(RNS) President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency has increased concerns about science foes in the incoming president’s inner circle.
Pruitt, who is Oklahoma’s attorney general, is a climate-change denier. In the National Review last May, he and co-author Luther Strange wrote, “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”
The vast majority of scientists do not disagree that global warming is linked to mankind’s use of fossil fuels. Pruitt heads a coalition of Republican state attorneys general who are suing the EPA and the Obama administration over its climate change initiatives. Continue reading
“I’m hopeful he’s going to do his best to “make America great again.” But it will take more than better governance in Washington to heal our land. That’s why I wrote a very optimistic new book – my first new title in six years. It’s called 
A tsunami warning has been issued for the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Nauru after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck 70km off the Solomon Islands, according to USGS.
“Physicians, researchers and ethicists are grappling with the copycat effect of suicide and rising U.S. suicide rates as jurisdictions enact laws to allow the terminally ill to take their own lives with the help of a doctor. Dr. William Toffler, national director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, says suicides do not occur in a vacuum but among others who might be moved to imitate the act, a phenomenon called the “Werther effect.” An increase in suicides should be expected where assisted suicide is legal because society is sending the unmistakable message that killing oneself is a proper response to life’s challenges, he says. “Essentially the message is, ‘I’ll avoid these problems by killing myself,’” says Dr. Toffler, a practicing physician for more than 35 years in Oregon, which became the first state to implement an assisted suicide law in 1997.” –
“Three sources from different conservative groups said that Heritage employees have been soliciting, stockpiling and vetting résumés for months with an eye on stacking Trump’s administration with conservative appointees across the government. One source described the efforts as a “shadow transition team” and “an effort to have the right kind of people in there. …Ultimately, Trump won 81 percent of the evangelical vote, a higher percentage than even George W. Bush — himself a devout born-again Christian earned in 2004. Part of the reason the list made such a splash was because Heritage and DeMint are hugely influential in deeply conservative circles, often appearing at the nexus of conservative power structures. …It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement. And daylight between traditionally conservative policy prescriptions and some of Trump’s campaign rhetoric is especially apparent on the issue of foreign policy.” –
(AFP) – A town in eastern France has been ordered to remove a statue of the Virgin Mary to comply with a national ban on religious symbols in public, the local mayor said Saturday.
— The highest ranking Chinese Catholic has stated that if Pope Francis allows Communist China to have a hand in the selection of the nation’s Catholic bishops it would be “betraying Jesus Christ.”