The Israeli government has approved the creation of a mixed prayer area at the Western Wall in which both men and women can pray together.

About time!

These are the results of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses that took place yesterday:

Republican Caucus Results
Ted Cruz (winner)	27.6%
Donald Trump	24.3%
Marco Rubio	23.1%
Ben Carson	9.3%
Rand Paul	4.5%
Jeb Bush	2.8%
Carly Fiorina	1.9%
John Kasich	1.9%
Mike Huckabee	1.8%
Chris Christie	1.8%
Rick Santorum	1.0%
Jim Gilmore	0.0%

Democratic Caucus Results
Hillary Clinton (winner)	49.9%
Bernie Sanders	49.6%
Martin O'Malley	0.6%

“A survivor hidden in a tree says he watched Boko Haram extremists firebomb huts and heard the screams of children burning to death, among 86 people officials say died in the latest attack by Nigeria’s homegrown Islamic extremists,” Ismail Alfa and Haruna Umar of Associated Press report.

On 6 December 2015, about a dozen Reform Muslims signed a declaration:

We reject interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicised Islam. Facing the threat of terrorism, intolerance, and social injustice in the name of Islam, we have reflected on how we can transform our communities based on three principles: peace, human rights and secular governance. We are announcing today the formation of an international initiative: the Muslim Reform Movement.

Read the whole thing at the Gatestone Institute.

Muslims shouldn’t feel compelled to take collective responsibility for Islamist extremism, but reformism in all religions is welcome as the orthodoxy so often legitimises violence and oppression.

In one of the courtrooms at the Scania and Blekinge Court of Appeal, this portrait of Charles XIV John of Sweden hangs on the wall. I think it’s stunning.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, an independent panel of experts, has ruled in a statement on that Julian Assange has been “arbitrarily detained” by Sweden and Britain, this because he has refused to defend himself of rape allegation in Sweden and therefore been hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years. And since he has done some important journalistic work by revealing possible war crimes in Iraq, an alarming number of people assume he’s not to blame for forcing his penis into a sleeping woman.

Today, he held a press conference gloating about it.

From a press release from the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain:

Omar Makram, an ex-Muslim, vocal atheist and a critic of Islam from Egypt fled his home country due to the threats he faced. Despite the threats, the Swedish authorities have refused his application.

Currently, the Swedish authorities seek to deport him back to Egypt were his freedom and perhaps even his life would be in danger. To further prove his convictions he had to resort to making a video where he renounced Islam by desecrating the Quran public for all the world to see.

In Egypt, authorities use blasphemy law to crackdown on vocal atheists, critics of Islam and reformists and that has intensified following the Egyptian revolution in 2011 when young people pushed for more space for freedom of speech.

Read More

“Evidently the UN thinks that the justice of the women who have been assaulted and raped is less important than the right of a possible offender to walk freely in the streets,” Clara Berglund, General Secretary of the Swedish Women’s Lobby, tells The Local.

“Half of girls and women cut live in just three countries,” Jessica Elgot of the Guardian reports.

Women Aged 15 to 49 Who Have Undergone Genital Cutting (2004–2015)
Somalia	98%
Guinea	97%
Djibouti	93%

“It is certainly a property worthy of a former prime minister: a six-bedroom, six-floor townhouse on one of the most prestigious squares in Belgravia, and it comes complete with a £30 million price tag,” Max Davidson of the Telegraph writes.

She had good taste. I like the colour scheme.

“Worried that a shortage of male teachers has produced a generation of timid, self-centered and effeminate boys, Chinese educators are working to reinforce traditional gender roles and values in the classroom,” Javier Hernandez of the New York Times writes.

“I think this was a ridiculous decision,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said in the House of Commons today. “You’ve got a man here with an outstanding allegation of rape against him. (…) He barricaded himself into the Ecuadoran embassy and yet claims he was arbitrarily detained. The only person who detained himself—was himself.”

Maddie Stone of Gizmodo writes:

Since Albert Einstein first predicted their existence a century ago, physicists have been on the hunt for gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime. That hunt is now over. Gravitational waves exist, and we’ve found them.

That’s according to researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), who have been holed up for weeks, working round-the-clock to confirm that the very first direct detection of gravitational waves is the real deal.

Cool! Perhaps string theory will be proven one day, too!

“Eastern European states want assurances that other EU members will not be able to limit benefits for migrant workers like UK,” Ian Traynor of the Guardian reports.

British exceptionalism is a difficult sell. Why should one European country be allowed to discriminate all other?

“Only one percent of all police call-outs in the period between October and the end of last month have concerned incidents involving refugees,” The Local reports.

