The Baptist Mosque; More Lutheran's Embrace Sin; The Other Holocaust Denial; Practical Reality War; Cops Replace Drugs; Cities Against States; and Dreaming of Flying Cars

Apostasy

Southern Baptist Mission Trustee Resigns Rather Than 'Support False Religion' christiantoday

He told Tennessee's Baptist and Reflector baptistandreflector.org: "If we defend the rights of people to construct places of false worship are we not helping them speed down the highway to hell? I want no part in supporting a false religion even if it is in the name of religious freedom."

In a statement to Baptist Press apparently conceding one of Haun's points, IMB president David Platt said: "As a result of discussions among IMB trustees and staff over recent months, we have revised our processes for our legal department filing any future amicus briefs. IMB leaders are committed in the days ahead to speak only into situations that are directly tied to our mission."

Also see SBC Loses Funding Over Mosque-Building Support pulpitandpen.org

Jordan's Red Line; Signing Off; Self-Balancing Motorcycle; Holo Cube; Testing Your Future; Law Breaking Pollution; Texas Takes on Bathrooms; The Distressing Cross; When Human Remains Aren't People; Zuckerberg for Office; and Where to Stand to Be Left in the Dark

Israel

Jordanian official: Moving US embassy to Jerusalem would be ‘catastrophic’ jta.org

An embassy move would be a “red line” for Jordan, would “inflame the Islamic and Arab streets” and serve as a “gift to extremists,” [Jordanian minister Momani] said, adding that Jordan would use all possible political and diplomatic means to try and prevent such a decision.

Hamas Seas Rocket; Taliban Peace; Norway Build Up; China's Inmate Organ; Jerusalem Lost; Patent Drive; Flying Alone; and Pet Luggage

Hamas

Hamas test-fires long-range rocket into sea off Gaza timesofisrael

The jihadist group regularly fires rockets as it works to improve its rocket range and accuracy, a little over two years after it last fought Israel ict.org. In June, it test-fired dozens of short-range rockets inside Gaza, with Israeli sources estimating that at least 30 projectiles were launched.

Monday’s test comes some 10 days after two projectile strikes in two days from Gaza on nearby Israeli population centers. The first attack — in which a rocket hit a street in the city of Sderot — caused some damage to nearby homes and cars, but no injuries. Three people were hospitalized for anxiety following the strike.

Eyes Wide Closed; JW No More; Pope and Zuckerberg; Nuclear Air Defense; Illegal but Palestine; Ancient and Sophisticated; Deep Space Diver; 365 Days on the Edge of a Volcano; Car Brains; 4D Printing; Feeling Virtual Reality; and The Drone Water Hunt

Society

Kerry terror solution: Media should cover less wnd v

“It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

Ohio's Abortion Wrestle; Mission Tennesse: Divide, Conqueror, Abort!; Pokemon Go Politician; Watching from Above; Obama's Illegal War Legacy; Singapore Taxi Bot; Pizza in the Sky With Dialings; Wearables for Wheelchairs; Unborn 3D; Squishy Bot; and Stretchy Sensor

Society

Attorney General Mike DeWine appeals ruling supporting Cleveland abortion clinic's fight cleveland

DeWine this week asked the Ohio Supreme Court to review a decision from a Cuyahoga County appeals court cuyahogacounty.us that allowed the case to proceed. In a 2-1 decision, the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals ruled that Preterm-Cleveland had standing to sue the state.

Also see Ohio AG Mike DeWine Files Appeal to Protect Pro-life Laws nationalrighttolifenews.org

Liquid Biopsy; Stem Cell Walk; RNA Splicer; Butterfly Screens; Artificial Leaf; Transgendering Games; Banning Gas Cars in Norway; The Big Red Button; Space Station Tour; and Get Angry, Lose Work

Medical

A Blood Test for Cancer Gets Closer time

...new advances in genetic sequencing is leading to more hope for a liquid biopsy for cancer, a way to track cancer through the blood. In a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, researchers from Guardant report encouraging results from a study involving 15,000 patients who were tested with the company’s test that looks at 70 different tumor genes. The technology picks up tiny fragments of DNA shed by tumors into the blood, and sequences the DNA to provide a picture of which mutations are present in the tumor. That helps doctors decide which treatments are most effective against that person’s cancer, since many of the newer anti-cancer drugs specifically target certain mutant processes common in cancer.

