Category Archives: Global

The Washington Post: Despite continuous attacks on Coptic Christians, a delegation of Egyptian Christian leaders said Wednesday (Feb. 8) they do not support the development of a Christian political party as a possible solution.

Janke Blumgart at The Huffington Post: There is a very strong pronatalist [anti-choice] current in Central and Eastern Europe and that goes along with nationalist tendencies in many of these countries,” says Johanna Westeson, European regional director for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Burton News & Staffordshire Newspape: PRIME Minister David Cameron should take back control of more than 100 crime and policing laws from the European Union, two Conservative MPs have said.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: After the passage of Spain’s liberal abortion law in 2010 the government began subsidizing abortion on demand, providing it at no cost to the mother.

The Courier-Mail: THE national legislature will on Monday become the Pink Parliament with a total of four gay marriage bills being up for consideration.

CNN.com: Spain’s best-known judge will be suspended for 11 years from the bench after his conviction Thursday for improperly ordering wiretaps while investigating a financial corruption case, the nation’s Supreme Court ruled.

Stratford Gazette: Perth County has dropped the long-standing tradition of reciting the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of council meetings.

Friday Fax: C-Fam: Last week UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told African nations to repeal criminal laws that sanction homosexual conduct and to stop discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity.

JURIST: The Parliament of Uganda [official website] on Tuesday reintroduced legislation that would criminalize certain homosexual activities.

News from The Associated Press: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is calling on the country’s ruling generals to sack the current military-appointed government . ..

Catholic Culture: The nation’s constitutional court has not yet ruled on an appeal that claims the 2005 law is unconstitutional.

The Guardian: General Synod puts off split over ordination of female prelates by delaying legislation for fine tuning until final approval in July.

The Christian Institute: Nearly two thirds, 60 per cent, of the public think that the curbs should be scrapped.

Religion Clause: The High Court in the Indian state of Gujarat today ordered the state government to pay compensation to over 500 religious structures that were damaged in riots in 2002 . . .

News from The Associated Press: Egypt’s military-backed prime minister says Cairo will not halt its crackdown on foreign nonprofit groups despite what he calls threats to cut off aid from Western and Arab countries.

Christian Concern: Andrea Minichiello Williams spoke to the General Synod today (6 Feb), challenging the Church of England to take a stand for traditional marriage before it is too late.

Christian Concern: The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that any legalisation of assisted suicide or euthanasia would be a “disaster” for Britain, creating circumstances where life would be “legally declared to be not worth living.”

LifeNews.com: The 3-genetic parent embryo is back in the news. This time it is Australia that wants to attempt to genetically engineer a human embryo to have 3 genetic parents.

Religion Clause: France’s 1905 law on the separation of church and state bars creating municipal cemeteries limited to only one religion. This means that cities have been limited to setting aside Muslim-only sections in existing cemeteries.

News from The Associated Press: Europe’s human rights court has rejected an invasion-of-privacy complaint by Monaco’s Princess Caroline – one of two potentially groundbreaking rulings Tuesday that uphold the media’s right to report on celebrities.

News from The Associated Press: British lawmakers from across the political spectrum voiced anger Tuesday at a court decision to release an imprisoned extremist cleric, saying the man described as one of Europe’s leading al-Qaida figures could be free during the London Olympics.

NYTimes.com: “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

Telegraph: Girls as young as 13 have been fitted with contraceptive implants at school without their parents knowing.

Telegraph: Two senior judges ruled it would be “manifestly unjust” to stop them helping him prepare a legal challenge to the law on assisted suicide – even if doing so could assist his suicide, which would be illegal.

Asia News: The attack on the colleges of St. Joseph Anegal (40 km south of Bangalore) occurred on January 27. Reason for the assault, failure to display the Indian flag during celebrations for the national holiday.

LifeSiteNews.com: Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “ironclad” control over Conservative MPs is shutting down debate on public policy, a pro-life MP warned in a recent radio commentary.

LifeSiteNews.com: A report from Taiwanese health authorities says that a crackdown on illegal sex-selective abortions prevented the deaths of nearly 1,000 female unborn babies in 2011.

Fox News: An Australian couple are seeking $10.6 million in damages from their IVF doctor because their son was born with a rare, genetic defect and will suffer a lifelong handicap.

