'Gay cake' appeal: Christian bakers Ashers lose appeal

The Christian owners of a Northern Ireland bakery have lost their appeal against a ruling that their refusal to make a "gay cake" was discriminatory.

Appeal court judges said that, under law, the bakers were not allowed to provide a service only to people who agreed with their religious beliefs.

Two years ago, the family-run firm refused to make a cake saying: "Support Gay Marriage".

It had been ordered by gay rights activist Gareth Lee.

The firm argued that the cake's message was against the bakers' religious views.

Reacting to the ruling, Daniel McArthur from Ashers said he was "extremely disappointed".

He said it undermined "democratic freedom, religious freedom and free speech".

"If equality law means people can be punished for politely refusing to support other people's causes then equality law needs to change," he said.

"We had served Mr Lee before and we would be happy to serve him again.

"The judges accepted that we did not know that Mr Lee was gay and that he was not the reason we declined the order.

"We have always said it was not about the customer, it was about the message."

Witches on Halloween cake

In court on Monday, three judges said it did not follow that icing a message meant you supported that message.

In their ruling, they said: "The fact that a baker provides a cake for a particular team or portrays witches on a Halloween cake does not indicate any support for either."

The judges also said that Ashers would not have objected to a cake carrying the message: "Support Heterosexual Marriage" or indeed "Support Marriage".

"We accept that it was the use of the word 'gay' in the context of the message which prevented the order from being fulfilled," they said.

"The reason that the order was cancelled was that the appellants would not provide a cake with a message supporting a right to marry for those of a particular sexual orientation.

"This was a case of association with the gay and bisexual community and the protected personal characteristic was the sexual orientation of that community.

"Accordingly this was direct discrimination."

Speaking publicly for the first time about the case, Mr Lee said he was both "relieved" and "grateful to the appeal court judges."

Michael Wardlow, from the Equality Commission, said the appeal court ruling against Ashers bakery was extremely significant and clarified the law.

"The reason that we've got law is to protect people so we can all receive the same treatment," he added.

"The judgement today was very clear. It said unequivocally, faith is important, but faith cannot set aside equality legislation that has been long fought."

The appeal court upheld the original court's decision that Ashers in County Antrim discriminated against Mr Lee.

At that time, the judge said she accepted that Ashers had "genuine and deeply held" religious views, but said the business was not above the law.

The family's appeal was heard in May, but the judgement was reserved.

Source: BBC

PHOTOS: Leah Brown crowned Miss Malaika Ghana 2016

21-year-old Leah Brown has been crowned Miss Malaika Ghana 2016 at a night of fierce competition combined with talent, beauty and wit.

The University of Ghana Political Science and French student beat nine other contestants to win the crown at this year’s event at the National Theatre in Accra Saturday night.

Leah Brown drove home a brand-new Renault Captur Hatchback as her prize for winning. And also received one year wardrobe supply of clothes, a trip to Dubai and a $10,000 education scholarship.

The crowing of this year’s winner follows 13 weeks of intensive grooming and mentoring by the organisers, Charterhouse.

Amanda Edem Fiawosime, a Business Administration (Insurance) student at the University of Ghana and Delsey Hamilton Yankah, a Business Management student at the University of Cape Coast emerged first and second runner ups respectively.

MzVee, Joey B and Lil Shaker provided an extra touch of entertainment.

SA to withdraw from international criminal court

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South Africa is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, according to a document seen by Reuters on Thursday, a move which would take effect one year after notice is formally received by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

A UN spokesperson declined to confirm receipt of the document, which is signed by South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and dated 19 October.

“The Republic of South Africa has found that its obligations with respect to the peaceful resolution of conflicts at times are incompatible with the interpretation given by the International Criminal Court,” according to the document.

The South African mission to the United Nations was not immediately available to comment on the document.

South Africa’s Justice Minister Michael Masutha is expected to hold a briefing on the matter in Pretoria this morning.

The International Criminal Court, which opened in July 2002 and has 124 member states, is the first legal body with permanent international jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Burundi appeared set to become the first state to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty establishing the global court, after its parliament voted last week to leave. President Pierre Nkurunziza signed a decree on Tuesday, but the United Nations has not yet been officially notified.

South Africa said a year ago that it planned to leave the International Criminal Court after its government faced criticism for ignoring a court order to arrest Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is accused of genocide and war crimes, when he visited the country last year.

