Who said religion and politics don't mix? Religion is one of the failsafe of any politician - lie and cheat and abuse people, and if you say that your actions are motivated by religion, everything will be forgiven. Trump was even sent to us to save Israel!

Religious groups themselves are happy to indulge the worst kinds of politicians, as long as they feel it will give them a bigger platform to do as they want. How Evangelicals can support a man like Trump, with his track record of doing everything their Bibles tell them not to, is one of the great ironies of the US political system. But they do it because they feel his sort of outsider politics gives them a bigger platform to spread their message from - they are still "voices crying in the wilderness" (John 1:23), but when that wilderness is the White House, they might be heard.

All of which makes it so much sadder that the US is so determined to fight religion as a matter of policy. The same Bible-thumpers who claim moral superiority by displaying their faith in public (Matthew 6:5) are not prepared to allow religion to inform the policies of other nations.

Whenever faith rears its head to the US and its allies, this has to be a bad thing, to be cut off it its root. We are told that Islam equals terrorism; despite the fact no Quranic scholar accepts that. Judaism equals Zionism, trying to undermine Christianity, while Christianity itself is a negative force trying to undermine secular values, as if there can be any secular values without religious ones to form a blueprint.

Dr. Gajendra Singh walked out of his local hospital's outpatient department last year, having been told an ultrasound for some vague abdominal pain he was feeling would cost $1,200 or so, and decided enough was enough. If he was balking at the price of a routine medical scan, what must people who weren't well-paid medical professionals be thinking?

The India-born surgeon decided he would open his own imaging center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and charge a lot less. Singh launched his business in August and decided to post his prices, as low as $500 for an MRI, on a banner outside the office building and on his website.

There was just one barrier to fully realizing his vision: a North Carolina law that he and his lawyers argue essentially gives hospitals a monopoly over MRI scans and other services.

Singh ran into the state's "certificate of need" law, which prohibited him from buying a permanent MRI machine, which meant his office couldn't always offer patients one of the most important imaging services in medicine. He has resorted to renting a mobile MRI machine a couple of days a week. But it will cost him a lot more over time than a permanent machine would, and five days a week, his office can't perform MRIs.

Back in September of 2016, I released three videos, expressing my concern about Bill C-16, which was then under consideration by the federal government, following the passage of similar legislation in a number of provinces. C-16 purported to merely add "gender identity" and "gender expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. However, it was embedded in a web of policy, much of it created by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which indicated that the bill comprised the tip of a very large iceberg. I was particularly upset with the insistence that failure to use the "preferred pronouns" chosen by individuals whose gender-related identity did not fit neatly, according to their personal judgement, into the standard categories of boy and girl or man and woman would now become an offence punishable by law.

Worse is the insistence characteristic of the bill, the policies associated with it, and the tenth-rate academic dogmas driving the entire charade, that "identity" is something solely determined by the individual in question (whatever that identity might be). Even sociologists (neither the older, classical, occasionally useful type, nor the modern, appalling, and positively counterproductive type) don't believe this. They understand that identity is a social role, which means that it is by necessity socially negotiated. And there's a reason for this. An identity - a role - is not merely what you think you are, moment to moment, or year by year, but, as the Encyclopedia Britannica has it (specifically within its sociology section), "a comprehensive pattern of behavior that is socially recognized, providing a means of identifying and placing an individual in society," also serving "as a strategy for coping with recurrent situations and dealing with the roles of others (e.g., parent-child roles)."

The whale-shaped monument to Gabriel Cruz is located in Almeria, Spain, where locals call it "The Whale of Gabriel and the Good People." El Español reported that graffiti was discovered on the memorial Tuesday.

"Become a feminist and abuse the male, whether he is a boy or a man," it read.

Cruz disappeared in February 2018. His body was recovered 12 days later after widespread media attention and a nationwide search involving 3,000 volunteers and 2,000 professional rescuers. Ana Julia Quezada, the girlfriend of Cruz's father at the time, later confessed to killing the boy.

Almeria City Council sources told the EFE international news agency that the municipality planned to have the vandalism cleaned up by last Thursday. There were no suspects.

