A minor earthquake struck the New Madrid fault Tuesday, the second quake on the fault line in the last two weeks.
The magnitude 2.7 quake struck around 8:46 p.m. Tuesday about 5 miles from the town of New Madrid, Missouri. The Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) at the University of Memphis said the quake was 5.9 miles deep.
Residents in northwest Tennessee, southeast Missouri and western Kentucky all reported slight shaking from the quake.
It’s the second minor quake along the New Madrid Fault in two weeks. A magnitude 3.5 quake struck near Memphis, Tennessee on August 25th.
The New Madrid fault line is twenty times larger than the San Andreas fault line in California.
One Missouri official is calling on residents to check to make sure they have earthquake coverage as part of their homeowners insurance. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the probability of a 7.5 or greater quake in the next 50 years at 7-10%, with the possibility of a quake stronger than 6.0 at 25-40%.
Residents of western Tennessee were given a jolt to their Wednesday morning commutes when a small earthquake struck around 8:26 a.m.
The magnitude 3.5 quake was centered about 16 miles northwest of Covington, TN or about 50 miles north of Memphis.
“I was just sitting down and I was inside of a building and it was just shaking, so I thought it was construction or something,” Covington resident Kiana Burnett told WMC-TV.
Local officials say there were no reports of damage and that inspections of bridges are taking place for safety reasons, not because they actually believe any bridge was damaged by the quake.
“What it means for the local person is if you were in Covington and weren’t in a car or something, or was just sitting somewhere, you probably felt an earthquake this morning, and that’s about all it means,” Dr. Mitch Withers of the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information told WMC.
The quake struck along the New Madrid Fault, a massive fault line that is 20 times larger than the famed San Andreas fault in California. Withers did remind reporters that just because this quake did not cause large damage, the fault line can cause massive damage from significant earthquakes.
A gunman has been killed after opening fire inside a Nashville, Tennessee area movie theater.
A spokesman for the Nashville Metro P.D., Don Aaron, told reporters on the scene that man came to a showing of the movie “Mad Max” at the Carmike Hickory 8 theater in Antioch with a gun and a hatchet. The gunman wounded one person with the hatchet and people stormed out of the theater.
A police officer entered the theater from the projection booth. As the officer was clearing the theater, the gunman opened fire on the police officer. The officer returned fire as he backed out of the room and held the gunman in place until a SWAT team arrived on the scene.
When the SWAT team arrived and engaged the shooter, he returned fire and then was shot dead by the police.
Aaron told the press conference that two backpacks were found at the scene that belonged to the shooter and the bomb squad was dealing with the bags.
The incident is the second theater shooting at a movie theatre in two weeks. On July 23rd, a shooter killed 2 and wounded 8 before killing himself inside a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.
A Navy petty officer wounded in the terror attack on two military recruiting centers in Chattanooga, Tennessee has died from his wounds.
The fallen soldier is Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith. He leaves behind a wife and three young daughters.
Smith’s mother Paula Proxmire went to the memorial site for those slain by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez and placed an American flag and baseball mitt in honor of her son. She said that America and baseball were her son’s passions.
“My son is a hero. He died doing what he loved. He would have had it no other way,” Proxmire, from Kansas, told NBC News. “He’s been my hero since the day I gave birth to him.”
Meanwhile, the family of Abdulazeez reportedly told investigators that their son suffered from depression and was a drug addict, so they sent him to Jordan to try and get him away from Chattanooga friends who were a “bad influence.” However, relatives and friends admitted they saw changes in his behavior after his return from seven months in Jordan.
Investigators say Abdulazeez sent a text message to a friend before the attacks that included the Islamic verse “Whoever shows enmity to a friend of mine, then I have declared war against him.”
The FBI reports there is nothing to connect the gunman to ISIS or any other international terrorism group.
Terrorism investigators are looking closely at a trip taken to Jordan by Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez to see if he had contact with known terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
FBI officials say that Abdulazeez spent seven months in Jordan last year, one of several trips he had made to the region over the last few years. He went to Jordan in the last weeks of 2005, in the summer of 2008, the summer of 2010 and during the spring of 2013. The trips lasted anywhere from two weeks to two months.
Despite the pattern of trips, the FBI admitted Abdulazeez was not on their watch list of possible terrorist sympathizers or operatives.
However, his father had been investigated years prior for giving money to an organization that had suspected connections to terrorists.
Abdulazeez’s attack on two Navy recruiting centers left four Marines dead. They have been identified as Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, of Springfield, Mass., Lance Cpl. Skip “Squire” Wells, of Marietta, Ga., Sgt. Carson Holmquist, of Grantsburg Wisc., and Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, of Chattanooga.
Security experts say that the shooting shows an inherent weakness in recruiting stations for the military. The locations need to be easily accessible to the public.
“They’re supposed to be convenient; they’re supposed to be easily accessible,” Brian Michael Jenkins, a security expert who is senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation, told the New York Times. “They’re virtually no more protected than a shoe store in a shopping mall.”
A gunman opened fire on two military recruitment centers in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Thursday, leaving soldiers dead and wounded.
Officials in the Chattanooga area say the gunman has been shot and killed and that they believe he is the only one involved in the attacks.
Fox News reported that four Marines were killed at one of the two centers. FBI officials confirmed others were injured and are being treated at local hospitals but there was no information on their condition.
The U.S. Prosecutor for the region said at a press conference the investigation is being conducted “as a case of domestic terrorism.” He added there is a joint federal, state and local investigation which is why much of the information about the shooting is being withheld from the media and public.
The FBI, ATF and the Department of Homeland Security were on the scene within hours and leading the investigation.
