Author Archives: Jim Bakker Show News

FFRF criticizes group prayer in Missouri middle school

A lawyer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation contacted a Missouri school district after watching a video that purportedly shows a ministry official leading students in prayer in the lunchroom.

The organization, which describes itself as a watchdog that strives for a separation of church and state, wrote a letter to the Hollister R-V School District’s superintendent, saying a concerned parent contacted them after the video was shared on social media.

The 10-second cell-phone video was uploaded to Facebook on February 5. It appears to show Robert Bruce, the local chapter director of the Christian youth ministry K-Life, standing in the center of a circle of students in the Hollister Middle School lunchroom and leading a prayer. Dozens of students are holding hands in the circle, while a few remain seated at lunch tables.

In his Feb. 10 letter to Hollister’s superintendent, Freedom From Religion Foundation attorney Patrick C. Elliott called the practice “an egregious violation of the First Amendment,” which forbids schools from promoting religion, and said it “must be stopped immediately.”

“It is unconstitutional for a public school to allow an evangelical Christian organization to impose prayer on all students,” Elliott said in a statement. “Giving the group access to all students as part of school programming suggests that the school district has preference not only for religion over nonreligion, but also evangelical Christianity over other faiths. This sort of entanglement between religion and public education is inappropriate.”

The letter argues that allowing the ministry into the school allowed its representatives to “proselytize” and students who did not participate in the prayer were made to feel like outsiders.

According to Elliott’s letter, the child of the parent who complained said that students had been directed in similar prayers on other occasions around the time the video was originally posted.

“No religious organization should have direct access to students at school,” Elliott argues in the letter. “This predatory conduct should raise red flags, especially since these adults are conversing with students without parental knowledge.”

The prayer circle video had been viewed more than 10,000 times as of Thursday afternoon.

In the video’s description on Facebook, the boy who uploaded it to the social media website wrote “we chose to do this” as a way of “Respecting Our God.”

On Thursday, after local media reported on the letter, a student from Hollister High School tweeted that “HHS supports HMS as well as Robert Bruce” and shared a 17-second video of students gathered in a prayer circle in what appears to be the high school’s cafeteria.

The student tweeted that it was a “110% student led prayer,” and the dozens of kids who appear in the high school video all participated voluntarily.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has written many letters to schools and government agencies across the country about the presence of religious tones in those environments.

On Thursday, it announced it had contacted lawyers for the Bentonville School District in Arkansas, claiming that the Feb. 19 inauguration of a new fitness trail at Cooper Elementary School had unconstitutional components, including a nun blessing the trail with holy water.

“Even when outside the typical school environment, the Supreme Court has found prayers taking place at school-sponsored events unconstitutional,” Elliott wrote in the Feb. 23 letter.

U.S. loses more than 160 abortion providers since 2011

The number of abortion providers in the United States continues to dwindle, and Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the rate of their disappearance is at its highest point on record.

The procedure is legal across the country, though Republican lawmakers in several states have passed a variety of laws in recent years that make it more difficult for clinics to operate.

Citing data from the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit with a focus on reproductive health, Bloomberg reported the United States lost more than 150 standalone clinics between the late 1980s and 2011. The number stood at 553 in 2011 and has declined further in subsequent years.

Bloomberg conducted its own analysis and found 162 abortion providers stopped performing the procedure — or closed entirely — in the past five years, a little more than one every two weeks.

Bloomberg reported that 35 states lost at least one provider since 2011, and restrictive laws were to blame for more than 40 of the closings. At least 30 closures occurred in Texas, whose abortion regulations are the subject of a lawsuit that will be reviewed by the Supreme Court on March 2.

Other providers closed because of business decisions, reduced demand or a lack of doctors, Bloomberg found, and only 21 new clinics have opened since 2011 amid the rising challenges.

Death toll rises to 8 as tornadoes sweep through Southeast

The death toll from the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that damaged homes and businesses across the United States over the past two days now stands at eight, officials said.

The National Weather Service received 68 reports of tornadoes in the Gulf Coast and Southeast on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with about 500 reports of wind damage from Florida to Maine. The reports mentioned damages to homes and businesses, indicating some were destroyed, as well as numerous downed trees and power lines throughout the storm area.

Tornadoes were reported in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida on Tuesday, and Florida, Virginia and North Carolina on Wednesday. It’s possible that some of those storm reports reference the same funnel cloud, as there are numerous counties listed multiple times.

Officials said severe weather killed five people Wednesday, four in Virginia and one in South Carolina. They came a day after tornadoes killed two people in Louisiana and one in Mississippi.

The Virginia State Police said three people were killed in Waverly, where a funnel cloud was reportedly spotted, and “significant debris” left two state highways impassible in the area.

