An 18-year-old black teenager who pulled a gun on police officers was shot and killed in the St. Louis area. Protesters descended on the scene immediately after the shooting and proceeded to clash with police.
St. Louis County PD said that a police officer conducting a routine check on a Mobil gas station at 11:15 p.m. saw two men outside the store and approached them. Antonio Martin pulled a gun on the officer and was shot by the officer.
The protesters that stormed the scene attacked police officers, threw some kind of explosive device at the police and also tried to burn down a QuikTrip store. Four people were arrested in the assault on the officers.
Police say Martin had a criminal record that included three assaults, armed robbery, armed criminal action and multiple weapons violations.
The family of Antonio Martin is claiming that he wasn’t with another man but with his girlfriend and that he didn’t have a gun despite the evidence that shows otherwise. A 9 mm handgun with the serial number filed off was found next to the body of Martin. A video of the incident showed Martin pointing the gun at the officer.
“When he was around me, he knew to do right,” Margret Chandler, Martin’s grandmother, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why would he pull out a gun against the police? That’s the thing I don’t get. It just doesn’t add up.”
The Pentagon has announced that three major ISIS leaders have been killed in the last few weeks and that the airstrikes are having a “significant impact” on the terrorist organization.
General Martin Dempsey granted an interview to the Wall Street Journal where he said the highest ranked terroristed taken out in the airstrikes is Haji Mutazz, deputy to ISIS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“We believe that the loss of these key leaders degrades ISIL’s ability to command and control current operations against Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), including Kurdish and other local forces in Iraq,” Kirby told the Journal.
“While we do not discuss the intelligence and targeting details of our operations, it is important to note that leadership, command and control nodes, facilities, and equipment are always part of our targeting calculus.”
General Dempsey said that the U.S. is not attacking the group as if it was a nation despite their attempts to claim they are a new country.
“It is in the context of how to fight a network,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman added. “It is not a country. They have claimed it, but they are not. They are a network, so they have finances, they have logistics and they have leaders.”
Government officials in Sierra Leone announced the country’s leading doctor died from Ebola Thursday just hours after the arrival of experimental drugs to treat him.
Dr. Victor Willoughby contracted the virus after working on a patient that came in complaining of pain in his organs. The patient, a senior banker in the nation, was later confirmed to have had Ebola after his death.
Sierra Leone Chief Medical Officer Brima Kargbo said that the experimental drug ZMapp was flown into the country in a frozen form but had not thawed when Dr. Willoughby’s health declined to the point of death.
His death makes the 11th doctor in Sierra Leone to die from Ebola during the massive outbreak out of 12 infected. In addition to the doctors, 109 of 142 health care workers infected with the virus have died.
“We’ve lost personal friends and colleagues we’ve worked with. It’s extremely depressing and frustrating. You can talk to someone today and tomorrow they are Ebola-infected,” Dr M’Baimba Baryoh said. “The tension, the depression, it’s a lot of pressure. You start having nightmares because of Ebola.”
The epidemic’s official death toll continues to rise toward a gruesome new mark, closing in on 7,000 total deaths. Officials admit that the death toll is likely much higher than the official count as many families in rural areas have buried victims without seeking government assistance.
The Pakistani Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of two Muslim clerics that they say incited a mob to kill two Christians last month after they made false accusations of the couple desecrating the Koran.
In addition to the clerics, five police officials who failed to take action to protect the couple have also been arrested for their lack of action.
“Why they did not make an attempt to secure the couple as they could disperse the mob through aerial firing?” Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk asked. “It is because of the police’s negligence that the tragic incident occurred.”
In the incident last month, 28-year-old Shama Bibi and her husband Shahzah Masih, 32, were burnt in a kiln by a Muslim mob. The mob had been informed at a mosque that the couple has been found guilty of blasphemy against Islam.
It turned out that the Bibi had burned items that her late father-in-law used to perform black magic and his family was so upset they told the clerics she had burned a Koran to get the Muslims to kill her.
The police report that over 100 people have been arrested on at least one charge connected to the unlawful killing of the couple.
Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights says that Islamic terrorist group ISIS killed over 150 women who refused to either marry a terrorist or allow themselves to be used as sex slaves.
“At least 150 females, including pregnant women, were executed in Fallujah by a militant named Abu Anas Al-Libi after they refused to accept jihad marriage,” said the Ministry. “Many families were also forced to migrate from the province’s northern town of Al-Wafa after hundreds of residents received death threats.”
The women were dumped into a mass grave and their children left in the desert.
The MHR says that ISIS has been found to be running brothels despite the fact this goes against their conservative brand of Islam would reject allowing that kind of behavior to take place. ISIS has claimed that because they use Yazidi and Christian women in the brothels it’s not a violation of their faith.
A video released to Iraqi officials showed a Yazidi woman in a brothel begging Western forces to bomb the brothel to end her suffering.
