An Indian Guru who allegedly told his followers that they must be castrated in order to “meet god” is being investigated for criminal intimidation and causing grievous bodily hurt.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim, otherwise known as the ‘guru in bling’ for his personal style, reportedly urged hundreds of men to undergo the operation. 400 castrations were allegedly then carried out.

One of those who says he was castrated under the order has now come forward. Hansraj Chauhan contends that he was manipulated by Rahim and underwent the operation at the guru’s ashram – medical examiners have confirmed that he has indeed been castrated.

His lawyer, Navkiran Singh, told AFP: “They were told that only those who get castrated will be able to meet god. We will put all the facts of the case to the court and seek compensation for the victims.”

Singh said that the castrations had taken place over the past 15 years, but his client had been afraid to come forward until now.

However, Rahim – who leads the Dera Sacha Sauda which describes itself as non-profit Social Welfare and Spiritual Organisation – has vehemently denied the allegations.

“Such allegations disturb me, when I am doing good for humanity,” he told a press conference, adding that he would challenge the investigation.

Rahim is to star in an action movie released later this month called ‘MSG: Messenger of God’. His Twitter profile describes him as a “Spiritual Saint/philanthropist/versatile singer/allrounder sportsperson/film director/art director/music director/script writer/lyricist/autobiographer/DOP”. A website dedicated to the guru says: “We cannot describe HIM with any vocabulary learnt upon the earth.”

“Writing down the praise of His humanitarian efforts by using all oceans as ink, chaste intelligence as paper, with the pen of dedication and with the mind of a seasoned journalist would be at par with showing the lamp to the sun,” it continues.

According to the Daily Mail, Rahim has already been accused of sexually exploiting his female disciples, and is also facing trial in connection with the murder of a journalist in 2002.

Source: Christian Today

Angelina Jolie paid a visit to the Vatican and hosted a screening of her latest film “Unbroken” for Pope Francis.

Released on Christmas Day, Jolie’s latest directorial project follows the story of Olympian and WWII vet Louis Zamperini who survived 47 days stranded at sea and two years in a Japanese POW camp. On Thursday morning, the Oscar-winning actress arrived in Rome where she was able to share the film with the Pontiff.

“Being invited with my film to the Vatican is an honor and a great tribute to the story that I have told in ‘Unbroken,'” the 39-year-old star said, according to a statement from Universal Pictures. “The story of the hero Louis is a great example of strength and forgiveness.”

Pope Francis, who invited Jolie to the Vatican, screened “Unbroken” on behalf of the Political Academy of Sciences.

“Pope Francis, aware of the incredible life story of Louis Zamperini, graciously welcomed the opportunity to view the film and is expected to attend the screening at the Casina Pio IV, headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Pontifical and Social Sciences,” according to Universal Pictures Italia.

Also in attendance at the “Unbroken” screening at the Vatican was Zamperini’s son Luke. Earlier reports suggested that Jolie’s husband Brad Pitt would also attend, but a “last minute change” prevented him from doing so. However, the couple’s eldest daughters Zahara and Shiloh joined their mother on the trip to Rome.

It comes as a surprise that Pope Francis screened “Unbroken” considering the head of the Catholic Church has turned down similar opportunities in the past, and he turned down a “Noah” screening just last year. Although Pope Francis did not watch “Noah” starring Russell Crowe, the Pontiff reportedly met the actor and offered him a blessing.

Source: Christian Post

With two House Republicans introducing a bill on Tuesday that would ban legal abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the GOP has wasted little time in introducing pro-life legislation that is likely to be voted on in the Senate with Republicans now controlling both houses.

The bill, which was sponsored by Rep. Ted Franks, R-Ariz., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is called the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and is similar to a bill of the same name that passed the House last year, which also banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy but stalled in the Democrat-contolled Senate.

“More than 18,000 ‘very late term’ abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America,” Franks asserted in a statement to Life News. “These are innocent and defenseless children who can not only feel pain, but who can survive outside the womb in most cases, and who are torturously killed without even basic anesthesia,”

According to the National Right to Life Coalition, 10 states have already passed similar legislation modeled by NRLC. Franks added that that since these unborn babies at this stage of pregnancy can feel pain, and often cry, voting for this bill should be common sense and opponents of the bill do not have valid arguments for the defense of late term abortions.