Point, Click, Hover; Printed Car Closer; Electronic Synapses; Modern Jewish Kingdom in Ancient Babylon; UN Gasps!; Not Pharaoh; Mr. Mandela Goes to Palestine; NK Readying Next Missile; Abu Who?; Fruit Ninja Weather; 12 Black Holes, Sitting in a Row; Ken Ham Caricature; Methodists Pressure North Carolina; Church of Norway Exodus; Digital Money Tracks Well; and If End Time Theology was a Popularity Contest

Got a crazy mashup of worldviews today! From bashing Ken Ham because public school students go to his museum, to denying that the Biblical Pharaoh was Egyptian, to Methodists lobbying for whatever-you-say-you-are bathrooms in North Carolina. Also Nelson Mandela has been "raised" in the West Bank with a cry of peace and death to Israel.

Drones

The Hover Camera will follow you around and record your entire life mashable v

The Hover Camera is also unlike drones in that it truly hovers after powering it on. You simply let go of it and it'll hover in the air at the altitude (up to 164 feet high) which you let it go at

Personal, small flying drones that can pick indivduals out of a crowd, follow them, and record what they are doing. What could go wrong? For a fuller story on the company, itself, see Zero Zero's Camera Drone Could Be a Robot Command Center in the Future v

TAX AVOID; ORTHODOX HOMOSEXUAL; ISRAEL AGAINST ARMS; 18-ROTOR 'COPTER; SYRIAN TRUCE FAILING; EXTREMISM LIBERALLY DEFINED; MUSLIM GHETTO; AHMADIS THREATS; NK DEFECTION; GLASS WORKS; GLASS WORKS; FINDS BY ACCIDENT; RISE OF THE BOTS; MASS SUICIDE ATTEMPTS; NORWAY's SAME-SEX VOTE; POPE EXCELS IN MINCING WORDS; CAR-DAR; 7 YEAR TERM; UN-ITY AGAINST VIOLENT EXTREME

Taxes

Can pay, won't pay: Tax avoidance throughout history bbc

The Panama Papers have revealed the massive scale of tax dodging schemes of the rich and powerful. But tax avoidance is nothing new - people have been coming up with schemes and loopholes for as long as there have been taxes.

Israel

Group of Israeli Orthodox rabbis urges greater acceptance of homosexuals jpost

While the document stated that the "Torah prohibits homosexual acts," the paper penned by the rabbis stressed that Orthodox communities should be more accepting and socially inclusive.

A reminder that though we look to Israel as time wraps up, that as a nation they currently as lost and blinded as the rest.

Israel has hit ‘dozens’ of Hezbollah arms transfers, Netanyahu says timesofisrael

Saying that he was proud of Israel’s ability to maintain “relative quiet and security” in an otherwise stormy Middle East, he told soldiers stationed there: “We act when we have to act, including here and across the border, with dozens of strikes, to prevent Hezbollah acquiring tie-breaking weaponry.”

Travel

Watch an 18-rotor electric helicopter take its first manned flight engadget

The designers still have to ramp up their tests to the point where the Volocopter hits its full 60MPH top speed, but they're now confident enough that they hope to take pre-orders later this year. It'll likely only be limited to enthusiasts at first, but the dream is to use the aircraft's unique properties to expand what's possible.

Syria

Syrian PM says Russia to back new Aleppo attack; opposition says truce near collapse in.reuters

The ceasefire came into effect in February with the aim of paving the way for a resumption of talks to end the five-year-long war. But it has been widely violated, with each side blaming the other for breaches. The fighting south of Aleppo marks the most significant challenge yet to the deal.

