Scotland’s largest grant-awarding charity has been forced to apologise for discriminating against two Christian groups.

The Robertson Trust, which distributes £20 million a year, was due to contest a case of religious discrimination in court this month.

Instead, it has apologised and agreed a settlement with the Stirling Free Church and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

The decision, recorded in a joint minute at Glasgow sheriff court, follows a two-year battle with the charity, which had cancelled bookings by both groups because they were for religious events.

In November 2019 Shonaig Macpherson, the former chairwoman of the trust, was “incandescent” with anger after she discovered that one of its venues had been booked by Stirling Free Church, where Kenneth Ferguson, the charity’s chief executive, was a senior lay figure.

An employment hearing heard that Macpherson repeatedly highlighted the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage. She heckled Ferguson and turned her back on him at a trust meeting the following January, and two months later he was sacked.

In a blow for the right to freedom of expression, a court in Slovenia has ruled that an NGO, whose pro-life bus ads had been removed in 2018, had not been discriminated against.

The state-owned bus company, contracted by the NGO, Zavod ŽIV!M, had agreed to display their ads for a couple of months. The municipal authorities, however, had deemed the messages “We love Life!”, “You are not alone”, and “I mourn my child”, accompanied by pictures of a happy family, a grieving mother and a woman holding a pregnancy test to be “intolerant”. They instructed the bus company to remove the ads after just over a week. The national equality body found that Zavod ŽIV!M had indeed been discriminated against, but the court now criticised that initial ruling, and asked the equality body to reexamine it.

The director of the NGO, Darja Pečnik, said they want to stand by women in crisis, especially those facing unplanned pregnancies or the loss of a child. “Our bus ads were meant to show them that they are not alone. We are disappointed that the court agreed with the bus company that removed the ads. Our message, which celebrates life, should be celebrated, and instead we have faced discrimination for it.”

A mandated Review of the operation of the 2018 Abortion Act has been commenced today by the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly. Pro-abortion groups are pressing to make the law even more liberal.

Speaking of the launch of the public consultation part of the Review, Minister Donnelly said they are now specifically seeking people’s views on the operation of the legislation.

“Separate in-depth qualitative research will consider the operation of the Act specifically from the service user and from the service provider perspectives, but service users and service providers are also most welcome to contribute their views through this public consultation process.”

Minister Donnelly added that when the Chair’s work is completed in 2022, “a final report will be submitted to me with any necessary recommendations. I look forward to hearing people’s views and to the outcome of this review process.”

The Pro-Life Campaign rejected the approach of the Minister saying his statement makes clear that the process is a ‘closed shop’ to different perspectives, and unless a truly independent chair is appointed, the Minister cannot expect there to be any faith in the process.

A coffin-shaped capsule that allows occupants to kill themselves has passed legal review in Switzerland, according to its creators.

The creator is Philip Nitschke of Exit International which believes that anyone who makes a ‘rational’ choice to die, ought to be able to avail of assisted suicide, whether they are ill or not.

The Sarco machine can be operated from the inside –conceivably just by blinking if the person suffers from locked-in syndrome – and works by reducing the oxygen level in the pod to below a critical level.

Some 1,300 people died by assisted suicide in Switzerland in 2020 using the services of the country’s two largest assisted suicide organisations.

Pope Francis pushed back against the European Commission’s internal guidelines, which have drawn fire for trying to “cancel Christmas,” likening these efforts to dictatorships as he warned against “ideological colonisation.”

Internal communications of the European Commission were leaked last week whereby a 30-page document, titled “Union of Equality,” advised members of the Commission avoid using the word “Christmas” in favour of “holidays.”

The document is “anachronistic,” Pope Francis said yesterday during a press conference aboard the papal flight returning from his four-day apostolic visit to Cyprus and Greece. “Throughout history many, many dictatorships tried to do it,” he added.

“Think of Napoleon: from there… Think of the Nazi dictatorship, the communist one… it is a fashion of a watered-down secularism, distilled water… But this is something that throughout [history] hasn’t worked”.

Francis also said the European Union must take on the ideals of its founding fathers and be careful of not “paving the road for ideological colonisation”.