“Many of them cry and scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air, we don’t hear them,” Franks said. “Later term abortion in America has its defenders, but no true or principled defense. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act seeks to afford basic protection to mothers and their unborn babies entering the sixth month of gestation.”

Although Franks said this bill would “protect mothers,” opponents claim this bill would harm the health of mothers.

“I would call this an outright ban on really critical health care that women need,” Talcott Camp, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, told Refinery29. “[The Republicans] have got their priorities all wrong. They should be thinking about how to improve health care in this country — [not about how] they can wrest this decision away from a woman and her doctor.”

According to a national poll by The Polling Company, 64 percent of Americans would support a law that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, unless the mother’s life is in danger, if they knew that the unborn baby could feel pain.

Dr. Maureen Condic, associate professor of Neurobiology and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, testified before Congress in 2013 and said that babies are capable of feeling pain as early as 8 to 10 weeks into pregnancy.

Dr. Steven Zielinski, a physician who is one of the leading researchers that specializes on the concept of fetal pain who also testified before Congress, said that unborn children can feel pain as early as “eight-and-a-half weeks and possibly earlier,” and that most unborn babies are fully capable of feeling pain in a little over 13 weeks of pregnancy.

Zielinski and his colleagues wrote: “Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are developed as early as 8 weeks, but certainly by 13 ½ weeks of gestation. Sensory nerves, including nociceptors, reach the skin of the fetus before the 9th week of gestation. The first detectable brain activity occurs in the thalamus between the 8th and 10th weeks … By 13 ½ weeks, the entire sensory nervous system functions as a whole in all parts of the body.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who introduced a 20-week abortion ban last year in the Senate, plans to reintroduce the bill again in the Senate in the next few weeks, according to ThinkProgress.org.

Although the Republicans have control of both the House and Senate, President Barack Obama vowed in 2013 to veto a 20-week abortion ban legislation if such legislation is passed by Congress.

“The Franks-Blackburn bill is based on the NRLC model legislation that has been encated in 20 states, and it reflects a policy that is broadly supported in national public opinion polls,” Douglas Johnson of the NRLC told Life News. “In the new Congress, every member of the House and Senate will go on record on whether to permit the continued killing of pain-capable unborn children, in the sixth month or later.”

Source: Christian Post

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa lost his bid for a third term on Friday, ending a decade of rule that critics say had become increasingly authoritarian and marred by nepotism and corruption.

As results rolled in overnight from Thursday’s election, it became clear that Rajapaksa had been beaten by opposition candidate Mithripala Sirisena, a one-time ally who defected overnight in November and derailed what the president thought would be an easy win.

Celebratory firecrackers could be heard exploding in the capital, Colombo, after Rajapaksa’s office said he had accepted the victory of Sirisena, who has vowed to root out corruption and bring constitutional reforms to weaken the power of the presidency.

Sirisena, a soft-spoken 63-year-old from the rice-growing hinterlands of this Indian Ocean island state, is expected to be sworn in at Colombo’s Independence Square at 6:00 pm. local time (12.30 pm BST).

His allies say he will rebalance the country’s foreign policy, which tilted heavily towards China in recent years as Rajapaksa fell out with the West over human rights and allegations of war crimes committed at the end of a drawn-out conflict with Tamil separatists in 2009.

US Secretary of State John Kerry was quick to welcome the successful election and commended Rajapaksa for accepting the verdict of the nation’s 15 million voters.

“I look forward to working with President-elect Mithripala Sirisena as his new government works to implement its campaign platform of a Sri Lanka that is peaceful, inclusive, democratic, and prosperous,” he said in a statement.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Sirisena to congratulate the new leader of “a close friend and neighbour”.

Rajapaksa had cold-shouldered New Delhi in recent years, but Sirisena told an Indian newspaper this week that “we will revert to the old, non-aligned policy”.

“India is our first, main concern. But we are not against Chinese investment either. We will maintain good relations with China too,” he told the Hindustan Times.