Global Religion

Losing my religion: life after extreme belief theguardian

Fleeing the grip of a sect can be a matter of life or death. Megan Phelps-Roper, and two other former believers, reveal how they lost almost everything when they lost their faith

It's no accident an "evangelical" (Westbro) Christian, Jew, and Muslim are highlighted in this article as breaking free from the bondage of extreme religion.

Islam

UK Muslim ghettoes' warning telegraph.co.uk

British Muslims are becoming a nation within a nation, the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned.

Kill Ahmadis' leaflets found in UK mosque bbc

A mosque trustee said he had never seen the leaflets before and suggested they were fakes or left there maliciously.

North Korea

Senior N. K. intelligence officer, diplomats defect koreaherald

The colonel-level intelligence officer came to Seoul last year and gave a “detailed testimony” on the Reconnaissance General Bureau’s espionage operations against the South, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing an unnamed source with knowledge on the inner workings of the communist state.

See also NORTH KOREAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER DEFECTS TO SOUTH IN ‘HIGHEST LEVEL CASE’

Archeaology

Ancient Glass-Works Prove Israel Was World Glass Production Center jewishpress

These kilns, about 1,600 years old (dating to the Late Roman period), indicate that the Land of Israel was one of the foremost centers for glass production in the ancient world.

Accidental Discoveries: Hikers Stumble Upon Archaeological Finds in Israel jpupdates

“Israel is a very small country, intensively settled over thousands of years, and there are 37,000 registered archeological sites, so almost everywhere you have the potential to find things,” says Yardenna Alexandre, an IAA research and field archaeologist stationed in the Jezreel Valley.

AI

(chat)Bots, explained recode.net

A bot is software that is designed to automate the kinds of tasks you would usually do on your own, like making a dinner reservation, adding an appointment to your calendar or fetching and displaying information. The increasingly common form of bots, chatbots, simulate conversation. They often live inside messaging apps — or are at least designed to look that way — and it should feel like you’re chatting back and forth as you would with a human.

Suicide

Aboriginal community in Canada declares emergency as 11 people try to commit suicide in one night itv

There have been 101 suicide attempts in the Attawapiskat First Nation, a remote 2,000-strong village near James Bay in northern Ontario, since September.

Apostasy

Norway's state church votes in favour of same-sex marriages mjtimes.sk.ca

Of 115 synod members present at the Church of Norway's council, 88 voted in favour, meaning that the state church will adopt provisions for marrying same-sex couples at its meeting next year and make it part of its official liturgy.

Pope

Pope invites Catholics to ignore church doctrine in document rife with calculated ambiguity albertmohler

Albert Mohler spends the entire briefing today discussing the Pope's document released last week and why it matters to Bible-believing Christians (hint: the Gospel is at stake)

Driverless Car

Ford tests Lidar-equipped car in pitch darkness techcrunch

By using Lidar, Ford recently showed that its autonomous vehicles can drive in complete darkness without human intervention. In the process, they remind us that the self-driving car is about a lot more than as-good-as-humans: It’s about harnessing tech to make cars far safer and smarter than human drivers.

UN

New UN Secretary-General may be elected for 7 years for first time tass.ru

The next UN Secretary-General can be elected for 7 years instead of 5 years for the first time and not be eligible for reelection. President of the UN General Assembly Mogens Lykketoft has told TASS that such an opportunity is currently discussed by the UN member-countries during the secret consultations.

I couldn't find a corroborating article. If true, you know this will kick off the prophesy-phere a chattering...

At Geneva conference, Ban calls for global partnership to prevent violent extremism un.org

the Secretary-General told the Geneva Conference on Preventing Violent Extremism – The Way Forward, co-hosted by the Government of Switzerland and the UN. Mr. Ban stressed: “Let us also recognize that today, the vast majority of victims worldwide are Muslims.”

Violent extremists seek to divide communities and the goal is to let fear rule, he said. “Let this conference – and our unity today – be the ultimate rebuke to that bankrupt strategy.”