The Temple Mount was closed off on Tuesday after several people reportedly threw a Molotov cocktail firebomb into one of the police stations at the holy site. 

According to the Jerusalem Post, a riot broke out at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem after “Israel accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting a religious war” there. 

The Temple Mount has long been a site of conflict for Israelis and Palestinians as it is of religious significance to Jews, Christians and Muslims. 

In a statement on Tuesday, Israel’s Public Safety Minister, Gilad Erdan said, “Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] continued to lie and incite violence together with the terror organizations of Murabitoun and Hamas, in an attempt to ignite a fire and cause a religious war on the Temple Mount.”

He continued, “We will not allow this to happen. We will continue to act to restore calm on the [Temple Mount]. Police will respond with strength and determination to any act of violence or attempt to harm Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount.”

While Israeli authorities claim that the flames were ignited by a “firebomb” several eyewitnesses claimed that the fire was started by young kids who were playing with fireworks.

According to reports, two adolescents were initially arrested in connection with the attack.

After the riot broke out, however, three more Palestinians were arrested. Palestinian…

An Ohio high school student says she was suspended after writing Bible verses on Post-It notes to counter students’ celebration of LGBT pride.

Gabby Helsinger of Lebanon High School says in a now-viral Facebook video that she went to school last Thursday and saw LGBT pride flags and posters throughout the school. 

“I felt the need to write down some Bible verses,” Helsinger says in the video.

She placed the Bible verse Post-It notes on lockers and walls, but teachers took them down.

The next day, she was called to the principal’s office. She was told she was being served with an in-school suspension for “abuse of others,” “disrespect” and “rudeness” in targeting the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) organization. 

“I didn’t know what the GSA organization was or meant,” she says. 

The principal asked her why she posted the notes. 

“I said, ‘I wanted to spread the Word of God.’ And he goes, ‘Well, did you have permission?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I didn’t know you have to have permission because people do it a lot – putting Post-It notes on people’s lockers,” she says in the video. 

“I asked him why every time Jesus or God or anything like that gets [put] up at school, it gets taken down straightaway. But we can put gay and pride stuff all over the school and not have to take it down, and people can talk about…

Iowa’s Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that the state can no longer ban Medicaid recipients from receiving sex-reassignment surgeries through taxpayer funds, deeming the surgeries “medically necessary.” 

The case began as a discrimination suit in a district court when two transgender women Eerieanna Good and Carol Beal sued the Iowa Department of Human Services over its administrative classification of transition-related surgeries as “cosmetic, reconstructive or plastic surgery.” The code excluded “surgeries for the purpose of sex reassignment,” writes The Blaze.  

The district court agreed with the plaintiff’s argument that the surgeries are necessary for the health of individuals suffering from “gender dysphoria.” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Gillespie and other state health officials appealed this decision. 

Life Site News writes that Gillespie argued this case was not about discrimination against transgender Iowans, but whether “the treatment in question was for physical or psychological purposes, and that the Iowa Constitution contained no mandate to overall services.” 

Gillespie explained that the department’s funds are limited in what they can cover, and gender-reassignment procedures can range from $20,000 to $100,000, according to the Des Moines Register. 

In the end, the Supreme Court stood by the district…

The Department of Defense formally announced Tuesday details of the new Trump policy on transgender troops, saying that personnel must serve in their biological sex and not their preferred gender – although current transgender troops who don’t meet the new standards will be allowed to stay.

The new policy means that no one will be booted from the military, although men and women who sign up for the military after it takes effect won’t receive an exemption. The policy will go into effect in 30 days. 

It was written at the directive of President Trump and overturns the Obama-era policy that allowed personnel to serve under their gender identity. A man who identified as a woman, for example, could serve alongside women. In the future, such an arrangement won’t be permitted.  

A story on the Department of Defense website says the policy “was developed by military and civilian experts” on combat readiness “who consulted with medical professionals.” 

Persons who have sex-reassignment surgery or are diagnosed with gender dysphoria are ineligible for the military under the new policy. 

The new policy advances military readiness, the department says.  

“To maintain a military force that is worldwide deployable and combat effective, the military must set high standards, and all military members must sacrifice to meet…

A Chinese official says the country is vowing to eliminate Christianity in China, according to The Christian Post.

Xu Xiaohong, head of the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China, says there are “problems” with Christianity in the country, calling the religion an “infiltration.”

“[We] must recognize that Chinese churches are surnamed ‘China,’ not ‘the West’,” Xu told delegates to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

“The actions by anti-China forces that attempt to affect our social stability or even subvert the regime of our country are doomed to fail,” he added.

He said he is worried that Christianity is a “western” influence that isn’t best for the country.

“Therefore, people often say: “One more Christian, one less Chinese,” Xu said, according to Xinhua News Agency.

“For individual black sheep who, under the banner of Christianity, participate in subverting national security, we firmly support the country to bring them to justice,” he added.

China already has a “sinicization campaign” that works to bring religions under the country’s official atheist’s party control.

Part of that campaign includes trying to make the country’s religions more “Chinese” and even rewriting the New Testament with…

A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld an Ohio law that strips Planned Parenthood of state funding, handing pro-lifers in the state a major victory three years after the law was passed.  

Former Republican Gov. John Kasich signed the law, which prohibits money from the Department of Health going to organizations that perform or promote abortions. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, gets roughly $1.5 million from the department each year. 

Judge Jeffrey Sutton, writing for the 11-6 majority, ruled that the law does not violate the U.S. Constitution because it does not prohibit women from obtaining abortions. The ruling overturned a lower court decision. 

“Planned Parenthood must show that the Ohio law, if implemented, would impose an undue burden on a woman’s right to an abortion,” wrote Sutton, who was nominated by President George W. Bush. “Its vow to keep performing abortions sinks any pre-enforcement action, and any speculation about what would happen if it changed its mind is just that.”

Further, Sutton wrote, Ohio “may choose to subsidize what it wishes – whether abortion services or adoption services, whether stores that sell guns or stores that don’t,” as long as “the subsidy program does not otherwise violate a constitutional right of the regulated entity.”

“The Supreme Court has never identified a…