The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that an application over the long-running so-called “gay cake” case is inadmissible as arguments relating to the Convention were not raised or adjudicated on by the domestic courts.

The court has said that the decision is final.

In 2018, the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Northern Ireland gay rights activist Gareth Lee was not discriminated against when the Christian owners of a Belfast bakery refused to make him a cake iced with the slogan “Support Gay Marriage”.

Asher’s said the refusal had nothing to do with Lee’s sexual orientation, and everything to do with the political nature of the message. They would have refused to the same cake order for anyone irrespective of their sexual orientation, and would happily have fulfilled an order for Mr Lee had it not had a political message that contravened their deeply help religious beliefs about the nature of marriage.

A Christian nurse in the UK who was forced to quit her job after being told to remove her cross necklace was discriminated against, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Mary Onuoha, 61, was harassed and victimised by Croydon Health Services NHS Trust when she was told to stop wearing the cross due to an infection risk, according to the ruling.

It added this had created a “humiliating, hostile and threatening environment” for the nurse, breaching her human rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Mrs Onuoha resigned as an NHS theatre practitioner at Croydon University Hospital in south London in June 2020 following what she described as a two-year campaign against her when she refused to remove the cross.

The tribunal found the trust had constructively dismissed Mrs Onuoha from her job of 18 years.

The few remaining restrictions on abortion, including conscience protections for staff at Ireland’s hospitals, have been called into question by pro-choice campaigners.

Niall Behan, chief executive of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), called for a full decriminalisation of abortion.

Of the 19 maternity hospitals across Ireland, only ten provide full abortion ‘services’. Behan described this as “absolutely outrageous”.

Regarding the law in operation, he said there are a number of areas that need to be changed. “The most urgent and the most important for us right at the moment is the 12-week limit, which is excluding women from abortion care.”

Parliamentarians in the UK have compiled a dossier on the assisted suicide legislation that includes horror stories of how such laws have gone wrong in other jurisdictions.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dying Well, chaired by Danny Kruger MP, highlighted among others the case of Kurt Huschle in Colorado.

Diagnosed with incurable bile-duct cancer at 58, he was eligible for assisted suicide as he was thought to have less than six months left to live. Subsequently, he was prescribed a cocktail of lethal drugs and found a pharmacy that was able to supply it in liquid form. He and his wife were told that the process from ingestion to death would take two to four hours.

However, contrary to expectations, he did not pass away peacefully.

“With every sip he’s choking and coughing, choking and coughing”, his wife Susan said.

After 20 minutes, he began to gasp unevenly. It seemed that he had lost consciousness but more than four hours after taking the drug, he was still alive. Frightened, Susan realised that her husband might still be partially conscious and able to hear her. She then called a doctor asking for help.

That evening, more than 8 hours after ingesting the lethal drug, Kurt sat in bed, retched and stopped breathing. Susan said she had not been able to say a peaceful farewell, nor had it been the goodbye they wanted.

Israel announced on Tuesday that the country will begin allowing same-sex couples, single fathers and transgender individuals to pursue parental surrogacy.

The news was delivered by Israeli health minister Nitzan Horowitz, who said the rules will take effect on Jan. 11.

The health ministry said the new rules will allow ‘equal access’ to surrogacy across Israel.

Parenting children through surrogacy had previously been banned for same-sex couples, single men and transgender people in Israel.

Israel’s highest court ruled last February that the ban was unconstitutional and current laws stipulate that surrogacy for parenthood is open only to heterosexual married couples or single women who have a genetic connection to the baby.

“The sweeping exclusion of homosexual men from the use of surrogacy is viewed as ‘suspicious’ discrimination, suggesting that this part of the population is inferior,” Supreme Court President Esther Hayut and Justices Hanan Melcer and Neal Hendel wrote at the time.

Sinn Fein’s leader has called for legislators to make a decision on euthanasia, saying the political system has “dragged its heels” on the issue.

Mary Lou McDonald said that campaigners such as Vicky Phelan had made “a really compelling case”. The Irish College of Psychiatrists issued a major policy document just before Christmas opposing assisted suicide.

Ms McDonald added that although the issue was “fraught and sensitive”, that did not absolve legislators from taking action and that the debate must not drag on “endlessly for another decade”.

McDonald added: “I think we are now at a point where we need to have the conversation. We need to listen to the evidence, we need to listen to all of the perspectives and then we need to take a decision.”

McDonald said that while she had yet to take a firm position on the issue, a decision was needed sooner rather than later. “I have an open mind on it,” she said. “I don’t have a fixed or a firm view, except that the political system has dragged its heels.”

Parliament approved the new law in December, following a constitutional court ruling on the issue.

The new rules explicitly exclude minors or those with mental health conditions.

An absolute ban on assisted suicide was lifted by a federal court last year, which ruled that it “violated the right of self-determination”.

But the legal punishment up to that point, up to five years in prison, will remain in place for those who kill another person at their “serious and emphatic request”.

The Indian government has blocked Mother Teresa’s charity from receiving funds from abroad in a decision made on Christmas Day.

The rejection of the application comes less than two weeks after Hindu hardliners accused the charity of carrying out forced conversions of Hindus to Christianity in a home for girls it runs in Vadodara in the state of Gujarat.

The accusations, which the charity fiercely denies, were that the charity was “luring” poor young Hindu women into becoming Christian by forcing them to read Christian texts and take part in Christian prayer.

A spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity rejected all the allegations as unfounded. “We have not converted anyone or forced anyone to marry into Christian faith,” he said.

The accusation come amid a wave of anti-Christian intolerance and violence that has been spreading across India. Christian pastors have been attacked and church services violently disrupted in recent months as anti-Christian hysteria has grown, and over Christmas there was an unprecedented spate of attacks against the Christian community.

The refusal by the government, which is ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), to grant a new licence to Mother Teresa’s charity has been seen by many as indicative of a growing hostility towards Christian organisations operating in India.

In a statement on Monday, the Missionaries of Charity confirmed that its renewal application had been denied, and that it would not operate any foreign funding accounts “until the matter is resolved”.

Businessman Declan Ganley’s High Court challenge to the legality of the ban on attending public religious worship which operated at stages during the Covid-19 emergency has been dismissed.

Mr Justice Charles Meenan ruled the challenge was now moot, or pointless.

Mr Ganley had argued that although the disputed regulations have lapsed, the case raised important legal issues about the balance between the right to public worship and public health and the issues could arise again in the future. To not litigate them in court would mean there was no “right to an effective remedy”, as provided by Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, the judge said the constitutional rights to the free practice of religion are not absolute and restrictions must be “proportionate” to the circumstances of a given time and place which depend on the extent and effects of the particular disease.

Finding that the now rescinded restrictions were disproportionate would be of little value in considering the legality of similar restrictions that could be introduced in the future to deal with a different threat, he said.

He was satisfied Mr Ganley’s application was moot and should be dismissed.