RELIGION HEADLINES

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(SRN NEWS) – The European Union is warning Pakistan that its status as a duty-free exporter to the bloc will continue to depend on the progress the country makes in addressing concerns about civil liberties, including freedom of religion.  Pakistan is one of the worst persecutors of Christians on earth and its draconian blasphemy laws have been decried by human rights activists for decades.  The country’s exports to Europe have doubled since 2014 when it was awarded the status of duty-free exporter under the EU’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus for developing countries. 

Hospitals in Colorado, Virginia and the nation’s capital say they have paused sex-change operations and puberty-blocking drugs for children as they evaluate President Trump’s executive order aimed at cutting federal support for such care.  Denver Health in Colorado has stopped providing sex-change surgeries for people under age 19. Officials at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., says the hospital has paused prescriptions of puberty blockers and hormone therapy.  In Virginia, VCU Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond have followed suit. 

Anti-Christian hate crimes are on the rise in Western Europe and one expert has an explanation.  Paul James-Griffiths is director of Scotland’s Christian Heritage Edinburgh and he says radical Muslims and radical secularists are teaming up to poison the public against the continent’s historic faith.  James-Griffiths tells International Christian Concern “From about 2013 things began to change.  The currents against Christianity and traditional family values have gone from being a stream to being a river.”  Christian faith in Western European countries has been in decline for decades. 

A government memo aimed at implementing President Trump’s order rolling back promotion of transgenderism is rippling through the federal government.  Agencies are moving quickly to strip gender ideology from websites, contracts and emails.  The Office of Personnel Management has directed agency heads to have staff remove pronouns from their government emails, disband employee resource groups, and terminate grants and contracts related to transgenderism.  OPM has also asked agencies to remove the term “gender” from government forms and swap it out with “sex.”