Officials in Appomattox County said one person was killed after a reported tornado left a trail of destruction that stretched at least eight miles. In a Facebook post, they said some 100 structures were damaged — 20 severely — and 40 percent of the county’s homes were without power.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency, joining governors in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who issued similar decrees for the severe weather.

McAuliffe’s office said the governor was heading out to survey the damage on Thursday.

The National Weather Service’s reports indicate multiple houses were destroyed near Richmond, Virginia, and five houses were damaged near Granville, North Carolina, a snippet of the storm’s impact.

The reports also say winds toppled trees and power lines in areas where tornadoes weren’t seen.

In South Carolina, the Darlington County Coroner’s Office said a 58-year-old man was killed by a falling tree as he tried to remove storm debris from a road near his home.

Those downed trees and limbs helped knock out power to tens of thousands of people along the East Coast, some of whom were still without electricity on Thursday morning.

That included about 45,000 customers in Connecticut, local utility company Eversource said.

Four Egyptian Christians reportedly punished for mocking Islam

An Egyptian judge punished four Coptic Christian teenagers who were accused of insulting Islam by making fun of prayers in a video last year, the AFP news agency reported Thursday.

A lawyer for the teens told the news agency the quartet was mocking beheadings perpetrated by Islamic State extremists, and did not mean to insult the country’s most-worshipped religion.

However, they became the latest four people punished for blasphemy under Egyptian law.

Three of the teenagers received five-year jail sentences, according to the AFP report, while a 15-year-old was ordered to a serve an indefinite amount of time in a juvenile detention facility.

Their lawyer told AFP he is planning to appeal.

Egypt ranks 23rd on the World Watch List published by Open Doors USA, a group that monitors Christian persecution in countries around the world. The roughly 10 million Christians among Egypt’s 87.3 million residents face persecution from Islamic extremists and must cope with “relatively restrictive legislation related to religious affairs,” according to the organization.

AFP reported it’s also illegal to insult Christianity and Judaism in Egypt.

The Islamic State beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians last February, according to Open Doors USA.

Human rights in danger across the globe, Amnesty warns

Basic human rights and freedoms are being threatened by governments across the globe, a watchdog warned Wednesday, saying seven decades of progress is at risk of coming undone.

Amnesty International’s annual report on the global state of human rights offered a scathing analysis of the situation, saying human rights are the victim of a “wholesale assault” from governments, some of them looking to boost their security in the face of evolving threats.

That has led to undue crackdowns on rights like privacy and free speech, the group claimed.

“Millions of people are suffering enormously at the hands of states and armed groups, while governments are shamelessly painting the protection of human rights as a threat to security, law and order or national ‘values,’” Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s secretary general, said in a statement.

The watchdog said it found many instances in which governments broke either their own or international laws, outlining several in the report. It claimed that 122 countries tortured or otherwise mistreated individuals, while the “laws of war” were violated in 19 countries.

It also reported that governments have been “increasingly targeting and attacking” human rights advocates such as lawyers, activists and other workers, calling it a “worrying trend.”

Perhaps more troubling was that Amnesty found “an insidious and creeping trend undermining human rights,” as governments have underfunded, attacked or neglected bodies who help preserve the freedoms, such the International Criminal Court and United Nations agencies.

“Not only are our rights under threat, so are the laws and the system that protect them,” Shetty said in a statement. “More than 70 years of hard work and human progress lies at risk.”

The 409-page report includes information on 160 countries, including the United States.

It mentioned the country continues to operate the Guantanamo Bay prison, held about 80,000 prisoners “in conditions of physical and social deprivation” nationwide and executed 27 inmates last year.

Amnesty highlighted what it called an “excessive use of force” by U.S. law enforcement, saying that 43 people were killed after police used stun guns on them.

It also mentioned issues with women’s health rights and the country’s treatment of migrants.

Amnesty went on to list some human rights threats that weren’t exclusive to any one nation.

Namely, it said 113 countries “arbitrarily restricted” freedom of the press, 61 nations imprisoned people who were just exercising their rights, 55 percent of the countries staged unfair trials and 30 governments illegally returned refugees to dangerous countries, calling for sweeping reform.

“It is within world leaders’ power to prevent these crises from spiralling further out of control. Governments must halt their assault on our rights and strengthen the defences the world has put in place to protect them,” Shetty said in a statement. “Human rights are a necessity, not an accessory; and the stakes for humankind have never been higher.”

U.S. officials investigating 14 new cases of Zika possibly being spread through sex

Health officials are investigating more than a dozen new reports of the Zika virus possibly being transmitted sexually, suggesting the method may be more probable than originally believed.

The virus is most commonly spread when an infected mosquito bites a person, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday that United States public health departments had received 14 new reports about the virus potentially being spread through sex.

