Standing in support of Israel, Jews, and believers in all the nations, in the name of Jesus (Yeshua). Sharing biblical truth, encouragement, news and prophecy.
When they're at school, the kids are decidedly not all right.
New survey findings suggest that when asked how they feel during the school day, USA high school students consistently invoke three key feelings: "tired," "stressed" and "bored."
The researcher who led the study warns that such negative feelings can influence young people's attention, memory, decision making, school performance and social lives.
"It's hard to concentrate and it's hard to do well in school if your brain is constantly having to respond to stress," said Marc Brackett, a researcher in the Yale University Department of Psychology and director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
The new findings, out Friday, are from a survey conducted in collaboration with theBorn This Way Foundation, the charitable organization founded by the singer Lady Gaga. The survey was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The student sample is huge: 22,000 high school students from across the USA.
The message is clear: our high schoolers are none too happy, at least when they're in school.
Researchers distributed a brief online questionnaire that featured the question: "How do you currently feel in school?" Three blank spaces followed, with room for any answers they felt were appropriate.
Eight of the top 10 responses were negative.
"Tired" was most often invoked — 39% of students wrote that.
"Stressed" came in second, at 29%. "Bored" was third, at 26%.
By contrast, the two most frequently invoked positive emotions were "happy" (22%) and "excited (4.7%).
Parents and educators should be alarmed by the findings, Brackett said.
"I think they point to the fact that we need to be attending to the feelings of our nation's youth," he said. "Unless what they're learning is engaging and interesting, they're going to be bored — the boredom is related to the quality of instruction."
In the sample, female respondents outnumbered males about two-to-one — 65% identified themselves as female and 32% as male; 3% indicated "other."
But Brackett said the happiness findings were "pretty much identical" across genders.
"It's a shame that much of our nation's education system is not focused on helping kids figure out their own goals, but rather (on) a standardized curriculum," he said.
Love For His People Editor's Note: Removing any and all spiritual life from school leaves them as such. My opinion.
Syrian President Assad made secret visit to Moscow
Jane Onyanga-Omara and Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY6:09 a.m. EDT October 21, 2015
Syrian President Bashar Assad made a secret visit to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, their two governments disclosed Wednesday.
The trip, which took place on Tuesday, was Assad's first known visit abroad since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
The unusual meeting was confirmed Wednesday by Damascus and Moscow, who said the leaders discussed their joint military campaign against militants in Syria and stressed the need for a political solution to the conflict.
The United Nations estimates the civil war has killed at least 250,000 people
In a statement posted on the Syrian presidency’s official Facebook page, Damascus said the campaign was focused on eliminating terrorism, which it said was standing in the way of securing a political solution to the conflict.
The post featured a picture of a smiling Assad shaking hands with Putin. It was also posted on the Syrian presidency's Twitter account. Assad is now back in Syria.
The Russian president thanked his counterpart for "accepting our invitation and coming to Moscow despite a tragic situation in your country.”
“The Syrian people have been putting up a fight against international terrorism effectively on (their) own for several years, sustaining sizeable losses but it has achieved positive results recently,” Putin said.
Russia began launching airstrikes against insurgents in Syria on Sept. 30 amid criticism from the United States and its allies who say the intervention is doing little beyond helping to keep Assad in power and fanning the violence.
The U.S. and allies want Assad to step down from power.
Allied warplanes have been targeting Islamic State militants in the region since last September, but recent Russian involvement has complicated that effort.
Washington and Moscow announced Tuesday they reached an agreement to avoid conflict among pilots and drones flying over the battlefields of Syria.
LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE Editor's note: I believe we are seeing the setup as foretold in Ezekiel. We stand with Israel in what is coming to the Middle East and Jerusalem.
Less than a week after being cut by the Philadelphia Eagles, the former NFL quarterback is returning to the SEC Network, ESPN announced on Wednesday afternoon.
“Tim quickly developed into an excellent analyst last year, and we were not shy about acknowledging his home at ESPN should he be available to return,” said John Wildhack, ESPN Executive Vice President in a statement.
Tebow will return to his role on the network’s pregame show, SEC Nation, on Saturday in a broadcast from Nashville.