Several African countries have expressed concern that the focus of The Hague-based court has been on Africa rather than elsewhere in the world.

“The Republic of South Africa is committed to fight impunity and to bring those who commit atrocities and international crimes to justice and as a founding member of the African Union promotes international human rights and the peaceful resolution of conflicts on the African continent,” the document said.

“In complex and multi-faceted peace negotiations and sensitive post-conflict situations, peace and justice must be viewed as complementary and not mutually exclusive,” the South African document said.

–

Source: Ewn.com

Obama : Trump vote remarks ‘dangerous’

President Barack Obama has said Republican Donald Trump’s insistence that he might not accept the election result is “dangerous”.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Miami for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the president said Mr Trump’s comments undermined American democracy.

Mr Trump refused in a televised debate to say he would accept the outcome of the election on 8 November.

He later said he would accept a “clear” result but left a challenge open.

Speaking in Ohio on Thursday, Mr Trump said, with a grin: “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election – if I win.”

In the same speech, he said he would accept a clear election result but reserved the right to file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable one.

Hours later, the president said that sowing the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of US elections provided a boost to the country’s enemies.

“You’re doing the work of our adversaries for them, because our democracy depends on people knowing that their vote matters,” said Mr Obama.

Mr Trump has been heavily criticised by many in his own party by suggesting he might not accept the election result.

For days, he has claimed the election is rigged against him, due to media bias and voter fraud.

During Wednesday night’s debate with Mrs Clinton, when moderator Chris Wallace asked Mr Trump if he would accept losing to her, the Republican nominee said he would “keep you in suspense”.

Mr Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, later insisted that the candidate had meant he would not concede until the “results are actually known”.

Republican Senator John McCain, who lost to Mr Obama eight years ago, said: “A concession isn’t just an exercise in graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people, a respect that is every American leader’s first responsibility.”

First Lady Michelle Obama also joined the attack on Thursday, saying “you do not keep American democracy in suspense”.

With the Clinton camp – Kim Ghattas, BBC News

Hillary Clinton walked on to her campaign plane to the cheering and clapping of her aides.  

        

She told reporters she was relieved and grateful and joked there would be “no more naps”- a reference to Trump’s repeated description of her prep days off the campaign trail as naps.

Mrs Clinton’s stand-in for Mr Trump during the mock debates was one of her close aides, Philippe Reines, who took the role so seriously that he wore Trump cufflinks, shoe lifts and the same red tie as Mr Trump. After the debate, Mrs Clinton and Mr Reines embraced and he called her a “badass hombre”.

Clinton aides said she would continue to highlight Mr Trump’s refusal to pledge he would accept the results of the election. But would it be a real crisis on election day? Not if the result was a decisive win, they seemed to quietly indicate.

If Mrs Clinton and her team felt that she had closed the deal on stage, they kept their confidence in check. But the mood on the plane was certainly relaxed.

At the Ohio rally, Mr Trump also reiterated a claim he made during the debate, that Mrs Clinton and President Obama were responsible for inciting violence at a Chicago rally earlier this year.

The crowd erupted into cheers of: “Lock her up!”

During the debate, he called Mrs Clinton a “nasty woman”.

Mr Trump has trailed Mrs Clinton in the polls after facing damaging fallout over a video that emerged of him making obscene remarks about groping women.

When asked to address the allegations made against him by several women in the wake of the video, Mr Trump said the claims had been “largely debunked”.

Mr Trump’s comments come after a 10th woman came forward to accuse him of sexual assault on Thursday at a news conference.

Karena Virginia said Mr Trump allegedly touched her breast at the US Open in 1998 and made offensive comments about her to a group of men.

The two candidates are scheduled to appear at a charity dinner on Thursday night in New York.

Polls suggest Mrs Clinton is ahead nationally and in key battleground states.

Source: BBC

President Mahama: “Ahwene pa nkasa”

Someone please “invite [President Mahama] to stop whining” or quit pulling the Trump-card. May be both.

Ghana's President Mahama

And also remind him “Ahwene pa nkasa” [good beads do not talk/market themselves]: that the “good performance” of his government would certainly get noticed by the good people of Ghana if they deserve to be acknowledged.

African beads

He has on most campaign platforms criticized opposition parties particularly the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for belittling his government’s achievements.

And the media has not been spared from what is often his propaganda denunciations on campaign platforms.

President John Mahama on Tuesday October 18 suggested the media has been bias towards his government citing unnamed “certain group [that] has taken control of the media” who either stretch the truth or repel information of the better Ghana agenda from reaching the masses.

