Parents will have the option of removing their children from sex-ed classes in the state of Ontario as the province rolls out a new curriculum that moves topics of gender identity and gender expression to later grades, Ontario’s Education Minister says.

The revised health and physical education curriculum, released on Wednesday, includes a provision that gives families three weeks notice of when sex-ed lessons will be taught, and up to five school days before the class to provide school boards with an exemption notice for their children.

Under a previous plan, an opt-out process was available, but some boards, including the Toronto District School Board and the Peel District School Board, would not entertain requests to let students miss classes about sexual orientation, gender identity or similar issues because those areas are protected under the human-rights code.

“We do believe that parents have an important say in some of the more sensitive issues and subject matters that get taught to their children,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said in an interview on Tuesday. He added later: “The overwhelming [number] of parents in this province want their kids to learn a modern curriculum that teaches respect and embraces the principles that define this nation. And I think we do that in this curriculum. But we also ensure that parents have a say.”

Several provinces, including British Colombia and Alberta, also have an opt-out process for sex-ed lessons.

Newly released figures confirm that churches are being attacked almost every second day in the North of Ireland.

Christian Action Research and Education (CARE) NI said there were 445 recorded cases of criminal damage in the past three years, according to figures that came from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The attacks have hit religious buildings, churchyards and cemeteries and have happened in every one of Northern Ireland’s 11 policing districts.

The charity has called on political parties to help set up a fund for extra security for churches and other religious buildings, similar to a scheme that already exists in England and Wales.

Created in July 2016, the places of worship (POW) protective security funding scheme provides financial resources to religious organisations, helping them buy security measures such as CCTV, fencing and lighting.

Dr Alistair McCracken, clerk of session at Saintfield Road Presbyterian Church, said he would support any government measures to protect churches.

The UK Court of Appeal has upheld an exclusion zone outside of an abortion centre in Ealing, London. The appellant, Alina Dulgheriu, has said she will appeal to the Supreme Court. In Ireland, plans to introduce such zones outside all abortion facilities have stalled for now.

The Court found that the appellant’s rights to assembly, religion, thought, expression and the reception of information were violated by the Ealing Public Space Protection Order (PSPO). Nevertheless they ruled that such violations were justified because of the right to privacy of Marie Stopes attendees not to be seen in public.

Alina Dulgheriu, a mother who herself had been helped by a local vigil, unsuccessfully challenged the order at the High Court last July after Ealing Council introduced an exclusion zone around the Marie Stopes abortion centre. Pro-life critics call them ‘censorship zones’.

Alina said: “My little girl is here today because of the real practical and emotional support that I was given by a group outside a Marie Stopes centre, and I am going to appeal this decision to ensure that women in Ealing and all across the country do not have this vital support option removed.”

Long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs), such as the coil and the contraceptive implant “bar”, should be at the centre of a “fully State-funded contraception scheme”, a leading women’s health advocate has said. There is no evidence that State-funded contraception reduces abortion rates in the general population.

Alison Begas, chief executive of the Dublin Well Woman Centre, said contraception should be available free of charge alongside access to free abortion services adding there was a “growing demand” for LARCs as the most effective forms of contraception. The increases are detailed in the centre’s 2018 annual report published on Tuesday.

“Cost, however, is a major barrier to women accessing LARCs,” she said.

While the contraceptive pill, which must be taken daily, costs about €7 a month plus a six-monthly doctor-consultation fee of about €50, the intra-uterine coil and the contraceptive bar cost about €300 and €260 respectively, including consultations and insertion.

The coil, inserted into the uterus, and the “bar”, inserted under the skin in the upper arm, provide almost 100 per cent protection for between three and 10 years after insertion.

Planned Parenthood director, Dr Leana Wen, was sacked after less than a year leading the company, for not prioritising abortion enough.

Starting in September 2018, Dr Wen led Planned Parenthood – which performed 332,757 abortions in the 2017/2018 fiscal year making it the largest abortion provider in the USA – until July of this year.

Speaking to the New York Times she said: “There was immediate criticism [after her hiring] that I did not prioritize abortion enough. While I am passionately committed to protecting abortion access, I do not view it as a stand-alone issue… For me, as a physician, it was also simply good medical care to treat the whole patient.”

“Perhaps the greatest area of tension was over our work to be inclusive of those with nuanced views about abortion,” she wrote. “I reached out to people who wrestle with abortion’s moral complexities,” she added.

Dr Wen’s sacking comes at the same time as increasing numbers of Planned Parenthood employees are leaving the company due to the fact that it company seems to put financial concerns over quality patient care.

