While the international community has been focused on a group of almost 300 girls kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram, the same terrorists have quietly been conducting a killing spree of Christians in northern Nigeria.
The terrorists killed at least 29 Christians in the last two days in assaults on both churches and Christian communities in Borno state.
At least 21 people are dead from an attack on the Church of Christ in Nations church in Gwoza. The church was in the middle of a worship service when the Islamic terrorist invaded and began to systematically gun down anyone inside the sanctuary. Rev. Moses Thliza of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria in the same village said that several dozen were injured and the death toll is likely to rise.
The next day, the terrorists attacked several Christian villages. At least six churches were burned to the ground, eight Christians killed and several dozen seriously wounded. One Christian leader said the number of burned homes of Christians could not be counted.
A Swiss right-to-die and assisted suicide organization has announced they are no longer going to limit their services to people suffering from some kind of terminal illness.
The group, “Exit”, has announced that “suicide due to old age” is now going to be considered a valid reason for use of their assisted suicide techniques. The group says that older adults who are experiencing psychological or physical problems can now choose to end their life rather than deal with issues like arthritis.
The group also said they will be streamlining the process for elderly patients who do not want to experience the lengthy process for assisted suicide.
Assisted death is legal in Switzerland.
The Swiss Medical Association was quick to issue a condemnation of the group’s actions, saying that their decision could cause significant problems for elderly citizens whose families just don’t want to care for them in later years. Families could force family members to say they want to die when they really don’t wish to die.
A mentally ill 22-year-old California man killed six people and wounded seven others before killing himself in a premeditated murder rampage in Isla Vista, California.
Elliot Rodger posted a video online the day before his assault where he prepared to bring “retribution” on those who he believed had done him wrong, singling out college age women he said rejected him in favor of men he thought were crude and beneath him.
Rodger posted a 140-page manifesto online that he e-mailed to friends and family who were frantically searching for him the evening of his attack.
Rodger stabbed his three roommates to death before getting in a black BMW to start his rampage. He committed suicide when police closed in on him after a short chase.
Police say most of the deaths happened outside a convenience store where the bystanders didn’t realize initially what was happening and took some time to obtain cover. Witnesses say the gunman rapidly sped away after the shooting, running over two bicyclists in his way.
Police had been dispatched to Rodger’s house a month prior to the attack after reports of disturbing videos that he had placed online. Police visited with him and reported that they did not find any threatening signs.
An Islamic terrorist group attacked an open-air market in western China, leaving 31 people dead and close to 100 injured.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported that terrorists drove off-road vehicles into a market in Urumqi and began to throw bombs into the crowds of shoppers. One of the vehicles was then abandoned in the center of the market and exploded as the terrorists fled the scene.
Witnesses say the majority of the dead are elderly people who visited their market to get fresh food for their family’s daily meal.
The attack comes as Chinese officials crack down on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, who they accuse of launching the Tiananmen Square attack last October and an attack on a train station in Urumqi last month.
An expert in ethnic relations in China says the attacks show a shift by the Muslim group. They had previously focused attacks and actions against military targets and government installations; now they are targeting innocent civilians with the intent of causing maximum casualties.
An elderly American missionary stabbed to death in Haiti last week has been remembered as a champion of those in need and a tireless worker for spreading the truth and love of Jesus Christ.
George Knoop, 77, a former Chicago area teacher before becoming a missionary to Haiti, was attacked inside his home in the Haitian capital May 13th. Friends say that Knoop was able to make a cell phone call after the attack but was unable to speak; by the time they reached the home he was dead.
Officials say they have no suspects in the murder. Investigators say the incident was likely a crime of opportunity as a computer was stolen from the home and the murder weapon was a knife that had been in the home.
“I studied the Bible with him and he helped me a lot,” Charles Ronald said at the memorial. “He was generous, helping people, paying for their school, their rents, their food.”
Pastor Larry McCarthy of Moody Church Chicago, who was Knoop’s pastor, said that when the retiree moved to Haiti he sold his home, his TV, his car and his clothes so he could spend everything helping the people of Haiti recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake that left more than 200,000 people dead.
A Sudanese judge has officially sentenced a Christian woman to death for not converting to Islam.
Meriam Ibrahim, a 26-year-old mother and currently pregnant with her second child, was convicted of adultery and apostasy for her marriage to an American Christian man. Ibrahim, a physician, was brought up in a Christian home and has never been a part of the Islamic faith.
The judge said Ibrahim will receive 100 lashes immediately following the birth of her child for the adultery. She will be hung to death for not accepting Islam once the child is nursed and weaned.