Ed Reinhold, special agent in charge of the FBI at the same news conference praised the local police department for the response and for “neutralizing the threat to the community.”
The FBI confirmed the suspect carried “multiple weapons” but would not describe the weapons. They believe that the gunman was residing in the area before the attack. Reinhold also said that while it’s being investigated as domestic terrorism, it’s possible the attack was not related to terrorism and just an act of violence.
A Tennessee pastor is showing the true meaning of forgiveness and grace by forgiving the man who murdered his father 30 years ago.
Ron Hammer gunned down Wayne Robinson outside a Tennessee grocery store in 1986. On Sunday, Hammer joined pastor Philip Robinson via Skype to talk about his conversion to Christ. Hammer told New Vision Life Baptist Church that the forgiveness of Pastor Robinson “changed his life.”
“I gave my life to Christ in October of 1996, but I’ve never really received the full blessings that Christ wanted me to have until one day He whispered and told me, ‘Well, you haven’t confessed to the Robinson family.’ And I sat and wrote a letter to Mrs. Robinson (pastor’s mother) and it was 20 years after the crime had taken place. And I told [her] how I had taken your father’s life and how it was an accident and that I never meant to hurt anyone,” said Hammer to Robinson before his congregation on Sunday
Hammer had denied being the gunman for years.
Originally Robinson admitted he had trouble forgiving Hammer.
“I wanted them to pay the full price for their crime,” said Robinson. “A great deal of my life was hanging on their conviction. It felt that way. I figured they would do it again.”
When Hammer reached out 13 years later, Robinson found a path to forgiveness, sending a letter to Hammer that was life changing.
“That letter from you, Phillip, truly touched me,” Hammer told the pastor in front of his congregation. “The words of wisdom and what God had planted in your heart to tell me changed my life that day. I’m so blessed by the forgiveness that you have given me.”
Robinson and his mother even testified in favor of Hammer at a parole hearing that resulted in his release from prison in March.
Tennessee lawmakers are considering the option of legalizing assisted suicide.
The state Senate Health Committee held a meeting on June 10th to consider a bill that would allow physician assisted suicide in the state.
Senate Bill 1362 was presented by Sen. Reginald Tate (D-Memphis) and House Bill 1040 by Rep. Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley). The bill would allow doctors to prescribe a massive overdose of drugs for a person 18 years of age or older to end their life; the option for a patient to immediately die after receiving a diagnosis of “terminal” and even allowing health care providers to turn down more expensive life saving treatments when cheaper assisted suicide options are available.
“We think it’s humane to euthanize an animal when they get to the point they can’t take care of themselves. Why can’t we do the same for people?” asked Dr. Douglas Essinger. “What about the patients rights to die with dignity? I think that should be the paramount issue here.”
Pro-life groups were vocal in their opposition.
“If doctor-prescribed suicide is legalized in Tennessee, it could become the only ‘medical treatment’ to which many people have equal access. If the government or insurance companies decide they no longer wish to pay for legitimate care and medical treatments, there will be a pressure upon the elderly, ill and disabled to end their lives. Being coerced into ending their lives does not offer death with dignity, it only offers a frightening and dangerous future for elderly and ill Tennesseans,” Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life, said.
A Nashville club that allows adults to come in and commit acts of adultery and other sexual sins claims it’s going to be using a new facility as a church to try and avoid city zoning laws that prohibit adult-oriented businesses within 1,000 feet of schools and churches.
The group, called The Social Club, recently purchased a former medical office next to the Goodpasture Christian School. The leaders of the school and parents of the students who attend protested at a Metro Nashville Council meeting where an amendment to the bill was made that prohibits the club from opening.
The Christian school is less than 1,000 feet from the building as are two other churches.
The Club then submitted new paperwork to the city calling themselves the United Fellowship Center. A former dance room is now called the “sanctuary.” Other rooms that had sexually oriented names now are being called the “handbell rooms” or “prayer rooms.”
“They can sue us and say they want an injunction to stop us from operating, and we can say we have some tenets of the church sort of like the Ten Commandments,” club attorney Larry Roberts told Washington Post.
Roberts also claims the head of the organization has become an ordained minister.
“As of right now, a church is a use that is allowed by right at this location under the zoning classification, and if it has passed all relevant codes then we will have to issue the use and occupancy letter,” city Zoning Administrator Bill Herbert told the Christian Post.
If the club is found not to be operating as a church after it is allowed to open, the Council would then have to take action to close the club.
Presentations in a Tennessee school district from a character called “Bible Man” have been banned thanks to a complaint from a virulent anti-religion organization.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) made one of their usual claims that a parent they would not identify contacted them about the voluntary assemblies put on by Horace Turner as “Bible Man.” The assemblies, which have been going on for 40 years, are not required of any student.
“It is deeply troubling that the district allows these assemblies to take place. It is well settled that public schools may not advance or promote religion,” the letter, which pertained to a presentation at Coalmont Elementary School, stated. “Allowing anyone access to public school students to proselytize, and including the events in the school’s calendar, is illegal district endorsement of the speaker’s religious message, in this case a Christian message.”
The letter when on to say that the children need to be protected from “predators” like Turner.
The school wanted to make it clear that while the “Bible Man” presentations are banned, Turner himself is not banned from being at the schools or working with children.
“I believe the perception was that we’re trying to get rid of him, and that was not the perception we wanted to present,” Dr. Willie Childers stated. “We are trying to make sure that the procedures that we do are legal and constitutional for every citizen.”
The school is looking into starting after-school clubs where students can come and participate in events hosted by Turner.