Allah's Willing Executioners

A 66-year-old Christian pastor and grandfather, Pastor Steve Maile, has spoken out following his arrest for criticising the history of violent Islamism in Watford town centre while preaching and singing Christian hymns and pop songs in a busy public area. The incident has since gone viral on social media.

Footage of the incident on Saturday 18 April 2026, shared widely online, shows a large police presence surrounding Pastor Maile before officers place him in double handcuffs.

According to Pastor Maile, who is now being represented by lawyers at the Christian Legal Centre, he had been peacefully singing and preaching for around ten minutes, drawing on passages of the Bible and calling people to repentance.

Discussing whether Islam is a religion of peace, he criticised the history of violent Islam, but said he had compassion and wanted Muslims to be saved by Jesus.

He was, however, then suddenly approached by police who arrested him on suspicion of public order and hate-related offences.

Pastor Steve exclaims: ‘No offence has been committed here….none whatsoever…. You should be ashamed of yourselves for arresting a minister of the gospel!”

Mocking what he is saying, the arresting policewoman says: “In the name of Jesus, get in the car.”

Steve is a singer who has released five albums and often sings famous songs and applies a Christian message to them. His music spans genres including hip-hop, jazz and opera.

Pastor Maile, who has been a pastor for 45 years and has no previous criminal record, says the arrest caused him significant physical pain and emotional distress.

He alleges he was handcuffed tightly for around an hour and a half, including with a so‑called “double lock”, despite repeatedly telling officers he was in agony.

He later required medical attention and splints for injuries to his hands.

Speaking about the moment of his arrest, Pastor Maile said he was shocked by the scale and speed of the police response. “One moment I was preaching the gospel, the next I was surrounded and in cuffs. I knew immediately this was wrong,” he said.

“Within seconds, they converged on me. Boom, the cuffs were on. Pain. Cuffs on for an hour and a half.

“I was so shocked; everyone was frozen with fear. I was not afraid. Is this a film? Is this reality? I knew it was illegal with righteous anger.”

He also alleges officers did not explain the grounds for his arrest or formally read him his rights before he was forcefully bundled into a police car.

Pastor Maile was first taken to Watford Police Station, where he describes being subjected to what he calls a humiliating and degrading process, before being transferred to Hatfield Police Station.

He says he was held for up to 10–12 hours, denied access to a toilet for a prolonged period, and that his family were not informed where he had been taken.

Police initially accused Pastor Maile of assaulting a teenager, an allegation he strongly denies and which he says was later dropped.

He remains under investigation for alleged hate-related public order offences connected to comments critical of Islam and LGBT lifestyles, which he maintains were Bible-based statements rather than calls to hatred or violence.

“I only ever preach or paraphrase the Bible,” Pastor Maile said. “I plead with people to come to Jesus. I do not attack individuals. I love everyone.”

Pastor Maile says the ordeal has had a lasting impact on him and his family, including sleeplessness and emotional exhaustion. Despite this, he says he does not intend to be silenced and remains committed to preaching peacefully in public spaces.

“They have picked on the wrong man. It was an awful experience being arrested in front of my family and children. This is a gross injustice,” he said. “I want to be acquitted. I want an apology. And I want to ensure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. I will continue to preach in Watford and I am not afraid.”

The Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting Pastor Maile’s case, says the incident, which is now with the Crown Prosecution Service, again raises serious concerns about free speech, freedom of religion, and disproportionate responses to lawful comments made against Islam in public.

Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said:

“Steve’s arrest is deeply troubling. A peaceful, Christian preacher was treated like a serious criminal for expressing his Christian beliefs and that Islam is a false religion in a public place. The footage raises fundamental questions about whether policing in this country is now criminalising Christianity while failing to apply the law equally and consistently. We are supporting Steve as he seeks justice, accountability, and an apology.”

christianconcern

by Andrea Widburg 

Earlier this month, I wrote that a leftist outlet openly stated that migrants sexually assaulting European women is a great way to help assimilate the migrants. This was not a joke. Now, in another “not a joke” moment, a major German insurance provider has released a commercial reminding German women and men to use contraception, especially when one of the two men in the bed is definitely not German.

