EndrTimes

Friday, July 17, 2026

Mandatory Bible study in Texas ‘risks fuelling anti-Semitism’

Jewish leaders say Trump-backed ruling is unconstitutional and will alienate their children

The Texas ruling prompted demonstrations at the state Capitol in Austin Credit: Jay Janner/Getty

Emily Smith Foreign Breaking News Reporter Show biography

Published 17 July 2026 10:30am BST

Mandatory Bible reading for Texas school students has split the state’s religious Right, with Jewish leaders warning the move risks fuelling anti-Semitism and eroding religious freedom.

The Republican Texas state board of education voted to approve mandated Bible study in the school curriculum for more than five million students, with a spokesman declaring: “We’re going to stop watering down American history.

“We’re going to teach the truth. Our nation was founded as a Christian nation, and Texas is a Christian state.”

The changes, which will take effect in 2030, are the latest step in Texas’s drive to bring religion back into the classroom and will see children study stories such as David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lion’s Den and Noah’s Ark from the age of six.

However, the measure has prompted fierce opposition from Jewish leaders, who argue it is unconstitutional and will fuel a rapid rise in anti-Semitism across the state.

Rabbi Josh Fixler, associate rabbi at Congregation Emanu El in Houston, Texas, was among those who testified against the measure. “I absolutely think that this will contribute to anti-Semitism,” he told The Telegraph.

“If anti-Semitism is about making Jewish people feel isolated and pushing Jews out of public spaces and having Jews feel that their religious tradition is less than, then kids hearing these messages in public schools is absolutely going to isolate them.”

He added: “It’s going to result in non-Christian students, including my own kids, feeling alienated and isolated in spaces where they should feel belonging.

Hegseth's plan to screen military members for low testosterone...

Hegseth's plan to screen military members for low testosterone raises concern for doctors: "Not a performance drug"

By Kerry Breen

July 16, 2026 / 3:37 PM EDT / CBS News

A day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. service members over the age of 30 will be annually screened for "testosterone deficiency," doctors are expressing skepticism of the program and its goals.

Hegseth said all service members over 30 will be screened as part of their regular health assessments, and that younger ones will have the option of being tested to ensure that they "have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best." If they are recommended for treatment, they'll have the option to receive testosterone replacement therapy.

Hegseth has commented frequently on the physical standards of the military, connecting appearance and masculinity to combat readiness. Hegseth did not say what the new policy might mean for female service members, and other details have not yet been announced.

Doctors flagged a range of concerns about the policy, which is likely to be costly to implement. National organizations including The Endocrine Society and the American College of Physicians recommend against general screenings for testosterone levels, which can fluctuate based on age, lifestyle and even the time of day.

"Testosterone in the normal range is not a performance drug," said Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical correspondent and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. "For a man whose level is genuinely low, replacement can help libido and mood a little. It has not been shown to sharpen thinking, fix fatigue, or make a healthy 30-year-old a better soldier."
"No link to how masculine they are or feel or look"

Testosterone is a hormone naturally produced by the body. It helps maintain muscle and bone mass, and impacts mood and energy levels. It impacts libido and supports sperm production in men. But it isn't inherently linked to an increase in strength or capability, said Dr. Marcus Goncalves, director of the Holman Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at NYU Langone Health.

Published

Jul 16, 2026 at 07:22 PM EDT

updated
Jul 16, 2026 at 07:23 PM EDT

By Maria Azzurra Volpe
Reporter
Newsweek is a Trust Project member

Researchers have developed a new nanoparticle-based strategy that could advance a promising cancer treatment approach by using tumors’ own copper supply to trigger cancer cell death.

The study, led by researchers at Guizhou Medical University and published in Biomedical Analysis, focuses on cuproptosis, a form of cell death that occurs when copper disrupts cancer cell survival mechanisms.

Cuproptosis has previously attracted interest as a possible cancer treatment approach, but many previous strategies have relied on adding external copper—raising concerns about toxicity to healthy tissues.

The new system is designed to avoid that problem by delivering a copper-binding agent directly to cancer cells and taking advantage of the copper already present inside tumors.

To create the system, researchers developed biodegradable nanoparticles made from PLGA-PEG, a material known for its safety and ability to break down in the body. They modified the surface of the nanoparticles with iRGD, a tumor-penetrating peptide designed to help guide the particles toward cancer cells.

