* CHRISTIANS CELEBRATE EASTER IN PAKISTAN - Pakistan's tiny Christian community, still reeling from a grenade attack that killed five people during a service two weeks ago, celebrated Easter Sunday under unprecedented security. Gun-wielding policemen and other security personnel in plain clothes were out in force around churches in Islamabad and did not let anyone enter without a thorough search. The International Protestant Church (IPC), the scene of the March 17 attack in which the wife and daughter of an American diplomat were among those killed, remained closed. All roads into the diplomatic district where the IPC and the fortified missions of the United States and other countries are located, were sealed off with barbed wire barricades. The main Easter service was at St. Thomas church, where about 300 men, women and children sang hymns. "The attack on the IPC church was a nightmare for us," Reverend Arley Leowanhe said in his sermon. "Today is Easter. It is a happy occasion but that nightmare still haunts us." (Reuters)

* DUTCH LEGALISE EUTHANASIA – (Amsterdam) Euthanasia became legal in the Netherlands on 1 April, the first country to permit mercy killing. The Dutch parliament sparked worldwide controversy last April when it voted to enshrine in law a practice the Netherlands had tolerated for two decades. Doctor and patient must be convinced there is no other solution, another physician must be consulted and life must be ended in a medically appropriate way. An expert panel examines the case after the death, and will report to the public prosecutor if it has doubts that the doctor acted properly. The UN Human Rights Committee of independent experts criticised the Dutch law last July, saying it could lead to routine and insensitive mercy killing. The committee said it was not convinced that the Dutch system would detect and prevent cases where pressure could be exerted on a patient to evade the legal criteria. The Dutch Voluntary Euthanasia Society (NVVE) data shows 2 123 reported Dutch cases of euthanasia in 2000, though the true number is likely to be higher since it is thought not all cases are reported to the coroner. (Reuters)
The landmark law has reverberated well beyond Dutch borders to countries as far away as Australia. Belgium has already moved in the same direction. Senators there voted in October in favor of a draft law setting conditions under which doctors may kill the terminally ill. French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner said last year he would use the Dutch decision to press for the legalization of euthanasia in France, and has confessed to performing mercy killings himself in Vietnam and Lebanon. Diane Pretty, a motor neuron disease sufferer seeking the legal right for her husband to help her die, is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights after British courts refused to offer him immunity from prosecution. (Prolife Infonet)

* RIGHTS GROUP SELLS KEYS - (Sydney) A pro-euthanasia group in Australia said on 24 March that it was selling keys to the home of a terminally ill woman who intended to end her own life. Ms Nancy Crick, 69, is bedridden with bowel cancer at her home on the Gold Coast, Queensland. The group is selling the keys to make it difficult to prosecute those who attend what promises to be an assisted suicide. (The Mercury, 25 March)

* JUDGE RULES WOMAN CAN DIE - (London) A paralysed woman who wanted doctors to remove the ventilator that kept her alive had a right to die, a British judge ruled on 22 March. The case was apparently the first in Britain in which a mentally competent patient had applied for the right to terminate life-sustaining treatment. She told the court that she fully understood the implications of being removed from the ventilator. Her doctors argued that it would be unethical to switch off the ventilator. The judge ruled that she had the necessary mental capacity to give or refuse consent to life-sustaining medical treatment, adding that, for someone as severely disabled as the patient, "life in that condition may be worse than death". (The Mercury, 25 March)

* 'HOLY SMOKE: CANNABIS CHURCH-CAFÉ TO OPEN' - (Winnipeg) Part church mission, part café and meditation lounge, a new business set to open first week of April in Winnipeg's Osborne Village is bound to turn some heads every time the door opens and lets out a distinctive waft of marijuana smoke. The Cannabis Devout Mission Café is devoted to all things hemp - including smoking and worshipping the most stimulating member of the mulberry family as a religious sacrament. Founder Chris Dalman said his café will be the first in Canada where cannabis is promoted for its environmental and spiritual properties and inhaled by those professing membership in the Church of the Universe. "What we plan to do is revolutionize and set a standard for cannabis cafés and missions in Canada," he said. "It's time for an establishment to exist in a healthy, positive, constructive way that facilitates the culture and is not associated with druggy, underground connotations." The Church of the Universe was founded by Walter Tucker in 1969 in Hamilton, Ont., for the purpose of worshipping cannabis, which is called the Tree of Life, practising nudism and alternative spirituality. (NORML Daily Bulletin, 30 March)