AOK is one of Germany’s largest health insurance providers. One of its approaches to healthcare is to provide free access to doctors for contraception counseling and consultations. To promote this service, it created a 17-second ad.

The ad shows a stereotypically Germanic-looking young woman leaving the arms of her sleeping, equally Germanic-looking (male) lover. Then there’s an overlay with a sultry video of the woman looking at the camera as she walks out of the room, along with the caption, “Mit irh?” (“With her?”)

The main camera then shifts to a picture of the same Germanic man sleepily sitting up. He looks over his shoulder, and you can see that there is a third person in the bed, although you can’t yet see the person. As the camera pulls back a little more, we see that it’s a sleeping, dark-haired, bearded man.

There’s a new overlay, this time a video of the Germanic man casting obviously sultry looks at his dark-haired, male bed partner. We get a shot of the dark-haired man’s hand and arm. We then get a close-up shot of the man. He’s obviously not German, for he has swarthy skin and frizzy hair.

And now another shot, this time of the Germanic man’s hand closing gently over the darker man’s hand. And there’s a new caption: “Mit ihm?” (“With him?”)

The woman walks back into the scene and smiles broadly, clearly pleased with what she sees happening on the bed. Another caption appears: “Mit beiden?” (“With both?”) She then drives into the bed, joining the two men who lie pressed together in a tangle of sheets.

Under the “Mit beiden?” caption, more words appear.

“#AllesOK” (“All is good,” which is also a pun on AOK, the company’s name)

“Mit der AOK ist dein Liebes-leben safe. Wir bezahlen dir die Verhütungsberatung.” (“With AOK your love life is safe. We pay for your contraception counseling”)

So that you can see I’m telling the absolute truth, here’s the ad:

An advert in Germany promoting contraception teaches young white couples to have THREESOMES with MIGRANTS

No I'm not making this up

The ad has now gone VIRAL for all the wrong reasons with many saying it promotes outright degeneracy pic.twitter.com/CqMJ7JkgD1

— Basil the Great (@BasilTheGreat) April 25, 2026

Can you imagine if Aetna or Blue Cross started promoting threesomes? Given the left’s admiration for all things European, unless we put the brakes on the Democrats, this is where we’ll be, too, in a few years.

But what’s probably more important is that the third in the threesome is so manifestly non-German. One could argue that the ad is simply leaning into the exotic for something more titillating and artistic. What better way to capture people’s attention and encourage them to use contraceptives? However, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.

Instead, it seems like a continuation of the German social pressure on young women to make nice, very, very nice with the millions of Africans and Middle Easterners who have flooded the country since 2015. It’s also a not-so-subtle message to these immigrants, who rape a lot more than Europeans traditionally do, that at the very least, they should wear condoms before they do so.

I don’t really have a lot more to add. I figure you’ve got all the opinions on this that you need.

The one thing I’ll say is that, if you want to put the kibosh on unlimited immigration to America from third-world countries, don’t vote Democrat, and don’t sit out the coming election. No matter how weak congressional Republicans are, Democrats are worse. A refusal to vote for your local Republican candidate has the practical effect of voting for those crazy Dems.

americanthinker

On the night of Thursday, April 23, several criminals broke into the home of an 85-year-old man from Seyssuel. Awakened by the noise, the octogenarian was punched in the face before being locked in one of the rooms of his home.

Demanding money, the home invaders ransacked the house, ripped out the landline telephone socket, and sprayed gasoline throughout all the rooms. Authorities say this was probably to erase any evidence of their presence, although no fire was apparently lit, according to Le Dauphine Libéré.

The victim was also doused with gasoline and then shoved into the trunk of his car. At some point, he managed to escape and alert the authorities, after which emergency services tended to him.

DL reports that the gendarmes from Chasse-sur-Rhône in charge of the investigation spent several hours investigating the site. The perpetrators reportedly fled in a stolen vehicle and are still at large.

In total, they got away with a few hundred euros.

Crimes against the elderly have been surging across France, and although in this case the identity of the perpetrators is not yet known, many of the crimes involve those of foreign ethnicity, often in France illegally. Horrifically, these have often involved the violent rape of elderly women.

