The Faithful Watchman

US Senators Introduce Bill to Prohibit Males Who Identify as Female From Competing in Girls’ School Sports

Heather Clark – September 24, 2020

WASHINGTON — Five U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would prohibit biological males who identify as female from competing in girls’ school sports.

Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, Mike Lee of Utah, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Tom Cotton of Arkansas presented the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” on Tuesday, which amends Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to specifically note that the definition of “sex” is based on the individual’s “reproductive biology and genetics at the the time of birth.”

“It shall be a violation … for a recipient of federal funds who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls,” the bill reads.

Read it in full here.

According to Loeffler, the measure would penalize schools that violate the law and could also threaten their funding altogether.

She points to a case out of Connecticut in which the Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) implemented a policy allowing students to compete in accordance with their stated “gender identity.”

Two biological boys, who go by the names Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, were consequently permitted to join the girls track team at their school and compete as females — moving on to the New England regionals.

One of the female competitors, Selina Soule, who attends Bloomfield High School, wasn’t able to qualify for the 55-meter race at the regionals because Yearwood and Miller took two of the top spots. She came in eighth.

She and her mother, along with fellow runners Chelsea Mitchell and Alanna Smith and their parents, lodged a complaint last year with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which agreed to investigate.

https://christiannews.net

Decrying normalization, Palestinians warn of Third Intifada

KHALED ABU TOAMEH – September 15, 2020

Palestinian protests against the normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain could lead to an intifada, Palestinian activists warned on Tuesday.

The warning came as Palestinians held protests against the “treacherous” agreements in some parts of the West Bank. The protests, organized by several Palestinian factions that are part of a new group called the Unified Leadership of the Popular Resistance, were held under the banner: “Normalization is a crime.”

“We are on the brink of a third intifada,” a Fatah activist told The Jerusalem Post. “The Palestinian people feels betrayed by the Arabs and will show the world that the Palestinian issue remains the central issue of all Arabs and Muslims.”

Other activists belonging to various Palestinian factions expressed hope that the Palestinian “day of rage” on the day of the signing ceremony of the normalization agreements at the White House would spark an intifada against Israel.

As part of the “day of rage,” Palestinians took to the streets in Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Hebron and other cities to voice their rejection of the peace accords between Israel and the two Gulf states.

The protesters held placards that read: “No to normalization with the occupation,” “We won’t allow the blood of our martyrs to be turned into a merchandise for trade,” and “Palestine will remain Arab.”

https://www.jpost.com

Pandemic has accelerated adoption of digital currency: ECB President

Turner Wright – September 11, 2020

The pandemic has seen consumers adopt digital payments in increasing numbers and the trend was accelerating, said the President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Christine Lagarde.

She also indicated a panel of euro-zone central bank officials is set to reveal a verdict on a European central bank digital currency (CBDC) imminently.

Speaking at an online conference hosted by Deutsche Bundesbank on Sept. 10, Lagarde, stated that EU residents had embraced digitalization, with e-commerce sales increasing roughly 20% between February and June, even as total retail sales declined 1.2%. She said the volume of online payments had experienced “double-digit growth rates” since the start of the outbreak.

“The pandemic has served as a catalyst, accelerating the transition towards a digital new normal,” Lagarde stated. “A vast majority of consumers expect to continue to use digital services as often as they do now or even more often.”

Other institutions have reached the same conclusion as data comes in regarding the economic fallout of COVID. An August report from Singapore’s DBS Bank stated that “the ongoing pandemic has added fuel to the move toward a society with less cash dependence.”

Lagarde supports the ECB developing a CBDC to address the move towards digitalization, in addition to faster and cheaper cross-border payments. Last September, when she was the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the ECB president said she would focus on ensuring EU institutions adapt to the changing financial environment by being open to crypto.

https://cointelegraph.com

Sally leaves trail of destruction across Gulf Coast

Gianrigo Marletta, with Leila Macor – September 17, 2020

Shellshocked residents were cleaning up on Thursday after Hurricane Sally left a trail of destruction in US coastal towns stretching from Alabama to the top of the Florida panhandle.

Sally, which made landfall Wednesday as a Category 2 hurricane, turned streets into rivers, toppled trees and downed power lines.

