Considering that 2/3rds of the world is not Christian why in the heck should a newspaper for a nonChristian nation feel obliged to the minority for something so arbitrary as what year it is? Just be lucky it wasnt in Jewish time or some other religions calender.
Other nations always had the option to determine their own dating system. The Chinese never used BC, AD as far as I know. The issue is that leftist academic types in Western civilization, which has used the BC,AD system for a couple thousand years, are trying to replace that with BCE,CE. For what reason? You think a six year shift makes some kind of scientific difference?