The former Florida quarterback’s return to SEC Nation was considered by many to be a foregone conclusion if he didn’t make a NFL squad during the preseason. After he left his job at ESPN to sign with the Eagles in April, the network issued a statement saying that he had a home at ESPN when his playing career was done.
“We appreciate Tim’s contributions to the launch of SEC Network and wish him all the best as he pursues his NFL dream. Tim quickly established a tremendous rapport with everyone he worked with in front of and behind the camera. He has a tireless work ethic and a unique passion for football,” Wildhack said at the time.
But for a few months, it seemed like there was a chance Tebow would at least have a few weeks on the field back in the professional game during the regular season. A few days before he was released, Eagles coach Chip Kelly said he believed Tebow “had a good camp.”
“I’ve seen Tim improve since he got here,” Kelly said last week. “I’ve seen him improve his throwing motion … I think he’s really worked very hard at that, sequencing his throwing motion. I think he’s been a lot more accurate with his passes.”
Christians drop, 'nones' soar in new religion portrait
Cathy Lynn Grossman, Religion News ServiceMay 12, 2015 USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The United States is a significantly less Christian country than it was seven years ago.
That's the top finding — one that will ricochet through American faith, culture and politics — in the Pew Research Center's newest report, "America's Changing Religious Landscape," released Tuesday.
This trend "is big, it's broad and it's everywhere," said Alan Cooperman, Pew's director of religion research.
Christianity still dominates American religious identity (70%), but the survey shows dramatic shifts as more people move out the doors of denominations, shedding spiritual connections along the way.
Atheists and agnostics have nearly doubled their share of the religious marketplace, and overall indifference to religion of any sort is rising as well. Only the historically black Protestant churches have held a steady grip through the years of change.
Remember the familiar map of American religion? The South: A bastion of white evangelicals. The Northeast: Cradle of Catholics. The Midwest: Nest of Mainline Protestants. The West: Incubator of "nones" — people who claim no religious brand label.
Well, scratch all that in the new topography.
The shrinking numbers of Christians and their loss of market share is the most significant change since 2007 (when Pew did its first U.S. Religious Landscape survey) and the new, equally massive survey of 35,000 U.S. adults.
The percentage of people who describe themselves as Christians fell about 8 points — from 78.4% to 70.6%. This includes people in virtually all demographic groups, whether they are "nearing retirement or just entering adulthood, married or single, living in the West or the Bible Belt," according to the survey report.
State by state and regional data show:
Massachusetts is down on Catholics by 10 percentage points. South Carolina is down the same degree on evangelicals. Mainline Protestants, already sliding for 40 years or more, declined all over the Midwest by 3 to 4 percentage points.The Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church, the country's two largest Protestant denominations, are each down roughly the same 1.4 to 1.5 percentage points.Every tradition took a hit in in the West as the number of people who claim no religious brand continues to climb.
Christian faiths are troubled by generational change — each successive group is less connected than their parents — and by "switching" at all ages, the report shows. While nearly 86% of Americans say they grew up as Christians, nearly one in five (19%) say they aren't so anymore.
"Overall, there are more than four former Christians for every convert to Christianity," said Cooperman.
Although evangelicals are part of the decline, their slide has been less steep. They benefit from more people joining evangelical traditions, but they're hurt by generational change and by America's increased diversity.
According to the survey, white "born-again or evangelical" Protestants — closely watched for their political clout within the GOP — now account for 19% of American adults, down slightly from 21% in 2007.
Politicians should take note, said Mike Hout, a sociologist and demographer at New York University who is also a co-director of the General Social Survey.
"Traditionally, we thought religion was the mover and politics were the consequence," he said. Today, it's the opposite.
Many of today's formerly faithful left conservative evangelical or Catholic denominations because "they saw them align with a conservative political agenda and they don't want to be identified with that," Hout said.
Catholics dropped both in market share and in real numbers. Despite their high retention rate for people reared in the faith, they have a low conversion rate. Today, Cooperman said, 13% of U.S. adults are former Catholics, up from 10% in 2007.
Generational shifts are also hurting Catholic numbers. Greg Smith, Pew's associate director of research, said "just 16% of the 18-to-24-year-olds today are Catholic, and that is not enough to offset the numbers lost to the aging and switching."
Where are they going? To religious nowhere.