Remix News has covered these cases extensively, such as here, here, and here.

Of course, France is not the only country facing this crisis, with Remix News just reporting today on an 85-year-old man beaten to within an inch of his life by a Nigerian man he had fed at a soup kitchen.

Just two weeks ago, Remix News reported on a 22-year-old man from Mali who was freed from prison over a technicality, after allegedly raping a woman in her seventies inside her home in Pistoia. An Italian court annulled his pre-trial detention on technical grounds because the original custody order had not been translated into his native language of French.

rmx.news

President Trump’s appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner was interrupted when the president and other key members were rushed out by the Secret Service after shots were fired.

The gunman has currently been identified as Cole Thomas Allen, a part-time teacher in California who uses the He/Him pronouns and had been named ‘Teacher of the Year’. Initial records (and these can be mistaken due to database mix ups or similar names) appear to show him donating to the Kamala campaign through the radical leftist ActBlue platform which is currently under investigation.

Protesters at the WHCD had called and continued to call for President Trump’s murder even after the shooting, holding up signs calling for “Death to all of them”.

While Dems are formally condemning political violence they, including Mamdani, had hosted Hasan Piker, a Turkish Muslim streamer, who had called for the murder of conservative elected officials.

frontpagemag

At a press conference in Dover, Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s spokesperson on immigration, policing, and national security, launched the party’s mass deportation proposal. He described the UK as “invaded” by migrants and said the plan would be the largest deportation programme in British history. Reform has stated it would deport more than 600,000 people in its first term, using a dedicated unit to track down, detain, and remove those in the country illegally, at a rate of up to 288,000 per year.

Yusuf was born in October 1986 in Bellshill, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, the son of Sri Lankan Muslim immigrants who came to the UK in the early 1980s. His father is a doctor and his mother a nurse, both working for the National Health Service (NHS). A Muslim son of immigrants leading a party strongly associated with anti-immigration politics, Yusuf nonetheless shares many concerns familiar to American conservatives.

Reform UK’s platform addresses illegal immigration, welfare dependency among foreign nationals, and terminating a permanent residency system that gives non-citizens lifetime access to benefits and the right to bring unlimited family members into the country. The party also demands that legal migrants be net contributors to the economy and speak English.

On security, Yusuf argues that Islamist extremism, the dominant share of MI5’s caseload, has gone unaddressed by a government that has preferred to promote right-wing extremism as the primary threat. He links that same culture of avoidance to the grooming gang scandal, in which organized child sexual exploitation by men of Pakistani heritage was covered up for decades by authorities unwilling to confront it. When warnings were ignored and attacks occurred, no one in government was fired and no one was held accountable.

His Reform Party also wants to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which has been used to block deportations of foreign nationals, including convicted criminals, and which British voters have no power to override.

On legal migrants, Yusuf drew a clear line between tolerance and subsidy. Those in the country on a legal visa, he said, are expected “to pay your way, i.e. be a net contributor to the economy and not be a burden on the taxpayer, to speak English and to not commit crime.” Reform also plans to abolish permanent residency, replacing it with a system requiring visa renewal every five years or a defined path to citizenship.

“This country can ill afford to continue to be a food bank for the world,” he said, pointing to the £9 billion ($12 billion) spent on universal credit (the UK’s main welfare program) for foreign nationals in the previous year alone. He warned that figure would grow as the 3.8 million people who entered under Boris Johnson become eligible for permanent residency (indefinite leave to remain), at which point they gain lifetime access to the welfare system and the right to bring unlimited dependents into the country.

“It’s totally unfair to expect them to foot that bill,” he said of British taxpayers, “and even worse to brand them racist.” Just like in the US, anyone who speaks out against open borders risks being called racist, except that in the UK it can land you in jail. Over 12,000 people were arrested in 2023 alone for social media posts under UK communications laws, a number that had more than doubled since 2017. In one case, Luke Yarwood received an 18-month sentence for anti-immigration posts on X that had been viewed just 33 times.

