Epoch Times – A Qantas employee, removed from her job after being deported from China for practising Falun Gong, was likely targeted by Chinese spies, says a representative of Falun Gong in Australia. Mr. John Deller, spokesman for the New South Wales Falun Dafa Association, said that Falun Gong practitioner Sheridan Genrich, a Qantas flight attendant, was stopped and interrogated before she was searched during a stopover in Beijing. Read Article
NPR – New research about a steep drop in circumcisions made headlines this past week. According to one federal researcher, circumcision rates in U.S. hospitals slid from 56 percent in 2006 to fewer than a third of boys born last year. Doctors caution that those numbers aren’t definitive — for instance, they don’t include circumcisions not covered by insurance policies or circumcisions performed in religious settings. Read article
Epoch Times – The Falun Dafa Information Center released a statement on Aug. 27 reporting that the Chinese police abducted a woman who died eight days later while in police custody. Yan Pingjun of Heibei, China is a 45-year-old Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioner. According to the center, “Falun Gong is a traditional-style Buddhist “qigong” practice, with roots in the Chinese heritage of cultivating the mind/body for health and spiritual growth.” It is now practiced in over 100 countries. Read Article
ABC – An official police investigation has found the British government and the Catholic Church colluded to cover up a Catholic priest’s suspected involvement in an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing that killed nine people in 1972. A report published overnight says the police had a wealth of intelligence linking Father James Chesney to numerous crimes, including the deadly bombings that killed nine people and injured 30 others at Claudy in County Londonderry on July 31, 1972. Read article
The Guardian – A record number of women are running in Afghanistan’s critical parliamentary elections next month despite many being inundated with threatening phone calls, including death threats from insurgents. Amid ever-rising violence, which some people fear could foster a repeat of last year’s catastrophic presidential election, women are struggling to campaign at all outside a few areas, poll monitors say. Even in Kabul, the capital, where the Guardian has interviewed a number of female candidates, women say they are facing daily obstruction from conservative hardliners. Read Article
BBC – Three weeks after Pakistan’s worst natural disaster began, many people are living in camps all around the country. Shmyalla Jawad, who is the gender advisor for the Plan International organisation in Pakistan, visited some of these camps in the Layyah district in Southern Punjab. She found out that apart from the dire conditions in the camp, women and girls are also facing a cultural challenge. Read article
Deutsche Welle – Liberal German-Turkish politician Serkan Toeren has called for a ban on the full-body veil worn by Muslim women. Toeren wants to follow in the model set by France and Belgium, which banned the burqa earlier this year. Read article
Guardian – Coalition ministers are to be warned today that their current plans to overhaul counter-terrorism powers risk tacitly condoning torture and banning a wide range of political and religious groups. The submission by the human rights campaigners Liberty to the government’s review of counter-terrorism legislation reiterates the group’s call for the existing anti-terrorist control order regime to be scrapped entirely. Liberty argues that the “unsafe and unfair” regime against terror suspects should be replaced by the use of intercept evidence in criminal cases, more prosecutions and a greater focus on the appropriate use of surveillance powers. Read Article
BBC – The Catholic Church is being sued in California by seven people who claim they were sexually abused by a priest several decades ago. The six women and one man accuse the Diocese of Oakland of negligence for hiring the Reverend Stephen Kiesle. They say it was known that there were multiple allegations of abuse against him. Read article
Epoch Times – Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua, due to arrive in Taiwan on Aug. 16 with a delegation of 1,000 communist cadres, may find himself facing a lawsuit. “We will be suing him,” said Chang Ching-Hsi, the Chairman of Taiwan Falun Dafa Association, in an interview with The Epoch Times. Guangdong is one of the provinces in China where Falun Gong practitioners are severely persecuted. Reported acts of violence against practitioners in Guandong labor camps intensified when Huang took charge as the Party Chief of Guangzhou City from 1999 to 2002. Huang deployed, commanded and controlled a wave of brutal persecution against practitioners in the region, say reports from World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG). Read article
Telegraph – The 23-year-old woman and 28-year-old man were killed because “they had an affair,” said Mohammad Ayob, the governor of Imam Sahib district in Kunduz province. “Two people were stoned to death by Taliban in Mullah Quli village late yesterday,” he said. The village is under the control of the Taliban. Mullah Quli resident Abdul Satar said about 100 people, most of them Taliban insurgents, gathered in the village on Sunday evening as a statement was read out saying the pair had confessed to their affair. He said the man was married to someone else, and the woman was engaged. Read Article
Guardian – Iran appears to be quietly changing the sentences of Iranians awaiting death by stoning to hanging after international outcry following the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two. Mariam Ghorbanzadeh, 25, who was six months’ pregnant and miscarried after being beaten up in Tabriz prison this week, was initially sentenced to death by stoning for adultery but her sentence has been commuted to hanging in a rapid judicial review. The decision is thought to have been driven by the Iranian authorities’ desire to avoid further international condemnation over the barbaric punishment. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – The Vatican has rejected the resignations of two Catholic bishops in Ireland who offered to quit in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal, the Archbishop of Dublin said. rchbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a letter to priests in his archdiocese that Auxiliary Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field will remain in their jobs but will be given “revised responsibilities”. The bishops presented their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI in December following a judge’s damning report on the Dublin archdiocese that found the Catholic Church concealed the abuse of children by priests for three decades. Read article
The Guardian – Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has stepped into the international outcry over Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, by offering his country as a refuge, a move which raised hopes her life will be spared. The surprise offer prompted an immediate reaction from Iran, which considers Brazil a key ally. Iranian officials softened their tone with Ashtiani’s family over the weekend and official media reported full details of the story for the first time.
