Tech Billionaire, Elon Musk, has warned that Ireland’s hate speech proposals would put Irish people at “the mercy” of politicians and bureaucrats who may criminalise speech they don’t like.

He said that “people should be concerned” that Irish politicians wanted to define “whatever they think hate speech is”, calling free speech “the bedrock of democracy”.

“You have to be able to speak your mind within the context of the law: without that you don’t have a real democracy”.

Mr Musk said that the default position of X, formerly Twitter, was to “challenge any legislation that infringes on the people’s ability to say what they want to say”.

“And we will also fund the legal fees of Irish citizens that want to challenge the Bill as well,” Mr Musk told Gript.

The Vatican is working on a document on human dignity that contains strong criticism of certain trends in contemporary society including gender ideology and commercial surrogacy.

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican’s prefect at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), told the Spanish news agency EFE that the new document will include “not only social issues but also a strong criticism of moral questions such as sex-change surgery, surrogacy, and gender ideology.”

The news comes days after Pope Francis spoke out against surrogacy, calling it “deplorable” and advocating a global ban. Almost all European countries ban commercial surrogacy and some ban it in all forms. Francis has also often criticised gender theory, referring to it as “dangerous” and “one of the most dangerous ideological colonisations” that blur the differences and value of men and women.

President Joe Biden’s administration has announced new plans to increase access to surgical abortion, chemical abortion, and contraceptives, with the move coming on the 51st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s now-overturned Roe v. Wade ruling. Democrat-run states often allow abortion up until birth for any reason. Republican-run states often ban abortion after six or 12 weeks.

The White House’s push includes new guidance to support surgical abortion through a federal law that guarantees “emergency medical treatment.” The plan also moves forward with prior executive actions to provide easier access to chemical abortions through federal regulation.

Medics should not report women believed to have illegally ended their pregnancy, under new guidance issued by a leading health body in Britain.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists issued the guidance following ‘the increasing number of police investigations’, into women who have late stage abortions.

Under the current rules NHS staff can breach patient confidentiality and inform police if it is in the ‘public interest’.

In its new guidance the RCOG said healthcare professionals should not call the police to report a suspected illegal abortion without the patient’s consent.

The guidance tells medical professionals that it is “never in the public interest to investigate a patient who is suspected of ending their own pregnancy”.

It adds: “Do not call the police or external agencies if a woman divulges, or you are suspicious, that she may have sought to end her own pregnancy unless she has given explicit consent to do so, or you consider it justified in her best interests.”

The Bishop of Elphin has asked the Irish Medical Council whether they now consider it acceptable for doctors to “take part in the deliberate killing of a patient” after a prohibition against doing so was dropped from the latest code of ethics.

Bishop Kevin Doran added that even if assisted suicide were to be legalised, “that of itself would never make the killing of patients ethical.”

As Chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Council for Life, he said had written to the president of the Medical Council seeking clarification on the matter, “but my letter has received neither a reply nor even an acknowledgment”.

He said there are numerous defects in the new guide, and cited the deletion of sections on Assisted Human Reproduction (47) and Abortion (48).

He asked: “Is this simply because the law in these areas has changed? Have actions which were previously unethical, and were quite simply ‘bad medicine’, suddenly become ethical because they are now legal?”

A barrister has claimed that the Government’s controversial hate speech bill could leave religious groups open to accusations of hate speech, and may also cause problems for people critical of gender ideology and abortion.

Grace Sullivan also warned that people may not find out how detrimental the Government’s new bill could be to their freedom of speech, until after the law has passed.

Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Ms Sullivan said that while the proposed bill will create an offence to “incite hatred” against an individual or a group on account of “certain protected characteristics” — nonetheless “there is no clear definition of what ‘inciting hatred’ means”.

There is also no requirement that comments are seen to be likely to cause physical harm to another person.

One of the protected characteristics in the bill is ‘gender’ which is defined in terms of radical new gender theory.

“One could conceive of disagreements with this very definition of gender,” she said. “Certainly a diverse number of religious groups would disagree with this definition.”

Three weeks after extremists murdered more than 300 people, burnt down entire villages and destroyed food supplies in coordinated attacks in Nigeria’s Plateau State, none of the perpetrators have been held to account, according to a report by Aid to the Church in Need.

Father Andrew Dewan, director of communications in the Pankshin Diocese, where most of the attacks took place told the charity that they had heard of some arrests but no prosecution, much to the frustration of survivors and victims’ families.

“We are used to this charade – attackers are often arrested and later set free. Politicians give speeches that contain no grain of truth. They make promises and pledges of rehabilitating and reinstating all those displaced back to their ancestral homes, but that is often not the case”, he said.

While the Court unanimously found the relevant pension legislation unconstitutional, 5 of the 7 judges said that the meaning of family under Article 41 of the Constitution does not include both marital and non-marital families.

Chief Justice Donal O’Donnell in his ruling said the distinction in the welfare legislation between a married and unmarried couple was “arbitrary and capricious”.

In a separate concurring judgment, Mr Justice Séamus Woulfe said the differential treatment of a family not based on marriage amounts to discrimination which cannot be objectively justified.

Mr Justice Gerard Hogan also held the relevant provision is unconstitutional because of the automatic exclusion of cohabiting couples of long-standing. He said the reference to parents in Article 42 must include all parents even though this section is about education.

A true plurality in society will support and encourage initiatives based on faith as well as those without faith, according to an Irish Catholic Bishop.

Bishop of Meath, Tom Deenihan, was speaking at Mass to open Catholic Schools Week 2024.

He said faith is too important to be diluted by ideology or political correctness and, “[o]ur students need a vision and the reassurance of a God who loves them, . . . They need a sense that we are born for more than what this life can offer.  That is the importance of a faith-based education.”

He added: “True plurality, be it in society or in education, will always support and encourage faith, as it will those who do not profess faith.  Plurality or inclusion cannot be against faith otherwise it is a mere ideology.”

At least 250 GPs have signed a letter to the Irish Medical Council stating that they are “gravely concerned” about a major change to the code of ethics governing doctors in Ireland that previously banned the deliberate killing of patients and has now lifted it. The development is being seen as a move towards paving the way to euthanasia. It was carried out without properly consulting doctors.

The recently updated 9th edition of the Medical Council’s ‘Guide to Professional Conduct’ also weakened protection of conscientious objection for doctors, removed all objection to abortion, and dropped guardrails for assisted human reproduction.

“Additionally we are concerned about doctors who have Freedom of Conscience positions in light of the change in section 42:9th edition functioning essentially to a mandatory requirement to act in a way that may contravene their conscience and potentially cause moral injury.”