In a rare break among Islamic terrorist groups and countries that support them, the Pakistani Taliban has been roundly denounced for their attack on a school that left 132 children dead.
The Pakistani Taliban has been attempting to justify their attack by saying that the assault was revenge against the army for an offensive against the terrorist organization. The terrorists said their families had suffered losses, so it was right to kill the children of army members.
The spokesman for the Afghanistan branch of the Taliban condemned the attack as being against the basics of Islam.
“The intentional killing of innocent people, children and women is against the basics of Islam and this criteria has to be considered by every Islamic party and government,” Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The Iranian government also released a statement strongly condemning the terrorist action.
“This is a totally un-Islamic and inhumane act. Terrorism, extremism and endangering the lives of innocent people, in any form and with any objective, is condemned,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told reporters.
Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif says the government had tried to negotiate with the terror group but the talks broke down, leading to a military offensive against the group.
Islamist group the Taliban has killed over 100 children in an attack on a Pakstiani school in an attack that took hours. The assault was a revenge attack for the Nobel Peace Prize being given to Malala Yousafzai for her standing up to the Islamists.
The attack lasted over eight hours before Pakistani military was able to eliminate the last of the terrorists in Army Public School in Peshawar.
“The gunmen entered class by class and shot some kids one by one,” a student told local media.
The terrorists attacked around 11 a.m. local time when 500 students between grades one through ten were in the building.
“We were standing outside the school and firing suddenly started and there was chaos everywhere and the screams of children and teachers,” Jamshed Khan, a school bus driver, told NBC News.
Sources say that the terrorists killed one teacher by dousing them with gasoline and burning them alive while they forced the students to watch.
“Our suicide bombers have entered the school, they have instructions not to harm the children, but to target the army personnel,” Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani told Reuters.
A new law passed in Saudi Arabia could impose the death sentence on people who bring Bibles into the country and anyone else who distributes information about a religion that is not Islam.
“The new law extends to the importing of all illegal drugs and ‘all publications that have a prejudice to any other religious beliefs other than Islam,’” Paul Washer’s HeartCry Missionary Society outlines in a post on their website. “In other words, anyone who attempts to bring Bibles or gospel literature into the country will have all materials confiscated and be imprisoned and sentenced to death.”
The Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington has been refusing to confirm or deny the new law.
Members of the HeartCry Missionary Society reminded Christian News about the fact Christians in Saudi Arabia are routinely harassed by Muslims with virtual immunity.
“Christians are raped, abducted, murdered, and beaten on a daily basis. Saudis who accept Christ as their Savior are choosing to pick up a cross of ostracism, discrimination, harassment, and even death,” it outlines. “They risk losing their jobs, access to education for their children, or even the right to basic utilities like water and electricity.”
The Open Doors International list of the 100 most dangerous places for a Christian to live has Saudi Arabia at number 6.
In the wake of the Islamic terror attack on a Sydney café, local officials are confirming the acts of bravery committed by the two hostages killed during the assault.
The first victim was a 38-year-old mother of three who died protecting a pregnant co-worker. Katrina Dawson was a lawyer who worked in the central business district opposite the café. She had been drinking coffee with Julie Taylor, a fellow lawyer who is pregnant, and when terrorist Man Haron Monis began firing she used her body to shield her friend.
The other victim was Tori Johnson, the manager of the Lindt Café. Johnson jumped forward when the terrorist began to fire at the hostages in an attempt to wrestle the gun away from the attacker. He suffered fatal wounds during the fight with Monis.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted to the press that the attacker was not on the terrorism watch list. He could not explain why the openly hostile jihadist was not on the list.
The London Daily Mail said that Monis was on bail related to charges that he had plotted to kill a woman at the time of his assault on the café.
In the wake of a Christian couple being burned inside a brick kiln due to false accusations of blasphemy, three more cases of Christians being accused of blasphemy has emerged from Pakistan.
A Muslim north of Lahore claims he found burned pages of the Quran along with a page that listed a bunch of Christians. He claimed that the Christians on the list must have burned the Quran or else they would have not been on the attached list.
“I don’t know who has done this heinous act, but I am sure that the perpetrator is very much against the Christian community,” Pastor Arif Masih, who is on the list, told World Watch Monitor.
In another incident, a 70-year-old Christian man was hired to whitewash a mosque including a signboard that contained writing from the Quran. The Christian man was beaten by a mob of Muslims as he performed his work.
The Christian man, Bashir Masih, was accused of blasphemy by the Muslim mob that attacked him.
Local officials say that while the charges have been filed, they have confirmed he was hired to do the work and that the issue is really between two separate Muslim groups.
The Minority Rights Group International report says these incidents are becoming common.
“Since 2001, violence and discrimination against Christians has increased. Seen as connected to the ‘West’ due to their faith, Christians have at times been scapegoated for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the immense human suffering seen as a consequence of interventions in other countries with large Muslim populations”.