The "nones" — Americans who are unaffiliated with brand-name religion — are the new major force in American faith. And they are more secular in outlook — and "more comfortable admitting it" than ever before, said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
Their growth spans the generations, as well as racial and ethnic groups, said Green, a senior fellow in religion and American politics for the Pew Research Center.
"Nones," at 22.8% of the U.S. (up from 16% just eight years ago) run second only to evangelicals (25.4%) and ahead of Catholics (20.8%) in religious market share.
The "nones" numbers are now big enough to show noteworthy diversity:
Atheists rose from 1.6% to 3.1%, and agnostics from 2.4% to 4%. Combined, there are more "nones" than Evangelical Lutherans, United Methodists and Episcopalians all together.
"It's because we're right," crowed David Silverman, president of American Atheists. He hadn't yet seen the Pew findings, but commented based on other surveys he said showed nones rising numbers. Indeed, it's the public attention given to "nones" in the last decade, combined with the wide-open access to anti-religious discussion on the Internet, that drives the change, Silverman said.
"More people know the facts, and more people realize they are not alone," Silverman said. And with these shifts, the stigma of coming out as an atheist is lessening.
"It's now impossible for an atheist to think he is alone in this world. They are automatically empowered," said Silverman.
The bulk of the "nones" (15.8%, up from 12.1% in 2007) don't even commit to any view on God. Instead, they say they believe "nothing in particular."
But among the "nothings," there's a distinct split between "spiritual" and totally indifferent "nones."
Thirty percent of all "nones" still showed "a sort of religious pulse" by saying that religion is still at least somewhat important to them, said Cooperman.
However, the bulk of this group (39%) are not agnostic, atheist or vaguely spiritual — they're just not interested. Religion is not even somewhat important to them.
That same level of disinterest cuts into their social and political clout, said Hout.
The nothing-in-particular folks "don't vote, don't marry and don't have kids," at the same rate as other Americans, said Hout. "They are allergic to large, organized institutions — mass media, religions, big corporations, and political parties."
"None" is the winning category for religious switchers across society, particularly among gay and lesbians — 41% of gay or lesbian Americans say they have no religion. Cooperman said. "This suggests the degree of alienation and discomfort and sense of being unwelcome that they may have felt in traditional religious groups."
Other trends of note:
Intermarriage is rising with each generation. Among Americans who have gotten married since 2010, nearly four-in-ten (39%) report that they are in religiously mixed marriages, compared with 19% among those who got married before 1960, according to the report.
There's an identity gender gap. Most Christians are women (55%) and most "nones" are men (57%). However, women's unbelief numbers are growing: nearly one in five (19%) now say they have no religious identity.Diversity makes a difference. Racial and ethnic minorities now make up 41% of Catholics (up from 35% in 2007), 24% of evangelicals (up from 19%) and 14% of mainline Protestants (up from 9%). "The share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus," the report said.
The latest survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of 35,071 adults interviewed by telephone, on both cellphones and landlines, from June 4-Sept. 30, 2014. The margin of error on overall findings is plus or minus 0.6 percentage points.
Kirsten Powers: Christians thrown overboard left to drown by Obama
Kirsten Powers April 21, 2015 USA TODAY
Obama only mentions Christians to lecture them, rather than defend them from persecution.
What do you call it when 12 men are drowned at sea for praying to Jesus?
Answer: Religious persecution.
Yet, when a throng of Muslims threw a dozen Christians overboard a migrant ship traveling from Libya to Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi missed the opportunity to label it as such. Standing next to President Obama at their joint news conference Friday, Renzi dismissed it as a one-off event and said, "The problem is not a problem of (a) clash of religions."
While the prime minister plunged his head into the sand, Italian authorities arrestedand charged the Muslim migrants with "multiple aggravated murder motivated by religious hate," according to the BBC.
As Renzi was questioned about the incident, Obama was mute on the killings. He failed to interject any sense of outrage or even tepid concern for the targeting of Christians for their faith. If a Christian mob on a ship bound for Italy threw 12 Muslims to their death for praying to Allah, does anyone think the president would have been so disinterested? When three North Carolina Muslims were gunned down by a virulent atheist, Obama rightly spoke out against the horrifying killings. But he just can't seem to find any passion for the mass persecution of Middle Eastern Christians or theeradication of Christianity from its birthplace.