The nanoparticles were loaded with TPEN, short for N,N,N′,N′-tetrakis(2-pyridylmethyl)ethylenediamine, a compound that binds to metal ions such as copper.

A 3D render illustrates targeted cancer cells treatment. | Getty Images

Working the Mines of Truth | Our High Calling - July 17

Thursday, July 16, 2026

President Trump Delivers an Address to the Nation, Jul. 16, 2026

Wildfires expose millions in the Midwest and Northeast US to dangerous smoke

PROGRAMMING THE NATION _ Subliminal Messages to the Masses

13-year-old Christian girl fights in court to escape custody of Muslim abductor: 'Serious injustice'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Maria Shahbaz, a 13-year-old Pakistani Christian girl, is fighting in court to escape the 30-year-old Muslim man who abducted her from her home in 2025. | Courtesy Alliance Defending Freedom

A 13-year-old Pakistani Christian girl is fighting in court to reunite with her family after a judge returned her to the custody of the 30-year-old Muslim man who abducted her last year.

Maria Shahbaz was kidnapped from her Christian home in July 2025 by Shehryar Ahmad, who married her against her will and forced her to convert to Islam. Shahbaz has since been "exposed to grave abuse and exploitation," according to a press release from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a nonprofit legal advocacy group.

An earlier investigation found that she was a minor and that her marriage documents were forged. Even so, Pakistan's Federal Constitutional Court reportedly did not confirm her age before ruling in February that she should remain in Ahmad's custody. The ruling contradicts Pakistani law, which does not allow minors to consent to marriage or religious conversion.

As Shahbaz awaits another court hearing, local lawyer Lazar Allah Rakha said the Pakistani judiciary has a chance to correct a grave error.

"The court that is due to hear this case has an opportunity to correct a serious injustice. Maria is a child. She was abducted, her documents were found to be forged, and the court handed her back to the man who took her — without even confirming her age. That cannot be allowed to stand," Rakha said.

"This is not just about Maria, though Maria's situation is urgent and she must be brought home. This ruling, if it stands, will further erode the confidence of the minority communities in the justice system. This review petition is an opportunity for the court to relook at their previous order and implement the law," he added.

Despite heated debate among lawmakers, Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, passed updated legislation this year to reinforce the minimum marriage age of 18 and require courts to prioritize the best interests of the child in such cases. The bill replaced provisions of Punjab's Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, which allowed girls to marry at 16 and boys at 18.

The change came as international bodies — including United Nations experts, members of the European Parliament and U.K. lawmakers — have repeatedly raised concerns about forced marriages and conversions in Pakistan, where more than 1,000 underage girls are reportedly subjected to these practices each year.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Jesuit Theater Of Control: Manipulation Faith, Politics and Perception | Audiobook

The Real Reveal

Apr 6, 2026

This audiobook pulls back the curtain on a world where faith, power, and performance intersect. Across five chapters, Jesuit Theatre of Control explores how theatre, symbolism, spectacle, and narrative have been used throughout history to shape belief, influence societies, and reinforce authority. What begins in the Counter-Reformation—with elaborate Jesuit stage productions and emotionally charged religious drama—extends into Inquisition trials, manufactured miracles, and ultimately into the modern world of cinema and global media.

Illegal immigrant sentenced after fiery California semitruck crash killed 3

dri
Dashcam video showed Jashanpreet Singh never braking before plowing into slow-moving traffic on Interstate 10

By Michael Sinkewicz Fox News
Published July 15, 2026 2:45am EDT

Driver in deadly Ohio crash spoke no English as Trump admin vows commercial truck license crackdown

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy details the Trump administration's crackdown on commercial driver's licenses issued to illegal immigrants. The effort follows a fatal Ohio crash involving an Uzbek national who authorities said spoke no English, as well as the death of a Pennsylvania state trooper struck by a Haitian national with a Massachusetts commercial driver's license. Duffy argues those licenses should be revoked to help keep America's roads safe.

A 21-year-old Indian national who federal authorities said was in the U.S. illegally was sentenced Tuesday to four years and eight months in prison for causing a fiery Southern California crash that killed three people last year.

Jashanpreet Singh pleaded guilty to three felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence stemming from the October 2025 crash, according to NBC Los Angeles.