Yusuf has also argued that British citizens’ rights are being placed “beneath those of criminals” under the European Convention on Human Rights, and Reform has pledged to leave the treaty. More broadly, he has described current immigration levels as “unsustainable” for public services.

Yusuf told reporters that the majority of MI5’s caseload is “Islamist terrorism, so that is a fact,” and accused the government of performing “the most extraordinary gymnastics in order to not actually address the problem.” He pointed to official language in a recent report that used the word “alleged” when describing grooming gang crimes, despite hundreds of convictions.

“We know there’s been an almighty cover-up,” he said, adding that Labour had acknowledged this only by permitting partial inquiries rather than the full national inquiry Reform is demanding. He accused the government of being willing to “sacrifice the lives of its own people at the altar of this virtue-signalling diversity.”

Yusuf also invoked the July 2024 Southport attack, in which Axel Rudakubana, a British citizen of Rwandan heritage, stabbed and killed three girls at a dance class: Bebe King, aged six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, aged seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, aged nine. He pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder, possession of terrorist material, and producing ricin.

Ricin is a highly toxic poison derived from castor beans. It is one of the most dangerous naturally occurring substances and has been used in assassination attempts and terrorist plots. There is no antidote.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years. Authorities had flagged Rudakubana to the government’s counter-extremism program three times between 2019 and 2021, when he was between 13 and 14 years old.

Each time, he was assessed and cleared. Yusuf demanded accountability: “Who has been fired? Who has paid a price for this inside the state system? Not a single person funded by the taxpayer whose job it was to keep those little girls alive has paid any penalty.” A subsequent government inquiry found an “inappropriate merry-go-round” of agencies passing responsibility and concluded the culture of unaccountability “has to end.” No one has been fired.

The grooming-gang prosecutions at the center of this debate involved perpetrators who were overwhelmingly men of Pakistani heritage. Operation Stovewood, the largest such investigation in UK history, identified 323 suspects in Rotherham, nearly two-thirds of Pakistani background, and secured 42 convictions. The Jay Report confirmed most victims were white British girls. The 2025 Baroness Casey audit found the same pattern across Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire.

Convicted perpetrators included Mohammed Amar, Mohammed Siyab, Yasser Ajaibe, Mohammed Zameer Sadiq, Abid Saddiq, Tahir Yassin, and Ramin Bari in Rotherham, and Zahid, Shahzad, Ahmed, Bashir, Khan, Akram, and Hussain in the separate Rochdale prosecutions, which covered crimes committed between 2000 and 2006. The Casey report cautioned that ethnicity data was not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators nationally, making broader conclusions impossible.

In the end, American conservatives would see Reform UK’s platform as the kind of common-sense policies held by the Trump administration and that many wish would become enshrined in law in their own country.

What Yusuf is describing, however, is not current UK law but proposed policy. These measures can only take place if Reform UK wins the next election and Nigel Farage becomes prime minister. Even then, the UK would have to withdraw from international treaties to carry out mass deportations, and that withdrawal could itself be challenged in court, a scenario that will sound familiar to Trump voters who have watched activist judges thwart immigration reform while the clock ticks toward the midterms.

As bad as things are in the UK, they are worse in the European Union. Meloni in Italy, working within EU constraints, has found that her best efforts to stop the endless flow of migrants have fallen short. Orbán in Hungary defied those constraints and was taken to court by the EU and stripped of billions in funding. However, he managed to keep his country’s borders largely secure but was voted out of office on April 12, 2026, after 16 years in power.

For now, the situation in the UK serves as a cautionary tale and a teachable moment for Americans on how the left can erode a country and how joining supranational treaties can hamstring government reform.

thegatewaypundit

It’s not looking good for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Plagued by dismal approval ratings, he has also acquired a reputation for being thin-skinned, censorious, and authoritarian. 

Last week, the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg ordered Merz’s office—the Federal Chancellery—to disclose information on proceedings related to alleged insults against him, including which public prosecutor’s offices are investigating the cases and under which file numbers the proceedings are being conducted. In total, this involves approximately 300 cases.

The news caused a stir and has the potential to evolve into a full-blown scandal. Most importantly, it has put Germany’s repressive anti-free speech Paragraph 188 of the Penal Code back in the spotlight—something that anyone with an interest in free speech must welcome.

