• Despite the good sense shown by the British Medical Association in lambasting homeopathy at their annual conference last month, the UK National Health Service has announced that it will still pay for water and sugar pills passed off as medicine.
• A court in Utah has thrown out the rape conviction of Mormon cult leader Warren Jeffs, due to a legal technicality, and ordered that the case be retried. Texas is still seeking to have him extradited to face similar charges, so it seems likely that he’ll ultimately face justice.
• I was shocked to read of some ultra-Orthodox Israeli communities that are so extreme, they demand that their women wear burqas so as not to arouse the passions of men.
• A Liberty University graduate defends the separation of church and state.
• In more welcome news, the U.K. education secretary has said he’s interested in proposals for atheist schools, after Richard Dawkins made such a proposal in response to a law allowing faith-based and community groups to open their own publicly funded schools. And why not? If every church in England has its own schools – the article mentions Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu – why shouldn’t there be atheist schools that teach students rationality and critical thinking?