Religious persecution of Christians is rampant worldwide, as Pew has noted, but nowhere is it more prevalent than in the Middle East and Northern Africa, where followers of Jesus are the targets of religious cleansing. Pope Francis has repeatedly decried the persecution and begged the world for help, but it has had little impact. Western leaders — including Obama — will be remembered for their near silence as this human rights tragedy unfolded. The president's mumblings about the atrocities visited upon Christians (usually extracted after public outcry over his silence) are few and far between. And it will be hard to forget his lecturing of Christians at the National Prayer Breakfast about the centuries-old Crusades while Middle Eastern Christianswere at that moment being harassed, driven from their homes, tortured and murdered for their faith.
A week and a half after Obama's National Prayer Breakfast speech, 21 Coptic Christians were beheaded for being "people of the cross." Seven of the victims were former students of my friend and hero "Mama" Maggie Gobran, known as the "Mother Theresa of Cairo" for her work with the poorest of the poor. She told me these dear men grew up in rural Upper Egypt and had gone to Libya seeking work to support their families. They died with dignity as they called out to their God, while the cowardly murderers masked their faces.
Rather than hectoring Christians about their ancestors' misdeeds, Obama should honor these men and the countless Middle Eastern Christians persecuted before them.
Monday, there was more horrifying news: ISIL terrorists released a video purporting to show more religiously motivated killing. According to CNN, before beheading and shooting two groups of Christians in Libya, a speaker said, "The Islamic State has offered the Christian community (the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay a tax for being Christian) many times and set a deadline for this, but the Christians never cooperated."
So they kill them.
Indeed, let's talk more about the Crusades.
Kirsten Powers writes weekly for USA TODAY and is author of the upcoming The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech
Seven children from an Orthodox Jewish family who died early Saturday when fire swept through their Brooklyn home are to be buried in Jerusalem, where the family had lived before emigrating to New York.
Funeral services for the four boys and three girls of the Sassoon family, ages 5 to 16, are to be held Sunday afternoon at a Brooklyn chapel that serves their religious community.
The bodies will then be flown to Israel and buried in Jerusalem at 2 p.m. Monday, the Israeli network Arutz Sheva reported. The family had lived there for many years before moving to the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn two years ago. A friend said the family had planned to return to Israel to live.
Fire officials believe the blaze was started by a malfunctioning hot plate being used to keep food warm during the 25-hour Sabbath, when religious restrictions forbid cooking. The house had only one smoke detector, in the basement.
"I call this not a tragedy but an absolute disaster," said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the district. "Everyone's in utter shock."
He urged the Orthodox community to make sure that hot plates were working properly and that smoke detectors were installed properly and functioning.
Authorities identified the Sassoon family victims as girls Eliane, 16; Rivkah, 11; and Sara, 6; and boys David, 12; Yeshua, 10; Moshe, 8; and Yaakob, 5. All were found in upstairs bedrooms of the two-story, brick-and-wood, single-family home.
Their 45-year-old mother, Gayle, a Brooklyn native, and 14-year-old sister, Tzipara, remained in critical condition Sunday at area hospitals. They survived by jumping from a second-story window. Gayle Sassoon reportedly was burned over 45% of her body, and Tzipara suffered broken bones and smoke inhalation.
Seven children were killed in a house fire in Brooklyn early Saturday morning. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
"I heard a child yelling, 'Mommy! Mommy, help me!' " neighbor Andrew Rosenblatt told reporters. "I looked out the back window, and I saw flames, smoke. ... The smoke and the flames were horrendous."
Other neighbors said Gayle Sassoon was heard yelling, "My kids are in there! My kids are in there! Get them out! Get them out!"
Firefighters arrived about four minutes after the blaze was reported at 12:23 a.m. Saturday, but it was too late to save any of the children trapped inside.
"They're some of the nicest, most well-behaved kids," neighbor Isaac Apton told the New York Times. "A great family."
Another neighbor tearfully described them as "beautiful little children."
"It's unbelievable. It doesn't seem possible," Rose Insel, told the Associated Press, recalling how she had given the children lollipops after they shoveled her walk unprompted.
