Six children and a pregnant woman were among nine people that Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed in north-central Nigeria last Tuesday, sources said.

About a dozen herdsmen armed with rifles and machetes raided Hura-Maiyanga village, in the Miango area of Kwall District in Plateau state’s Bassa County, shouting jihadist slogans.

“They were armed with machetes and AK-47 rifles as they attacked us,” Hanatu John, a woman who survived the attack, told Morning Star News. “They attacked our village at about 8 p.m., and they were shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ as they shot into our houses.”

Dalyop Solomon Mwantiri, director of the Emancipation Centre for Crisis Victims in Nigeria (ECCVN), confirmed the attack.

“Hura hamlet of Maiyanga village in Kwall District, Miango Chiefdom in Bassa Local Government Area, Plateau state was invaded last night on April 14th by suspected armed Fulani herdsmen, who surrounded the entire area and unleashed mayhem on the unsuspecting natives,” Mwantiri told Morning Star News by text message. “As a result, nine persons were gruesomely killed and two injured while 33 houses were completely torched by fire. Most of the persons killed were children.”

Chinese officials demolished a government-run church on Easter Sunday after persecuting it for a long period of time.

Donghu Church, located in Xining, Qinghai province, could host up to 300 people at once and was one of the largest churches in the area.

The church was registered as a Three-Self, or state-run, church in 2003. In China, all religious institutions must, by law, register with the government and submit to its censorship and oversight.

Over the past few years, officials made several attempts to close the church but failed to follow through when the attendees protested. On the morning of April 12, the Chengxi District Urban Construction Bureau spent about two hours tearing the church down. Li Zhennan, the director of the local religious affairs bureau, and Wang Xiao, secretary of the Xining Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, oversaw the project.

Immediate action is needed to save the lives of residents in nursing homes, according to the Pro-Life Campaign.

The group were responding to the news that more than half of all deaths to date from Covid-19 in Ireland have occurred in nursing and residential homes.

PLC spokesperson, Maeve O’Hanlon called the figure “devastating” and said a clear picture is starting to emerge that protecting residents of nursing homes was not given the priority it deserved.

“There was the baffling HSE decision on 10th March to relax restrictions on visiting nursing homes, undoing the restrictions put in place by nursing home managers, followed by a clinical directive from the HSE to nursing home staff not to wear PPE equipment.

“The claim from nursing home representatives that the HSE were also actively poaching frontline staff from nursing homes to reassign to hospital settings as the Covid-19 crisis started, is very troubling. So too is the claim that acute hospital beds were freed up by moving patients to nursing homes, which in turn likely contributed to the spread of Covid-19 in these homes.

Ms O’Hanlon said the Government and National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) must be held more accountable for their actions.

“That accountability needs to happen immediately. With each passing day more and more lives are being lost. No stone should be left unturned to assemble the expertise needed to protect the lives of our beautiful and beloved elder and dependent citizens, who deserve nothing but the very best care and protection from this State.”

Hospitals are using a points system heavily weighted against the elderly to determine which patients should be sent to intensive care during the pandemic, according to the Irish Sun.

The patient evaluation process at major hospitals along the west coast ranks patients by age and medical conditions and sometimes even by gender.

Guidelines established by the Saolta Hospital Group show that anyone who scores more than eight points in the system should not be sent to ICU during the Covid-19 crisis.

Patients are given points for their age with people over 80 hit with seven points –two shy of the exclusion total – despite government ethical guidelines advising that patients should not be excluded from treatment because of their age.

Men also on occasion receive more points than women in the scoring system with one point given to males aged between 50 and 60 and no points given to females in the same age bracket.

A spokesperson for the HSE said: “All patients are given treatment based on their clinical need and the potential benefit of the treatment to the patient. These are the same principles that are used prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In a pandemic, while the ethical principles are the same, it is necessary to switch from a strictly medical ethics approach to decision-making (aimed at the individual level) towards a public health approach (population level) and this ethical framework takes cognisance of this.”

Chemical abortions are to be provided in Northern Ireland in an emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic, a pro-choice group has said.

The provision of lethal abortion drugs within the first nine weeks and six days of pregnancy will be arranged through existing sexual and reproductive health services in the Belfast, Northern and Western health and social care trusts.

Informing Choices NI launched what it termed a central access point to offer a pathway to obtaining an abortion.

The process will involve attending a local clinic to take the first abortion pill while the second set of pills can be taken at home.

In response, Bernadette Smyth, Director of Precious Life in Belfast, said: “The news that this horrific abortion pill is set to become available is devastating for unborn children and their mothers.”

