Boy Killed During School Gun Walkout

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By ABC 7. University Medical Center has announced a memorial for the Parkland Middle School student struck and killed Friday.

Police say 11-year-old Jonathan Benko was taking part in Parkland Middle School’s organized walkout when he and a group of students left the designated walkout area. Police say around 10:30 Friday morning, the group crossed Loop 375 then attempted to cross it again. Benko was the last in the group to cross and was struck by a Ford F150.

Benko sustained serious injuries and was taken to UMC where he died. (Read more from “Boy Killed During School Gun Walkout” HERE)

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Texas Sixth-Grader Killed Crossing Highway After Leaving School During Walkout

By Dallas News. A Texas sixth-grader who left his middle school campus during national student walkouts Friday was hit by a car and killed when he attempted to walk across a highway, officials said.

The 11-year-old boy, identified in a hospital news release as Jonathan Benko, was hit at 10:27 a.m. by a pickup traveling north on Loop 375 in El Paso, the El Paso Times reported. He died later at a hospital.

Students nationwide walked out of classes Friday on the 19th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, to protest gun violence.

The boy was struck while leaving Parkland Middle School in El Paso during the walkout, but he was not participating in it, Ysleta Independent School District Superintendent Xavier De La Torre said at a news conference.

He left in a group of students as part of a “separate, isolated event,” the Times reported. Students walked to the middle school’s football field to gather for the walkout, but a small group hopped over a wall and left campus, according to the students’ accounts to the Times. No other students were hurt, officials said. (Read more from “Texas Sixth-Grader Killed Crossing Highway After Leaving School During Walkout” HERE)

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Twitter Blocks Pro-Life Activist with down Syndrome

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Twitter reportedly blocked a British pro-life activist with Down Syndrome for more than 24 hours after she posted pro-life pictures.

Charlotte “Charlie” Fien rebuked the social media giant with a trenchantly worded tweet once her account was restored Tuesday. Her previous tweet was dated Sunday . . .

LifeSiteNews contacted Twitter to ask why Fien’s account had been blocked, but did not hear back by deadline . . .

The pro-life advocate gained international renown after she received a standing ovation from United Nations delegates in Geneva in March.

Fien gave a passionate plea asking the international body to defend people with Down Syndrome from eugenic abortion.

(Read more from “Twitter Blocks Pro-Life Activist with down Syndrome” HERE)

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Abstinence Gets a Boost: Trump Announces Huge Change to Obama-Era Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program

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By The Daily Wire. The federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) that was established in 2010 by the Obama Administration is undergoing massive changes toward abstinence education, the Trump Administration announced on Friday. The program doles out funding to schools and individual communities to combat teen pregnancy with “comprehensive sex-education.”

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Obama-era program has been ineffective at best.

The omnibus spending bill funded TPPP with $108 million for fiscal year 2018, but in an effort to effectively reduce teen pregnancy and advance sexual health, such grants will now be attached to abstinence-focused education per the administration . . .

An August press release from the HHS claimed that the Obama-era program negatively affected teen behavior and was a waste of taxpayer dollars. “Overall, of the 37 funded and evaluated projects, 73% either had no impact or had a negative impact on teen behavior, with some teens more likely to begin having sex, to engage in unprotected sex, or to become pregnant. Very few positive results were sustained over time,” said the report. (Read more from “Abstinence Gets a Boost: Trump Announces Huge Change to Obama-Era Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program” HERE)

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Trump Admin Announces Abstinence-Focused Overhaul of Teen Pregnancy Program

By The Hill. The Trump administration will shift federal funding aimed at reducing teen pregnancy rates to programs that teach abstinence.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Friday the availability of grants through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, (TPPP) a grant program created under former President Obama that funds organizations and programs working to reduce teen pregnancy rates.

Trump’s HHS announced, however, that unlike under the Obama administration, grants will be geared toward organizations that teach abstinence education to teens instead of the comprehensive sex ed approach the previous administration supported.

In a funding announcement released Friday, the administration announced two tiers of funds for the TPP program.

In the first, grantees would have to follow one of two abstinence programs to receive funding. (Read more from “Trump Admin Announces Abstinence-Focused Overhaul of Teen Pregnancy Program” HERE)

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State Sued for Taking Babies’ Blood Without a Warrant

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By WND. The state of Michigan is being sued by parents of newborns’ whose blood was sampled by the state without a warrant.

“It has been well-established that drawing a person’s blood for analysis constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” explains the complaint filed against the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, various doctors and the Michigan Neonatal Biobank Inc.

“The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the right of persons to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, including the state of Michigan, its agencies, and those that work for in in cahoots with those agencies.”

While the state program to “seize” blood from newborns for testing against various diseases “is a noble public policy idea,” the method that the state as implemented “violates the United States Constitution,” the complaint contends.