The law criminalises insults, defamation, and slander against public figures—i.e., politicians. The court ruling was set in motion, not least, by the now-famous case of pensioner Andreas Hüttner, who has become something of a free speech martyr after being placed under the scrutiny of the public prosecutor’s office—and facing a formal investigation—because he posted a picture of Merz as Pinocchio, complete with a long nose, on Facebook.

The proceedings were finally dropped in March of this year, but the ‘Pinocchio backlash,’ as the case might be called, has stuck as a symbol of Merz’s litigiousness against ordinary citizens. It has also helped expose as a farce our politicians’ justifications for Paragraph 188.

Passed by Parliament in 2021 with the support of a broad coalition of all established parties, the law was a consequence of the social upheavals that followed the refugee crisis of 2015. Its stated aim was to combat right-wing extremism and hate crime—it is, in fact, part of a broader legislative package to that effect. The penalties it imposes for “public insults” directed at political leaders that are “likely to significantly impede their public activities” are up to three years’ imprisonment or heavy fines.

Modelled on the Weimar Republic’s 1922 Law for the Protection of the Republic (Gesetz zum Schutz der Republik), its aggressive and defensive character was clear from the start. It was justified in part by the shocking 2019 murder of local politician Walter Lübcke (CDU), whose killing was compared to that of Jewish Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in 1922. But the differences are stark: the Weimar era, unlike the late 2010s, had been soaked in violence and political murder in the aftermath of the First World War and a failed revolution. The state judiciary of that era was characterised by its unwillingness—or inability—to punish far-right violence. While Rathenau was murdered by a paramilitary group notorious for its aggressive antisemitism and closeness to high military circles, Lübcke’s killer is considered a lone perpetrator: an extremist, xenophobic oddball who had attracted attention for violent behaviour since childhood.

More than a symptom of distorted historical consciousness, the 2021 law reflects our parliamentarians’ indifference to—or outright rejection of—the principle of free speech. Rushed through parliament with the support of all established parties, it embodies the concept of ‘militant democracy’ that has defined German politics for years, a concept always rooted in a deep suspicion of free speech and of the power of ordinary citizens. The public sphere, so the story went, needed to be protected from a debilitating verbal toxicity—amplified by social media—that threatened to corrode democracy itself.

This narrative was accompanied by studies showing that local politicians in particular had come under increasing pressure (Lübcke, too, had been a local politician who faced criticism for defending the housing of asylum seekers in his area). But it soon became clear that the new law not only treats politicians as a protected caste; it is also a tool in the hands of the powerful to intimidate rebellious and angry citizens. Its slippery-slope character is easy to demonstrate, with the figures rising exponentially: according to police statistics, there were 4,792 charges in 2025, up from 4,500 in 2024, 2,600 in 2023, and 1,400 in 2022.

Only a handful of cases have made headlines, but those that have offer no less reason to doubt the law’s repressive nature than the Pinocchio case itself. Among the most prominent examples:

• Stefan Niehoff, a Bavarian pensioner who died aged 65 in February of this year, had his home raided in the early hours of a November 2024 morning and his computer confiscated—because he had shared a satirical meme, inspired by a well-known hair care brand, referring to then Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Green Party) as a “Professional Idiot.”
• A man was charged and sentenced to a fine of €2,250 in 2024 for shouting the words “bitch,” “Jew murderer,” and “child murderer” at Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann—now an MEP for Renew Europe and former deputy leader of Germany’s liberal FDP. It has since emerged that Strack-Zimmermann filed an astonishing 1,900 charges between February 2023 and September 2024 alone. Among her other targets was a pensioner charged for an X post—with 25 followers—that read, “Strick-Strack-Zimmermann—that’s the grandma from the henhouse, the old warmongering sow!”
• In 2023, a man was charged after calling several members of the Bundestag “lobby whores” (Lobby Nutten) in two social media posts and referring to a female politician as an “arsehole Goebbels imitator” in another. In July 2025, he was finally acquitted in a high-profile third-instance court ruling.