She continued, “In response to the coronavirus crisis, instead of directing the focus towards saving lives, this so-called ‘charity’ has capitalised on the fear and crisis of abortion-vulnerable women to introduce the killing of their unborn children. This is about making money, and about pushing a radical abortion agenda at a time of crisis.”

The number of men and women marrying each other has fallen to its lowest level on record, official statistics show.

A total of 235,910 such marriages were registered in England and Wales in 2017- a decrease of 2.8% compared with 2016.

The number has fallen by 45% since 1972, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The figures also show less than a quarter (22%) of all marriages in 2017 were religious ceremonies – the lowest percentage on record.

Harry Benson, Research Director of the Marriage Foundation, said “the hidden damage to our social fabric caused by our indifference to marriage – and therefore commitment and stability – will continue long after we are free of coronavirus”.

He added: “Family is where we find our security. Our individual experiences of these long weeks of covid lockdown will almost certainly depend on how we feel about family life at home. Those of us that thrive will do so from stable, secure homes. Those of us that struggle will do so because we live with uncertainty, ambiguity and insecurity. The long term decline of marriage profoundly matters because marriage is especially strongly associated with the commitment, clarity, security and stability that all of us need now more than ever”.

An obstetrician has been sentenced to three years and six months in prison for killing a baby who “burst out crying” during abortion procedures.

The Seoul Central District Court on Friday convicted the doctor, 65, called ‘Yun’, of killing a 34-week-old baby and suspended Yun’s medical license for three years.

“Medical staff who participated in the operation have consistently said they heard the baby crying,” a three-judge panel of the court said in a statement. “It is clear that the doctor killed the baby, who was born alive.”

Yun, who ran a maternity clinic in Seoul, received 28 million won (€21,000) for the operation from the mother of a pregnant girl, 16. Yun was later indicted on murder charges for putting the live baby in a bucket of water.

Last year, the Constitutional Court ruled that the law banning abortion was unconstitutional and demanded the National Assembly revise it by the end of 2020.

The court ruled that abortion before 22 weeks of pregnancy should be decriminalised, saying women’s rights to self-determination outweighs an unborn child’s right to life.

A controversial sex education course that taught children as young as six about touching their own genitals has been pulled by a council following a backlash.

The “All About Me” syllabus, which was rolled out at over 200 primary schools across Warwickshire, proposed that children should learn that “lots of people like to tickle or stroke themselves as it might feel nice” including their “private parts”.

The syllabus reassures children that this is “really very normal” but adds that it is “not polite to do it when other people are about”. It recommends that children do this when they are alone, such as “in the bath or shower or in bed”.

But following an outcry from parents and religious groups, Warwickshire County Council has now axed the “All About Me” sex education course.

The Christian Institute had written to the council earlier this year saying it would take legal action over the “catalogue of errors” in the syllabus, including the assertion that gender identity “can be best understood as being a spectrum”.

Two recent articles in the New York Times portray the self-sacrifice of Catholic priests in Italy and the US during the current pandemic.

On Saturday last, two reporters filed a dispatch from Rome entitled “As They Console Coronavirus’s Victims, Italy’s Priests Are Dying, Too”.

The report notes that while doctors and nurses on the northern Italian front line have become symbols of sacrifice against an invisible enemy, priests and nuns have also joined the fight. It says: “Especially in deeply infected areas like Bergamo, they are risking, and sometimes giving, their lives to attend to the spiritual needs of the often older and devout Italians hardest hit by the virus.”

Meanwhile, opinion writer, Elizabeth Bruenig detailed the work of Dominican friars in New York.

She said their calling was to live in community and then go out to lay hands on the sick, but that all changed once the coronavirus struck. She mentions one friar, Fr Hugh Vincent Dyer, who decided to move into a nursing home to be with the residents and medical staff for the duration of the lockdown rather than be entirely physically absent.

Bishop of Elphin Kevin Doran has paid tribute to all who have continued to provide essential services during the Covid19 lockdown.

In his homily at the Easter Vigil mass, he said that “nurses, doctors, chaplains and other healthcare workers place their lives on the line in a way that might never have been imagined. Gardaí serving the public, risk being spat at in the street, just as Christ was. For ordinary men and women who work in shops, or drive delivery vans or public transport, going to work involves taking a risk for others”. Bishop Doran said it is not what happens to us that makes the difference; it is the generosity and the freedom with which we give ourselves. “There are many people today, including people who would not necessarily think of themselves as particularly religious; who are not Christian perhaps, but who are making enormous sacrifices. It is in them that we meet Christ today, whether or not they realise it”.