Because Ibrahim was born in Sudan, the government says she’s Muslim even if she never worships Allah. Thus, they say she illegally converted to Christianity.
Amnesty International called the action a “flagrant breach of international human rights law.” Several U.S. State Department and Congressional officials expressed their outrage at the actions.
“The refusal of the government of Sudan to allow religious freedom was one of the reasons for Sudan’s long civil war,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House congressional panel that oversees U.S. policy in Africa, said in a statement. “The U.S. and the rest of the international community must demand Sudan reverse this sentence immediately.”
A Nigerian girl from the same village as 270 of the girls kidnapped by Islamic extremists Boko Haram is speaking out about her family being slaughtered by the terrorists.
Deborah Peters delivered a talk at the Hudson Institute where she talked about her brother and father getting gunned down by the terrorists. Peters said that she was at home with her brother on December 21, 2011 when gunfire broke out in her hometown of Chibok.
“So my brother called my dad and told him not to come home because they are fighting and my father told him to just forget about it,” Peters said.
Her father came home and a few hours later the terrorists stormed into their home and demanded her father, a Christian pastor whose church had been destroyed earlier in the year by the Islamists, renounce his faith in Christ.
“He told him that he would rather die than to go to hellfire,” Peters said. The terrorists then shot him three times in the chest while she watched. Then they turned their guns on her younger brother because they said he would grow up to be a pastor if they didn’t kill him.
Emmanuel Ogebe, an international human rights lawyer, attended the event and said that what we’re seeing now has been happening for years.
“What is happening now is this is persecution on steroids. Northern Nigerian Christians are used to being killed a couple of times a year,” Ogebe said. “But for terrorists to come out and abduct 300 kids, this is where Northern Nigerian Christians are saying ‘okay, we didn’t sign up for this.'”
A pregnant Christian woman in Sudan has been sentenced to 100 lashes and then death for adultery and apostasy.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, 27, had been working as a doctor at the time she was seized by government officials. The graduate of Khartoum University has been a Christian her entire life and married a Christian man from South Sudan.
However, because Sudan is largely Muslim and controlled by Islamists, Ibrahim was considered Muslim by the government regardless of what she said was her faith. Therefore, they said her marriage to the Christian man was invalid and her having his child is adultery and apostasy.
“We grieve today at the sentencing to death of a mother, pregnant with her second child, for the expression of her faith and legal marriage to a practicing Christian,” said International Christian Concern Regional Manager William Stark.
“The handing down of such an extreme punishment under a law inspired by the al-Turabi radicalism of the early al-Bashir regime brings into question the direction Sudan intends to head following South Sudanese succession. Having embraced policies of Islamization and Arabization in the past, ICC fears Meriam could be the first of many more Christians to suffer under an increasingly radicalized Sudanese government intent on enforcing Sharia law throughout the land.”
The international director of the Barnabas Fund said that anti-Christianism in Sudan is increasing to the point women are being picked up off the street and beaten by authorities if they do not meet Sharia guidelines for dress even if they are not Muslims.
The deadly South Korean ferry disaster has been found to be the result of illegally loaded cargo shifting during the journey.
The death toll climbed to over 260 as divers continue to bring the bodies of the dead from inside the ferry. The official death toll does not include one diver who died after problems with his oxygen supply while on a recovery mission.
Investigators say that the ferry was loaded with double the amount of cargo allowed by maritime law. The cargo was also not tied down properly which broke free in the heavy surf and shifted left, toppling the ferry.
“The lashing devices that should have held cargo goods steady were loose, and some of the crew members did not even know” how to use them correctly, prosecutor Yang Joong-jin told reporters.
Police reportedly have arrested four employees of the ferry’s owner, Cheonghaejin Marine Company, and one of those in custody was a senior executive. Officials won’t say if the people arrested had a direct connection to the overloading of the ferry.
The ferry company reportedly had been overloading the ferry since March 2013 and earned almost three million dollars in additional profits with the illegal loads.
Afghanistan officials say that the death toll in the Friday landslides has topped 2,100 and could climb even higher.
Government officials say that the most tragic part of the entire event happened in the second landslide. A government spokesman said that 600 people who showed up to help those trapped in the first landslide died when they were buried in a second landslide.
Rescuers say that the area is still very unstable and that rescue workers and residents still in the area are at risk for another landslide. However, families have been saved from the landslide.
“Around 700 families were rescued,” Afghan National Disaster Management Authority spokesman Sayed Abdullah Homayun Dehqan said while adding that they are still short of the necessary supplies to expand rescues.
NATO’s Regional Command is organizing troops to help with the rescue efforts.