Though many cases have ended in acquittal—while many others have not—the law has fostered a climate of repression and distrust. For those charged, court hearings have come with enormous financial costs and personal stress, with cases dragging on for months or even years. The fact that the accusation itself—often accompanied by the confiscation of mobile phones or computers—functions as a punishment in its own right was highlighted in a 2025 episode of the American CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, titled “Policing the Internet in Germany, Where Hate Speech and Insults Are a Crime.”

Paragraph 188 is unworthy of any free society. In a democracy, citizens must have the right to express their frustration with those who govern them. Attempts to suppress that frustration mean evading precisely the debates and struggles that demand political clarification—and that should therefore be seen as hallmarks of a healthy democracy, not threats to it.

The overtly authoritarian nature of Section 188, and scandals such as the Pinocchio backlash, have led at least a few prominent politicians—though arguably still far too few—to advocate for its repeal. Among them are Jens Spahn, head of the CDU/CSU’s joint parliamentary group in the Bundestag, and Wolfgang Kubicki, vice chairman of the FDP, a party desperately trying to reinvent itself after a series of devastating electoral defeats.

It is welcome news that two more significant voices are now calling for the abolition of this shameful paragraph. But we should harbour no illusions: the low regard in which the majority of parliamentarians from the established parties hold free speech was demonstrated once again in January of this year, when a proposal to abolish the paragraph—introduced by the right-populist AfD—was defeated, with 440 MPs voting against and 133 in favour. It is not only the cordon sanitaire that prevents these parliamentarians from voting with the AfD but their genuine conviction that they are fighting the ‘far right’ by censoring what they deem to be harmful speech.

The best hope of ridding Germany of this paragraph lies with its citizens—those who, like Hüttner, refuse to be intimidated. It is these citizens who must, and hopefully will, continue to stand up for the most basic right of any free society: the right of every person to say what they think.

europeanconservative

In the latest INSA poll for Bild am Sonntag, the AfD has risen to 28 per cent and extended its lead over the CDU/CSU to four points. Merz is thus becoming a problem for his own party: he set out to win back the centre-right vote but is increasingly becoming a liability for the CDU/CSU.
The new INSA poll for Bild am Sonntag confirms the AfD’s upward trend – and the CDU/CSU’s downward spiral under the leaden-footed Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The AfD now stands at 28 per cent, reaching a new high in this survey. The CDU/CSU has fallen back to 24 per cent and has thus not only been overtaken by a significant margin, but left clearly behind.

For Friedrich Merz, this is yet another damning verdict. He had set out to lead the CDU/CSU out of the chaos caused by the ‘traffic light’ coalition, to rally the centre-right camp and to cut the ground from under the AfD’s feet – in his own words, to halve its support. In reality, the exact opposite is happening. The Union continues to lose ground; Merz has settled into the role of second-in-command behind Klingbeil and, in the public eye, is ceding the leadership role to the battered SPD – whilst the AfD pulls ahead. The gap is widening, and with it, the impression is growing week by week that the CDU under Merz may be governing, but it is not leading.

Voters can see very clearly what this government delivers and what it does not. They see a Union that announced a major change of direction and then, in the day-to-day business of government, sinks back into the old German timidity. They see a Chancellery that touts its claim to renewal but has delivered the exact opposite on all key points. This is precisely what the AfD thrives on. It doesn’t need to invent anything new. It is enough that the competition is reneging on its own promises.

tichyseinblick

A choir has been dropped from the London marathon over its founder’s gender-critical views.

The Singing Striders, an amateur ensemble that regularly performs at the sidelines of running events, has been asked to step down from the capital’s marathon after a disability charity objected to the gender-critical views of its founder.

The singing group has been invited by Scope to support the runners in Sunday’s race.

Janet Murray, the founder of Singing Striders, has publicly expressed concerns about the inclusion of biological males in women’s sports and organisations such as the Girl Guides, the Telegraph reports.

Scope, the disability charity, revoked the invite after receiving two anonymous complaints about the views expressed by Ms Murray.

The charity, originally founded in 1951, informed the choir lead that her views on gender ideology – that gender is a matter of biological sex rather than self-identification – are incompatible with Scope’s “commitment to diversity and inclusion”.