Their father, Gabi, was at a religious conference in Manhattan at the time and did not learn of the tragedy for several hours because of the Orthodox prohibition on electronic communications. He was found praying at a synagogue Saturday morning, and fell to his knees in tears when given the news, the New York Daily News reported.
"What will happen to us now? Where will I go?" he told Arutz Sheva on Sunday.
The Times said he met his wife when she moved to Israel after having divorced her high school sweetheart. They had eight children, and lived in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem for many years before moving to Brooklyn to be closer to her family.
They ultimately intended to return to Israel, a friend of the father said.
"You can't explain it, it's unbelievable," Alon Deri told the Israeli news site Walla! News. "I hope we wake up from this bitter dream. It's like the story of Hannah who dedicated her seven sons."
Jews in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk where pro-Russian militants have taken over government buildings were told they have to "register" with the Ukrainians who are trying to make the city become part of Russia, according to Israeli media.
Jews emerging from a synagogue say they were handed leaflets that ordered the city's Jews to provide a list of property they own and pay a registration fee "or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportation and see their assets confiscated," reported Ynet News, Israel's largest news website.
Donetsk is the site of an "anti-terrorist" operation by the Ukraine government, which has moved military columns into the region to force out militants who are demanding a referendum be held on joining Russia.
The leaflets bore the name of Denis Pushilin, who identified himself as chairman of "Donetsk's temporary government," and were distributed near the Donetsk synagogue and other areas, according to the report.
Pushilin acknowledged the flyers were distributed by his organization but he disavowed their content, according to the web site Jews of Kiev, Ynet reported.
Emanuel Shechter, in Israel, told Ynet his friends in Donetsk sent him a copy of the leaflet through social media.
"They told me that masked men were waiting for Jewish people after the Passover eve prayer, handed them the flyer and told them to obey its instructions," he said.
The leaflet begins, "Dear Ukraine citizens of Jewish nationality," and states that all people of Jewish descent over 16 years old must report to the Commissioner for Nationalities in the Donetsk Regional Administration building and "register."
It says the reason is because the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine supported Bendery Junta, a reference to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement that fought for Ukrainian independence at the end of World War II, "and oppose the pro-Slavic People's Republic of Donetsk," a name adopted by the militant leadership.
The leaflet then described which documents Jews should provide: "ID and passport are required to register your Jewish religion, religious documents of family members, as well as documents establishing the rights to all real estate property that belongs to you, including vehicles."
Consequences for non-compliance will result in citizenship bein g revoked "and you will be forced outside the country with a confiscation of property." A registration fee of $50 would be required, it said.
Olga Reznikova, 32, a Jewish resident of Donetsk, told Ynet she never experienced anti-Semitism in the city until she saw this leaflet.
"We don't know if these notifications were distributed by pro-Russian activists or someone else, but it's serious that it exists," she said. "The text reminds of the fascists in 1941," she said referring to the Nazis who occupied Ukraine during World War II.
Michael Salberg, director of the international affairs at the New York City-based Anti-Defamation League, said it's unclear if the leaflets were issued by the pro-Russian leadership or a splinter group operating within the pro-Russian camp.
But the Russian side has used the sceptre of anti-Semitism in a cynical manner since anti-government protests began in Kiev that resulted in the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Russian former president Viktor Yanukovych. Russia and its allies in Ukraine issued multiple stories about the the threat posed to Jews by Ukraine's new pro-Western government in Kiev, Salberg said.
Those stories were based in part on ultra-nationalists who joined the Maidan protests, and the inclusion of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party in Ukraine's new interim government. But the threat turned out to be false, he said.
Svoboda's leadership needs to be monitored, but so far it has refrained from anti-Semitic statements since joining the government, he said. And the prevalence of anti-Semitic acts has not changed since before the Maidan protests, according to the ADL and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, which monitors human rights in Ukraine.
Distributing such leaflets is a recruitment tool to appeal to the xenophobic fears of the majority, to enlist them to your cause and focus on a common enemy, the Jews," Salberg said.
And by targeting Donetsk's Jews, they also send a message to all the region's residents, Salberg said.
"The message is a message to all the people that is we're going to exert our power over you," he said. "Jews are the default scapegoat throughout history for despots to send a message to the general public: Don't step out of line."
Greg Toppo, USATODAY
