The Trump Department of Justice said Friday the federal government had shut down a major website for prostitution and sex trafficking and had indicted the website’s owner.

The website, CityXGuide.com, was a leading source of online -s for prostitution and sex trafficking and was launched in 2018 after Backpage.com – which also advertised prostitution and sex trafficking – was shut down by the feds.

CityXGuide.com users described the website as “taking over from where Backpage left off,” the Justice Department said.

Visitors to CityXGuide.com now see a message saying, “CityXGuide.com and affiliated websites have been seized by the Department of Homeland Security.” The website also includes emblems from the Justice Department, Homeland Security, Secret Service and the police department of Colleyville, Texas.

Erin Nealy Cox, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, announced a 28-charge indictment against Wilhan Martono, 46, the website’s owner. Among the charges was one count of promotion of prostitution and reckless disregard of sex trafficking, one count of interstate racketeering conspiracy (facilitating prostitution), nine counts of interstate transportation in aid of racketeering (facilitating prostitution), and 17 counts of money laundering, according to the Justice Department.

Martono allegedly made $21 million off the website. He…

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 23, 2020 (Morning Star News) – A former sheikh (Muslim teacher) in eastern Uganda who secretly became a Christian on Christmas Day decided to tell his two wives about his new faith last month.

Marijan Olupot invited his pastor to his home in Obokora village, Obokorasub County, Kibuku District on the evening of May 14. He then revealed his Christian faith to his wives and called on the pastor to explain the gospel so that the church leader could lead his family to faith in Christ, Olupot told Morning Star News by phone.

One of his wives put her faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, and the other declined, he said.

Three weeks later, the wife who had declined left the household and told a Muslim leader of the family’s conversion to Christianity, including three children. The Muslim leader then told other Muslims that their sheikh had left Islam, Olupot said.

Muslim villagers on June 8 surrounded Olupot’s house at about 11:30 p.m. and set it ablaze, he said. Olupot, his wife and three children ages 10, 12 and 14 fled through a back door.

“Unfortunately as we were fleeing in the night, the attackers managed to get hold of my wife and beat her with sticks, injuring her left hand and back and the right leg, but thank God my Christian neighbors rescued her,” Olupot told Morning Star News. “As we were fleeing, I heard one of the Muslims, named Hamuza, calling out…

Despite false imprisonment and lawsuits, Daylan McLee put his life on the line for a police officer this weekend.

In Uniontown, Pennsylvania, about 45 miles south of Pittsburgh, a police cruiser was involved in a car crash so loud McLee later recalled he thought it was a small earthquake. When he heard it was a crash, the 31-year-old Black man raced out of his house and pulled Officer Jay Hanley from the car as flames engulfed the cruiser.

“There is value in every human life. We are all children of God and I can’t imagine just watching anyone burn,” McLee said, according to Fox News. “No matter what other people have done to me, or other officers, I thought, ‘This guy deserves to make it home safely to his family.’”

Hanley was helicoptered to a hospital in West Virginia where he underwent surgery for a severe injury to his leg and is recovering.

Uniontown Police Lt. Thomas Kolencik got emotional thanking McLee for his bravery.

“Daylan actually said, ‘I’m not going to let him die,’” Kolencik said. “There’s just no words to describe, you know.”

Joining the chorus of gratitude were Hanley’s relatives on social media and phone calls from Hanley’s sister, fellow officers, and even the police chief.

McLee has had several run-ins with the law over the years. He filed a lawsuit in 2018 against four Pennsylvania State Troopers…

An iconoclast movement that began with the destruction of Confederate statues has now morphed into an anti-Founders campaign, with statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson having been toppled in recent days.

Protesters tore down statues of Washington and Jefferson in Portland, Ore., in the last 10 days, while in San Francisco, protesters last week ripped down a statue of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to America’s national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.

The statues of all three men were targeted because they owned slaves. Jefferson and Washington questioned the morality of slavery but owned hundreds of slaves during their lives. (Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot.”) Washington famously had his slaves freed after his wife’s death.

According to The Oregonian, Protesters in Oregon on June 14 tore down a statue of Jefferson that stood in front of a high school named for him. On June 18, protesters burned an American flag on the top of a Washington statue before pulling it down. They also wrote “genocidal colonist” on the base. It stood at Northeast Sandy Boulevard and 57th Avenue in Portland.

Last Friday (June 19), protesters in San Francisco tore down a statue of Key, along with ones of Catholic missionary St. Junipero Serra and President Ulysses S. Grant.

Serra founded nine Catholic missions in the…

A debate on the role of women leaders in the church has resurfaced after social media pages revealed some complementarians privately decrying author Aimee Byrd.

In a Facebook group called Geneva Commons, elders from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Presbyterian Church in America discussed Byrd, a Christian author and speaker.

“I wish her husband loved her enough to tell her to shut up,” one person is reported to have written.

“Why can’t these women just take their shoes off and make us some sandwiches!?!” another wrote.

Byrd is the author of Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose.

The OPC has since apologized and released a letter saying they are “greatly concerned about the overtly misogynistic tone leveled at women authors.”

The comments about Byrd have raised the discussion between egalitarianism and complementarianism and a call for change in views on women’s role in the church.

In an article for Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer took issue with the misogyny that often comes with complementarian beliefs. Stetzer highlighted the mistreatment of Byrd and fellow female Christian speaker and author Beth Moore.

Referring to the Geneva Commons groups comments about Byrd and Moore’s 2018 publication of “A Letter to My Brothers” in which she pleaded with her male counterparts not to tolerate…

Tennessee’s governor is pledging to sign a recently passed bill that bans abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected and also prohibits abortions based on sex, race or a Down syndrome diagnosis.

The legislation, House Bill 2263 and Senate Bill 2196, passed the Tennessee House of Representatives 70-20 and the Senate 23-5, and now awaits action by Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who championed the bill earlier this year and confirmed in a tweet he will sign it. He also thanked legislators who promoted it.    

“One of the most important things we can do to be pro-family is to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our state, and there is none more vulnerable than the unborn,” Lee tweeted. “We have passed the strongest pro-life law in our state’s history.” 

One of the most important things we can do to be pro-family is to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our state, and there is none more vulnerable than the unborn.

— Gov. Bill Lee (@GovBillLee) June 19, 2020

We have passed the strongest pro-life law in our state’s history and I am grateful to @ltgovmcnally, @CSexton25, @SenJohnson, @WilliamLamberth and members of our General Assembly for making the heartbeat bill law.

— Gov. Bill Lee (@GovBillLee) June 19, 2020

The bill makes it a crime “to perform” an abortion “upon a pregnant woman whose unborn child has a fetal heartbeat,”…