Amid a fierce debate about minarets, public services in canton Zurich are being tested to determine if they discriminate against Muslims.
The cantonal authorities commissioned the fact-finding study to provide a more solid foundation for an ongoing political debate on how Muslims practise their religion in Zurich.
The Zurich chapter of the rightwing Swiss People’s Party put forward a motion last August calling for a ban on the construction of “provocative” minaret towers on Muslim centres of worship.
This was followed by a similar national initiative earlier this year that was condemned by several government ministers.
Dr Thomas Widmer from Zurich University’s Institute of Political Sciences has been given the task of assessing the suitability of the canton’s health, education, penal and social services for the Muslim population.
RAF fighter jets were scrambled to intercept two Russian strategic bombers heading for British airspace yesterday, as the spirit of the Cold War returned to the North Atlantic once again.
The incident, described as rare by the RAF, served as a telling metaphor for the stand-off between London and Moscow over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
While the Kremlin hesitated before responding to Britain’s expulsion of four diplomats, the Russian military engaged in some old-fashioned sabre-rattling.
Two Tu95 “Bear” bombers were dispatched from their base on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle and headed towards British airspace.
[He fled due to Saddam Hussain, now he is dead why does he not go back?-ed]
Halim Ibrahim and his family are among the half of all Iraqis who choose Sweden as their destination when they flee to Europe from their war-torn homeland.
“We wanted to get as far away from Iraq as possible,” said 50-year-old Halim, standing outside his ground floor flat in southern Sweden.
Last year Sweden received 8,950 asylum applications from Iraqis, nearly half of the 22,200 who came to Europe. The United Kingdom received only 1,305, according to UN statistics.
A long-term opponent of Saddam Hussein and a Shia Muslim from southern Iraq, Halim would get taken away by the police to be interrogated on a regular basis.
For days he would be gone without his family knowing if he was still alive.
“The police harassed anyone who was related to me because they knew I had been politically active. I had to leave to save myself and my family,” he said.
Organizers are describing a pro-life rally to be held in Dublin this coming Saturday, 7 July, as Ireland’s largest pro-life event in fifteen years.
Abortion remains illegal in Ireland, despite the legal quandary left by the X case ruling in 1992. Two things protect the unborn child from abortion in Ireland: first, the provisions of the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act and, secondly, a pro-life amendment made to Ireland’s constitution in 1983. The latter was, however, later interpreted, in 1992, by Ireland’s Supreme Court, to allow for abortion in the case of suicide.
A California woman is filing a complaint in the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court against an organ transplant doctor and the Sierra Vista hospital for willfully deceiving her and murdering her physically handicapped son for the purpose of harvesting his organs.
Mrs. Navarro is the mother and only surviving family of her son Ruben, who was stricken with Adrenal Leukodystrophy, a rare disorder that left him confined to a wheelchair. The court papers allege that last January, 26-year old Ruben was transferred to the Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center due to a medical issue. Ms. Navarro went to visit him at the hospital where she was led to believe that Dr. Hootan Roozrokh was Ruben’s “treating doctor”. According to the complaint, he was actually working for a California organ-harvesting corporation.
Despite attempts by pro-homosexual advocates to paint the homosexual lifestyle as just another, normal, and healthy lifestyle choice, the FDA has renewed its 1983 policy that gay men cannot donate blood, due to the high-risk nature of living an active homosexual lifestyle.
This past Wednesday the FDA stated that, despite mounting opposition to the policy, it will for medical reasons continue to uphold its ban on men who live or who have lived an active homosexual life from donating blood.
According to the FDA, the ban is in place because, “A history of male-to-male sex is associated with an increased risk for the presence of and transmission of certain infectious diseases, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.”
The FDA policy relating to homosexual men is unique in its severity. While there is a lengthy list of criteria by which a potential donor may be deferred from donating blood (such as visiting particular African countries), such bans usually expire after a certain period of time. The ban on homosexual men, however, applies to any man who has ever had sex with another man, even once, subsequent to 1977.
The College of Physicians of Barcelona is opposing plans to allow the distribution of the abortifacient morning-after pill in pharmacies without a prescription.
Saying greater access to the pill will lead to more surgical abortions and more risks for the health of women, the College is opposing an effort by the Catalan Department of Health to make the pill available for over-the-counter sales, according to a report published by Spanish news service Noticias Globales.
Johannesburg – A child is raped every 24 minutes and every eight minutes one is molested in South Africa, trade union Solidarity said on Wednesday.
Forty percent of rapes reported were of children, said deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann ahead of a conference on Thursday to discuss crimes against children.
“According to a report that will be discussed at the conference, more than three children are murdered every day in South Africa.”
November 23rd, 2009
Telegraph: The “appalling” errors that contributed to Britain’s failure in Iraq are disclosed in the most detailed and damning set of leaks to emerge on the conflict.
On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph has obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports [...]
November 21st, 2009
Telegraph: A Russian Orthodox priest known for his outspoken criticism of Islam and his attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity was assassinated in his Moscow church by a masked gunman.
The gunman approached Father Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in his small wooden church in Moscow on Thursday night, checked his name and then shot the priest in [...]
November 20th, 2009
Al Jazeera: A British documentary has alleged that any future Conservative government will be disproportionately influenced by a powerful pro-Israeli lobby in the country.
Channel 4’s Dispatches programme on Monday said that at least half of the Conservative shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), one of a number of pro-Israel lobby [...]
November 19th, 2009
ROME, November 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The news about abortion, marriage, divorce and the birth rate in Europe is bad and only getting worse, a report recently presented to the EU said.
According to the report by the Institute for Family Policies abortion rates in Britain have leaped by a third among unmarried teenage girls and [...]
November 18th, 2009
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A West Bank rabbi has written a book that says Jews can kill non-Jews who threaten Israel.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar released the book Monday.
Shapira, head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, also said in “The King’s Torah” that it is permissible to kill children if they [...]