Asia Times Online: Now we know that computers don’t help children learn and that drugs don’t help them concentrate, because the establishment mandarins who sold us the computers and drugs have conceded failure. In the January 29 New York Times, [1] a prominent professor of child development shows that attention-deficit-disorder drugs only harm the three million children who take them. One out of 10 American children have been diagnosed with so-called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and most of them have been medicated. [2] Some months ago, the Times reported that test scores lagged in school districts that invested massively in digital education.

Religion Clause: Authorities in Gothenburg have formally notified the Namdars that they will be fined the equivalent of $2400 (US) per week if they do not enroll their children in a Swedish school by Feb. 1.

English pravda.ru: For the first time in the history of Europe, Islamic organization can participate in the elections. Party For Muslim Netherlands wants to get into parliament in 2015. The Netherlands could become the first country on the continent where the Islamists will participate in the legislature. The far-right sentiment is increasing in the country as well.

Christian Freedom International: But despite the consistent defamation of Christianity by prominent Muslims — which has included calling Christians “infidels” and “criminals” and the Bible as “fake” and “Greek mythology” — complaints filed by Christians against Muslims for these offenses in accordance with the contempt of religion law have come to no avail.

Christian Concern: Andy Stephenson and Kathryn Sloane entered a not-guilty plea yesterday (30 Jan) at Brighton Magistrates’ Court, after being arrested for a demonstration outside an abortion clinic in Brighton on 22 June 2011.

Christian Concern: A culture of sexual license and promiscuity in the UK is costing the taxpayer approximately £100 billion per year, according to findings by the Jubilee Centre. In a paper entitled “Free sex: Who pays? Moral hazard and sexual ethics” . . .

Boston.com: An Orthodox Christian church famed for its valuable icons was set alight in southern Macedonia overnight, authorities said Tuesday, as religious tension between Christians and minority Muslims grew over a carnival in which men dressed as women in burqas and mocked the Quran.

BBC News: Labour’s Johann Lamont, the Tories’ Ruth Davidson, the Lib Dems’ Willie Rennie and Scottish Green Patrick Harvie are united on the issue.

ChicagoTribune.com: “This is a treaty outside of the EU,” British leader David Cameron insisted Tuesday at the House of Commons. “We are not signing it. We are not ratifying it. We are not part of it.” The decision by Cameron and Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas to reject the deal leaves Europe with a clumsy compromise and has thrown up legal questions about using EU-wide institutions like the European Court of Justice to enforce the pact.

NYTimes.com: The young Afghan woman gave birth to a third girl three months ago — to a husband, the authorities say, who had been demanding a boy.

News from The Associated Press: Police say suspected Islamic insurgents have killed five people in attacks on security targets in Nigeria’s restive northeast.

News from The Associated Press: South Africa is recalling 1.35 million condoms given away at the African National Congress party’s centenary celebrations amid charges some broke during intercourse and others were porous, an official said Tuesday.

News from The Associated Press: The only movie ever banned in Britain for blasphemy was finally approved for distribution Tuesday, 23 years after it was outlawed.

NYTimes.com: The insults were furious. “Infidel!” and “Apostate!” the religious protesters shouted at the two men who had come to the courthouse to show their support for a television director on trial on charges of blasphemy. Fists, then a head butt followed.

IrishCentral: An unaccountable European elite is ignoring the basic principles of democracy and betraying the founding vision of the EU.

TheBureauInvestigates.com: For many the mention of the Court of Human Rights conjures up the image of complex cases dealing with genocide, war atrocities and tyrannical dictatorships, not the legal wranglings of aggrieved celebrities, disgruntled drug dealers or convicted asylum seekers.

The Christian Institute (includes video): Marriage must remain a union between one man and one woman, the Archbishop of York has warned.

LifeSiteNews.com: eventy-four percent of Christian Britons believe that discrimination against Christianity and Christian freedom of expression is on the rise in their country, according to a recent poll. This is a significant increase from 66 percent in 2009 according to an independent research group, ComRes.

Independent.ie: Humanist says ‘godless culture’ sermon was hostile to those who do not share church’s aims . . .

Christian Concern: Girls as young as nine are being forced to marry in mosques in Islington, according to the findings of a leading women’s rights group.

BBC News: wenty-five of the EU’s 27 member states have agreed to join a fiscal treaty to enforce budget discipline.

