Judge wears 'pussy hat' in court, probe launched

(BREITBART) — A short investigation was launched after a Travis County judge wore a pink, knitted “pussy hat” in her courtroom late in January causing, some to doubt her impartiality from the bench.
Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt started her session on January 24 by putting on the pink knitted hat that has become associated with the Women’s March protests held the day after Donald J. Trump took the oath of office to become the 45th president of the United States.
The judge’s shocking partisanship was first noted by Reddit users and soon caused residents to quiz Texas authorities as to whether or not a sitting judge is allowed to wear partisan political paraphernalia on the bench.




Read more  here.

Syrian Arab women battle IS, social stigma

 

Though fighting the most-feared members of the militant Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, hundreds of Arab female fighters are also battling with the disapproval of their relatives and society.

"I braved my tribal clan, my father, my mother. Now I'm braving the enemy," says 21-year-old Batul, who is part of an Arab-Kurdish alliance battling to capture IS's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

She is one of more than 1,000 Arab women who have joined Kurdish male and female fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, according to a spokeswoman.

Read more: 'I joined the Afghan army to save lives'

Standing in the desert some 20 kilometres from Raqqa, Batul speaks passionately about her decision to fight IS, which holds the nearby village of Al-Torshan.

"My parents told me, 'Either you put down your weapons or we disown you'," she says, wearing an ammunition vest and a floral scarf around her shoulders.

Her parents have not spoken to her since.

 

 Batul, a 21-year-old female Arab fighter among the Syrian Democratic Forces, talks to a comrade of hers. ─AFP

 

Batul comes from the Al-Sharabiyeh tribe, one of the best-known of the Arab tribes of northeast Syria.

Her family views her as a rebel, who removed the headscarf worn by many Muslim women and refused her father's orders to pray in front of him.

But she is proud of the decision she took two years ago to join the Kurdish Women's Protection Units, more commonly known as YPJ, which is an all-female Kurdish military organisation and a key component of the SDF alliance.

Also read: Women soldiers: If the boot fits, why shouldn't they wear it?

"I joined the YPJ to liberate my homeland, but also to free women from slavery," she says.

"We must no longer remain cloistered behind four walls." 

Continued, here.

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

A one-year-old boy shattered his back falling down a flight of stairs. He spent his childhood and youth in and out of hospital. Gavin Read, the former Bishop of Maidstone, interviewed him in church. The boy remarked, ‘God is fair.’ Gavin stopped him and asked, ‘How old are you?’ ‘Seventeen,’ the boy replied. ‘How many years have you spent in hospital?’ The boy answered, ‘Thirteen years.’ Gavin asked, ‘Do you think that is fair?’ He replied, ‘God has got all of eternity to make it up to me.’
We live in a world of instant gratification that has almost entirely lost its eternal perspective. The New Testament is full of wonderful promises about the future: all creation will be restored. Jesus will return to establish ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Revelation 21:1). There will be no more crying, for there will be no more pain and suffering. Our frail, decaying mortal bodies will be changed for a body like that of Jesus’ glorious resurrected body.
Suffering is not part of God’s original created order (see Genesis 1–2). There was no suffering in the world before rebellion against God. There will be no suffering when God creates a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:3–4). Suffering is, therefore, an alien intrusion into God’s world.
This, of course, is not a complete answer to the question ‘Why does God allow suffering?’ As we saw yesterday there is no simple or complete solution, but each of today’s passages gives us some further insight.

By Nicky Gumbel

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