Six Iranian converts to Christianity were convicted of crimes related to their membership in a house church, according to World Watch Monitor. Mohabat News, which reports on news of Christians inside Iran, published a report on June 16 claiming that four men, a woman and her teenaged son were convicted by a Revolutionary Court in Shiraz, in southwestern Iran. The four men were found guilty of attending a house church, spreading Christianity, having contact with foreign ministries, propaganda against the Iranian regime and disrupting national security, Mohabat reported. The news service identified the men as Mojtaba Seyyed-Alaedin Hossein, Homayoun Shokouhi, Mohammad-Reza Partoei (Koorosh) and Vahid Hakkani. Each was sentenced to 44 months in prison. Hossein and Shokouhi each received an additional eight months. Also convicted was Fariba Nazemina, who is the wife of Shokouhi, and her son, Nima Shokouhi. Mohabat did not specify the crimes for which the mother and son were found guilty, but reported that each received a suspended two-year prison sentence. read more

In the ongoing controversy over David Barton’s historical work, this is a significant development. First, let me present the components of the story. In 2007, David Barton led a tour of the Capitol on behalf of the Family Research Council where he made several key claims. He used these claims to make dubious assertions about the intent of the founding fathers. FRC edited the tour video into an eight minute promo and uploaded it to You Tube. That video had over 4 million views. To fully understand the significance of this issue, you should watch that video which is still available on several You Tube accounts (another version is here on Vimeo): Watch original FRC Video Earlier this year, FRC made this video private after 34 Christian historians and social scientists asked FRC to remove the video from You Tube. FRC acknowledged the errors and Barton then made changes to the speech by introducing newly recorded audio clips into the old video. The new video has not been uploaded to the FRC account but was made available last week on Barton’s Wallbuilders You Tube account. Here it is: Watch altered Video Although new viewers of this video would not know it, there are several important changes to the original video.   The table below summarizes the alterations and remaining problems. Clearly, Barton has changed his story on some key claims he has been making for years. However, he continues to defend erroneous conclusions even as he walks back on his prior stories. ... read more

The Republican-led House on Tuesday passed a far-reaching anti-abortion bill that conservatives saw as a milestone in their 40-year campaign against legalized abortion, Fox News reports. The legislation, sparked by the murder conviction of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, would restrict almost all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, defying laws in most states that allow abortions up to when the fetus is considered viable, usually considered to be around 24 weeks. It mirrors 20-week abortion ban laws passed some states and lays further groundwork for the ongoing legal battle that abortion foes hope will eventually result in forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal. The bill passed 228-196, with six Democrats voting for it and six Republicans voting against it. In the short term, however, the bill will go nowhere; the Democrat-led Senate plans to ignore the bill and the White House has already issued a veto threat.  read more

The U.S. military is making plans to integrate women into combat roles, including special operations, CBN News reports. Under the new rules, women could start training as Army Rangers by mid-2015 and Navy SEALs a year later. Women and men would be required to meet the same physical and mental standards to qualify for certain infantry, armor, commando and other front-line positions. The Navy intends to open up its Riverine force and begin training women in July. Women make up about 14 percent of the 1.4 million active U.S. military personnel; more than 280,000 women have been sent to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or neighboring nations. read more

Bullying and aggressive behavior by a sibling can be as damaging as bullying by a classmate, neighbor or other peer, finds a new study that links it to increased depression, anxiety and anger among victimized kids and teens. And that association holds true for the various types of aggressive behavior studied, both mild and severe, from physical and psychological aggression to property victimization, researchers say. Although peer bullying has increasingly become a recognized problem and the focus of preventive efforts, sibling bullying has historically been viewed as "benign and normal and even beneficial" for a child's social development and ability "to learn to handle aggression in other relationships," according to the study, in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics. The study "shows that sibling aggression is linked to worse mental health (for the victim), and in some cases it's similar to what you find for peer aggression," says lead author Corinna Jenkins Tucker, an associate professor of family studies at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "For all types of sibling aggression, we found that being the victim was linked to lower well-being for both children and adolescents," Tucker says. Mental health distress scores were greater for children than for adolescents who experienced mild physical assault, but kids and teens were similarly affected by the other forms of sibling aggression, she says. And even kids who reported just one type of sibling aggression in the past year had higher distress scores than kids who reported none. Source: USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/17/bullying-siblings-aggression/2421067/ ... read more