NOW, THE NEWS:
UPITT HIRES INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR TO REVIEW ITS FOETAL RESEARCH PROGRAM
from: BioEdge.org
(18 Sep.) For months the University of Pittsburgh has been under pressure from pro-life groups over its foetal tissue research programs. There have been allegations that UPitt scientists have harvested the kidneys of unborn babies while their hearts were still beating.
The University has heatedly denied any wrong-doing. "As we have repeatedly noted, the University of Pittsburgh does not perform medical procedures and is not part of the tissue collection process," David Seldin, Pitt’s vice chancellor for news, told Fox News in August. "All of the University’s research is closely supervised to ensure compliance with strict and rigorous federal and state laws and regulations."
Earlier this month the University took the unusual step of hiring an outside investigator to prove that its research practices are within the bounds of the law. It has retained a respected Washington DC law firm, Hyman Phelps & McNamara.
"Fetal tissue research is subject to robust internal controls at Pitt and highly regulated at the state and federal level," said a statement from the UPitt. "The University routinely conducts reviews to ensure that its research activities – across all areas of research – comply with internal policies as well as all relevant federal and state laws."
The foetal tissue research has become a lightning rod for political controversy. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a Republican state legislator declared that he didn’t want to spend taxpayer money on a university that commits "deplorable, grotesque and morally offensive" atrocities in the name of research to aborted babies. His reaction typified the allegations made against the University. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: If UPitt had purchased these babies' organs from a third-party supplier that buys them from Planned Parenthood, it could claim plausible deniability that it does not itself harvest the organs from babies born alive during an abortion. But according to the section "NIH's Gruesome Experiments with Baby Parts" in the article "The Appalling Moral Failure of Francis Collins," UPitt was itself performing the abortions and doing these experiments on the body tissues of babies born alive. May the truth – whichever it is – come out, and not be swept under the rug.
DONETSK, DONBAS: THREE PROTESTANT CHURCHES BANNED
from: Forum 18 News Service
(4 Oct.) On 17 June 2021, the internationally unrecognised Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) entity's General Prosecutor's Office announced that prosecutors had sent a suit to the Arbitration Court in Donetsk to liquidate two Protestant churches, Good News Baptist Church and the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The rebel-held entity in eastern Ukraine claimed the suits had been launched "with the aim of removing violations" of the Religion Law, and announced that the Arbitration Court had upheld the suits and banned the two churches.
On 25 June, the General Prosecutor's Office made a further announcement that Yenakievo Prosecutor's Office had sent a suit to the Arbitration Court in Donetsk to ban the activity of a Baptist church in the town of Yenakievo, Church of the Awakening, as well as any "branches or sub-divisions." Church of the Awakening was taken by surprise by the announcement.
"Nobody informed them," a Baptist told Forum 18 on 27 September. "But their registration documents have once again been submitted for consideration. There is a certificate from the Justice Ministry that the documents are under consideration." Baptists told Forum 18 that the Arbitration Court upheld the suit and banned the Church of the Awakening. Officials noted though that the registration denials did not deprive the Church of the right to re-submit documents. "So far, this court decision has not affected the life of the church."
General Prosecutor's Office and Arbitration Court officials have refused to answer any questions. An official of the Religion and Nationalities Department of the Culture Ministry in Donetsk, who refused to give his name, refused to say why prosecutors had brought suits to court to liquidate the three Protestant Churches. "I can't say by phone," he told Forum 18 and put the phone down.
The unrecognised DPR authorities ban religious communities on three grounds: firstly for not having the registration officials demand; secondly after being specifically banned by a court for failing to gain registration; and thirdly after a court has found them to be "extremist." All non-Moscow Patriarchate religious communities are banned from functioning if they failed to get re-registration by 1 March 2019.
The latest March amendments to the much-amended 2016 DPR Religion Law change the definition of what constitutes a religious association. The reworded Article 6 continues to say – against international human rights standards – that religious associations exist only if they are registered. It also gives a new and more restrictive definition of a religious association, restricting its activities to only "participants and/or members. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: The above phrase "non-Moscow Patriarchate religious communities" means that the Mocow-oriented Orthodox churches are the only ones that do not require registration. This is a clear indication that Moscow is behind the invasion into Ukraine's Donbas region. Registration by all other religious communities is a tedious, time-consuming, and expensive process that may or may not be accepted by the Mocow-oriented rebels' government.