Charity bosses told Ms Murray directly: “We are concerned about your views because we don’t agree with your views.”

She condemned the decision, arguing that her personal views have nothing to do with the choir’s work.

She said: “When cancel culture finds its way into something as joyful as a choir singing for marathon runners, it’s a sobering reminder of how insidious it can be.

“My choir exists to lift people up, helping them through the hardest moments as they raise money for charity. I’ve run the London Marathon myself, and I know how much that support means.

“I leave politics at home when I’m with the choir and so does everyone else.”

She concluded it was the charity that had invited politics into what she considered to be an apolitical space.

The cancellation was even more shocking for the choir as they had performed for Scope at previous London Marathons, without any complaint or incident.

The choir had been due to perform at the Mile-Three cheer point in Woolwich from 8.30am to 1pm, with only minor travel expenses covered by the charity.

Members of the group had reportedly spent months rehearsing ahead of the event and were said to be surprised and disappointed by the last-minute decision.

It is understood they remained hopeful that another organisation might step in to offer them a performance slot at the marathon.

The London Marathon features several dedicated cheer points along the route designed to boost runner morale, with Scope holding two spaces this year at Tower Hill and Woolwich.

Scope has defended the decision, saying it reflects its commitment to the equality and inclusion of trans and non-binary disabled people, including colleagues, volunteers and supporters.

The charity’s chief executive John McLachlan said: “Concerns were raised to us about the views of the founder and director of Singing Striders, a choir who were due to volunteer to perform for us at the London Marathon.

“After consideration, we took the decision to not have their choir perform on our behalf.”

He concluded by saying they respect that people have different political views, but they remain dedicated to disabled people who identify as trans or non-binary.

The 2024 Cass Review, which cautioned against rushing children into gender transitions and reignited public debate around gender ideology in Britain.

Critics of gender ideology have faced increasing professional consequences in recent years, with figures including Father Ted co-writer Graham Linehan among those to have faced cancellation over their views on the issue.

The Supreme Court ruled just over a year ago that “sex” and “woman” refer to biological sex assigned at birth.

This meant the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

gbnews

A 17-year-old Egyptian migrant has been arrested for fatally stabbing 25-year-old Gabriele Vaccaro with a screwdriver in a parking lot in Pavia, Italy. The argument was reportedly over a girl, with the Egyptian suspect already having a criminal record for illegal possession of a weapon.

The incident, which occurred on April 19, began with a dispute in a bar over a girl, with the Egyptian later targeting Vaccaro, originally from Sicily, in a nearby parking lot.

The events occurred at 4:00 a.m. when the suspect stabbed the victim in the abdomen with what investigators believe was a screwdriver.

The injury was considered to be “deceptive,” as it did not shed excessive amounts of blood but appeared instead as a deep puncture wound. As a result, it may have concealed the severity of the internal damage.

The stabbing attack occurred in front of a crowd of people, with Vaccaro present with three Italian friends. However, the Egyptian was not alone either, and was with a group of foreigners, according to Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera.

After the stabbing, the friends of Vaccaro brought their friend home, who was said to be in “agony” from the stomach wound. They eventually called emergency services. Despite the man being rushed to the hospital, he died in the operating room.

Surveillance footage has been secured, and multiple people have been questioned about the attack at the San Matteo hospital police station.

Following the man’s death, images began flowing in on social media from friends and family, including travel photos, photos of him hugging his twin sister, and pictures of him at football stadiums.

Vaccaro, who was an avid football player, was honored by teammates at a match.

“Your smile will live forever,” read the banner displayed during the match against Gela.

“We honored him today,” coach Pietro Infantino said. The victory of his team, CastrumFavara, was also dedicated to Gabriele.

The municipality of the province of Agrigento will observe citizen mourning on the day of the funeral, as announced by Mayor Antonio Palumbo, describing on social networks a “pain so great that it is unimaginable.”

He said that this pain does not only belong only to the Vaccaro family, but “to every street and every house in our city. The pain leaves us empty, helpless. Faced with violence that finds no justification. It’s not just a life that is interrupted, it’s a young man whose light is stolen. It is our community that is losing a piece of its future.”

