A Christian man has been sentenced to death after a Muslim man claimed he insulted the Prophet Mohammed.
Islamic officials seized the man last year after a Muslim mob burned down the homes and fields of Christians because of the alleged slight. Over 3,000 men went through the streets of the area called Joseph Colony attacking Christians.
The Christians in the region say that the man never actually insulted anyone but rather the Muslim man in question had been trying to take over the Christian’s land and when he wouldn’t sell made the accusation of blasphemy.
“In Pakistan even being accused of blasphemy is equivalent to being sentenced,” Xavier William, president of the Christian group Life for All Pakistan said. “The blasphemy laws in Pakistan are used to settle personal vendettas.”
Amnesty International and other international aid groups are calling for the Christian man to be freed and for the Muslims who beat Christians and burned their homes to be tried for their crimes.
As a state official says residents of the area struck by a massive landslide on Saturday knew of the “high risk” of being killed in that way, rescue workers recovered 2 bodies and found the locations of 8 more victims.
The total of the missing is now listed at 150.
The Washington Army National Guard and FEMA arrived Tuesday to join the recovery efforts using specially trained dogs and sonar to search the area. The additional searchers came as local government officials did a flip-flop on their public stance regarding the disaster.
Initially, officials had said the slide was unforeseen and “came out of nowhere.” The same officials changed their story Wednesday.
“This entire year we have pushed message after message that there’s a high risk of landslides,” John Pennington, director of Snohomish County Emergency Management told reporters. “The dangers and the risks are known.”
Rescuers on site have told reporters that the work is going very slowly because the ground is “like quicksand.” Local fire chief Travis Hots said some of his crew could only go 50 feet in a five minute time frame because of the soft ground.
Washington state officials confirmed the death toll in Saturday’s massive landslide has risen to 14. The number of people reported missing has risen from 108 to 174.
“The 176 I believe very strongly is not going to be a number that we’re going to see in fatalities, I think it’s going to drop dramatically,” Snohomish County emergency management director John Pennington said. Pennington added he believes there are duplicate names on the list that have yet to be weeded out.
Officials also announced a suspension of search-and-rescue efforts after fears were raised that there could be another shifting of the earth at the site. However, several search teams using hovercraft, air support and sonar devices are continuing to search the site.
A closer examination of the site showed that 47 home sites were destroyed in the slide. Officials say at least 25 of the homes were occupied full time.
Family members of the missing were gathering at a Red Cross shelter. Reed Miller, whose son Joseph was inside a mobile home that was caught in the landslide, says he’s been calling his son’s cell phone for days without a response.
An Egyptian court has shocked many in Egypt by passing down a death sentence to over 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Legal experts say the death sentences are likely to be overturned on appeal, but the initial ruling by the Egyptian court shows the government is serious in their crackdown on the Islamic extremist organization.
Part of the reason for the belief the sentences will be overturned is that all death sentences have to be approved by the government’s official interpreter of Islamic law. If they are upheld, they can be appealed to the Court of Cassation, which would likely ask for a new trial.
Defense lawyers pointed out that the judge issued many of the death sentences without the defendants even in the courtroom.
A second group of 700 defendants are due in the courtroom on Tuesday, including Mohammed Badie, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The bodies of aborted and miscarried babies have been found to been burned as clinical waste with some even used to heat British hospitals.
Ten different National Health Service units across England have admitted to burning the bodies of aborted children in “waste-to-energy” plants that provide power for heating hospitals. An investigation by Channel 4 discovered that over 15,500 babies were burned in the last two years.
Health Minister Dr. Dan Poulter declared the action “totally unacceptable” and issued an immediate ban on all hospitals burning the remains of babies.
The investigation also found in the case of miscarriages, the parents were often not consulted about what they wanted done with the remains of their child which was then dumped into bags of medical waste.
A Cambridge hospital was found to have used the babies to heat their facility and told the mothers of the dead children that the bodies had been “cremated.”
The Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Sir Mike Richards, said that the actions discovered breached the standard on respecting and involving people who use their services.
Attempts to control a deadly virus in Guinea appear to be failing as the outbreak continues to spread.
Three cases of hemorrhagic fever cases in Guinea’s capital of Conakry were negative for Ebola, however, doctors have not been able to determine the cause of the infections that have killed two of the three hospitalized victims.
Guinea has been facing a massive outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, which kills up to 90 percent of those infected. World Health Organization officials have isolated three rural villages in an attempt to keep the virus from spreading.
At least 60 deaths have been confirmed from Ebola. The total does not include deaths in rural villages where the villagers did not report the illness of a family member or buried them before they could be tested for the virus.
Health officials fear the quarantine of the areas will fail because locals are afraid of the virus and fleeing rural towns for the nation’s capital city.
There is no treatment or vaccine available for Ebola. The most recent epidemic occurred in 2012 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and killed 62 people.
In Minnesota, if you want to coach someone through killing themselves, you’re now legally and Constitutionally protected to do it.
The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday reverses the convictions of a former nurse who had been convicted under the state’s law that bans assisting suicide. He had been convicted of encouraging and providing advice to a 32-year-old man and 18-year-old woman.
The sentence for William Melchert-Dinkel had been suspended pending his appeal. His lawyers had argued that he had free speech rights to share methods and encouragement to those planning suicides and that it was impossible to prove his words were the deciding factor in the victims ending their lives.
The prosecution noted that Melchert-Dinkel sought out depressed people online for the sake of encouraging them into suicide. He posed as a female nurse and then after showing compassion gave instructions on the best way to kill themselves.
Melchert-Dinkel admitted that he did it for the “thrill” and entered into fake suicide pacts with at least 5 people with whom he is sure ended their own lives with his encouragement.
A group of Muslims attacked Christian farmers near Kano, Nigeria on Sunday, killing more than 100 and injuring dozens more.
The attackers also destroyed all the property of the Christian farmers, burning their homes to the ground.
The admission of the deaths by the government was complicated by the additional news this was the second straight week of Christian farmers being slaughtered by Muslim groups.
Chenshyi village chief Nehu Moses told journalists that gunmen slaughtered the church’s pastor, his wife and then gunned down their children. After that, they ransacked through the area killing at least 50 in his village.
Local government acting chairman Daniel Anyip told Time that at least three villages were destroyed during the assault.
A watchdog group is calling out General Motors for under reporting the number of deaths connected to faulty ignition systems.
The Center for Auto Safety say that over 300 people have died in GM cars where the airbags did not deploy compared to the 12 that GM reported to federal investigators.
“Without rigorous analysis, it is pure speculation to attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions,” the company said in a statement refuting the group’s claim. “In contrast, research is underway at GM and the investigation of the ignition switch recall and the impact of the defective switch is ongoing.”
Still, the company has hired outside investigators to look into the recall.
The Center for Auto Safety is taking the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to task, saying they were negligent in following up on reports of accidents attributed to the GM system.
“The only way NHTSA could not see a defect trend is if it closed its eyes,” said the group in a letter to the NHTSA.
The case of an alleged drunk driver who drove into a crowd of concertgoers at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival has taken a dark turn.
Police now say that 21-year-old Rashad Owens deliberately drove through the crowd of concertgoers after fleeing from police on suspicion of drunken driving.
“For me from his actions, from what I’ve seen this is an individual that showed no regard for human beings. He plowed through in his attempt to get away,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told Fox News.
Owens was scheduled to perform later that night. He has a long criminal record and the car he was driving had been reported stolen.
Owens killed two people who were riding a moped and before swerving around a police officer that tried to stop him and drove through the crowd. He was subdued after trying to flee on foot after driving into a taxi.