MOTLEY COALITION

The Department of Elections said that of 7.6 million votes counted so far, Sirisena had taken 52.05 per cent and Rajapaksa was trailing on 46.7 per cent.

The results showed Rajapaksa remained popular among Sinhala Buddhists, who account for around 70 percent of the country’s 21 million people, but Sirisena took his lead from the ethnic Tamil-dominated former war zone in the north and Muslims-dominated areas.

Rajapaksa won handsomely in the last election in 2010, surfing a wave of popularity months after the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

But critics say he had become increasingly authoritarian, with several members of his family holding key positions of power, and although the economy had blossomed since the end of the war, voters complained of the high cost of living.

Rajapaksa had called the latest election two years early, confident that the usually fractured opposition would fail to come up with a credible candidate. But he did not anticipate the emergence of Sirisena, who shared a traditional Sri Lankan dinner with him one evening and turned on him the next day.

Sirisena will lead a motley coalition of ethnic, religious, Marxist and centre-right parties, which analysts say could hamper economic reform and encourage populist policies.

He has pledged to abolish the executive presidency that gave Rajapaksa unprecedented power and hold a fresh parliamentary election within 100 days.

He has also promised a crackdown on corruption, which would include investigations into big infrastructure projects such as a $1.5 billion deal with China Communications Construction Co Ltd to build a port city.

It is not clear if the port, to be built on land reclaimed from the ocean in Colombo, will be cancelled. However, his backers have said a casino licence given to Australian gambling tycoon James Packer’s Crown Resorts Ltd, will be withdrawn.

Source: Christian Today

Al Qaeda militants in Syria are plotting attacks to inflict mass casualties in the West, possibly against transport systems or “iconic targets”, the head of MI5 Security Service said on Thursday.

Speaking after gunmen killed 12 people in an assault on a French satirical newspaper, MI5 boss Andrew Parker warned a strike on the United Kingdom was highly likely.

“A group of core al Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West,” Director General Parker said in a rare public speech at MI5 headquarters in London. His last public speech was in October 2013.

In the speech, planned before the killings in Paris, Parker said seasoned al Qaeda militants in Syria aimed to “cause large-scale loss of life, often by attacking transport systems or iconic targets” in the West.

Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people by attacking the United States with hijacked passenger planes on September 11, 2001. Militants inspired by the group killed 52 commuters in London on July 7, 2005 with suicide bombs.

Al Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces in 2011 and the threat posed by the network to the West seemed to recede in recent years.

But spies in Europe and the United States have been troubled that al Qaeda militants from Pakistan have appeared in wartorn Syria, in what some intelligence analysts say could be part of a plot to mount a major attack against the West.

Thursday’s stark warning from one of the West’s most influential spymasters mirrors a growing concern among Western political leaders and their Arab allies about the threat from the cauldron of militant groups in Syria and Iraq.

“DARK PLACES”

Parker said around 600 British extremists had travelled to Syria, many joining the militant group which calls itself “Islamic State” and has taken control of swathes of Iraq and Syria.

The group, an offshoot of al Qaeda, has beheaded two US journalists and an American and two British aid workers in an effort to put pressure on a US-led international coalition bombing its fighters in Syria.

Islamic State militants in Syria were plotting attacks on Britain and making sophisticated use of social media to incite British nationals to carry out violence, Parker said.

MI5, established in 1909 to counter German espionage ahead of World War One, had stopped three potentially deadly “terrorist plots” against the United Kingdom in recent months, he said.

“We face a very serious level of threat that is complex to combat and unlikely to abate significantly for some time,” said Parker, who has argued strongly for more surveillance powers to spy on militant communications on the Internet.

He said that the security services needed to have access to such communications.

“My sharpest concern as Director General of MI5 is the growing gap between the increasingly challenging threat and the decreasing availability of capabilities to address it,” he said.

Twitter and Facebook are so important to militants that technology giants should give security services greater access to their networks, the head of Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency said last year.

“The dark places from where those who wish us harm can plot and plan are increasing,” Parker said. “We need to be able to access communications and obtain relevant data on those people when we have good reason.”

Source: Christian Today