A scandal has erupted at the Church of God in Christ, the Los Angeles megachurch attended by celebrities Denzel Washington and Magic Johnson.
A public health expert and Seventh-Day Adventist preacher who lost a job offer from the State of Georgia over sermons posted to YouTube is suing for discrimination.
A week after offering Eric Walsh a job in 2014 as district health director for Northwest Georgia, state officials combed through his online sermons, which allegedly ranged from topics such as the sin of homosexuality to the corrupting influence of pop culture. They met together the following morning, and revoked his job offer the next day. Source
Fired for preaching: Georgia dumps doctor over church sermons
Bi-vocational pastors be warned – what you say from the pulpit on Sunday could get you fired from your public sector job on Monday.
Dr. Eric Walsh, a renowned public health expert who also serves as a lay minister, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Public Health alleging he was terminated for delivering sermons on issues ranging from homosexuality to evolution. Source
A Catholic Spanish schoolteacher has admitted in court that he abused nine children, all seven years old, but won’t be spending any time behind bars because of a legal loophole.Roberto P.S. admitted he had molested eight girls and one boy, a spokeswoman for the court said, as cited by The Local.
The teacher got individual sentences of one year per child, totaling nine years in jail, prosecution and defense have agreed, Cadena Ser TV reported.
However, here’s when the tricky law comes to the molester’s rescue: due to the fact that the teacher received individual sentences of one year, and not an entire nine-year sentence, he qualifies for a suspended sentence, according to a reform to the country’s criminal code. Source
About 330 million people are affected by drought in India, the government has said, as the country reels from severe water shortages and desperately poor farmers suffer crop losses.
A senior government lawyer, PS Narasimha, told the supreme court that a quarter of the country’s population, spread across 10 states, had been hit by drought after two consecutive years of weak monsoons.
Narasimha said the government had released funds to affected regions where a crippling shortage of rainfall had forced the rationing of drinking water to some communities.
As summer hits India, reports of families and farmers in remote villages walking long distances to find water after their wells dried up have dominated local media. Source
In a surprise decision, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) just announced that it won’t regulate the cultivation and sale of a genetically altered mushroom. The mushroom was modified using the CRISPR gene-editing tool, and it’s the first of its kind to get the go ahead from the federal government.
The particular fungus in question stems from the common white button mushroom, known to the scientific community as Agaricus bisporus. Penn State plant pathologist Yinong Yang used CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to introduce a genetic modification that reduces browning, which pretty much anyone who’s ever sliced a mushroom will have experienced. Genetically-speaking, Yang targeted the gene group that encodes an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, which is known to cause browning. By removing just a few base pairs from the mushroom’s genome, Yang was able to reduce the browning enzyme’s activity by 30%…
In the meantime, Yang is considering starting a commercial venture to support his effort to genetically remove the browning enzyme from a variety of fruits and vegetables. Genetically-modified apples and potatoes engineered by other researchers have already been approved for market sale, since reducing browning increases shelf-life. So while the United States scurries to reimagine its regulations and rules surrounding GMOs, geneticists continue to plough on with developments that could revolutionize the way we eat. Source
Wife of Chinese Church Leader Reportedly Buried Alive and Killed After Protesting Church’s Demolition.
Two members of a church demolition team in China’s central Henan province buried a house church leader and his wife alive Thursday when the pair tried to prevent the destruction of their church, according to local news sources. Though the church leader managed to escape, his wife suffocated to death before she could be freed.
The couple had petitioned the destruction of their church, China Aid reported Monday.
When the demolition crew showed up, Li Jiangong, the church leader, and his wife, Ding Cuimei, stepped in front of the bulldozers to protest the demolition.
“Bury them alive for me,” one of the workers said, according to China Aid. “I will be responsible for their lives.”
The couple was reportedly pushed into a pit with a bulldozer, which proceeded to cover their bodies with soil, suffocating Ding and nearly killing Li. Source
A hospital is persuading women who want to terminate their pregnancies to have the babies so it can sell them for $1,400 each to childless couples.
The shocking “baby farm” has been exposed at the 30-bed Palash Hospital in the Gwailor district of India. Two of the sold babies have since been rescued by police.
Prateek Kumar, from the ASP crime branch, told Times of India: “Three others have been sold to childless couples in Uttar Pradesh and Chattisgarh.” Source
Documents being revealed by the U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives, set up to investigate the abortion industry after David Daleiden and his Center for Medical Progress released videos in 2015 documenting Planned Parenthood officials negotiating for higher pay for baby body parts, confirm the profit in the trade.
“This barbarism degrades our nation and violates federal laws against such profiteering. We commend the Select Panel for its investigative work thus far and call on the Department of Justice to take immediate action,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List.
“The abortion industry sells baby hearts, livers, brains, hands and other organs procured by a middleman company inside their facilities at no cost or effort to the facilities themselves,” she continued. “The facility receives upfront fees that can amount to five-figure sums every month and then the procurement companies resell organs for tens of thousands more – depending on the child’s characteristics.
“Was the developing baby 18 weeks old? 24 weeks? Was the mother a smoker? What is the child’s ethnicity? All of these factors might make the heart, foot, eyeball or limbs more expensive,” she said in a statement released Tuesday. Source
A flurry of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions wreaked havoc around the globe in the past week and reignited widespread interest in the natural time bombs beneath humanity’s feet.
A volcanic eruption near Mexico City on Monday and an earthquake in Ecuador on Saturday followed a pair of earthquakes that rocked Japan last week. In short, Mother Nature dealt millions of victims five days terror that involved collapsed buildings, soot-filled streets, tsunami warnings and emergency workers searching through rubble.
Filerma Rayo, 33, told Reuters she spent five hours trapped under debris in Pedernales, Ecuador, after Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake. Nearly 300 people and at least 2,000 were injured. Hundreds of corpses were consolidated at a nearby stadium to be identified. Source