“Our house had windows blow out,” Matt Wilson of Orange Beach, Alabama, one of the worst hit towns, told WPMI TV. “The whole house was shaking like a boat on the water.

“It was scary, man, it really was.”

Lieutenant Trent Johnson of the Orange Beach Police Department told AFP there had been one death in the city.

More than 400,000 homes and businesses in Alabama and Florida were still without power on Thursday, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.

Some of the worst reported flooding occurred in the city of Pensacola, Florida, which has a population of around 52,000.

Downtown streets resembled lakes at the height of the storm with cars submerged to the tops of their wheels and ferocious winds whipping up whitecaps.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was to visit Pensacola on Thursday to survey the damage, which included a missing section of a major new bridge across Pensacola Bay.

A 7:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew was imposed in Pensacola and surrounding counties.

Wilson, the Orange Beach resident, said his house had suffered severe damage and his family fled their home at the height of the storm.

“Everything on the ground floor is gone,” he told WPMI. “We ended up leaving the house during the eye of the storm… and waded through about five foot of water to our neighbor’s house arm in arm.”

https://www.spacedaily.com

Kroger Fires Christian Employees Who Refused to Wear LGBT Rainbow, U.S. Suit Says

Michael Foust – September 16, 2020

An Arkansas Kroger store violated federal anti-discrimination law when it reportedly fired two employees who refused to wear LGBT-themed aprons due to their religious beliefs, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

According to the Miami Herald, a dress code by the Conway, Ark., grocery store required employees to wear a rainbow-colored heart emblem on the bib of the apron. The women “believed the emblem endorsed LGBTQ values and that wearing it would violate their religious beliefs,” the EEOC said in a news release summarizing the suit.

Kroger disciplined the two women and eventually fired them, an action that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. The EEOC charges Kroger with religious discrimination.

Both women are Christian.

The two women “offered to wear the apron with the emblem covered and the other offered to wear a different apron without the emblem, but the company made no attempt to accommodate their requests,” the EEOC said.

“Companies have an obligation under Title VII to consider requests for religious accommodations, and it is illegal to terminate employees for requesting an accommodation for their religious beliefs,” said Delner-Franklin Thomas, district director of the EEOC’s Memphis District Office. “The EEOC protects the rights of the LGBTQ community, but it also protects the rights of religious people.”

The EEOC tried but failed to reach a pre-litigation settlement, the news release said. The lawsuit seeks “monetary relief in the form of back pay and compensatory damages, as well as an injunction against future discrimination,” the EEOC said.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Chlamydia and gonorrhea have increased among younger women, study finds

Bethany Ao – September 14, 2020

Rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea are increasing among women ages 18 to 30 in the United States, a recent study by Quest Diagnostics suggests

The study, recently published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, analyzed more than 17 million laboratory samples taken between 2010 and 2017 from females ages 12 to 30. Researchers found that while there was a decline in cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea among adolescents ages 12 to 17, women of ages 25 to 30 experienced a 50% increase in positive test results. Women 18 to 24 had a 21% increase in positive test results over the period of the study.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends annual screenings for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among sexually active women under 25, said Harvey Kaufman, director of Quest’s Health Trends Research Program. For women 25 and older, the CDC recommends screenings only for those with specific risk factors, such as reporting that their sex partner may have a concurrent sex partner. Kaufman, a co-author of the study, said the findings suggest that sexual and contraceptive practices have changed since 2002, when the CDC guidelines were first published.

Kaufman pointed out that the CDC guidelines were largely influenced by a 1998 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that the overall rate of chlamydia among female Army recruits was 9.2%. As a result, the authors of the study recommended a screening program for female recruits 25 and under.

https://www.inquirer.com

Undercover Journalist Hits Planned Parenthood with Defamation Lawsuit

Graham Piro – September 18, 2020

Undercover journalist David Daleiden filed a defamation lawsuit against Planned Parenthood, alleging that a communications officer gave false statements to a publication regarding organ harvesting operations.

Attorneys for Daleiden at the Thomas More Society said that the nation’s largest abortion organization orchestrated a smear campaign to distract from the content of his work, which featured candid conversations with Planned Parenthood executives about the trade of baby body parts.