NO LABOR SHORTAGE AT CAFE STAFFED BY WORKERS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES
from: Disability Scoop
(1 Oct.) MIDDLETOWN, N.J. – In retrospect, February 2020 was the worst possible time to open a restaurant. The pandemic shut everything down less than a month later, and more than a few establishments never reopened.
But No Limits Cafe in Middletown is still standing. That's a big deal, because it's the first New Jersey eatery to be staffed almost entirely by adults with intellectual disabilities.
"Every week is getting better and better," co-founder Stephanie Cartier said of the pace of business. "What's good about us is we're one of the only restaurants that doesn't have an employee problem – a lack of employees. Last week alone we had three people with intellectual disabilities looking for jobs. We could staff a whole other restaurant if we wanted to."
No Limits Cafe was co-founded by Stephanie and Mark Cartier, Middletown residents whose daughter Katie has Down syndrome.
"When she was 18 we said, ‘She can stay in school until she's 21,' but then what's going to happen?" Stephanie Cartier told the Asbury Park Press in 2020. "She will fall off a cliff."
The "cliff" is the precipitous drop in community opportunities for adults with intellectual disabilities once they age out of the special education system at 21. With that in mind, the Cartiers' launched this restaurant. They hire greeters, servers and kitchen hands who make the New Jersey minimum wage of $12 an hour.
No Limits Cafe employs 38 people – 34 adults with intellectual disabilities and four neurotypical adults. Like other eateries, it closed for three months at the pandemic's onset, then opened with outdoor seating only through the summer and fall of 2020. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: This is another inspiring story of how people with disabilities can become contributing members of society... if we give them a chance to do so.
THE BLESSED OMELIAN KOVCH SHOWED THAT HATE IS OVERCOME ONLY WITH LOVE, WHEREAS CONTEMPT WITH MERCY AND FORGIVENESS
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine
(4 Oct.) "Omelian Kovch in one of his letters asked to pray for generators of ideology of violence and injustice, thereby demonstrating that hatred might only be overcome with love," – said His Beatitude Sviatoslav, the Head of the UGCC at Lublin Cathedral during the Divine Liturgy celebrated on the occasion of consecration of the monument to the Blessed Omelian Kovch.
The Head of the Church mentioned that if we carefully regard the decision made by Fr. Omelian, we will see that his phenomenon lies in willpower which was penetrating him, thus left no room for fear, doubts and despair to paralyze him. His Beatitude Sviatoslav urges not to be afraid but just believe, since holding faith in God overcomes all existential fears.
As the Head of the Church assumes, the faithful see two dimensions ahead of them, out of which they cannot be completely themselves. And our vocation is to abide in God which reflects our outer performance as serving the humiliated and the needy.
At the end His Beatitude Sviatoslav encouraged following the model of the Blessed Omelian Kovch and cherish humanity so to be inspired enough to be next to those who are in need. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: The "UGCC" is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which was formed when the Hapsburg Empire conquered the area called "Ruthenia" in the 1600s. This area then became nominally Catholic but not "Roman" Catholic, merely changing from commemorating the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to the Roman Pope but continuing to use the "Greek" (Eastern Orthodox) liturgy and allowing married priests just as before. But many of these people who had immigrated to the U.S. returned to Orthodoxy in 1937, forming the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese in the U.S. or joining other Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions.
MOM WITH TERMINAL CANCER HAS LEG AMPUTATED TO SAVE HER PREBORN CHILD
from: LiveAction News
(25 Sep.) Kathleen Osborne has been fighting cancer since she was a little girl. But at 28, when she went in for an MRI of her leg, she found out she was pregnant – and she made the choice to save her preborn child.
In 2005, at 11 years old, Osborne was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. She underwent chemotherapy and had two metal rods inserted into her leg, and thought the rest of her life would be uneventful. She welcomed two little boys, only for cancer to return in 2016. "About three or four months after I had my second son [Leo], I had pain all down my side and I couldn't move, I was bent over in pain," she told the Daily Mail.
"I had a scan after the doctors found fluid on my lungs and that’s where they saw this big mass on my lung which they couldn’t biopsy as it was touching vital organs. It turned out the cancer was back, and within a week, I was back in hospital for chemo. Childhood cancer usually comes back within two or three years, but mine came back after 11. It was really rare, it’s not often they see that so they had to act quickly."
