Some interesting law and religion news stories from around the web last week:
- A Christian nursery worker in England, who was fired after responding to a lesbian co-worker’s question about her views on homosexuality and marriage, won a discrimination claim against her former employer.
- The Supreme Court held that Congress infringed on the President’s power to recognize foreign countries when it enacted a law giving U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem the right to have “Israel” rather than “Jerusalem” listed on their passports as their place of birth.
- Muslim leaders in India object to compulsory yoga classes for children, claiming that the classes are designed to impose Hinduism and that practices such as the sun salutation violate Islamic law.
- Video: A year after ISIS took over Mosul, some of those who escaped reflect on the invasion, the persecution ISIS brought, and the future of the area.
- Pope Francis has approved a new system of accountability for Catholic bishops who do not appropriately handle accusations of clergy sexual abuse.
- Egypt’s minister for religious endowments called for the issuance of an “international law to criminalise contempt of religion,” similar to an existing Egyptian law.
- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on religious leaders to band together and fight against extremism and faith-based violence by encouraging open dialog to reach a more harmonious society.
- Pope Francis met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Vatican and encouraged him to engage in “sincere” international efforts to bring peace to Ukraine.
- CLR reflected on the meeting in an earlier post this week.
- A businessman who secretly filmed a devout Muslim woman taking a shower to blackmail her into becoming his second wife became the first person convicted under a new UK law criminalizing forced marriage.
- Locals from Brunei, a tiny oil-rich in country in Southeast Asia with a strict Islamic penal code, say that the foreign media have unfairly sensationalized the country’s royals and laws.
- A U.N. investigation finds that Eritrea, a country in the Horn of Africa, which has the second-largest number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, is committing serious religious freedom abuses that force the people to risk their lives to leave.
- Pro-choice groups plan to appeal to the Supreme Court after the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit largely upheld a 2013 Texas law requiring abortion clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, requiring abortion clinics to meet the building and staffing standards of surgery centers, and providing for sharp cutbacks in abortions that are performed with medication.