“We have taken access to water from 58 percent in 2008 to 78 percent today. Small town water systems, boreholes all across this country have been constructed. We have eradicated guinea worm”, he said in an exclusive interview with Ovation International Flagstaff Magazine at the House in Accra.

And says his government's achievements are not reaching Ghanaians because some persons in the media are sieving them out insisting if the media would be balance and objective in their reportage it would be the reverse.

"His [Akufo-Addo] thinking of Kasoa Interchange is that it is just a bridge. Kasoa Interchange is made up of three bridges. There is a main interchange and then two bridges to enable the people of East Kasoa and West Kasoa cross to the other halves of the city”, myjoyonline.com reported the president as saying.

For a sitting president to cry foul – “I can’t think far”: it is beyond tasteless.

If President John Mahama sees himself at the losing end after the December 7 General Elections the media would be the last to blame. Perhaps never.

Because the country’s media have among other things failed to provide editorial opinions on the presidential candidates and their so-called achievements to propel its agenda setting role: the media has the responsibility to make a clear case base on facts as to which presidential candidate is best to be the country's commander-in-chief.

For now - the president has ample time to get his achievements and campaign messages to the people. May be.

He should spare our ears the failures of his cocky surrogates and communicators.

This write up has been updated.

By Crabbe Nathaniel/cmcghana.blogspot.com

Indonesian leader vows to 'wipe out paedophilia' by castrating and executing sex offenders

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has defended the introduction of castration and the death penalty for paedophiles.

His parliament last week voted to introduce the tough new measures and the leader has spoken of the country's 'no compromise' approach to sex crimes.

'Our constitution respects human rights, but when it comes to sexual crimes there is no compromise.

'In my opinion, chemical castration, if we enforce it consistently, will reduce sex crimes and wipe them out over time,' he said.

The emergency decree was introduced following an outcry in the aftermath of the fatal gang-rape of a schoolgirl.   

Widodo defended introducing chemical castration, a decision that has sparked anger from human rights activists and the Indonesian Doctors Association, which has said its members will not perform the treatment.

He told the BBC the government 'will hand out the maximum penalty' for sex crimes. 

Twelve of the men accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Bengkulu Province, Indonesia in April were seen hiding their faces as they emerged from a police cell guided by a plain clothed officer.

Yuyun (above right in a family photograph released by her mother) was walking home from school when she was killed

Indonesia is among a small group of places worldwide which use the measure, including Poland and some states in the USA.

In 2011 South Korea became the first Asian country to legalise the treatment.

Chemical castration involves using drugs to reduce libido and sex drive.

Widodo was spurred into action after the murder and gang-rape in April of a 14-year-old girl Yuyun.

She was set upon by a gang of drunken men and boys as she walked home from school on the western island of Sumatra.

The leader of the gang was sentenced to death last month after being found guilty of premeditated murder, a crime already punishable by death before the new laws were introduced.

Other members of the gang have been jailed.

Source: GARETH DAVIES FOR MAILONLINE

There’s no media conspiracy against Trump

Source: Robert J. Samuelson | The Washington Post

Date: 19-10-2016 Time: 11:10:05:pm

Regardless of who wins the election, the press — or, at any rate, what used to be called the “mainstream” media — may be the big loser. Donald Trump is making a case that he’s the victim of an orchestrated media campaign to defeat him, and although the charge is not true, it may stick among his devoted followers.

We live in an era of fragmented news sources. People can pick not only what’s interesting and agreeable but also what confirms their opinions, convictions, and biases. There are more choices than ever. A new Pew survey finds that adults “often” get their news from the following sources: TV, including cable (57 percent); online, including social media and smartphones (38 percent); radio (25 percent); and print newspapers (20 percent).

News has become akin to religion; it’s accepted or rejected as a matter of faith, depending on the source. Consider another recent Pew poll. Respondents were asked whether on major issues Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters agree on basic facts, even if they disagree on solutions. The finding: 81 percent said they disagree even on basic facts.

Trump is now ratcheting up this process to a new level of mistrust. The essence of his charge is that most mainstream media reporters and editors (the type of people who work at CNN, The Washington Post and the New York Times) don’t like him, don’t agree with him, or both, and have skewed their coverage to engineer his defeat. There is cooperation, implicit or explicit, with the Clinton campaign.

Trump is right in one sense: Much of the press dislikes him.