“In a survey of 29 studies published in January 2015, Marieka Klawitter of the University of Washington found an average earnings premium of 9% for lesbians over heterosexual women, compared to a penalty of 11% for gay men,” The Economist reports.

“Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm are now among the richest regions in Europe,” Julien Grunfelder tells The Local.

A 16-year-old boy who murdered a gay man and wrapped a snake around the victim’s neck has been sentenced by the Gothenburg District Court to four years in a detention centre for juvenile offenders.

Andrew Pulver of the Guardian writes:

In The Simpson’s epic self-parody episode The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show, Homer asks if the cartoon he has scored a role in is “going on the air live”. June Bellamy, the voice of Itchy and Scratchy, replies: “Very few cartoons are broadcast live. It’s a terrible strain on the animators’ wrists.”

Well, the makers of The Simpsons have just made their own gag redundant by announcing that an upcoming episode, to be broadcast on 15 May, will indeed go out live—or at least a short section of it. According to the show’s producers, they will make use of motion capture technology to allow actor Dan Castellanata, in character as Homer, to respond in real time to pre-submitted questions from fans using the hashtag #HomerLive.

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

H. A. Goodman of Salon writes: “67% of American voters find Hillary Clinton ‘not honest and trustworthy,’ compared with 59% for Donald Trump. Yes, more people trust Donald Trump.”

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”

Nicholas Watt, Ian Traynor, Jennifer Rankin, and Rowena Mason of the Guardian write that the key changes will mean that:

• A proposed “emergency brake” on EU migrants claiming in-work benefits will last for seven years. It will cover individuals for no more than four years, but the UK will be allowed to apply the overall restrictions for seven years.
• Restrictions on child benefit for EU migrants will kick in at a reduced rate – indexed to the rate of a migrant’s home country – for new migrants with immediate effect. Existing EU migrants will be paid at the lower rate from 2020. Eastern European countries had hoped that existing migrants would be exempt.
• Britain has a specific opt-out from the EU’s historic commitment to forge an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”.
• One country—in effect Britain—will have the right to impose a handbrake to refer contentious financial regulation to a meeting of EU leaders in the European council.

“David Cameron has pledged to campaign with ‘all my heart and soul’ to keep Britain inside a reformed EU in an in/out referendum after he succeeded in renegotiating the terms of Britain’s EU membership.” the Guardian writes.

The Pope and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church have released a joint statement condemning equal rights for gay people.

“Speaking in Downing Street after briefing the Cabinet, the Prime Minister said that the promised in/out referendum would take place on June 23.” Michael Wilkinson of the Telegraph reports. “He confirmed that the Cabinet had backed his plan but that individual ministers would be free to campaign on either side.”

David Corn of Mother Jones quotes Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz:

My son Ted and his family spent six months in prayer seeking God’s will for this decision. But the day the final green light came on, the whole family was together. It was a Sunday. We were all at his church, First Baptist Church in Houston, including his senior staff. After the church service, we all gathered at the pastor’s office. We were on our knees for two hours seeking God’s will. At the end of that time, a word came through his wife, Heidi. And the word came, just saying, “Seek God’s face, not God’s hand.” And I’ll tell you, it was as if there was a cloud of the holy spirit filling that place. Some of us were weeping, and Ted just looked up and said, “Lord here am I, use me. I surrender to you, whatever you want.” And he felt that was a green light to move forward.

I just had a chat with God, and it denounces this story. “It must have been the Devil speaking to Cruz’s wife,” God tells me. “Satan is a known Republican. I’m more of a Roseanne Barr fan.”

The American presidential election just got that much weirder.

“Sweden should not allow surrogate pregnancies, even if no money is exchanged, according to the team tasked with looking into the controversial issue for the government,” The Local reports.

Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian has written a superb article on Britain’s relationship with Europe and its national sovereignty:

We are a proud island nation, to be sure, but we are also right next to a continent that represents the largest single market in the world. Half our trade is with mainland Europe. And because those nations have formed a single market, to trade with them on the same beneficial terms they all enjoy means complying with that market’s rules. We could do it from the outside, as the Norwegians do. Or we could do it from the inside, as we do now. Both options involve some constraint of our sovereignty.

If anything, after a Brexit, we could discover that we are rather less sovereign than we are now. In order to do business, we could find ourselves compelled to bow before rules that, like Norway, we have no say in writing. As the Norwegian conservative, quoted by David Cameron in the Commons this week, put it: “If you want to run Europe, you must be in Europe. If you want to be run by Europe, feel free to join Norway in the European Economic Area.”

Read the whole thing here.

“Swedes are celebrating unexpectedly high growth in 2015,” The Local reports.

Money, money, money…