Category Archives: Global

The Atlantic: The schools, part of a network of hundreds around the world, aim to create a “golden generation” of educated Muslims by emphasizing science and technology, but some regional governments are worried.

LifeNews: Almost 20,000 pro-life people showed up in Canada’s capital to take part in the 2012 March for Life to demonstrate their opposition to unlimited abortions and taxpayer funding of abortions.

Raymond Ibrahim at Middle East Forum: As the United States considers the Islamic jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it would do well to focus on its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and jihadists, who, through a number of tactics—from engaging in da’wa, converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, simple extortion, kidnappings and enslavement—have been subverting Mexico in order to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S.

Religion Clause Blog: It includes differential treatment based on a broad range of characteristics: race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, ideology, political opinion, religious beliefs, participation in organizations or lack thereof, sex, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, health and disabilities. In the past, opponents of the law, including Protestant churches and the Catholic Church, had been concerned that it could be used to legalize same-sex marriage.

LifeNews: New figures from the United Kingdom show the British government spends one million every week in taxpayer funding for abortions for women who have having at least their second or more abortion.

Religion Clause Blog: According to a report on Friday by Pink News, Colombia’s Constitutional Court has ordered the country’s Institute of Social Security to award pension rights to the same-sex partner of a deceased Catholic priest.

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last week issued a statement (full text) strongly criticizing the Kuwaiti Parliament’s recent passage of a bill imposing strong penalties– including the death penalty in some cases– for blasphemy.

Christian Science Monitor: Like the thousands of women who fled North Korea before her, Kim Eun-sun made it into China and paid a woman to help her, only to discover she’d traded one form of captivity for another.

Washington Post reports.

Human Events: After regaling a group of environmentalists last week on military initiatives to pursue biofuels and prepare for climate change, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta advanced another tenet of a far-left military agenda Wednesday when he appeared at a forum to push for ratification of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. The treaty would create an international regime of law to dictate actions and activities on and in the oceans

NY Times: Call it bad timing. On the very day President Barack Obama gave his endorsement to same-sex marriage, the British government appeared to defer a promise to legalize it.

Christian Institute: A petition against Government plans to redefine marriage set up by Coalition for Marriage (C4M) has now passed over half a million signatures.

DW.de: The Interior Minister of Germany’s western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has ordered a ban on far-right groups displaying Mohammed caricatures which provoked riots in Bonn on Saturday. The courts seem opposed.

Digital Journal: Germany is considering a ban on Islamic Salafist groups in the wake of violence between Islamic extremists and Germany’s far-right anti-Islamists. The government in Germany is considering a ban as concerns mount over their ideological stance which is viewed as politically threatening . . .

Religion Clause Blog: In Zhang v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, (Fed. Ct., May 4, 2012), Canada’s Federal Court ruled that it was improper for Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board to decide that an applicant for refugee status was not a genuine Christian, based on questioning about the applicant’s knowledge of Christianity.

AP: President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday that he supports gay marriage boosted the hopes of gay rights groups around the world that other leaders will follow his example.

AP: Authorities in the hometown of blind activist Chen Guangcheng have notched up restrictions on members of his extended family while he awaits permission in Beijing to travel abroad under an agreement between China and the U.S.

Jeff Jacoby at Townhall: There is no cruelty so depraved that people cannot be induced to do it, or to look the other way while it is being done. Escape from Camp 14 reconfirms what we have known for years: North Korea’s rulers brutalize their people with unparalleled and bloody barbarity. Why do we find it so easy to look the other way?

AP: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has broken a long silence on gay marriage and left the door open for making it legal.

David J. Rusin at Islamist Watch: Media outlets tiptoeing around Islam are a dime a dozen, but the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) stands apart for the egregiousness of its self-censorship and bias. Even more striking than the number of controversies involving suppression of Islam-critical speech on its channels are the frank acknowledgements that BBC policy is shaped by fear.

Washington Post: Adults who want sex-change surgery or hormone therapy in Argentina will be able to get it as part of their public or private health care plans under a gender rights law approved Wednesday.

The AP reports.

Christian Newswire: The Holy See mission to the United Nations assembly in New York called upon UN Member States to respect the right of parents to homeschool their children in a statement before the United Nations two weeks ago.

UPI: A Swedish health board faulted a doctor who canceled a woman’s abortion against her wishes after speaking to the woman’s husband, who asked about alternatives.

Religion Clause Blog: In Algeria, the National Legislative Election Monitoring Commission has warned Islamist groups that the country’s law on political parties prohibits the use of religion for political ends.