Andrew Brown at the Guardian.co.uk: In the end, the church may have to choose between communion and establishment. Sentamu has often, loudly, and rightly defended “Britishness” and British traditions. And if it comes to a choice between the Anglican Communion and the Church of England, British history, and British tradition, would then demand that the Anglican Communion be told, politely, to go away and commune with itself: that the archbishop of Lagos has no more jurisdiction in this country than the bishop of Rome.

OneNewsNow.com: Thirty-five Christians have been jailed in Saudi Arabia for worshiping in their own homes according to a recent report. The news only surfaced this week that the Christians have been imprisoned for over a month.

Religion Clause: Yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor reports that as the fighting goes on in Syria, the conflict is moving from a popular uprising to a confrontation between Sunnis and Shiites . . .

News from The Associated Press: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says African nations should stop treating gays as “second-class citizens, or even criminals”.

News from The Associated Press: Police say suspected members of a radical sect have attacked two more police stations, leaving two people dead in a north Nigerian city where 185 people were killed just over a week ago.

CBC News (includes video): A Montreal couple and their son were convicted Sunday of first-degree murder in the deaths of four family members in a case the judge called “despicable,” “heinous” and stemming from “a completely twisted concept of honour.”

The Guaridan The Observer: Viola Caon left her Italian home to find work. Now she returns to see how her former classmates are faring… and in the week that shocking figures showed how badly Europe’s youth is being hit by the unemployment crisis, we also talk to hard-hit twentysomethings in Athens and Madrid . . .

The Daily Star: Fears of new violence hung over Muslims at Friday prayers in the Nigerian city of Kano after Islamists who killed at least 185 people there a week ago threatened to strike again.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: A recent oped advocating for US ratification prompted ParentalRights.org president Michael Farris to warn of renewed calls for President Obama to move to ratify before November.

The Christian Institute: The Government is set to stop men who are married to multiple women from claiming extra benefits payments. Last year it emerged that the number of polygamous relationships among British Muslims is increasing.

LifeSiteNews.com: The petition was begun in response to a new initiative by French socialists, who are promising voters to institute homosexual “marriage” if they are chosen in the upcoming presidential elections.

LifeSiteNews.com: rotesters demonstrating against abortions being carried out in Barcelona-area Catholic hospitals were attacked by an angry mob pro-abortion counter-demonstrators, some of whom reportedly threw rocks and trash, as well as obscene insults.

Religion Clause: ince 2010, the U.S. State Department has produced a series of online videos labeled Conversations with America.

News from The Associated Press: The Dutch Cabinet moved a step closer Friday to banning the burqa, making good on an election promise that is largely symbolic but has broad public support.

News from The Associated Press: South Korea allowed members of a private group to accompany aid to North Korea for the first time Friday since leader Kim Jong Il died last month.

News from The Associated Press: Newly empowered Islamist leaders stood up for Arab democracy Friday, saying extremists need to be brought into the fold and chiding the West for objectifying women and income inequalities.

News from The Associated Press: Nigeria’s Supreme Court says it has fired five governors who overstayed their tenures.

Washington Examiner: Iranian courts have sentenced two bloggers to death for “spreading corruption,” and government security forces have arrested four other journalists, in the lead-up to the nation’s March elections.

C-Fam Friday Fax: Hungarian leaders have passed a law protecting the traditional family, defying ongoing criticism that their new constitution would curtail abortion and homosexuality.

Christian Concern: Margo McDonald, the independent MSP, has re-launched her effort to secure legislation which would make assisted dying legal in Scotland, unveiling a new consultation on the issue.

The Christian Institute: David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham in London, backed the right of parents to smack their children and criticised those who claim it is abuse, commenting: “There’s a big difference between abuse and parenting.”

The Christian Institute: A pagan woman who lives with her lover and his wife, but denies it is a polygamous arrangement, has won a ‘right to family life’ immigration case.

LifeNews.com: The ECLJ welcomes the adoption, by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), of a Resolution setting the principle that “Euthanasia, in the sense of the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, must always be prohibited.” This is the first time, in the past decades, that euthanasia is so clearly rejected by a European political institution.

LifeNews.com: Angie Murie, executive director of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region in Canada, was recently quoted in a National Post article claiming she opposed sex-selection abortions but essentially admitting that women should be able to have abortions for just about any reason.

The online database is here: Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe.

News from The Associated Press: Egypt has banned the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and a number of other Americans from leaving the country as tensions rise over moves by Egyptian authorities to restrict the work of international rights organizations.