Italy has seen many similar cases, including a case from last year, involving a young Italian man who was murdered in a brutal knife attack after a fight broke out between two groups of young people outside a club. The battle, between Italian-Romanians versus North Africans, took place in the quiet town of Castelfranco Veneto, a province of Treviso.

The young victim, 20-year-old Lorenzo Cristea, who was born in Romania, lost his life after arriving in the hospital despite attempts by medical staff to revive him. He came to the hospital on his own, but the stab wounds were too deep to save his life.

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A bill that would have legalized assisted suicide in England and Wales has stalled in the British Parliament.

Despite being passed by the House of Commons last June in the face of strong opposition, “The Terminally Ill Adults Bill” ran out of time before it could be voted on by the House of Lords before its deadline.

The legislation would have allowed persons over the age of 18 and in the final six months of their expected remaining life to seek medical help to kill themselves.

Opponents of the bill submitted over 1,000 amendments, causing the process to stall. It was initially put forward by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater on October 16, 2024, and passed in June 2025 by a narrow 319-291 vote.

The tidal wave of push back against the measure occurred not long after, with the Vatican weighing in as well.

In July 2025, the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family issued a statement abasing the bill, noting that “only through an authentic catechesis that teaches the supremacy of God’s law can we convince wider society that all innocent human life deserves equal protection under the law.”

Gordon McDonald, head of the anti-euthanasia organization “Care Not Killing,” praised the House of Lords for taking their time to study it. “It didn’t get proper scrutiny in the House of Commons. It’s right that parliaments look at these bills properly and give them due consideration, that’s what the House of Lords is doing,” he said.

Critics have accused members of the Upper Chamber of Parliament of stalling tactics.

The Catholic Church teaches that suicide of any kind, whether done with the help of a medical professional or on one’s own, is a grave sin since God is the author of life. Earlier this week, Canadian Catholic Cardinal Frank Leo reiterated the Church’s teaching in a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney and members of the Canadian Parliament.

“Our Catholic faith opposes the taking of any life, and it is with great disappointment and anguish that we have seen our country expand MAID at a rapid and alarming rate,” Leo explained. Assisted suicide and euthanasia are “contrary to the dignity of the human person.” His Eminence also urged lawmakers to “choose life and not death” and not to allow a planned March 2027 expansion of assisted suicide laws for those with mental illness.

The BBC has reported that despite the measure dying in the House of Lords, there is a “possibility” that it may be reintroduced next month. “Several peers who support the bill have signed a letter to MPs saying the elected chamber should decide what happens next and they believe Parliament ‘must come to a decision on choice at the end of life as soon as possible,’” the BBC explained.

In Scotland, palliative care specialists have come out in opposition to the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill as well. “We are deeply concerned that legislation in its present and now amended form is clinically unsafe, inequitable, and unworkable,” the Association of Palliative Medicine (APM) stated in a letter. “We urge extreme cau­tion: dying people need invest­ment in care and sup­port, not legis­la­tion that could com­pound exist­ing inequit­ies.”

In the United States, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described assisted suicide laws that target vulnerable populations as immoral during an April 22 Senate hearing.

“I think those laws are abhorrent,” Kennedy told pro-life GOP Senator James Lankford. “And we just see in Canada today, I think the number one cause of death is assisted suicide, and as you say, it targets people with disabilities and people who are struggling in their lives.”

While assisted suicide is not the top cause of death in Canada, it is one of the most common ways for Canadians to die. On February 6, 2024, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition released data indicating that there were approximately 15,300 euthanasia or medical assistance in dying (MAID) deaths in Canada in 2023. On December 11, 2024, Canada’s Ministry of Health released the Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying confirming that euthanasia deaths represented 4.7 percent of all deaths in 2023. This means euthanasia is the fifth leading cause of death in the country.

During the hearing Wednesday, Kennedy agreed to work with Lankford in his efforts to protect life. “I don’t think we can be a moral society, we can’t be a moral society around the globe, if that becomes institutionalized throughout our society,” he said.

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