The lawsuit seeks an order to stop the practice, destroy the data illegally collected and “return to the parents all blood samples and spots of infants which defendants have caused to be seized and stored indefinitely without informed consent.” (Read more from “State Sued for Taking Babies’ Blood Without a Warrant” HERE)

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Lawsuit Alleges Michigan Stole Blood of Newborn Babies

By Associated Press. . .Philip Ellison filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of the parents, saying Michigan’s practice of drawing infant blood is unconstitutional, MLive.com reported. The lawsuit also alleges that there aren’t protections in place to stop police or others from accessing information that can be derived from the stored blood samples.

“Essentially, the state has stolen consent from parents,” said Ellison, an attorney based in Saginaw County . . .

The blood of more than five million people is being stored, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. (Read more from “Lawsuit Alleges Michigan Stole Blood of Newborn Babies” HERE)

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School Official Obsessed with Claims of Homeschooler’s ‘Sex Trafficking’

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By WND. An attendance officer in a West Virginia school district posted a Facebook message in support of public schools shortly after a teachers’ strike declaring 80 percent of homeschoolers “are drug addicts, have truancy charges, [engage in] childhood sex trafficking, etc.”

Then a local family contacted the officer to inform the officer, as required by state law, of its intent to homeschool.

The next day, Child Protective Services arrived at the family’s home demanding to investigate “allegations which included many of the same specific criminal activities that the county attendance officer had accused homeschooling families of in her Facebook post,” according to the Home School Legal Defense Association.

“After interviewing the children and viewing the home, the CPS investigators acknowledged that the allegations were ridiculously meritless. But the family had already been traumatized,” HSLDA said . . .

He explained the district worker “aggressively interrogated [the mother] as to why she had mailed in the notification,” and the school worker said she had two weeks to decide whether or not the family would be allowed to homeschool. (Read more from “School Official Obsessed with Claims of Homeschooler’s ‘Sex Trafficking'” HERE)

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CPS and Homeschooling Mom Agree: She’s Not a Criminal!

By HSLDA. Acrimony fomented by a West Virginia public school teachers’ strike and pushback against pro-homeschool legislation appears to have affected how homeschooling families are treated on the local level.

Home School Legal Defense Association recently advocated on behalf of one of these families, who was harassed and then put through a Child Welfare Services investigation simply for following the legal requirements for homeschooling.

The incident began when the HSLDA members mailed a notice of intent to their county attendance officer (the local official who enforces compulsory school attendance laws).

The mom was announcing her intention to begin homeschooling, a decision she and her husband had made in part because some of their children were being bullied at school. . . .

The official was wrong. Though state law does require homeschool students to be assessed regularly and show acceptable progress, it does not give her the power to approve or disapprove of homeschool programs. But what made her behavior especially egregious is that it appeared to be based on her political views that hold homeschoolers in disdain. (Read more from “CPS and Homeschooling Mom Agree: She’s Not a Criminal!” HERE)

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Stanford Study: The Most Religious Kids Do Best in School

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Adolescents who practice religion regularly perform better in school than those adolescents who do not, finds a recent study performed by Dr. Ilana M. Horwitz at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. Horwitz’s paper explores differences among the grade point averages (GPAs) of public school students based on their levels of religiosity.

Horwitz bucketed the students into five different levels of religious adherence, from most religious to least religious: Abiders, Adapters, Assenters, Avoiders, and Atheists. She found the most religious kids had the highest GPAs. Horwitz defines that group, the “Abiders,” as those who “display high levels across all measured dimensions of religiosity and ‘abide’ by religion in a classic, institutional sense,” while Avoiders, true to their nomenclature, “avoid religious involvement and broader issues of the relevance of religion for their life.” Unlike the Atheist group, they believe in G-d, but participate far less in religious ceremonies and prayer.

Horwitz’s paper focuses exclusively on the “Abider-Avoider” achievement gap, noting that Abiders outperform all the other religious groups, with the exception of Atheists, who performed comparable with Abiders, although the Atheist group size was very small, which affects its reliability. Atheists comprised 3 percent of Horwitz’s sample, and Horwitz makes no conjectures regarding their achievement metrics, saying they are a unique subset of students who most likely differ greatly from their other non-religious counterparts, given the “strong social stigma” attached to claiming G-d does not exist. Therefore, Horwitz directs her research primarily on the remaining four categories, exploring the relationship between varying levels of religious commitment and its impact on academic performance.

Horwitz discovered that “Abiders report the highest GPAs while Avoiders report the lowest GPAs, even after controlling for a host of background factors and behaviors.” Based on her own religious research, Horwitz believes religion nurtures two qualities rewarded heavily in school curriculums: “conscientiousness” and “cooperation.” Conservative Protestants comprised the largest religious type within the high-achieving Abiders group, which “run[s] counter to the hypothesis that Conservative Protestants fare worse in terms of academic achievement,” Horwitz wrote. . .

Horwitz found that, within each income bracket, Abiders consistently received better grades than Adapters, Assenters, and Avoiders did, while the GPA gap between Abiders and Avoiders was most pronounced. Even after controlling for a host of factors, including “Gender, race/ethnicity, family socioeconomic status, religious affiliation, and region of the country,” Abiders had an average GPA of 3.21, while Avoiders had just a 2.92 GPA. Even more interestingly, Horwitz found that, after instating the same controls, this effect of religiosity on student grades was most profound for middle-income families and least impactful for high-income families. (Read more from “Stanford Study: The Most Religious Kids Do Best in School” HERE)

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Here’s Why Folks Are Calling Title of David Hogg’s Book Not Only Clueless, but Shameful

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Parkland high school student David Hogg and his sister have scored a major book deal expounding on “the birth of a new movement,” but have created controversy before it is even released.