AP: Blind activist Chen Guangcheng has drawn a global media spotlight after setting off tensions between the U.S. and China, but he’s almost unknown at home – and the Chinese government is working to keep it that way

AP: It will enable people to prepare advanced health care directives, and when damage is irreversible, families will be able to decide whether or not to keep them on life support. It also says that doctors cannot be prosecuted for following a family’s wishes. Some opponents worry that withdrawing food and fluids could cause pain . . .

Telegraph: Police and social workers were last night accused of failing to investigate an Asian paedophile gang for fear of being perceived as racist, allowing them to prey on up to 50 young white girls.

Examiner.com: Winston Blackmore is no stranger to money disputes. The final decision in his latest dispute lies in the hands of a federal tax judge. Blackmore, the head of a polygamous group in Bountiful, B.C. claims to be eligible for the same tax exemption granted to the Hutterites.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee released its FY 2013 appropriations bill making serious cuts to international organizations that perform or promote abortion.

Baptist Press: The Chinese government is engaging in a three-phase campaign to eradicate Protestant house churches, according to the China Aid Association.

Globaltvedmonton: This fall, Sturgeon Heights Public School will reintroduce the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer. The Sturgeon School Board made the decision after surveying parents of the school’s student

LifeSiteNews: The blind lawyer, who exposed China’s brutal forced abortion policy, said “thugs with wooden spoons” beat his nephew, Chen Kegui, “ruthlessly

AFP: Thousands took to the streets of the Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil on Tuesday as a rally to demand swift punishment for a magazine editor who ran a story decried as “against Islam” turned violent.

LA Times: Days after a bloody street battle led to more than 100 arrests, authorities in Germany’s biggest state braced for the possibility of more violence Tuesday between a right-wing political party and an Islamic group.

Christian Concern: Following the late intervention of the Christian Legal Centre, an employee of a major London tourist attraction is able to continue in his job, as his employer has now agreed to let him take Sundays off so that he can worship at church.

Examiner.com: On May 1st, President Barack Obama signed a new Executive Order which opens the door for the United States to give up economic and environmental sovereignty through the promotion of a single international regulatory system.

AP: Rights advocate Chen Guangcheng says the Chinese government has quietly promised him it will investigate abuses he and his family suffered at the hands of local authorities, in a rare instance of Beijing bowing to demands of an activist.

AP: A Chinese blogger is seeking compensation for a one-year labor camp sentence he served after posting a brief poem mocking now-disgraced politician Bo Xilai . . .

Catholic Culture: In the Indonesian province of Aceh, protests by Muslim militants have led to the closing of three Christians churches: two Catholic and one Protestant.

LifeSiteNews: A school board on the south shore of Nova Scotia has backed down after it sparked a nationwide controversy last week by suspending a grade 12 student for wearing a Christian t-shirt.

Timothy Herrmann at Turtle Bay and Beyond: The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is taking advantage of the upcoming Rio+20 conference in June to re-brand population control and market it as the backbone of sustainable development, particularly in the developing world.

AP: Militants who have vowed allegiance to al-Qaida attack security forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula close to Israel and enjoy unchallenged control of two border towns.

BioEdge: Many women in India who hire surrogates use fake tummies to keep the surrogacy a secret, the Times of India reports.

BioEdge: Legal, safe and rare abortion is often seen as a necessary component of women’s health. Abortion rights groups contend that unless it is legal, backyard abortionists will fill the gap in demand and maternal mortality rates will rise.

LifeSiteNews: An editorial in the Botswana Gazette this week, notes that there has been a mass escalation by international NGOs pushing to legalise abortion in answer to the country’s many woes.

Adelaidenow.com.au: Mifepristone (RU486) still has question marks over its health impacts and we expect that women are fully informed about those risks before using the drug,” Mr Hood said.

ABC.net.au: A senior ambulance paramedic has told a coronial inquest, a Hunter woman who died after an abortion was in severe anaphylactic shock when he began treating her.

Choudhury, Cyra Akila, Between Tradition and Progress: A Comparative Perspective on Polygamy in the United States and India (May 3, 2012). University of Colorado Law Review, Vol. 83, No. 4, 2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2050671

LifeNews: News reports today are focusing on an update of a South Korean SBS TV documentary released last August that focuses on Chinese pharmaceutical companies selling “health pills” made from the bodies of babies dying in abortion and miscarriages.

BBC: Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries.