Several of those cases involved pregnant women, the CDC said.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in response to the Zika virus. Scientists are still investigating whether the virus can lead to microcephaly, a rare condition in which children are born with unusually small heads, or Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a nervous system illness that can cause paralysis.

The WHO says the evidence about a potential link between Zika and the disorders “remains circumstantial,” though a growing amount of data that suggests the virus plays a “causal role.”

There is currently no vaccine against Zika, though the WHO says some are being developed.

The CDC maintains the best way to prevent Zika infections is to prevent mosquito bites, and has issued travel notices for several countries where the virus is currently being transmitted.

However, the new reports about possible sexual transmission prompted the organization to reiterate its advisories for people who have traveled to those countries. The CDC says pregnant women and their partners should use condoms throughout their pregnancy, or abstain entirely.

The CDC said it has confirmed two cases of Zika in women whose only possible exposure to the virus was “sexual contact” with infected men who had recently traveled to countries where mosquitos are known to be transmitting Zika. Another four potential cases are currently awaiting confirmation from lab tests, and the other cases are currently being investigated.

“These new reports suggest sexual transmission may be a more likely means of transmission for Zika virus than previously considered,” the CDC said in a news release.

In all 14 cases, the CDC said the travelers were male and began displaying symptoms about two weeks before their “non-traveling female partner” reported an illness. The CDC says Zika stays in semen longer than blood, though scientists do not know exactly how long the virus lingers.

The CDC says it’s not yet known if women can transmit Zika to their partners through sex.

To date, the CDC has not reported any instances of people acquiring Zika from mosquitos in the United States. However, there have been 82 cases of people getting sick after returning home.

The organization says only about 1 in 5 people infected with Zika display symptoms, and they usually experience a mild illness that lasts about a week.

Blizzard begins bearing down on Great Lakes, near-whiteout conditions expected

Portions of Illinois and Indiana were bracing for a blizzard on Wednesday.

The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for select counties in those states, saying high winds and heavy snow could generate near-whiteout conditions throughout the day.

The service said 6 to 12 inches of snow were expected across the warning area, and warned of wind gusts possibly reaching 50 mph. Travel was expected to be close to impossible during the height of the storm, and the warnings encouraged people to stay off the roads when possible.

The National Weather Service said snow had already begun falling on Wednesday morning.

More than 1,000 flights to or from Chicago’s airports had already been cancelled as of mid-day, according to flight monitoring website flightaware.com.

The Indiana State Police said they had responded to at least 46 crashes in just four hours, and the Indiana Department of Transportation reported multiple roads were closed due to incidents.

Some of the roads had since reopened, but the transportation department reported driving conditions were difficult on many roads in northwest Indiana. The state Department of Homeland Security issued numerous travel watches and advisories in that part of the state.

Broader winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories were also issued in other parts of Illinois and Indiana, as well as Missouri and Michigan. Winds were not expected to be as high in those areas, but the service said 6 to 12 inches of snow were still possible in many communities.

Residents of all of the affected states are encouraged to monitor their local forecasts.

Tornadoes kill three in the South, more possible along East Coast

Tornadoes killed at least three people and damaged dozens of homes and businesses as a powerful storm system swept through the Gulf Coast on Tuesday evening, officials said.

More tornadoes were possible along the East Coast today, the National Weather Service warned, saying parts of Virginia and North Carolina had the highest chance of seeing extreme weather.

The service’s Storm Prediction Center received 31 reports of tornadoes in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and the Florida panhandle on Tuesday. Some of those reports may reference the same tornado, as several counties had multiple damage summaries listed.

The National Weather Service said one person was killed when a tornado destroyed a mobile home near Purvis, Mississippi. The St. James (Louisiana) Parish’s official Facebook page added that a tornado hit a mobile home park in Convent, killing two people and sending 30 to the hospital with injuries. The storm also damaged about 100 RVs and trailers there, officials wrote.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, the National Weather Service’s reports indicate tornadoes caused “significant damage” to a gym in Ascension Parish and “widespread structural damage” to homes and businesses in St. John the Baptist Parish. There were also several reports of winds knocking down trees and power lines, and one mention of a 120 mph gust near Mandeville.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency in seven parishes.

“I ask all Louisianans to pray for the victims of the terrible storms that touched down in Louisiana today and especially at the Sugar Hill RV Park in Convent,” he said in a statement.

Governors in Alabama and Mississippi also declared states of emergency ahead of the storms.

The National Weather Service is expecting strong-to-severe thunderstorms from New York to Florida on Wednesday, but said severe weather was most likely to hit northeast North Carolina and southeast Virginia. The service said there was a “moderate risk” of severe thunderstorms in those areas, the second-highest level on a five-tier system, and tornadoes were a possibility.

