(RNS) — There is no glamor to Sharon Shalom’s memories of his evacuation from the Sudanese desert to Israel 35 years ago.

“I had to leave my parents behind in Sudan,” said Shalom, now a rabbi in Tel Aviv, in a phone interview. “The Mossad came in the middle of the night to take us on the trucks. In one small truck, we had 150 people; the mission was very dangerous.”

Now the daredevil operation by Israel’s secret service to rescue more than 8,000 Ethiopian Jews from Sudanese refugee camps in the early 1980s has become “The Red Sea Diving Resort,” a fast-paced Netflix drama that turns Chris Evans, best known for playing Captain America, into a dashing Israeli hero.

If the Hollywood gloss makes the mission out to be “Ocean’s Eleven” in the Nubian Desert, Shalom, who advised the filmmakers on the events of the rescue, said he’s glad nonetheless to see a little-known journey of faith dramatized for a global audience.

“Some friends here in Israel will argue it doesn’t reflect the exact accurate story,” he said. “The bottom line is, it helps us not to forget what happened, and it starts a conversation.”

The resort of the film’s title refers to the dilapidated holiday retreat that the Mossad purchased as a cover for what they dubbed Operation Brothers. “They had to pass as non-Israeli to help run this fake hotel,” said the…

The FBI rescued over 100 sex trafficking victims across the United States in the month of July. According to a press release, the initiative, called “Operation Independence Day” recovered juveniles and arrested 67 suspected traffickers.

“The FBI is fiercely focused on recovering child victims and arresting the sex traffickers who exploit them,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said. “Through operations like this, the FBI helps child victims escape the abusive life of sex trafficking.”

Because of a national initiative, the FBI had a longer time window to implement their plan to save victims. The Houston Field Office worked with the Houston Police Department to search out social media and escort sites for juvenile victims being advertised for commercial sex. Officers set up a fake-date, met at a pre-arranged location, and brought victims in for an interview.

Recoveries occurred in cities throughout the country. Las Vegas, with 14 recoveries, and Dallas, with 13, ranked the highest. The FBI notes that “recovered” means “the removal of the child from ongoing, continued victimization.” Specialists work to ensure that the child is situated in a safe environment where their needs are met.

“We are here to rescue children, and we are here to build good cases against traffickers,” Jeanette Milazzo, a special agent in Houston’s Field Office said. “If…

Every school building in Louisiana must display the nation’s motto, “In God We Trust,” under a new law that goes into effect this school year. 

Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards signed the law last year. It passed the state Senate, 33-6, and the state House, 93-12. 

Social studies classes also must teach students about the national motto by fifth grade under the new law. 

The law is popular, even among some administrators. 

“I still feel strongly that America is a Christian nation,” Shelby Ainsworth, principal of West Monroe High School, told WAFB 9. “I want our high school youngsters exposed to as much as that as possible.”

The law says, “each public school governing authority shall display the national motto in each building it uses and in each school under its jurisdiction.” The minimum requirement is that it be a paper sign.

A Democrat, Sen. Regina Ashford Barrow, was the bill’s lead sponsor. She told WWL last year that America has suffered morally by taking God out of public schools. 

“We have seen a moral decay in our schools and in our community because we have taken this out of our school system,” Barrow said. 

She was inspired to promote the bill, she told WWL, by the governor’s prayer breakfast and by the senate’s practice of praying.

“Every day before we begin to do our business here at the…

The Trump administration on Friday gave Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers and family planning programs until Aug. 19 to announce if they will comply with a new rule that prohibits them from referring or promoting abortion under the federal Title X program.

Nearly $300 million in Title X money is at stake, including $60 million for Planned Parenthood. Title X is a family planning program which funds services such as cancer screenings, contraception and pregnancy tests for lower-income individuals. 

The new rule prohibits Title X money from going to clinics that “perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.” 

Supporters call it the Protect Life Rule. Critics have dubbed it the “gag rule.” 

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that Title X recipients have until Aug. 19 to document their steps for complying with the rule. It will go into effect Sept. 18, as Christian Headlines previously reported. 

Another part of the rule requires family planning clinics to physically and financially separate their abortion services from their non-abortion services. That section, though, won’t go into effect until March 4. 

“If the grantee believes that it cannot meet the deadlines listed above, it must submit a request for an extension along with an explanation or documentation of…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement says 300 workers who were detained last week in a raid in Mississippi have been released after the children of many of the workers reportedly came home from their first day of school to find their parents had been detained.

ICE says they released the workers on “humanitarian grounds.”

According to Relevant Magazine, hundreds of undocumented immigrants were taken into custody in what’s being called the “largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.”

 “Children finished their first day of school with no parents to go home to tonight,” a report from the Jackson Free Press said. “Babies and toddlers remained at daycare with no guardian to pick them up. A child vainly searched a workplace parking lot for missing parents.”

In one interview, an 11-year-old girl asked the U.S. to release the parents.

“Government please show some heart,” she said. “Let my parents be free and everyone else please don’t leave the child with cryness and everything.

“I need my dad and mommy,” she said. “My dad didn’t do anything, he’s not a criminal.”

Many of the children were taken to a local gym where neighbors had donated food and drinks for the children.

“I understand the law and how everything works and everything needs to have a system,” the gym’s owner Jordan Barnes…