“We have not been surprised over their campaign to smear the reputation of Mr. Daleiden, but they are not allowed to falsely besmirch his reputation for exposing the truth,” Thomas More Society president Tom Brejcha said in a statement.

The complaint cites a quote given by a communications officer from Planned Parenthood to Rewire News that accused Daleiden and his organization, the Center for Medical Progress, of having “manufacture[d] a fake smear campaign against Planned Parenthood.” It also cites a tweet from November 2019 that claimed Daleiden, who posed as a prospective buyer of fetal organs, distorted the truth in his videos.

“In reality, as PPFA and its representatives recorded on the Videos readily admit in other fora, Plaintiffs’ videos accurately record Planned Parenthood officials’ own shocking words spoken in real life,” the complaint says.

https://freebeacon.com

Prominent Rabbi Breaks Silence: ‘Messiah Coming this Year!’

Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz – September 18, 2020

There have been 5,780 holidays of Rosh Hashanna since the creation of the world but if a prominent rabbi’s prediction proves true, in just a few short weeks, Rosh Hashanna number 5,781 will be quite special.

Rabbi Shalom Arush, an Israeli Breslov rabbi and founder of the Chut Shel Chessed Institutions, made an entirely uncharacteristic announcement: On September 18, Jews will be celebrating the last New Year without the Messiah.

“I am going to tell you with certainty that Hashem (God, literally ‘the name) will help us meet together after Rosh Hashanna,” Rabbi Arush said in an interview last week. “And remember well what I am telling you, that this Rosh Hashana will be the last one without Moshiach (Messiah). And it could very well be that on this Rosh Hashanna the Messiah will be revealed.”

The rabbi emphasized that he has never made such a statement before.

“Anyone who knows me knows that for over 40 years I am teaching, and have I never spoken about Messiah,” Rabbi Arush said. “But these are things that are clear and everyone sees them. I can’t explain but please, don’t miss out on this. Because this year, you will receive gifts like never before.”

https://www.israel365news.com

Tense India-China border raises fears of inadvertent escalation

DW – September 9, 2020

Tensions between China and India are running dangerously high, as troops from both sides face off in a remote Himalayan region and accuse each other of firing warning shots along their disputed border.

Over the past few months, Chinese and Indian troops have been engaged in aggressive posturing at multiple locations along the two nations’ de facto border, known as Line of Actual Control, raising tensions between the world’s two most populous countries.

The two nuclear-armed neighbors have accused each other of firing in the air during a fresh flare-up in the Ladakh region on Monday, violating long-standing protocols to avoid using firearms along their undemarcated borders.

“The Sino-Indian border conflict has intensified further over the past few weeks, and I still believe that neither side wants a war, but neither side is willing to back down from it either because of the symbolic and psychological consequences,” Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told DW.

“The situation is tense,” an official in New Delhi told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday, adding that Indian and Chinese troops were squaring off in close proximity in at least four locations south of Lake Pangong Tso that both sides lay claim to.

Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of Chinese studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, shares a similar view. “The situation on the ground is tense. Yesterday, the Chinese air force was on the second level of alert and surface-to-air missile batteries were activated to counter any adversary air force movement,” he told DW.

“Although the firing was in the air and not against each other, it’s definitely an escalation,” he added.

https://www.dw.com

Bahrain agrees to normalize relations with Israel, Trump announces

Jerusalem Post – September 11, 2020

Bahrain has joined the United Arab Emirates in striking an agreement to normalize relations with Israel, President Donald Trump said on Friday, a dramatic move aimed at easing tensions in the Middle East.

Trump tweeted out the news after he spoke by phone to both Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said.

Trump also tweeted: “Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Bahrain agree to a Peace Deal – the second Arab country to make peace with Israel in 30 days!”

“This is a historic breakthrough to further peace in the Middle East,” the United States, Bahrain and Israel said in a joint statement.

“Opening direct dialog and ties between these two dynamic societies and advanced economies will continue the positive transformation of the Middle East and increase stability, security, and prosperity in the region,” it said.

Netanyahu said the agreement marks a “new era of peace.”

https://www.jpost.com