The chemotherapy worked again, and in 2017, she was cleared by her oncology team. But three years later, she discovered a painful lump on her leg that made it difficult to walk. She underwent an MRI, which told doctors that Osborne had cancer once again – but they also found a mass in her pelvic region. After giving her a pregnancy test, Osborne also found out she was expecting another baby.
"That’s how I found out I was pregnant – I had no idea!" she said. "It was really scary because then I immediately thought I was going to lose my baby. I'd only just found out about her and then I thought I was going to lose her."
Doctors then told her that she could choose to have an abortion and begin chemotherapy right away, and possibly lose her leg – or have her leg amputated now, and try to keep her baby. "They gave me a week to make the decision and told me the sooner I had the surgery, the better," she said. "My friend stayed with me that evening and I just cried a lot. I was really worried, I did a lot of crying, and my friend did a lot of crying with me." [read more...]
COMMENTARY: This is indeed a heartwarming story of self-sacrifice. But another piece of information from LiveAction is this: "Every day in America … 100 people die in car accidents. 1,300 people die from smoking. And every day in America: 2,363 children are violently killed by abortion. Let this sink in. The worldwide death toll from abortion now exceeds every war, every disease, every famine, and every genocide. Because of this, the killing of preborn children is the worst human rights crisis in human history." So LiveAction has set up a web-page to counter this mega-genocide: https://give.liveaction.org/save-2363 - will you stand in the gap?
IS IT JUST ME, OR HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED THAT WE ARE GETTING OLDER?
from: Disabled World
(7 Oct.) Could be just me, since I know that the title above is a take-off on mouse traps. But of course, the truth is we all are whether we like it or not. That means we should be on the lookout for ways to make this aging business as smooth and painless as possible. I'll venture not too far out on a limb and say that almost everyone can agree on that.
One way we have found to accomplish this is to simply keep moving. Yes, sounds simple, and it is, but it is also wonderfully effective. No need to scale mountains or run marathons, just make a point to keep your body in motion. One of our favorite ways to achieve this modest goal is to ride bikes. We began this in earnest back when we set out on our empty nest motorhome adventure several years ago and have continued to this day.
Back then it was a good way to get places without having to move the RV once we were settled in somewhere. Then, over time, we became pretty good at riding to do many of our daily errands and the pedaling helped to keep our old joints working and the blood circulating.
But how can you carry several bags of groceries, or keep out of the elements when it rains or snows? How many times have we said, "there must be a better way"? Well, it turns out there is! It's called a PEBL by BetterBike. These ingenious little vehicles, known as Micro Car Ebikes, have combined the best of both cars and bikes into smart, healthy, and emission free eco-friendly transportation. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: These PEBL vehicles are great for people with disabilities and they don't require a driver's license or insurance because they're considered a bicycle. The price? $10K to $12K. But if you search the Internet, you can find 3-wheel electric trikes without a protective covering for $2K to $3K and 2-wheel electric bikes for under $1,000. Compare that to the cost of owning and operating a car including car payments, insurance, gas, and maintenance that add up to several hundred dollars per month. They can also serve as a "second car" for around-town trips.
NOW, OUR VIEWS:
Have you ever heard of the Christian Research Institute
? Perhaps you've heard about "Hank, the Bible Answer Man" – Hank Hannegraff's website is a rich resource of articles, videos, audio podcasts, and broadcasts by the thousands defending traditional Biblical Christianity. Check it out! Hank has recently become an Orthodox Christian.
We regularly have visitors from Kenya, Burundi, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan in our online "Morning Prayers and Readings" daily at 7:30 a.m. New York time. This Wednesday, we had a visitor, Shabaz, from Afghanistan. He told us that he is in hiding and that Christians are being hunted down and killed by the Taliban. Let's remember to pray for Shabaz and all Christians in Afghanistan.
We've also begun showing on Skype to people in Africa and Asia a video series of lectures about the Old Testament on Mondays and Fridays at 11:00 a.m. Here's how we inform our visitors what are their time zones: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/. If you'd like to join us, please let us know your Skype ID.
Please remember to pray for Christians in Secularized Countries, and for...
Your fellow-servants,
Bob & Cheryl
p.s. We have laws against murder, rape, theft, slavery and child molestation. Who says you can't legislate morality?