Authorities said Singh was driving a semitruck that plowed into slow-moving traffic on Interstate 10 in San Bernardino County, killing three people and injuring several others.

Jashanpreet Singh, an illegal immigrant from India, was arrested in connection with a deadly crash on the I-10 Freeway in San Bernardino County, Calif., on Oct. 21, 2025. (Bill Melugin/via X,ICE)

Fox News Digital previously reported that Singh is an illegal immigrant from India who crossed the southern border in 2022 and was released into the United States by the Biden administration.

According to federal sources, Singh was first encountered by Border Patrol agents in California's El Centro Sector in March 2022 and released pending an immigration hearing.

The crash, which was captured on dashcam video, showed Singh never applying the brakes before slamming into traffic, according to investigators.

Mamdani forgot he’s just a mayor. The State Department had to remind him

Story by Anthony Maranise, Washington Examiner

Mamdani forgot he’s just a mayor. The State Department had to remind him

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration recently scheduled a meeting between his commissioner of international affairs and Iran’s U.N. ambassador. The meeting was only stopped after the State Department intervened and ordered it canceled.

Mamdani says he didn’t know about it. That is not a defense. It is an admission that either his office is freelancing foreign policy or he sees nothing wrong with it.

He is a city mayor. Nothing more. The fact that he leads the largest city in the country does not grant him authority to conduct diplomacy with a regime that actively works against U.S. interests. Foreign policy belongs to the federal government. Period.

Local officials exist to handle local problems: crime, transit, housing, and basic services. They do not get to insert themselves into matters of national security and international relations. When a mayor’s team attempts back-channel contact with Iran’s representative at the United Nations, it is not bold leadership. It is arrogant overreach.

This episode fits a pattern. Mamdani ran on a platform that treated the mayoralty as a platform for progressive ideology rather than competent local governance. Now, his administration has demonstrated the same confusion of roles in practice. While City Hall dabbles in foreign affairs that it has no business touching, New Yorkers continue to deal with failing infrastructure, strained public safety resources, and a city government that too often prioritizes symbolism over results.

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

NGO's

Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson

Jul 12, 2026

NGO’s, or non-governmental organizations, feed the hungry and provide medical care to victims of disasters in the US and around the world. but your tax dollars help fund them, and many use that to push political agendas. Scott Thuman investigates.

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P.S.

🇺🇸 House DOGE Subcommittee | 'Public Funds Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild' Hearing

I fed 5 major religions into an AI engine. Here is the 'winner.'

By Jay Atkins, Op-ed Contributor Monday, April 20, 2026

iStock/Chor muang

I recently did something that will likely make both my Christian and atheist friends a little uncomfortable: I asked a popular AI engine to evaluate the world’s major belief systems and tell me which one makes the most rational sense.

To be clear, I didn’t prompt it to favor Christianity. I didn’t ask leading questions or try to stack the deck. I asked it to analyze the heavyweights — Atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity — using a simple two-step framework: First, which worldview best explains reality, and second, which one does so while requiring the fewest unsupported assumptions? In other words, tell me which one has the highest explanatory power with the lowest evidentiary burden.

As a professing Christian for more than 40 years, what I got back should not have surprised me, yet it did. AI, in seconds, reached the same conclusion I’ve been working towards for decades: Christianity offers the most reasonable overall explanation of reality with the fewest leaps of faith.

Pause and let that settle in. AI ranked Christianity as the most reasonable view of the world.

The analysis I asked AI to do was not complicated, but it was comprehensive. I asked it to evaluate each worldview against the same basic questions:

1. Why does anything exist at all?
2. Why is the universe ordered and intelligible?
3. Why do humans possess consciousness and reason?
4. Are moral truths real or are they just social constructs?
5. Does human life have meaning or purpose?
6. Do the historical and fact claims of each belief system hold up?

I framed the analysis this way, not to pick a winner for rhetorical effect but to see which belief system actually holds together under the pure, rational scrutiny of a machine. When the analysis was done, here’s what happened.

Atheism scored well on simplicity. It doesn’t require belief in miracles or divine revelation. But that simplicity comes at a cost. It struggles to explain the biggest questions: why does the universe exist at all, why is it governed by rational laws, how does consciousness arise from mere matter, and why do we experience moral obligations as something real and binding? In many cases, it simply labels these things as either illusory or as “brute facts” and moves on, but it does not answer them.

