The Green Party has vowed in its manifesto to institute controversial guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, which include availability of puberty blockers for teenagers. This is despite strong criticism from the Cass Review in the UK which highlighted the lack of an evidence base for such drugs.

In their manifesto, the Greens pledge to “Implement a community-based, person-centred model of trans healthcare, ensuring universal access to evidence-based care. Our policy will be guided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.”

A Nigerian Bishop has called for action to tackle escalating insecurity in the country’s Benue State, which has led to the closure of over 15 parishes in his diocese alone.

Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe expressed concern about the constant reports of killings and kidnappings in the country, emphasizing the role of the Nigerian government to protect lives and property.

“Every day we must hear about killings and kidnappings. And it is not for the people to defend themselves because the protection of lives and properties is in the hands of the government,” the Catholic leader explained.

He said authorities in Nigeria should “do the needful thing,” adding: “We have been plunged into untold hardship. It is not just Makurdi but the whole of this country. As you travel from any part of this country … until you arrive, you are not safe.”

Anagbe, a member of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Claretians), warned that the prolonged closure of schools in affected areas could create a generation of future bandits and terrorists.

An ‘Assisted Dying’ bill was published yesterday in the UK to enable doctors to help terminally ill adults to kill themselves. Critics point out that when euthanasia is introduced, the grounds for it constantly expand pointing to examples like Canada, Belgium and Netherlands.

MPs will debate and vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29 November.

The bill would require those who apply for assisted suicide to be over the age of 18, a resident in England and Wales and registered with a GP for at least 12 months. It also requires they have the mental capacity to make a choice about ending their life; and express a “clear, settled and informed” wish, free from coercion or pressure, at every stage of the process.

The legislation will require two independent doctors to determine whether the person satisfies the criteria to take their own life. According to legal expert, Yuan Yi Zhu, one doctor can recommend the other and people seeking assisted suicide will be able to ‘shop around’ until they find two doctors.

A judge will also take evidence from at least one doctor, and could also question the terminally ill person before allowing self-administration of the medication.

The individual would be allowed to change their mind at any time, and no doctors would be obliged to take part in the process.

If all the criteria and safeguards are met, the substance to end someone’s life must be self-administered.

A group of Muslim extremists killed an evangelist in eastern Uganda after he and another Christian refused to convert to Islam, according to reports.

Three days into an evangelisation event at which 18 Muslims converted to Christianity, Islamists surrounded Emmanuel Dikusooka, a 29-year-old father of three children, and a fellow church member, Jack Mbulante, as they returned to their hotel.

Armed with swords, sticks and iron bars, the assailants forced the two to surrender their bags, which contained Bibles and other Christian books.

“They threw them all into the River Lumbuye, then ordered us to hold the Quran up that they had and told us to recite and swear in the name of Allah,” Mbulante told Morning Star News. “They tried to force us to renounce Jesus Christ and our faith and then embrace the Islamic faith. We openly refused, which angered them, and they hit Dikusooka with an iron bar on the head, and he fell down.”

Mbulante escaped by jumping into a river and swimming to safety, but Dikusooka succumbed to his injuries.

A donor-conceived woman has questioned the ethics of the fertility industry and the inadequacy of legislation in Ireland. Donor-conception means that you are conceived via either sperm donation, egg donation, or both. Frequently the gametes are purchased, not donated.

Journalist, Louise McLoughlin, who describes herself as “a product of donor-assisted IVF”, has spoken to hundreds of donor-conceived people across the world for her podcast ‘You Look Like Me’.

Writing in the Irish Independent she says she finds it hard to put aside her knowledge of “the dark side of this industry”.

“At the end of the day, fertility clinics are a business, and the endgame is a successful pregnancy that puts a baby in the arms of its clients — nothing more”.

She adds that Irish legislation “does not currently go far enough when it comes to protecting the people being created”.

For decades, she says the industry was allowed to run free unchecked — happily using various self-serving misconceptions.

“The once-prevalent myth that we wouldn’t want to know where we come from has been debunked. Promises of anonymous DNA have been shattered. Assurances that donor-conceived people fare well — even when lied to — have been revealed to be little more than an idyllic fantasy”.

While denying that IVF is morally unacceptable, she said “The fertility industry, however, might just be”.

The Slovak Parliament has issued a rebuke to its EU counterpart for having attempted to assert a right to abortion.

In April, the EU Parliament passed a resolution calling for abortion to be included in the EU’s charter of fundamental human rights.

However, last week the Slovak Parliament voted 78 to 40 that abortion is a matter of national sovereignty and therefore beyond the competence of the EU.

The motion expressed concern over “repeated efforts” of the European Parliament “to interfere with” the sovereignty of the member states of the European Union, citing abortion as an example and adding that issues “related to health policy fall within the competence of national states”.

Argentina’s bishops have hailed the country’s Supreme Court for protecting the rights of a child in a case involving surrogate motherhood.

The court rejected the request of a male couple who contracted the surrogate to be registered as the sole parents of the child at the expense of the birth mother.

Welcoming the “unprecedented exemplary ruling”, the Bishops’ noted the Court’s decision that “the mother is the one who gives birth, regardless of the subjective self-representations and private wishes of third parties.”

The Bishops’ also welcomed the Court urging the nation’s Legislature to “correct the lack of regulation”, so as to take into account the rights of all involved and to limit harm to “the most vulnerable, that is, poor women and children processed as objects of desire”.

Spain’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the refusal of a Catholic brotherhood to admit a woman amounted to illegal discrimination against her on the basis of her sex and her right to association.

In 2008, María Teresita Laborda Sanz requested to join a public association of the faithful founded in 1545 specifically for men.

In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that Laborda had not suffered any discrimination because “the purposes of [the brotherhood] being religious, it did not hold a dominant position in the economic, professional, or labour spheres, so no harm could be caused to the appellant, who could create a new religious association with the same purposes.”

However, rejecting this interpretation, the Constitutional Court has now said that while the association may be religious in nature, the prohibition of women “is not based on any reason of a religious or moral nature”.

Voters in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota on Tuesday night voted down major pro-abortion proposals in their states, while seven other states saw voters approve measures to expand abortion, in several cases codifying abortion access into the state constitution.

After back-to-back pro-life losses in half a dozen states since 2022, the rejection of the pro-abortion measures in three states on Tuesday represent the first victories at the ballot box for pro-life advocates since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Most notably, Florida voters failed to cross the super-majority threshold to adopt Amendment 4, which would have added a right to abortion before the point of “viability” to the state’s constitution and allowed for abortions later in pregnancy if deemed “necessary” for reasons of “health”.

The measure would have overturned the state’s Heartbeat Protection Act, one of the most pro-life laws in the country, which restricts abortion after six weeks of pregnancy with limited exceptions.

The measure failed after garnering 57pc of the vote; three short of the 60pc it needed to pass.

It was strongly opposed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Catholic Church in Florida.

A French radical feminist has offered an apology to Catholics for provocative protests after undergoing a change of heart.

In February 2013, Marguerite Stern burst, topless, into the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to celebrate, along with other feminist activists, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and express her hatred of the Church.

In a video published on YouTube on Oct. 31, the eve of All Saints’ Day, she offered her “sincere apologies” to Catholics hurt by her frequent public provocations when she was a Femen activist between 2012 and 2015, most notably, “during a campaign in favour of gay marriage.”

Stern’s change of heart began five years ago, when she turned against transgender ideology.