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In the News

  • Times (£): Youngest terrorist jailed for beheading plot
    October 3rd, 2015
    Britain’s youngest terrorist was jailed for life with a minimum of five years yesterday as it was revealed that he had tipped off other extremists about the police investigation after his arrest.
     
    The 15-year-old, who was so unrepentant that he boasted on the streets of Blackburn about being detained, alerted others with whom he had been in contact and urged them to delete evidence of their connection with him from their phones, a court was told.
     
    He was sentenced at Manchester crown court after plotting a beheading in Australia. The court was told that the boy, who was only 14 when he goaded an alleged jihadist in Australia to murder police officers, was a “deeply committed radical extremist”.
  • Breitbart: #IAmAChristian: Dr. Ben Carson lights up Facebook in response to Oregon school shooting
    October 2nd, 2015
    Dr. Ben Carson, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate and world-renowned neurosurgeon, has launched a social media response effort to the Oregon gunman’s reported targeting of Christians in his shooting spree on a community college campus on Thursday.
     
    In one of several consecutive Facebook posts, Carson urges his millions of followers to change their Facebook photograph to an image of a hashtag: #IAmAChristian. The other Facebook photograph shows Carson holding up a piece of paper with the words “I am a Christian” written on it.
  • Belfast Telegraph: If you're for free speech, speak up for Pastor McConnell
    October 2nd, 2015
    On the face of it, you couldn't imagine two more different people than Maryam Namazie and Pastor Jim McConnell. One is a secular activist and human rights campaigner who fled Iran in 1980 after the revolution. The other is an elderly Pentecostal preacher, recently retired after 57 years of ministry. But they share the dubious distinction of being silenced for their views on Islam.
  • Telegraph: Meet the heterosexual couples campaigning to have civil partnerships
    October 2nd, 2015
    Jimmy Pierce, 30, and Laura Cochrane, 25, are in love. They’re expecting a baby, they live together and they know they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other.
     
    So earlier this year they decided to make their relationship official by getting a civil partnership.
     
    But they can’t. Under UK law, only same-sex couples are eligible to have civil partnerships.
  • Guardian: 'He asked are you Christian? Then he shot and killed them' - Oregon college shooting
    October 2nd, 2015
    Details have begun to emerge of the terrifying experience of students and staff at the Umpqua community college, where 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer shot and killed nine people and injured at least seven others.
     
    Harper Mercer died in a shootout with police who responded to calls about an active shooter at 10.38am on Thursday.
     
    Anastasia Boylan, 18, was in a class when Harper Mercer came in shooting, her father Stacey Boylan told CNN. He said his daughter, who was undergoing surgery for her injuries, survived by “playing dead”.
     
    “[Harper Mercer] came in and there was gunfire immediately and he scattered the room. From what I understood what she said was he shot the professor point blank, one shot killed him....

    “‘Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them, and ‘if you are a Christian then stand up’ and they would stand up. He’d say ‘because you are a Christian you’re going to see God in about one second’ and then he shot and killed them. And he kept going down the line doing this to people.”
  • World Watch Monitor: Top pastor escapes death amidst renewed violence in CAR
    October 1st, 2015
    One of the top three religious leaders in the Central African Republic, who has won global recognition for his efforts to end the conflict, has escaped an assassination attempt, as the capital, Bangui, has seen a renewed wave of violence.
     
    Coming just a few weeks before a planned referendum and subsequent October elections aimed at putting an end to the transitional government, this violence has now caused the interim President to cancel the elections.
     
    The President of CAR’s Evangelical Alliance, Rev. Nicolas Guerekoyame-Gbangou, was targeted in an attack apparently triggered by the death of a young Muslim motorbike taxi driver. His body was found in the predominantly Christian 5th district on Saturday, 26 September, then taken to a mosque in the 3rd district, known also as Km5 – formerly considered by many as a stronghold of Séléka rebels, and a "no-go zone" for all non-Muslims.
  • Care Not Killing: House of Lords Access to Palliative Care Bill
    October 1st, 2015
    A bill 'to make provision for equitable access to palliative care', introduced by senior palliative care physician and peer Ilora Finlay, will be debated in the House of Lords on 23 October.
     
    Baroness Finlay, who today takes over as the National Council for Palliative Care's Chair of Trustees, introduced the Bill with a view to instigating 'the beginning of a comprehensive discussion around end of life care and hopefully, ultimately a change of law' which responds to 'the problems and failings of a system that has the knowledge of what needs to be done but fails to make it happen'. Such aims were recently endorsed by 60 MPs in an open letter to The Times.
  • This is Lancashire: Council accused of 'staggering U-turn' in Accrington crematorium cross saga
    October 1st, 2015
    A council has been accused of a ‘staggering u-turn’ over the presence of a Christian cross in its crematorium chapel.
     
    On Tuesday, Hyndburn’s cemeteries boss Ken Moss said the religious symbol would only be available for funerals if requested by organisers.
     
    Yesterday, after his comments were quoted in the Lancashire Telegraph, he issued a revised statement saying a free-standing cross would be present in the chapel at Accrington Cemetery unless families asked for its removal during a service.
     
    Councillor Moss said his original statement was open to ‘misinterpretation’ and yesterday’s replacement was intended to clarify the position.
     
    Former Tory group leader on Hyndburn Council Peter Britcliffe, who originally raised the matter, said: “This is not a clarification. It is staggering u-turn.”
     
    Bishop of Burnley Philip North welcomed yesterday’s statement as “a sensible decision”.
  • Guardian: Fifth Briton added to UN sanctions list of Isis fighters in Syria
    October 1st, 2015
    A Cardiff-born teenager has been added to a UN sanctions list containing four other British citizens fighting with Islamic State militants in Syria.
     
    Aseel Muthana, 19, has been put on the same list as his older brother, Nasser, who achieved notoriety when he appeared in an Isis propaganda video entitled There is No Life without Jihad.
     
    Their father, Ahmed Muthana, has already described the inclusion of Nasser on the list as “crazy” after the 21-year-old and three people became the first to have UN sanctions imposed on them at the request of the UK government since 2006.
     
    The others are Aqsa Mahmood, 21, from Glasgow; Omar Hussain, 28, from High Wycombe; and Sally-Anne Jones, a 46-year-old Muslim convert from Chatham, Kent. All have had travel bans and asset freezes imposed on them.
  • TES: Nearly all faith schools 'abuse' admissions system, British Humanist Association claims
    October 1st, 2015
    Faith schools systematically cheat the admissions system, a new report claims.
     
    The British Humanist Association (BHA) report says all but one of the secondary faith schools investigated (69 out of 70) failed to comply with the School Admissions Code.
     
    The report, An Unholy Mess, produced on behalf of the Fair Admissions Campaign (FAC), lists a series of violations of the admission arrangements at religiously selective state schools, including a lack of clarity over the frequency and duration of religious worship required.
     
    A number of schools investigated required practical or financial support for associated organisations – through voluntary activities such as flower arranging and singing in choirs at churches or, in the case of two Jewish schools, paying to become a member of a synagogue.
     
    Many schools failed to sufficiently prioritise looked-after and formerly looked-after children, and the majority asked for information from parents that they did not need.