Buddhism performed better as a practical system. It offers profound insight into human suffering and provides a quasi-workable path toward inner peace, but it largely sidesteps the deeper metaphysical questions. It gives advice on how to cope with reality, but not what reality ultimately is.

Hinduism fared about as well as Buddhism. It offers a sweeping explanation of reality with concepts like ultimate unity, karma, and reincarnation that attempt to account for both the material and spiritual world. That gives it significant explanatory depth, but with a big tradeoff. The system relies on a complex web of metaphysical claims that can’t be verified or falsified, creating a very high evidentiary burden relative to other worldviews.

Islam held together fairly well. It offers a strong account of God, morality, and purpose, which is understandable given its Abrahamic roots. But it runs into serious historical tension when it comes to the historicity of its claims about divine revelation to Muhammad, Jesus’ crucifixion, and correction of earlier traditions. Islam’s brand of retrospective revision carries a very heavy evidentiary burden that it simply can’t carry.

Monday, July 13, 2026

Democratic pastors run to reclaim Jesus from Trump's Republicans

Malcolm FOSTER
Sat, July 11, 2026 at 9:30 PM EDT

James Talarico, running for the Senate in Texas, is one of a crop of Democrats with deeply religious backgrounds who are challenging Republican dominance among Christians (RONALDO SCHEMIDT)

A band of white Democratic pastors have a striking message ahead of November's US midterm elections: Republicans have hijacked Jesus for political gain, and we're not going to stand for it.

For decades, it's been a truism that Republicans have cornered the Christian market -- at least when it comes to white voters.

But these ministers are so fed up with President Donald Trump, and particularly his policies against immigrants, that they're running as Democrats in November to rein him in.

"The Christians we're hearing in Washington don't reflect the Jesus of the Gospels," one of the insurgents, Adam Hamilton, told AFP.

As the head of a 24,000-member Methodist megachurch in a deeply conservative, rural area of Kansas, Hamilton would typically fit the profile of a right-wing Republican Christian.

However, along with support for fiscal responsibility and a strong military, the 62-year-old Hamilton backs legal access to abortion and protecting LGBTQ rights in his campaign for the US Senate.

Citing the "crassness and mean-spiritedness" of Trump's presidency, he said what's happening in Washington is "inconsistent with the values that I've preached for 36 years."

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Sunday, July 12, 2026

Was Lindsey Graham Assassinated?

Your Bible Version Matters

The Bible is God’s revealed Word to us, not our word to make applicable to the cultural moment.

07/9/26
John StonestreetandAndrew Carico

Two recent news stories point to the crisis of biblical literacy, not only of knowing the biblical text but in properly understanding it. An editorial published at the Washington Post by Princeton professor Gregory Conti (a self-professed “non-believer”) explained how common it is for college students to not know the basics of Christianity:

(They) seldom recognize the allusions to the Bible that appear in Shakespeare’s work or in Lincoln’s second inaugural address (or in Obama’s first, for that matter) . . . their ignorance of religious ideas means they struggle to understand a wide array of Western art, literature, and philosophy.

In short, the lack of Biblical knowledge means they are unable to understand American history and culture.

Another New York Times story profiled the pastor and the church of Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. According to the article, Pastor Jim Rigby of St. Andrews’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, welcomes new members by:

…handing them a new copy of the Inclusive Bible, an unusual feminist translation St. Andrew’s has used since the 1990s. In Genesis, instead of saying that God created a man, Adam, the translation first refers to an “earth creature.” It often uses the term “kindom” of God in place of “kingdom,” which it deems classist.

The Inclusive Bible is promoted as “the first egalitarian translation.” In addition to replacing the male pronouns for God and humankind, it purports to “re-imagin(e) . . . the [S]criptures and our relationship to them.” The innovative version promotes progressive Christianity and includes a strong postmodern emphasis, rejecting absolute “truth” in favor of a newly created narrative.

Those who only read the Inclusive Bible will not really know the truth of Scripture, any more than those who never read any version. Nor can they understand a culture inspired by and built from, mostly, the King James Version. And yet, that is actually the point of the postmodern way of approaching reality: there is no truth to be known or revealed, only that which is constructed.