Read article
AFP — Weekend violence across Iraq killed 60 people, officials said on Sunday, just days ahead of the start of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan when insurgents typically step up their attacks. The unrest has fuelled concerns about security here — more than 100 people have died so far this month — amid a massive pullout of American forces, although US officers insist that Iraqi soldiers and police are up to the task. Read Article
Guardian – The client of human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei has been sentenced to death in spite of retracted testimony. An 18-year-old Iranian is facing imminent execution on charges of homosexuality, even though he has no legal representation. Ebrahim Hamidi, who is not gay, was sentenced to death for lavat, or sodomy, on the basis of “judge’s knowledge”, a legal loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where there is no conclusive evidence. Read Article
AP — They hiked for more than 10 hours over rugged mountains — unarmed and without security — to bring medical care to isolated Afghan villagers until their humanitarian mission took a tragic turn. Ten members of the Christian medical team — six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton — were gunned down in a gruesome slaughter that the Taliban said they carried out, alleging the volunteers were spying and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. The gunmen spared an Afghan driver, who recited verses from the Islamic holy book Quran as he begged for his life. Read Article
Aljazeera – US authorities have approved the building of an Islamic culture centre and mosque in New York City, despite tensions over it being located near the site of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to deny landmark status to a building two blocks from the World Trade Center site that developers want to tear down and convert into an Islamic community centre that will include a mosque. Read article
On Saturday 31 July, the editor of www.OpenYourEyesNews.com, James Fairbairn, made a guest appearance on ABC720 Radio in Perth, Western Australia to discuss with host, James Lush, some of the key news events of recent days. The interview covered the following:
- Iraq
- Deforestation
- Church Sex Abuse Allegations
Check out our latest interview on our new Podcast channel and please subscribe to keep up to date with future episodes of OpenYourEyesNews
News Americas – S authorities have approved the building of an Islamic culture centre and mosque in New York City, despite tensions over it being located near the site of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to deny landmark status to a building two blocks from the World Trade Center site that developers want to tear down and convert into an Islamic community centre that will include a mosque. Read article
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali Dutch feminist activist, writer, and politician. She is a prominent critic of Islam, and her screenplay for Theo Van Gogh’s movie Submission led to multiple death threats. Our reporter, Boomerang, attended her one off talk in Perth last night. To read his review CLICK HERE
“Rights are for individuals, not for religions or beliefs. ‘Every human is equal’ does not mean that every belief is equal.” – Maryam Namazie
As voted for by OYEN readers on our Facebook page this week, selected from the daily Thoughts of The Day. Did you have your say?
The guardian – A former cellmate of a woman sentenced to death by stoning in Iran, who spent two years in prison with her and accompanied her to the court when she received the news of her punishment, has told the Guardian how the woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, fainted in shock after hearing the verdict. Read article
Reuters – The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a new trial of a polygamist leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, who was convicted of forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her first cousin. Warren Jeffs, 54, whose word was considered God’s will to thousands of followers, was sentenced in November 2007 to a term of 10 years to life in prison. The high court ruled, however, that a new trial was needed because the lower court judge gave faulty instructions to the jury. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he was very disappointed with the court decision. Read article
Epoch Times – On the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol at high noon on Thursday, about 500 Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners from around the world gathered in protest of the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of the meditation practice for the past 11 years. Members of Congress, human rights activists, and Christian organizations joined offering their support for a new dawn of religious freedom in China. Read Article
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