Posted: 12 May 2014 03:14 PM PDT

Hundreds of UK schools have banned pork sausages and bacon and switched to halal only meat for meals even where Muslims are in the minority.
Many families of other faiths and none have been angered and upset by the move which has often been done by schools and councils with little or no consultation.
At least two dinner ladies have been sacked in the last year after serving non-halal food to Muslim students by accident.
By contrast, dinner ladies in hundreds of schools are expected to serve halal meat to primary and secondary school age pupils every day of the week whether they are Muslim or not.
The driving force appears to be cost because it is far easier and cheaper to have a single source of halal meat for everyone, rather than having to provide a segregated menu.
In most cases the halal meat served in schools will come from animals that have been pre-stunned before slaughter, which welfare experts say is the minimum required to minimise suffering.
The concern among non-Muslim parents is that it is not clear which schools are using halal only meat. Separately, a move to halal only meat means children have no choice but to eat it or switch to a vegetarian option.
This is a particular worry for the Sikh community who refuse to eat halal meat on religious grounds.
A spokesman for the Sikh Council UK said: ‘We are concerned that many schools, councils and other public sector bodies and their caterers are effectively allowed to deceive the public by providing halal meat without declaring it as such.
‘Public sector bodies have a duty to the entire community and should be accommodating for all needs without fear or favour.’
He said: ‘Everybody has a right to purchase and consume food in accordance with their religious or other beliefs and food should be clearly labelled to allow individuals to make an informed choice.
‘All foodstuffs using or containing halal meat and any derived products from halal meat should be clearly labelled as halal. Certified halal meat products should be provided and be available for the benefit of the Muslim community where required.
‘All consumers should have the confidence that foodstuffs that are not labelled as halal are in fact halal free. It should be a duty of trading standard officers to enforce effective and clear labelling on all food.’
In March, parents in Rotherham condemned a school’s decision to ban all pork products from the menu and replace other meats with halal versions.
The change means pupils aged 3-11 at Brinsworth Manor Infant and Junior Schools in Rotherham – which Ofsted identifies as having only a small number of pupils from minority ethnic groups – will no longer be able to enjoy sausages, bacon or ham.
Parents at both schools, which share a site, were told of the decision in a letter from Rotherham Council’s catering officer, who wrote that there had been ‘minor adjustments’ to the lunch menu.
Although just 20 per cent of the school’s 600 pupils are Muslim the menu changes were reportedly brought in to make the school more inclusive.
A mother with an 11-year-old girl at the school, who asked not to be named for fear of being branded racist, said: ‘At home I pay more for organic and free range food. I am a Christian but I don’t do it because of that, it’s more for the respect of how animals are killed.
‘The way the animals are slaughtered for halal meat is a religious killing and I don’t feel it should be in schools.
‘My daughter has been anxious about the change as she has concerns about if it is humane killing. I believe in animal welfare rights and standards of meat production that halal does not follow.’
The change in policy was agreed by the head teacher and governors as part of a policy to make the meals more inclusive.
This same scenario is understood to have been played out in hundreds of schools across the country over the past five years.
While schools are going to extraordinary lengths to protect the interests of Muslim pupils, there is no such support for others who may not want to eat halal for various reasons.
Dinner lady Alison Waldock, aged 51, was fired for gross misconduct last year from a Cambridge school after she mistakenly gave non-halal food to a seven year-old girl.
The girl’s parents complained with the result she lost her job after 11 years with the catering company involved.
In February last year, it emerged that a dinner lady at a multi-faith school in Moseley, Birmingham, was sacked after she accidentally served non-Halal meat to Muslims. Moseley School has a policy of serving halal-only meat to all 1,400 students, regardless of their faith.
The change to halal seems to have been encouraged and organised by local councils, however the Local Government Association, which speaks for them, denied responsibility. It said each school has responsibility for a decision on whether or not to switch to halal only meat.
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Posted: 12 May 2014 02:32 PM PDT

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Israel has condemned Israeli hate crimes against local Christians and Muslims.
Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal told a news conference in the city of Haifa on Sunday that the acts of vandalism “poison the atmosphere” ahead of a visit by Pope Francis to Jerusalem.
The Pope’s visit is set to begin in Jordan on May 24 and he is due to spend two days in Israel from May 25.
On Friday, Israeli vandals spray-painted anti-Christian graffiti on a church in Jerusalem. The act of vandalism came just days after the Roman Catholic Church called for Israel to take action following the discovery of racist slogans daubed on a Vatican-owned property elsewhere in the area.
The Israeli regime has come under fire for its failure to control the spiraling wave of “price tag” hate crimes by Israelis targeting Christian and Muslim properties as well as their holy sites.
“How can it be that they don’t catch the perpetrators?” Twal asked, saying the price tag attacks were “only drawing condemnation” from Israeli authorities but resulted in few arrests.
The United Nations says there have been 2,100 such attacks since 2006, when the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) started the counting, with the annual overalls up from 115 in 2006 to 399 last year.
In early May, Carmi Gillon, the former chief of Shin Bet which is the Israeli security agency, said Tel Aviv does not stop the “price tag” attacks, because it lacks the desire to do so.
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Posted: 12 May 2014 02:11 PM PDT

Donetsk People’s Republic has proclaimed itself a sovereign state and has asked Moscow to consider its accession into Russia, the Republic’s council said.
“We, the people of Donetsk, based on results of the May 11 referendum and the declaration of sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic, declare that from now on DPR is now a sovereign state,” Republic Co-Chairman Denis Pushilin said. “Given the will of the people of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and in order to restore historical justice, we ask Russia to consider the issue of our republic’s accession into the Russian Federation,” he added.
Earlier on Monday the results of referendums have been announced in Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, showing the majority of voters support self-rule, amid an intensified military operation by Kiev which resulted in several deaths.
Almost 90 percent of voters in Donetsk Region have endorsed political independence from Kiev, the head of the Central Election Commission of the self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’, Roman Lyagin, announced.
“Counting the ballots proved to be surprisingly easy – the number of people who said ‘no’ was relatively small and there appeared to be only a tiny proportion of spoiled ballots, so we managed to carry out counting quite fast. The figures are as follows: 89.07 percent voted ‘for’, 10.19 percent voted ‘against’ and 0.74 percent of ballots were rendered ineligible,” Lyagin told journalists.
In Lugansk Region 96.2 percent of voters supported the region’s self-rule, according to the final figures announced by the local election commission.
The Kremlin’s press service has issued a statement, saying: “Moscow respects the will of the people in Donetsk and Lugansk and hopes that the practical realization of the outcome of the referendums will be carried out in a civilized manner.”
It stressed the necessity of a “dialogue between representatives of Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk.”
At the same time, both the EU and US dismissed the ballots in eastern Ukraine as illegal.
In the two weeks prior to the referendum, Kiev intensified the military operation in southeastern Ukraine. May 9 became one of the bloodiest days in the weeks of the operation. It has been confirmed that nine people were killed and another 49 injured during the armed assault of Kiev’s army on Mariupol’s Police HQ. Driven by reports of shooting, residents, then mostly celebrating WWII Victory Day, flocked to the scene. The Kiev fighters opened fire on civilians.
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