COLU @ CONCEPTS

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — A Maltese priest has been handed a suspended three-month sentence after he was found guilty of violent indecent assault on a woman who was undergoing psychiatric care. The woman testified that Charles Fenech, 57, a priest who was popular in the Mediterranean island nation in the 1990s for organizing activities to raise funds for disabled people, forced her to perform oral sex on him on several occasions in 2011. The woman was under the care of a psychiatrist after trying to commit suicide while her marriage was breaking up. The verdict Thursday was the first involving a Maltese priest accused of sexually abusing an adult. In 2011, two Maltese priests were sentenced to a total of 11 years in jail for sexually abusing minors. Source: www.apnews.com 

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The leaders of Poland’s Jewish community have written to the country’s most powerful politician, urging him to denounce what they say is rising anti-Semitism that has left them fearing for their future in the country. The letter, a rare voicing of concern, comes nearly two years after the election of Law and Justice, a deeply conservative, nationalistic and anti-migrant party that is backed by some groups with anti-Semitic views. Observers including the country’s human rights commissioner have noted a rise in anti-Semitism and other hate speech and as well as attacks on dark-skinned people since the party came to power. “We are appalled by recent events and fearful for our security as the situation in our country is becoming more dangerous,” Leslaw Piszewski, the head of the Jewish community in Poland, and Anna Chipczynska, the head of the Warsaw community, wrote in the letter. Chipczynska told The Associated Press on Thursday that the community sent th...

LONDON (AP) — Britain is wrestling with a volatile nexus of crime, race and religion, after 18 people were convicted of sexually abusing women and girls as young as 15. One woman and 17 men were convicted of, or admitted, to charges including rape, supplying drugs and inciting prostitution in a series of trials that ended this week at Newcastle Crown Court in northeast England. The crimes follow a pattern that has become grimly familiar from cases across Britain in the last few years. The convicted men mostly come from South Asian Muslim backgrounds. Their victims — who were plied with drugs and alcohol before being abused at parties, in taxis or in back rooms — are mostly white. The prosecution of child-grooming gangs in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford and now Newcastle has raised uncomfortable questions. Some allege that the crimes were long ignored by authorities afraid they would be branded racist or fearful the allegations might inflame ethnic tensions. Sarah Champion, a ...

PHOENIX (AP) — A judge overseeing a religious discrimination case against polygamous communities in Arizona and Utah has appointed an official to monitor municipal decisions involving housing rights and make sure other changes ordered by the court are carried out. Roger Carter, city manager of Washington, Utah, was appointed to monitor municipal operations in the sister cities of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, on behalf of the court. His appointment on Aug. 3 was a response to a 2016 jury verdict that concluded nonbelievers were denied police protection, building permits and water hookups on the basis of religion. Carter was the last of three outsiders hired to help carry out the court-ordered overhaul of the towns, which are under court supervision for the next decade as punishment for the discrimination verdict. The towns were accused of serving as an arm of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism,...

About $250 million from Wisconsin taxpayers will be used as tuition vouchers for pupils attending private schools during next school year. It is wrong that the planned annual state outlay for voucher pupils will be up to $8,403 while that for public school pupils will be only $6,703. Voucher funds will be subtracted from and handicap public schools. Furthermore, the vast majority of of the 163 voucher schools will be Christian K-12 schools, many of which will provide religious instruction. By distributing millions of our tax dollars to so many Christian schools, our state violates the spirit of our Constitution by its preferential advancement of one religion. The Parental Choice Program was enacted to help low income parents transfer their children from public schools to private schools assumed to provide improved instruction. Multiple studies show that academic accomplishment of voucher school pupils does not exceed that of public school pupils. Pause Curren...

India and Pakistan have had testy relations at best since independence. Some key dates that helped define the South Asian nations: Muslim refugees crowd on top a train leaving New Delhi for Pakistan. (AP Photo, File) August 1947 - Britain ends its colonial rule over the Indian subcontinent, which becomes two independent nations — Hindu-majority, but secularly governed India and the Islamic republic of Pakistan. The division, widely known as Partition, sparks massive rioting that kills up to 1 million, while another 15 million flee their homes in one of the world’s largest human migrations. October 1947 - The two young nations begin a war over control of Kashmir, a Muslim-majority kingdom ruled by a Hindu maharaja. A U.N.-brokered cease-fire ends the war in a year with Kashmir divided between them. January 1949 - India and Pakistan agree to a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a referendum in which Kashmiris would determine their future; the vote never takes p...

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A Jakarta family who joined the Islamic State group in Syria out of an apparently naive belief it would give them a better life is now in Iraq and in contact with the Indonesian government, a senior Indonesian official said Friday. Deputy Foreign Minister Abdurrahman M. Fachir said that the family of 17, which includes young children and teenagers, is safe but also indicated their journey won’t be straightforward. The government in Baghdad only controls parts of Iraq and the family’s travel involves dealing with different authorities depending on what region they’re moving through. Some areas are controlled by Iraqi Kurdish troops known as the Peshmerga while others are held by government troops and various militias. The family crossed into Iraq from Syria on Tuesday, a local Kurdish official told The Associated Press earlier this week. “Our representatives in Baghdad are trying to oversee this process,” Fachir said. “But of course, we have to reall...