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The U.S. says it will not pursue any sort of prosecution against those who killed American missionary John Allen Chau three months ago. Sam Brownback, Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, confirmed the U.S. would be dropping the case. He said, "It’s a tragic situation and a tragic case of what’s happened, but that’s not something that’s been asked."
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Eight new identified cases of measles in Vancouver over the past week, all emanating from a single French-language school. The father of the family responsible for the outbreak said in an interview that he fell for the hoax that vaccines cause autism. “We worried 10-12 years ago because there was a lot of debate around the MMR vaccine,” said Bilodeau. “Doctors were coming out with research connecting the MMR vaccine with autism. So we were a little concerned.”
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State Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, a Wyoming lawmaker who helped defeat a bill to repeal capital punishment used the argument that Christianity was founded on the death penalty, in the sense that Jesus was crucified by the state as a criminal. She told the Casper Star-Tribune, “The greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty for you and me........If it wasn’t for Jesus dying via the death penalty, we would all have no hope.” Wyoming’s state Senate, with help from Hutchings, voted down a bill to abolish the death penalty in the state. The final vote was 12 in favor and 18 against.
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Hoda Muthana, the American-born woman who traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State and who wants to come home, does not qualify for citizenship and has no legal basis to return to the country, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. President Trump said the US would not re-admit her. She was a 20-year-old student in Alabama then traveled to Turkey, hiding her plans from her family. She told them she was heading to a university event. She was smuggled into Syria, where she met up with the Islamic State and began urging attacks in the West. Mr. Pompeo issued a statement declaring that she “is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States.”
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For the first time in Catholic history, the almost 200 global church leaders are gathering at the Vatican to address the Catholic Church's clergy abuse scandal. Pope Francis said, "In the face of this scourge of sexual abuse perpetrated by men of the church to the detriment of minors, I thought I would summon you,...so that all together we may lend an ear and listen to the Holy Spirit ... and to the cry of the small ones who are asking for justice". The four day summit will include small group discussions among bishops and a penitential ceremony involving abuse survivors.
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Anthony DeStefano's op-ed for Fox News, claims that atheists are responsible for the vast majority of humanity's suffering, death, war, and destruction.
"There’s no polite way to say it. Atheists today are the most arrogant, ignorant and dangerous people on earth."
Adapted from his book, Inside the Atheist Mind: Unmasking the Religion of Those Who Say There is No God, DeStefano shares myriad examples of not only how terrible atheists have been all through history but also how today's atheists are bullies who try to force their beliefs upon others.
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Almost 100% of Flat Earthers were convinced of their current beliefs through Youtube, a new study shows. According to the Guardian's report, researchers at Texas Tech University attended two of the world's largest Flat Earth gatherings and interviewed the people there. The results pointed to one commonality, Youtube. The interviews revealed that most had been watching videos about other conspiracies, with alternative takes on 9/11, the Sandy Hook school shooting and whether Nasa really went to the moon, when YouTube offered up Flat Earth videos for them to watch next.
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A woman from Kolkata, who is also a member of one of AR's consulate, alleged that she received non-stop death and rape threats over her Facebook post that criticised the Narendra Modi-led government after the Pulwama terror attack. These threats have come from the right wing and VHP/RSS activists. The woman's Facebook post read, "Do those who are weeping for the Army jawans feel a similar pain for ordinary Kashmiri citizens? Will they remain left out? Just because they are Kashmiris? Kashmiri shawls and Kashmiri corpse, both are in demand." This is the second case from Kolkata.
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Creationist Ken Ham claimed it was a violation of the First Amendment for public schools not to take their students on field trips to Ark Encounter or the Creation Museum. His remark during an interview on the WallBuilders Live radio show was, “these people [atheists] are so scared that these students would actually hear some different thinking, that they threaten them this way. So the way I responded was to offer any public school that brings students on a field trip to the Creation Museum — now, to do it in accord with the Constitution, and that is this: That they are to do it as an educational trip, you know, a field trip, to learn other perspectives about science and history outside the context of the classroom, they can do that.
- The Christian organization Focus on the Family will set up 4-D ultrasound images in what is being called the largest "pro-life" effort in history. The idea is that if strangers see an image of a fetus in the third trimester of pregnancy, they’ll never want to have an abortion… even though only about 1% of abortions occur after 20 weeks of gestation and suggesting all abortions are late-term ones is wildly misleading and par for the course for these kinds of anti-abortion groups.
