Twenty-Five Things that Caught My Eye Today: Lebanon, China, Surrogacy & More (August 5, 2020)

1. China Uighurs: A model’s video gives a rare glimpse inside internment

2. Up to 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers stranded in Russia

3. AP PHOTOS: Terror, death, devastation in Lebanon explosion

4. ‘This is What Death Looks Like’: Lebanon’s Christians Reeling from Explosion as Some Say Country Too Dangerous to Stay

5. Beirut Explosion: ‘I Was Bloodied and Dazed. Beirut Strangers Treated Me Like a Friend.’

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8. “We’ve lost a generation.” Will Anyone Protect the Yezidi Survivors of ISIS Genocide?

9. Iran women’s podcast gives voice to victims of abuse – BBC News

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11. Matthew Soerens from World Vision:

American Christians must ask ourselves some tough questions. Scripture makes it clear that all believers are part of the body of Christ and that when one member suffers, the entire body suffers alongside it. Yet the policies of the elected officials chosen by most white Christians suggest that we’ve closed our ears — and our nation’s doors — to this suffering.

This is not to say that there haven’t been key policy victories for religious freedom here at home, or to say that those policy victories don’t matter. But, frankly, I have a hard time celebrating that my kids have presidential permission to read their Bibles at recess at their public school and that pastors are told they can make partisan political endorsements when Christians elsewhere are literally being slaughtered and when our nation’s “golden door” for these sisters and brothers “yearning to breathe free” has been all but slammed shut on them.

12. In the WSJ, Walter Russell Mead says this COVID-19 business is just a dress rehearsal:

The pandemic, which is mild as the great plagues of history go, demonstrates that the complexity of this global civilization has become a source of new vulnerabilities. And with the legitimacy of many institutions resting on their ability to solve problems quickly and effectively, Covid-19 challenges political leaders and institutions in ways that they cannot easily manage.

 

13. Americans Are Embracing Dangerous Secular Cults

14. In a Twist on Loyalty Programs, Emirates Is Promising Travelers a Free Funeral If Infected with Covid

15. Girl in famous surrogacy case dies at age 8

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17. Gloria Purvis:  AOC could do more for women by opposing abortion

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https://twitter.com/wilcoxnmp/status/1291017609949982721?s=11

19. Pope at Audience launches new catechesis series on healing the world

20. From a former foster child:

I think that people should consider fostering or adopting kids because it can benefit your family and the child, it will put the child out of harm’s way and it will give the child peace of knowing that they next day they won’t be moving houses again.

This is one of the hardest things for a child in foster care to learn, especially if they have been moved several times before being in your care. It can benefit your family because they will be more thankful for each other and thankful that haven’t been through what the child has. It can benefit the child to see how a family should be and should treat each other with love and respect and most kids in the foster care system would not be coming from a family that shows that.

Lastly, and the most important thing I think why you should consider adopting or if you are not ready for that fostering children is to give them hope and a place to call home and a family to rely on whenever they need to.

21. Wave of evictions expected as moratoriums end in many states

22. Catholic schools should be able to choose for themselves on reopening

23. Becket’s Mark Rienzi on SCOTUSBlog: Amid polarization and chaos, the court charts a path toward peaceful pluralism

24. Francis X. Maier:  Yes, We Have No Bernanos

25. An alternative ending to The Giving Tree