Take me as an example. I’m a slightly right-of-center columnist at The Post. I am no great fan of Clinton, but I believe that President Trump would be a disaster. He doesn’t know anything about governing, is proud of his ignorance, stirs hatred of his critics and would throw his opponent (Clinton) in jail. This last threat is one we associate with dictatorships, not American democracy.

I suspect that most Post reporters and editors feel this way, though I have no hard evidence. (For what it’s worth, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity has disclosed that 480 “journalists” have made nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions, more than 96 percent of which went to Clinton. Many news organizations, including The Post and the New York Times, bar contributions and involvement in partisan politics.)

But this doesn’t mean the press has hatched a conscious campaign to defeat Trump. The counterweight to personal preference is a professional ethos that emphasizes evenhandedness — at least among mainstream media organizations. Note also that editorial pages are run separately from the news pages.

Let’s put this in context. All through the primaries, Trump skillfully played the media to get free airtime. He also used the media as a whipping boy, part of the dreaded “elite” that is allegedly ruining America. For these months, the media was Trump’s unwitting ally.

Now, the landscape has changed. Trump is the subject of blanket coverage, much of it unfavorable. He apparently didn’t pay federal income taxes for many years; he not only has made lewd comments about women but (as my colleague Eugene Robinson suggests) he also appears to be a sexual predator; he says nice things about Vladimir Putin and ignores his secret national-security briefings.

These stories are anti-Trump, but they’re not unfair. They address a central issue in any presidential election: personal character. If Trump dislikes the results, he has mostly himself to blame, because he has been mainly responsible for projecting and defining himself. If a free press is not supposed to explore questions of character and political philosophy, what is it supposed to do?

True, if the exploration were one-sided, the media would be playing favorites. But the press has also focused on Clinton’s embarrassments. Her use of a private email server has generated hundreds of stories; so have potential conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation, as have her lucrative speaking gigs. But Clinton’s sins — secretiveness, arrogance, greed — seem less offensive than Trump’s, which include lying, bigotry and alleged sexual misconduct.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes there's a global conspiracy to stop him from becoming president – but it's not the first time he's pushed unfounded theories. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Should Trump win, he will likely use his new powers to attack the media he dislikes. If he loses, the media — or, at any rate, much of it — will be cast as a villain. Defeat will justify more false claims that he has been the victim of a “rigged” election. There was a time when the mass media was a unifying force in national life. That time has long passed.

This stylish 86-year-old grandma just got married and outshined us all

At 86 years young, grandma Millie Taylor-Morrison made one radiant bride.

A photo of Nana Millie, decked out in a purple wedding gown that she designed herself, began circulating on Facebook on Sunday, with many complimenting her timeless beauty and impeccable sense of style.

On Oct.16, she married Harold Morrison, 85, at Zion Hill Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey in front of 200 friends and family.

Her granddaughter Khadija Elkharbibi told The Huffington Post that all of the guests ― and especially the groom ― were blown away by her big day look.

“The look on everyone’s face when they saw her, but especially the look on Mr. Harold’s face when he saw her walking down the aisle ― it was the absolute sweetest thing you could ever see!” she said.

“He teared up. It was beautiful! My Nana just beamed with happiness, it was truly a sight to see.”

The groom started tearing up when he saw his stunning bride coming down the aisle

Nana Millie was married to Khadija’s grandpa for 41 years before he died in 1992. She knew Harold since the 1950s ― he was even a guest at her first wedding.

Over the years they lost touch and later reconnected at New Beginning Faith Fellowship Ministries in Orange, New Jersey. When Harold got sick, Millie picked him up and took him to church every Sunday.

“He got really sick again a year or two ago to the point where he couldn’t live alone and he moved in with her,” Khadija told HuffPost. “After a year of him getting better, they wanted to be married.

As a Christian woman, she felt strongly about not having a man in the house without being married and she wanted to be a role model for her granddaughters.”

The bride and groom sharing a dance at the reception

“Our family couldn’t be happier for her,” Khadija wrote on the Facebook page Love What Matters. “This is a true testament that age is just a number and everyone can find love again.”

The couple has known each other since the 1950s

After the ceremony, guests headed to Richfield Regency in Verona, New Jersey for the reception. The room was decorated beautifully and lit with purple lights that complemented Nana Millie’s gown.

The bride and her beautiful granddaughters

           

A view of the gown from the front and back.

Source: Huffington Post