A British judge has authorized doctors to perform an abortion on a pregnant Catholic woman with developmental disabilities and a mood disorder, despite the objections of the woman's mother and the woman herself. The woman is 22 weeks pregnant.

"I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn't want it is an immense intrusion," said Justice Nathalie Lieven in her ruling in the Court of Protection, June 21.

"I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society's views of termination," Lieven explained, arguing that her decision is in the best interest of the woman.

The Court of Protection handles cases involving individuals judged to lack the mental capacity to make decisions for themselves.

The woman, who cannot been publicly identified, has been described as "in her twenties," and is under the care of an NHS trust, part of the UK's National Health Service.

The head of the Memorial Human Rights Center's branch in Grozny, Oyub Titiyev, who was sentenced to four years in prison for drug possession, has been released after more than 18 months of detention in Chechnya.

Earlier in June, a Shalinsky district court in Russia's Republic of Chechnya ordered the early release of Titiyev on parole, with the decision coming into force on Friday.

Titiyev was greeted by relatives, colleagues, and journalists as the gates of the penal colony settlement in Argun, 15km (9.3 miles) east of Grozny, closed behind him.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a new report on Thursday that 47,000 people died by suicide, and 1.4 million attempted suicide in 2017. The suicide rate increased by 1% per year from 2000 through 2006, and by 2% from 2006 through 2016, which now means suicide rates are at their highest level since World War II.

Along with out of control suicides, drug overdoses have spiked in the same periods, further pointing to a general deterioration of the middle class. More than 70,000 people committed suicide in 2017, and 17.3 million, or 7%, of Americans, are experiencing mental health issues. As we have shown in past reports, life expectancy has also declined for three straight years, in part because of the surge in drug overdoses and suicides. This is the first year in a little over a century since life expectancy fell for three consecutive years.

Why are Teslas catching fire? It's a question we've asked Tesla repeatedly only to be met with the same answer: We're looking into it, and by the way, gas cars catch fire too. Then, silence.

There are over 270 million cars on the road in the United States, and the vast majority of them run on gasoline. It's flammable, sure, but the fact that an equivalent majority of vehicle fires involve gas-powered cars is also a function of their monopoly. So it's worth taking a step back and looking at how in recent months, with over half a million Teslas on the road at this point, the number of spontaneous fires involving the Model 3, S, and X seems to be increasing.

Tesla says there's no reason for concern, but it still pushed a "precautionary" over-the-air update to its Model X and Model S fleet to improve thermal management in the wake of one fire earlier this year. Then another stationary Model S caught fire. And a recall doesn't appear to be coming either, even as Audi makes a cautious and potentially sale-killing move to recall its new E-Tron SUV over a potential fire issue just months after its release.

Cleaners found an abandoned fetus blocking the toilet of an plane in South Africa on Friday, the domestic FlySafair airline said, prompting the offloading of passengers and a police investigation.

The fetus was discovered by cleaning staff as the plane was being prepared and passengers boarded for an early morning flight from the coastal city of Durban to Johannesburg.

"Upon final preparations of the waste management system for the departure of flight, our technical crew discovered what appeared to be an abandoned fetus," the airline said in a statement.

Police confirmed the incident and said they were investigating. Passengers were asked to disembark the plane and their journeys were re-scheduled.

"We will be doing everything within our power to aid authorities in the necessary investigations and thank our loyal customers for their patience with the resultant delay," said FlySafair executive Kirby Gordon.

A pandemic is sweeping across the globe. It affects people of all societies, regardless of gender, religion, age and number of social media likes. Those of the vegan or vegetarian persuasion tend to be more susceptible to it, but the culprit is an equal-opportunity virus so it also afflicts all who identify as 'progressive' lefties - from soy-fuelled Social Justice Warriors to latté-infused politicians to career journalists.

The disease is called environMENTALism. A person (male/female/gender fluid, or partially solid) who catches this takes on the persona of an environMENTAList.

How to identify an environMENTAList?

Those displaying advanced symptoms often gather in large groups, drink soy-shakes, bang drums out of tune and repeat various illogical mantras, such as "climate change is real", "stop cows farting", "rebel for life" and - occasionally, paradoxically - "don't have children... save the planet for future generations!"