Hogg, the media darling of the student anti-gun movement since the mass shooting at his Florida school in February, has teamed with his sister Lauren book deal with Random House, the publisher announced Wednesday.

The planned book, “#NEVERAGAIN: A New Generation Draws the Line,” is being described as “a statement of generational purpose, and a moving portrait of the birth of a new movement.”

But while Hogg has made waves with his incendiary rhetoric and his calls for boycotts against pro-gun companies as well as Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who hurt his feelings by tweeting about his college rejection letters, it is the title of the upcoming book that has ignited the latest backlash.

(Read more from “Here’s Why Folks Are Calling Title of David Hogg’s Book Not Only Clueless, but Shameful” HERE)

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Man Stabbed in Neck by Muslim Goes Public About Horrific Attack

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So when Momena Shoma, 24, a female Bangladeshi student from a well-to-do family, needed to switch host homes a week after arriving in Australia in early February, Singaravelu opened his once again.

Nothing stood out that could have warned the 56-year-old Melbourne Hospital worker of any potential problem. The father of a five-year-old daughter felt comfortable enough to take an afternoon nap on the couch the day after Shoma settled in . . .

He awakened to “a sharp pain” in his neck, with Shoma leaning over him with a kitchen knife and shouting, “Allahu akbar” as she stabbed him, his daughter screaming as she witnessed the attack . . .

Four years before the attack, Shoma had been romantically involved with Najibullah Ansari, a now-missing ISIS extremist sought by authorities in Bangladesh. The pair, both from upper middle-class professional families, broke off their relationship because of parental disapproval.

Shoma’s suitor allegedly belonged to New Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, or Neo-JMB, an ISIS-inspired radical group made up of youth from wealthy families. Neo-JMB was responsible for a July 2016 attack at a Dhaka cafe favored by Westerners that left 29 dead. Following the massacre, authorities named Ansari, son of a naval officer, as a Neo-JMB militant wanted for questioning. (Read more from “Man Stabbed in Neck by Muslim Goes Public About Horrific Attack” HERE)

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Look: Latest AP History Textbook Says Christians and Conservatives Are Racists

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An AP U.S. History textbook slated for distribution in 2019 reportedly contains anti-Trump bias and says Christians and conservatives are racists and xenophobes.

Radio host Alex Clark of WNOW’s “The Joe and Alex Show” posted photos of the book and its contents on Twitter after publisher Pearson Education sent samples of the book to public schools to encourage school administrations to purchase it, according to Fox News. The textbook features sections on the Black Live Matter movement and the 2016 presidential elections in which author New York University Professor James Fraser portrays Christians, conservatives, and President Donald Trump supporters as bigots who fear non-white ethnicities.

“It was really, really surprising to me. I really believe that learning should be objective and that students can make their own decisions based on what they’re able to learn in a classroom; and if the facts are skewed, then students aren’t able to make well-rounded decisions on what they believe.”

A section of the book, “The Angry Election of 2016,” describes Trump supporters as “mostly older, often rural or suburban, and overwhelmingly white.” It also calls Trump supporters from Hillary Clinton supporters’ perspective “people who were afraid of a rapidly developing ethnic diversity of the country, discomfort with their candidate’s gender, and nostalgia for an earlier time in the nation’s history.”

Clinton supporters meanwhile “worried about the mental stability of the president-elect and the anger that he and his supporters brought to the nation,” according to the book. (Read more from “-Look: Latest AP History Textbook Says Christians and Conservatives Are Racists” HERE)

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Federal Appeals Court Forces State to Fund Planned Parenthood

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. . .On Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling blocking that law, mandating that Ohio taxpayers fund abortions . . .

U.S. Circuit Judge Helene White said the two Planned Parenthood affiliates had a right to taxpayer dollars because abortion was a “protected activity” outside of the government-funded programs . . .

Reuters reports that “White said the law had violated Planned Parenthood’s due process rights by requiring a health care provider surrender its right to provide legal abortions as a condition of participating in programs that have nothing to do with abortion.” More of the ruling written by White below:

The issue in the instant challenge is … whether Ohio may require a provider to surrender the right to provide safe and lawful abortions on its own “time and dime” as a condition of participating in government programs that have nothing to do with abortion.

Thus, as a condition of retaining access to abortion free of undue governmental interference, Ohio women must forego the extensive and subsidized access to health services under federal programs that they previously enjoyed. Although Ohio women do not have a right to the programs, they do have a right not to have their access to important health services curtailed because their major abortion providers opted to protect women’s abortion rights rather than yield to unconstitutional conditions.

(Read more from “Federal Appeals Court Forces State to Fund Planned Parenthood” HERE)

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