Then there’s the guy selling “transnasal light therapy” — a new gizmo that shines a light up your nostrils and promises to heal everything from diabetes to dementia.
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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Forced marriage: Girl aged five among 400 minors helped
In 2011 the UK’s Forced Marriage Unit helped deal with around 1,500 cases, but many
more are thought to go unreported. -
Rachel Maddow interviewed on Fresh Air
“My attitude toward anti-gay stuff was not to try to bring people along gently, gently, and show people by my evident humanity their callousness. I just wanted to throw something up in peoples’ faces.”
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Kansas House votes to protect anti-gay discrimination
With a bill called “the Preservation of Religious Freedom Act.”
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France bars Islamist clerics from entering the country
Al-Qaradawi is widely respected throughout the Middle East and has a popular weekly TV show on Islamic law on Al-Jazeera.
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Leo Igwe on religious law, democracy, and human rights
Religious laws are religious hatred, intolerance, discrimination and fanaticism turned into state policies. In most parts of Africa, they are a disaster.
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HRW: Afghanistan: women and girls jailed for being victims
These “crimes” usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina after being raped or forced into prostitution.
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Egypt: man throws daughter into Nile for divorcing
She had refused to marry the much older man, but submitted to family pressure; he abused her, she left, her father tied her up and dumped her in the river.
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3 MPs to ASA: let ads say that prayer works, or else
“We write to express our concern at this decision…It appears to cut across two thousand years of Christian tradition and the very clear teaching in the Bible.”
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Woman murdered for refusing to withdraw rape accusation
Six weeks after a schoolgirl was reportedly raped in Betul, India, her mother was allegedly shot dead by the accused and his friends in front of the family.
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Pennsylvania church kidnaps teenagers for a giggle
A shaken 14-year-old told police two men came in with guns, pulled pillow cases over some of their heads, and pushed them into a van. Whee, training exercise!
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Amnesty: sharp rise in executions in Middle East
There were at least 360 judicial killings in Iran (up from 252+ in 2010), at least 82 in Saudi Arabia (up from 27+), and at least 68 in Iraq (up from 1+).
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CNN talks to Dave Silverman
“We want people to know we are huge, we’re everywhere, and we are growing.”
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Big Reason Rally roundup
Everything.
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What Jason Rosenhouse learned from talking to creationists
On many occasions I asked people the blunt question, “What do you find so objectionable about evolution?” Never once did anyone reply, “It is contrary to the Bible.”
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MCB opposes marriage equality for gays
Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said, “marriage in Islam is defined as a union between a man and a woman.” Or a man and two women, or three, or four.
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Islamist preacher barred from university talk
A Muslim preacher who said homosexuality was ‘unnatural’ and gays needed to be ‘treated’ has been barred from speaking at an event for the Islamic Society at U of Hertfordshire.
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Mexican activists protest pope’s visit
And they do a good job of it, too!
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Washington Post on the Reason Rally
“We have the numbers to be taken seriously,” said Paul Fidalgo, spokesman for CFI, one of the organizations sponsoring the rally. “We’re not just a tiny fringe group.”
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Bangladesh will block Facebook pages for “blasphemy”
“These pages hurt the sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population and the followers of other religions.”