* CFT BLOEMFONTEIN RAISED THE ALARM - CFT members in Bloemfontein objected to the Government’s planned sex education programme for schools by holding a banner display on 14 March. The banners had slogans like: "Sex education is parents' duty", "Government sex ed. rapes young minds", "Lust = condoms; Love = Abstinence", "Let a little one stumble.... Better a millstone Matt. 18:6". Copies of a publication by Dr Ed Cain on "Sex education by Government" was distributed. (CFT)

* 'SEX EDUCATION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED IN FREE STATE SCHOOLS' - The Free State Department of Education will not tolerate sex education in the province's schools, Ms Harriet Speckmeier, provincial coordinator of the Free State Department of Education, said at the introduction of an Aids conference for teachers and pupils. Teachers who get involved in sexual relationships with children will also be punished severely. "The department is implementing a programme for skills in sexuality, at schools. This programme will however differ drastically from sex education". She says school principals are not at all permitted to allow the LoveLife programme or distribute condoms at schools. A variety of posters and pamphlets about sex education may not be distributed at schools either. The department's program for skills in sexuality doesn't teach children about practising sex. It is specially designed to encourage children to abstain from sex. It is the only way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids... (23 March, Volksblad)

* " LOVELIFE DRIVE AN 'OBSCENITY' " - (Cape Town, SA) The government should immediately stop the LoveLife sex-education campaign in schools because it "encourages masturbation" and gives instruction on oral sex and orgasm, says the African Christian Democratic Party. Giving notice of a motion in the National Assembly, ACDP MP Cheryllyn Dudley said the house should note "with disgust, the LoveLife campaign material which encourages masturbation and blatantly stimulates sexual responses in youth". Her motion called on the government to "stop this obscenity which purports to be a campaign to encourage children to openly talk about sex". It further called on education minister Kader Asmal to "urgently re-look at 'HIV/Aids and lifeskills' courses influenced by planned parenthood which also operate under the guise of LoveLife". (News24, 15 March)

* ZEALOTS LET 15 GIRLS DIE IN BLAZE - Saudi Arabia's religious police are reported to have forced schoolgirls back into a blazing building because they were not wearing Islamic headscarves and black robes. Saudi newspapers said scuffles broke out between firemen and members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who tried to keep the girls inside a burning school in Mecca. Fifteen girls were killed as they stampeded to escape from the blazing building in the Muslim holy city. The incident caused anger among Saudi media and families of the victim. The resulting public criticism of the religious police, or mutaween, is highly unusual. The English-language Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that members of the religious police stopped men who tried to help the girls escape from the building, saying: "It is sinful to approach them". "Lives could have been saved had they not been stopped by members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," the Saudi Gazette said. (Daily Telegraph, 15 March)

* CARDINALS URGE POPE TO ABDICATE - Vittorio Messori, a leading Catholic writer, recently said that both liberal and conservative Cardinals inside the Vatican are urging the ailing 81-year-old Pope to abdicate, as reported from Rome by The Times - UK. Officials explain that the Pope is still mentally "sharp as ever" but physically feeble, due to an arthritic knee adding to his Parkinson's disease problems. For the first time, the Palm Sunday Mass was handed over to another, the Vicar of Rome and a potential successor, Cardinal Camillo Ruini. Signor Messori advised that the Pope could invoke Article 332 of Church canon law, "which provides for a pontiff freely to lay down his office," which would not be considered as a resignation. (The Times - UK, 26 March) The Pope has told close advisers that he is aware of pressure on him to step down because of his collapsing health, but said that he was refusing to do so "because Christ did not descend from the Cross". (Times, 1 April)

* 'HOUR OF TV A DAY LEADS TO VIOLENCE' - (Washington) Teen-agers who watch more than an hour of television a day are much more likely to become violent than the rare adolescent who watches less, researchers reported on 28 March. One of the most definitive studies yet to link watching television with violent behavior finds both men and women are affected by violent programs on television - but teen-aged boys are especially at risk. "We saw the jump was between less than one hour and more than one hour a day. There was a four-fold increase," Jeffrey Johnson of Columbia University in New York, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. Johnson, a psychiatric epidemiologist who studies patterns of behavior, said 60 percent of TV programming contained violence. Johnson's team tracked 707 children, most of them white and Catholic, who took part in a study in upstate New York. (Reuters, 28 March)