San Francisco Chronicle: As President Obama struggles with the politics of gay issues at home, his administration is drawing cheers from human rights groups for its commitment to gay rights around the globe.

World Net Daily: Word that the lawyer who has been representing a Christian pastor condemned to death in Iran for leaving Islam is now facing jail is a stunning setback to hopes that the Islamic republic would begin recognizing human rights, according to an advocacy organization in the United States.

Judd Gregg at The Hill: It has been a long time getting there, but France now seems to be on the final leg of this journey of self-delusion and self-destruction. The world is becoming more and more competitive, with no time for the self-indulgent as nations seek better lifestyles for their people. The politics of envy and the real reduction in competitiveness of the French society is clearly placing France and many nations in Europe at a tipping point.

LifeSite News: The mediation hearing of former TV sports anchor Damian Goddard, who was fired by Rogers Sportsnet last May after tweeting his support for true marriage, and who subsequently launched a human rights complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, is taking place today at the CHRC office in Toronto.

LifeSiteNews: After Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government moved to fast track its controversial homosexual “rights” bill this week, it easily passed a vote at second reading Thursday. It now heads to committee.

Irish Central: Prior to his death, al-Qaeda ring-leader Osama bin Laden was urged by Adam Gadahn, the American al-Qaeda spokesman, to consider reaching out to the Irish population in hopes of getting them to convert to Islam.

Catholic Statesman: In one town in northern Mali a man has been whipped for drinking alcohol. In another, pictures of unveiled women have been torn down. In a third, traditional music is no longer heard in the streets.

Christian Concern: The High Court has passed a ruling this week permitting doctors to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from a paralysed man who communicated a wish to die by blinking.

Religion Clause Blog: he Guardian reported yesterday that in Indonesia, for the first time an atheist is being prosecuted for blasphemy, which includes a violation of the first pillar of Indonesia’s state philosophy – pancasila, which requires belief in one god.

Religion Clause Blog: Bloomberg News reports that Kuwait’s Parliament yesterday, by a vote of 40-6, passed a strict new blasphemy law.

Religion Clause Blog: Aswat Masriya yesterday published a compilation of the positions of each of Egypt’s 12 Presidential candidates  on whether they prefer a religious or civil state . . .

AP: A prominent Russian gay rights activist was convicted on Friday of spreading “gay propaganda” among minors in the first such ruling in Russia’s modern history . . . a city court in St. Petersburg fined him 5,000 rubles ($170) for breaching the law . . .

Pat Buchanan at

Raymond Ibrahim at Middle East Watch: To appreciate this dichotomy—what Islamists are all about and why secularists want no part in Friday’s march—consider who is among the characters spearheading tomorrow’s mass protests: none other than Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the elder brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a seasoned terrorist in his own right. According to Youm 7, Zawahiri appeared yesterday “at the head of hundreds of protesters,” including “dozens of jihadis,” demonstrating in front of Egypt’s Military Council near Cairo.

Christian Concern: An Anglican Lay Reader with fifty years of experience has been suspended for backing the Coalition for Marriage campaign, of which Christian Concern is a core member. The campaign seeks to preserve the current legal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.

Christian Institute: A poll has found 66 per cent of the public want a default block on online pornography, as Labour MPs join calls to clampdown on children being able to see explicit content.

Susan Yoshihara at C-FAM: Is family breakdown the cause or the cure for the global crisis of population decline? Two new articles in top foreign policy journals raise the question.

CBC.ca: A Christian student suspended from a high school in Nova Scotia for sporting a T-shirt with the slogan “Life is wasted without Jesus” vows to wear it when he returns to class next week.

Religion Clause Blog: EuroNews reports that Libya’s National Transitional Council has reversed a law adopted last month that banned political parties based on religion, tribe or ethnicity.

Catholic Culture: Chaudhry Irshad Younas, a Pakistani Christian involved in politics, was murdered in Lahore on April 27.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Great Britain gave 166 million pounds ($268 million) to a government program in India that forcibly sterilizes poor women and men. The UK’s aid agency cited a need to address climate change by reducing population as a key reason to fund India’s abusive program, reports The Guardian.

Telegraph: The Sunday Telegraph has found that at least 40 councils have decided to either stop or “water down” prayer sessions held at the start of business after the High Court controversially backed the complaints of secularists that the ancient custom was “illegal”.

Christian Institute: Two thirds of his constituents want to keep marriage as it is – between one man and one woman. That number climbs to 75 per cent amongst the people who voted for him at the last general election.

The Times of Israel: Knesset approves IDF request to call up a further 16 battalions if needed