The service issued several flash flood watches and wind advisories throughout the mid-Atlantic and southeast. Residents in the storm’s path are encouraged to monitor their local forecasts.

North Korean leader would use WMD, U.S. general tells lawmakers

The leader of North Korea would use a weapon of mass destruction to protect his authority, the general in charge of the United Nations and United States forces in South Korea said Tuesday.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the commander of United Nations Command and United States Forces Korea, said tensions on the Korean Peninsula recently hit a 20-year-high and expressed concerns the North “could quickly escalate” the situation.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Security Council condemned a Feb. 7 North Korean satellite launch that U.N. officials said used the same kind of technology as ballistic missiles.

The launch came about a month after North Korea said it tested a nuclear weapon.

“Kim Jong Un has been clear that he intends to establish himself and wants to be accepted as a nuclear nation with a valid missile capability to deliver those assets,” Scaparrotti told the committee about the North Korean dictator. “He claims he can do that today.”

A senator asked Scaparotti if the general believed Kim would use a long-range nuclear missile against the United States, if the dictator actually had such a weapon at his disposal.

“His stated purpose is to protect his regime and if he thought his regime were challenged, he states that he would use WMD,” Scaparrotti responded.

The general testified tensions between North Korea and South Korea peaked in August, when two South Korean soldiers were wounded in a landmine attack in the demilitarized zone.

This year’s tests prompted the United States to impose additional sanctions on North Korea.

“I think (Kim’s) calculus is, at this point, that those tests that he just conducted in January and February, they were within his risk tolerance,” Scaparrotti told the committee. “That he could conduct those and at some point in the future here, in the next three or four months, move beyond it, just as he has done in the cycle of provocation and relaxation over time, which has been their norm. I do worry about his calculation being wrong at some point.”

The general said it was important the United States and its allies continued to deter conflict, and warned about the potential implications if a North Korean provocation escalated the situation.

In prepared testimony, Scaparrotti said the North has “several hundred ballistic missiles,” one of the world’s largest chemical weapons stockpiles and the fourth-largest military on the planet.

“If deterrence fails, full-scale conflict in Korea would more closely parallel the high intensity combat of the Korean War than the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Scaparrotti said in the written testimony he submitted to the committee. “Furthermore, any conflict with North Korea would significantly increase the threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

Scaparrotti testified North Korea is pursuing several other technological advances.

“He’s developing his cyber capability,” Scaparrotti testified, referring to Kim. “He’s developing a strategic-launch ballistic missile. And he’s developing his air defense capabilities. All of those things, in about five or six years, are going to be a more formidable problem.”

New research suggests 20th century sea levels rose at quickest pace since 800 B.C.

Climate scientists studying the Earth’s sea levels have determined that it was “extremely likely” those waters rose more rapidly in the 20th century than any other century in nearly 3,000 years.

Human-induced climate change contributed to the increase, the scientists wrote in Monday’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

The research team found sea levels rose 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) in the 20th century, and its models suggest those numbers may have been different without the effects of climate change.

Without it, the team wrote it was “very likely” that seas would have seen a change that ranged from a 3 centimeter (a little more than an inch) drop to a 7 centimeter (2.75 inch) increase.

The study’s lead author was Bob Kopp, a climate scientist from Rutgers University.

In a message on his website, Kopp wrote that he and his colleagues concluded “with 95 percent probability” that the levels rose more rapidly last century than any other century since 800 B.C.

The study’s cutoff, which stretches back 28 centuries, “is not because the rate of global sea-level rise was probably faster before then,” Kopp wrote on his website, “but simply that the reconstruction quality isn’t good enough before then to have the same level of confidence.”

NASA says the global average sea level has risen another 6 centimeters since January 2000 and is currently rising at a rate of .4 millimeters every year. The agency says the increases are “a direct result of a changing climate,” as melting ice sheets and glaciers fuel the expansion.

Kopp wrote last century wasn’t the only time when global temperatures and sea levels moved together, pointing to a 400-year stretch from the 11th to 15th centuries. Temperatures fell about .2 degrees Celsius during that stretch, while sea levels dipped approximately 8 centimeters.

But the study found it was “very likely” that global sea levels have risen “over every 40-year interval since 1860,” as societies became more industrialized.

In December, 195 countries agreed to a landmark climate change pact that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent temperatures from reaching 2 degrees Celsius above their pre-industrial averages, a long-feared threshold.

But Kopp’s team warned that even with “extremely strong emissions abatement,” their models suggest seas could rise another 24 to 61 centimeters (9 to 24 inches) during the 21st century.

If emissions were to continue at “business-as-usual” levels this century, the research team said that sea levels could potentially rise between 52 and 131 centimeters (20 to 51 inches).