A child born through IVF and surrogacy has turned out to be not genetically related to the couple who commissioned it. Blaming a ‘mix-up’ at the IVF clinic they used, the couple posted their situation on an internet message board.

The anonymous father, who is thought to be American, explained that the couple decided to pay a surrogate ‘lots of money’ to have a child.

He continued that he and his wife were ‘excited’ but when the baby was born they realised ‘something was wrong.’

‘The baby had Asian features, black hair and brown eyes when we are both white, blonde folks with blue eyes.

‘We immediately brought up the issue with the doctors and asked for a DNA test. I am not the father,’ he added.

He further wrote that he and his wife are ‘devastated’ and that the surrogacy and sperm bank did an investigation and told the pair that there was an ‘extremely rare’ mix-up and offered the couple financial compensation, but only if they didn’t go to the media about it or sue.

The father admitted he was thinking of taking legal action against the clinic anyway and not keep the baby. However, he added that the surrogate mother cannot keep the child as she already has five.

The case is similar to an Irish case that came before the courts in 2016. In that instance, an Irish couple commissioned a child through a foreign surrogacy arrangement but discovered after they had brought the child home that they had no genetic relationship to it. The result of that case was never publicised.

School patron bodies have been invited to apply for the patronage of six new post-primary schools to be established next year.

The six new schools are being set up to meet the demand from growing populations in parts of Greater Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow.

Parents whose children will be starting first year from 2020-2024 and who are living in the areas listed will be eligible to make their preferences known in an online survey carried out by the Online Patronage Process System (OPPS).

The patronage process for new schools is overseen by the New Schools Establishment Group, which was established in 2011 to advise the Minister.

An Iraqi church damaged and defaced by the Islamic State in 2014 was rededicated last Thursday for the parish’s celebration of the Feast of the Assumption of Mary.

The Syriac Catholic Church of Mar Behnam and Mart Sarah in the Iraqi city of Qaraqosh welcomed Archbishop Petros Mouche of Mosul, priests, and the local Catholic community to celebrate the solemnity.

Archbishop Mouche rededicated the church’s altar, which had been burned by the Islamic State. After renonvations and rebuilding, the interior of the church, once charred black by fire, has been painted white.

Five years ago on the August Feast of the Transfiguration, the Islamic State devastated the city of Qaraqosh in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains causing Christians to flee the region.

“In 2014 we left our churches and our homes. The city had about 50,000 Christian inhabitants,” Fr. George Jahola told Vatican News in an interview published Aug. 15.

Now the Christian population in the city has been reduced to half of what it was. About 26,000 Christians have returned to Qaraqosh, Jahola explained.

The Church of Mar Behnam and Mart Sarah was charred black and its bell tower was demolished. “But we never stopped imagining how beautiful our church would be, once fixed,” Fr. Jahola said.

The Charities Regulator has received an application to facilitate the transfer of the ownership of the site designated for the €350m National Maternity Hospital.

Currently, the Religious sisters of Charity own St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG) which includes St Vincent’s Hospital. They had announced that a new company limited by guarantee, with charitable status, St Vincent’s Holdings CLG, would be set up and made the sole owner of the site upon which the new Maternity Hospital would be built. The Sisters additionally had promised that they would relinquish all ownership and interest in the new company which will have no beneficial owner. Current directors of SVHG will serve as the first directors of the new company.

“An application for charitable status has been made by this entity,” a spokeswoman for the regulator said last week.

A spokeswoman for SVHG said the group “commenced the application process for charitable status for the new St Vincent’s Holdings CLG in December 2018 and this is progressing”. She said the new hospital “will be managed and operated by a new company, the NMH DAC, under an operating licence from the state”.

Ireland’s youngest parish priest has been appointed at the age of only 32 years.

Fr Conor McGrath was curate in Drumbo and Carryduff prior to his new appointment as parish priest of Glenravel in Ballymena.

Fr Conor studied history and philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. As well as training at St Malachy’s Seminary, he read theology at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome and was ordained in July 2012 at St Bernard’s Church, Glengormley.

Of his new appointment, Fr Conor said: “It’s a lot of responsibility and it will be a big change but I am looking forward to it.”

He added that while “in some respects” his new position has placed a lot of weight on his shoulders, he is trusting in God’s providence to take care of him.

Fr Conor’s move to his new parish is part of the Down and Connor diocesan changes announced by Bishop Noel Treanor who was appealed for more men to consider the religious life given the continuing decline of clergy numbers throughout Ireland.

“Undoubtedly, the increasing age profile of clergy and declining numbers of available priests has created its own challenge in fulfilling the Church’s mission and ministry, a challenge which our clergy respond to on a daily basis with generosity and faith-filled dedication,” the bishop said.