News Brief

A collection of 45 posts

News Brief

Landmark High Court win for UK humanism

A recent High Court judgment recently found in favor of a humanist, and Kent County Council will not appeal the decision. This has been seen as a landmark ruling. The event might ignite discussions of whether or not humanism should be designated a religion. When looking at the definition for

News Brief

Was it right for the US to give Ukraine cluster bombs?

Munitions of every kind have horrific outcomes. The hope in Ukraine is bringing this war to the best conclusion in the quickest timeframe.

church-state separation

Mississippi removes 'In God We Trust' from license plates

The phrase "In God We Trust" was first included on US coins in the 1860s in order to “relieve [the U.S.] from the ignominy of heathenism,” according to Treasury Department records. As such, it is a phrase that rankles with many nonreligious people, and is often a

News Brief

Putin is issued arrest warrant for war crimes

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, with a focus on the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia. This crime is one of 11 that constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and that are applicable only

Islam

UK pupils suspended for damaging Qu'ran

Four pupils have been suspended from a school in West Yorkshire, UK, for damaging a Muslim holy book. The incident took place last week at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield in the north of England, although the Headteacher has claimed that there was "no malicious intent" concerning the

Atheist Demographics

Census: Christianity in UK on the back foot

The 2021 national census in England and Wales seems like a long time ago now, but the data is only just being released after aggregation and analysis. As reported recently, non-religion in the UK is in the ascendancy and Christianity is in decline. The latest statistics reaffirm this. Though the

gender equality

Missouri lawmakers adopt strict dress code for women

With the regression in laws that seem to have overwhelmingly affected women over the last few years, Americans may be forgiven for thinking that The Handmaid's Tale on TV is a documentary. There are some who say that author Margaret Atwood was something of a futurist. With stricter

editor's pick

Musk's Twitter polls: the slopey moral shoulders of deferring decisions

The Great Elon Musk Twitter Saga continues. Most recently, Musk reignited the culture wars with his decision to "temporarily suspend" a range of journalists for apparently doxxing his 2-year-old son. Except this is not what they did, and the screenshots of those banned showed it was meant to

Elon Musk

"I'm a free speech absolutist!"*

Free speech is a thoroughly thorny issue, not just because it is divisive in online and offline debates, but because it is philosophically troublesome and potentially an unsolvable quandary. We all have our own lines about what is and isn't acceptable. Everyone has a line somewhere. You would

freethought

Over 70% of people live in countries that 'severely discriminate' against nonreligious

In the recent and incredibly important annual Freedom of Thought Report, published by Humanists International, research shows that most of the world lives in countries that openly discriminate against the nonreligious. The report looks at every country in the world, looking at laws and policies that are in place and

editor's pick

Brittney Griner and the comparative worth of humans

What we value and how much we value any given thing is a subjective affair. We might look at price tags on things, but they are for guidance only. If you aren't prepared to pay that much for a widget, you won't buy one. You can

Coronavirus

Call it what it is: corruption

When other governments are involved in nefarious acts of nepotism that line the pockets of their administration or those of their cronies and friends, we call them out for being corrupt. South America, Africa, Asia: corrupt governments! But when this happens in broad daylight, under our noses, in our own

census

Christians now a minority in England and Wales

Over the past few months, as the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) has analyzed the data from Census 2021, they have gradually released interesting nuggets to the British public. Today, the ONS released data showing the continued decline of Christianity, the dominant religion in the UK. This census has

News Brief

Belarus Foreign Minister suddenly dies

Belarus has been inextricably linked to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. And although Putin has used the country and its land as a springboard to conduct offensives against its neighbor, extracting a huge proportion of its physical hardware in terms of tanks and military vehicles, the Belarusian armed forces

News Brief

Oh by the way, Trump is running in 2024

Donald Trump is quickly becoming passé. In case you hadn't seen page 6 of your local newspaper, the former president announced the other day that he is running for POTUS in 2024. This should be huge news, but it turned out to be something of a damp squib.

Brexit

UK economy crisis: Living standards now in freefall

You know things are bad when acronyms are queuing up to give you bad news. In quick succession, we have had expert organizations warning of our imminent economic and cost-of-living woes. First, at the end of September, the ONS (the Office for National Statistics) announced that GDP grew only 0.

Elon Musk

How the Twitter Blue Check debacle went from hilarious to horrifying

Who knew that if, as the newfound CEO of a huge social media company, you got rid of half of your staff, including most of your content moderation team, and many of your team leaders and experts then walked, you would be left with a hot mess? People, including corporations

GOP

The Red Ripple won't affect US support for Ukraine

The Red Wave never happened, and left-leaning seculars are generally very happy about this considering what might have happened. But for some, this is not just from a political standpoint concerning hot potatoes like Roe v Wade and women's autonomy, but from the point of view of the

Cosmology

There's a black hole just over the cosmic horizon

The Gaia spacecraft, launched in 2013 by the European Space Agency, has the job of precisely mapping billions of stars. Its wealth of data provides the diet for many scientists looking for any number of phenomena. One such person has been astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry, who together with colleagues has discovered

climate change

Sunak's climate flip-flop: Optics over ethics

New UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, incurred the wrath of opposition parties, environmentalists, many in his own party, members of the UK public, and other global leaders when he announced that he was not attending the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt next week. The surprise was warranted. The UK has

climate change

New UK Prime Minister Sunak puts wrong foot forward

It has been a matter of days since Rishi Sunak took the helm of the good ship Britannia, hoping to keep a politically sinking ship afloat. What can we learn from the short time he has been in charge? It turns out, quite a bit. Sunak, a previous Chancellor of

Boris Johnson

How did Truss happen? A UK observer explains

For those looking at British politics from the outside, the short but chaotic leadership of now-former PM Liz Truss must be baffling. A brief in-country explainer may help. The previously-resigned Prime Minister Boris Johnson was ousted by his own party for successive scandals and pathological lying. This should not have

Liz Truss

After shortest term in history, Truss resigns as UK Prime Minister

It seems only weeks ago that we reported the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. That's because it was only weeks ago—six, to be exact. Less than two months into her leadership, Liz Truss has now resigned. After a number of very embarrassing U-turns, a mini-budget that

Entertainment

What we can learn from Selma Blair's departure from Dancing with the Stars

I didn't know that Selma Blair, who has been very open about her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis, was on Dancing With the Stars, so I was surprised when I heard that doctors had advised her not to continue appearing after being on the dance floor for four weeks.

News Brief

Supreme Court declines fetal personhood case

Personhood is a notoriously tricky philosophical term to define, let alone argue about in court. Indeed, the argument that a fertilized human egg has personhood is an incredibly difficult claim to establish. Nonetheless, it is an argument that anti-choicers have been desperate to see debated within the hallowed confines of