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has apologised after referring to mothers as “postnatal people” in a set of recently-released ‘safer sleeping’ guidelines.

The guidance, published on Wednesday of last week, made no reference to women, instead referring to mothers as “postnatal people”.

RCM removed the guidance from its website on Thursday morning after it had received backlash on social media soon after it was published.

The apology tweeted by RCM read: “We would like to apologise that women are not mentioned in our recent safer sleeping guidance. This was a huge oversight on our part, especially as we are committed as an organisation to ensure that women are never erased from the narrative around pregnancy and birth.

“We have taken it down from our website while we revise and correct this omission.”

It’s not the first time a medical organisation has changed its terminology around biological sex. In September, the Lancet medical journal was accused of sexism after describing women as “bodies with vaginas” on its cover.

The export manager of a factory in Sialkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province was killed by a mob on 3 December after he was accused of desecrating posters bearing the name of the prophet Muhammad.

Pakistani news outlet Dawn reports that Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national identified in initial reports by CSW sources as a Hindu, was attacked by “hundreds of men and young boys” on the Wazirabad Road in Sialkot, who tortured the man to death before proceeding to burn his body.

According to a tweet from researcher and journalist Rabia Mehmood, Mr Diyawadana was reportedly killed after his colleagues at the Rajco Industry factory where he worked witnessed him tear off a piece of a poster which read “Labbaik Ya Hussain” (an expression meaning “I am here, O Hussain!” and commonly associated with Shi’a Islam).

The state is set to roll out a free nationwide STI home testing service in 2022 at a cost of €3 million a year.

In the period up to the end of 2019, before Covid-related lockdowns began, there were major increases in the number of STIs in Ireland.

The kits will test for chlamydia, gonorrhoea, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis and HIV. The scheme will be run with the help of SH:24, a free online sexual health service.

The programme will be based on a pilot scheme from earlier this year, which involved 13,749 kits being posted to people’s homes over a five-month period at a cost of €734,000.

As part of the programme, anyone aged 17 and older will be able to order a free STI test to their home. There will be a set number of kits available to order per day. Results will be communicated through the SH:24 clinical team by phone or text message. If follow-up testing or treatment is required, this will be provided for nothing by HSE public STI clinics. The service is aimed at individuals who do not have symptoms of an STI.

The initial pilot scheme had to be halted for a period after almost 5,000 orders were received in less than a day. A spokeswoman for SH:24 called the uptake in Ireland “unprecedented”.

Cohabiting partners should not have the same rights as married couples, according to a leading family campaigner.

Harry Benson of the UK’s Marriage Foundation was giving evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee in Westminster last week.

He noted the problems that arise from cohabiting partners not having the same sorts of rights and protections as equivalent married couples following either break-up or death, and acknowledged the tremendous injustices where, for example, a woman sacrifices her career to bring up children only to be left penniless when her partner walks out with all the money that he says is his.

While sympathising greatly with those situations, Benson told the committee that automatically providing marriage-like rights to cohabiting couples, risks undermining commitment and creating ever more family breakdown that affects couples and children, precisely the problem he says everyone is trying to avoid.

An Evangelical Lutheran Bishop in Finland, is facing trial in January for expressing traditional Christian teaching on human sexuality.

In April, Finland’s Prosecutor General charged Rev Dr Juhana Pohjola and the Christian Democrat MP Dr Päivi Räsänen with “incitement against a group of people” over the 2004 publication of a booklet which described sex outside of heterosexual marriage, including homosexual practice, as sinful.

In an interview with Christian Today, Dr Pohjola affirmed he is ready to go to prison rather than refrain from proclaiming his faith: “We have nothing to be afraid of when we fear God more than men. In truth and in love we are called to confess Christ Jesus and publicly teach the faith of the Church.

“We have to be ready to pay whatever the price is and be labelled by media as intolerant and lawless. We must defend our basic rights and use the freedom of expression we still have.

Although we feel the cultural pressure and intimidation, our main focus as Christians is not to wage cultural war but to share the grace, life and hope we have in Christ Jesus.”