impact of these tests, particularly if they become more widely available in the coming years”.
  • BBC: Dawn of gene-editing medicine?
    November 6th, 2015
    Does the smiling face of Layla Richards mark a new era in genetic medicine that could change all our lives?
     
    Her story is simply remarkable and a world first.
     
    On the day before her first birthday, Layla's parents were told that all treatments for her leukaemia had failed and she was going to die.
     
    The determination of her family, doctors and a biotechnology company led to her being given an experimental therapy that had previously been tried only in mice.
     
    Now, just months after her family was told her cancer was incurable, Layla is not only alive, but a happy, giggling child with no trace of leukaemia in her body.
     
    The "miracle" treatment was a tiny vial filled with genetically engineered immune cells that were designed to kill her cancer.
  • BBC: Gay canon Jeremy Pemberton was not discriminated against
    November 4th, 2015
    A gay clergyman prevented from taking up a post as a hospital chaplain was not discriminated against, an employment tribunal panel has ruled.
     
    In a 58-page judgement, the panel also dismissed a claim of harassment made by Canon Jeremy Pemberton.
     
    It was against the former acting Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Revd Richard Inwood.
     
    Mr Pemberton claimed that the Church of England's stance on same-sex marriage breached the 2010 Equality Act.
     
    It came after his permission to officiate was revoked after marrying his partner in April 2014.
  • Breitbart: Firebombed Baghdad church reopens but the faithful have fled
    November 4th, 2015
    The church of Saint George in Baghdad, which was closed down in 2007 after being firebombed by Islamic militants, was finally reopened Monday, but local clergy worry that there are no longer any Assyrian Christians left to worship there.
     
    The church is located in a neighborhood of south Baghdad called Dora, which once was predominantly Christian. In 2004, jihadists rained terror upon the 20,000 Assyrian Christians living there, burning 500 Christian-owned shops in one night, bombing churches and exacting the jizya, a Sharia-based tax, from Christian inhabitants of the area.
     
    The bombings resulted in the deaths of dozens of Christians, and these persecutions, along with demands that Assyrian girls be married off to Muslims, led to a mass exodus of Assyrian Christians from the region. Of the original 20,000 Christians, a mere handful remain.
     
    ISIS has been particularly fierce in defacing images of Saint George, traditionally believed to have been a second-century Roman soldier of Arabic origins born close to the Iraqi border in what is now modern-day Turkey. Saint George was allegedly tortured and killed by the Romans for refusing to renounce his Christian faith.
     
    According to Canon Andrew White, the London-born “Vicar of Baghdad”: “When one looks closely at the legend of St George, his fate bears striking similarity to the violence and persecution which Iraq’s Christian minorities have faced.”
  • BBC: Will UK spy bill risk exposing people's porn habits?
    November 4th, 2015
    After weeks of conflicting reports, the draft Investigatory Powers Bill has been revealed.
     
    It represents the UK government's attempt to update and tidy up the powers the authorities have to delve into the public's data to combat crime.
     
    It is a huge document - but at its heart is the argument it is illogical officials can scan through itemised lists of the phone calls people make but not the websites and chat apps they use.
     
    So, the bill proposes the authorities be given the right to retrospectively check people's "internet connection records" without having to obtain a warrant.
     
    That means, for example, they would be allowed to learn someone had used Snapchat at 07:30 on their smartphone at home and then two hours later visited Facebook's website via their laptop at work.
  • Breitbart: Pro-life, pro-family wins on Election Day in governor's offices and bathrooms
    November 4th, 2015
    The pro-life and pro-family base of the Republican Party is celebrating following both gubernatorial elections Tuesday and the defeat of Proposition 1 – the “gender identity” bathroom bill – in Houston.
     
    On Wednesday morning, Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, applauded the election of pro-life governors in Kentucky and Mississippi.
     
    “This year’s historic election of a pro-life governor in Kentucky and the re-election of a pro-life governor in Mississippi are more evidence that the pro-life position is a winning position,” said Pavone in a statement sent to Breitbart News.  “Americans are electing more leaders who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public.”
     
    In Kentucky, Matt Bevin became only the second Republican to be elected governor in the last 40 years. While Kentucky has been a consistently Republican state in presidential elections, the Governor’s mansion has belonged to the Democrats, with Republicans only holding the state’s highest office for four of the last 44 years.
     
    Bevin’s campaign also emphasized his support of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.