* HOMOSEXUAL MUSIC FOR SMALL KIDS - According to Girlfriends, a cultural magazine for lesbians, "Double Daddy works as an album that kids would actually want to listen to, largely because of its catchy, light tunes" while being "set in a happy and openly gay environment". Molly Universe said she wants her music to expose the children of same-sex parents to their sexual orientation and lifestyle. However, she acknowledged there are no sexual content warnings on the CD. The lyrics to Double Daddy's title track leave no doubt about how many daddies Danny has. "Danny has a daddy and a daddy at home - It's a double daddy and he's never alone." And, according to the song, "when you double the daddy ... you double the fun." Another song, "Oh what a Mess (Billy's wearing a dress)," is simply about "a little boy who likes to wear a dress," Universe said. (CNSNews.com)

* DOBSON WARNS: GAY AGENDA IN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS - A pro-family group founder and talk show host is urging parents not to send their kids to public schools in California for fear they could be corrupted by a pro-homosexual agenda. "In the state of California ... if I had a child there, I wouldn't put that youngster in a public school," Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson told his radio audience on March 28. "I've been very careful not to be negative to the public schools, because there are many Christian teachers that are struggling mightily to do what's right," he said. "But given the fact that in every classroom in the state, for 13 public school years, they're being taught homosexual propaganda and these other politically correct, post-modern views." Regarding schools, Focus on the Family criticized state-passed bills that extend "hate crime" policies to public and some private schools; use school-based health clinics to allegedly refer children as young as 12 for birth control, abortions, drug and alcohol and mental health counseling "all without parental notification or permission;" and define harassment to mean talking about moral objections to homosexual behavior. (CNS News, 29 March)

* REPORT FROM SA ABORTION CLINIC - The KZN coordinator of the Marie Stopes clinic, Andy Maduray, says that they see close on 200 women a month at their Durban office, according to a report in Sunday Times. Two weeks after having had an abortion, patients go for a check-up by a midwife. A patient's state of mind is also assessed. "Many women do go through a state of depression. You can't separate emotion from such a decision. We always tell the patient that it's not a right or wrong decision and that they need to make the best decision for their lives for now...", says Mudaray. 70% of all women who come to the clinic fall into the 18-25 age group while 15% are school pupils. Most of the pupils don't come in with their parents. "According to the law, a pregnant female is defined as a woman. So, even if a woman is under 18, she can sign her own consent form and doesn't need permission from her parents." The most common reasons given for wanting an abortion are socio-economic circumstances, but there are those, especially in the Indian and African communities, who say they want to save their parents from embarrassment. (Sunday Times, 3 March 2002)

* 'CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN' – (South Africa) Police removed 12 teenage prostitutes (aged between 14 and 16) from Durban's Monte Carlo nightclub during a swoop on 1 March, and handed them over to Childline for safekeeping. Deputy Provincial Commissioner of SAPS, Mulder van Eyk, said "The aim of the operation was to gain evidence of crimes against women and children, especially in relation to prostitution. Childline director Joan Van Niekerk said: "We are looking at the different circumstances of the girls and will try and link them up with their families..." According to a Sunday Tribune article an increasing number of technikon and university students are students by day and sex workers at night – as they say, to pay for their education, or to sustain their lavish lifestyles. (Sunday Tribune, 3 March )

* "ADDICTION BUG BITES GAMBLERS" – (South Africa) The marked increase in the number of compulsive gamblers in the Indian community has set off alarm bells among psychiatrists and support groups. Desperate to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, many compulsive gamblers and their families are now turning to support groups and private counselors. Dr Hemand Nowbath , psychiatrist based in Mount Edgecombe, said he and his colleagues have been inundated with cries for help from pathological gamblers, many of whom are breadwinners. "Some of my patients owe loan sharks money, others have cashed in their insurance policies and some have mortgaged their homes, all in desperation to feed their gambling habits," Nowbath said. He attributed the marked increase to the easy accessibility of casinos, often being located in close proximity to residential areas. GamAnon is an organisation that gives support to the family and friends of people with gambling problems. (Sunday Tribune, 3 March)