News in Brief

Saturday, July 12, 2014

House reauthorizes

freedom panel

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives has approved a five-year reauthorization of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The independent government agency reports on violations of religious rights abroad and recommends actions the United States could take against countries that persecute or fail to prevent persecution of people of faith.

Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf said, “Without this commission, there would be nobody around to point out what is taking place to these groups.”

Commissioners are appointed by Congress and the White House.

— The Associated Press

N.H. suit challenges

abortion buffer zone

CONCORD, N.H. — A conservative Christian law group has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down New Hampshire’s 25-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics.

Alliance Defending Freedom announced Tuesday that it filed the suit on behalf of several abortion opponents. The suit says the buffer zone signed into law this year violates the free speech rights of abortion protesters.

The group filed the Massachusetts lawsuit that led to last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down that state’s buffer zone.

The lawsuit filed Monday says the law unfairly allows clinic escorts, but not protesters, to talk to women within the buffer zone. Abortion rights supporters say the buffers are needed to protect women and clinic workers from harassment.

— The Associated Press

Mormon missionaries

to get 32,000 iPads

SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon church is moving forward with its plan to provide missionaries with iPad minis and broaden their proselytizing to social media.

A test program that began last fall with 6,500 missionaries serving in the United States and Japan went well, prompting the initiative’s expansion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said this week.

Church leaders expect to have the specially configured mobile devices in the hands of more than 32,000 missionaries by early 2015.

Scholars say this is the latest example of the LDS church’s gradual embrace of the digital age and its recognition that door-to-door proselytizing is not the most effective way to expand church membership.

— The Associated Press

Hispanic evangelicals:

Turn kids from border

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A Hispanic evangelical leader says most of the unaccompanied children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border would be better off with their parents and should be sent home.

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez says those without parents in the United States could fall victim to the same drug gangs in American cities that threaten their lives in Central America.

Rodriguez is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference/Conela, which represents more than 40,000 Hispanic evangelical churches in the United States and 500,000 worldwide.

The organization plans to broadcast public service announcements in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala discouraging parents from sending their children on the dangerous trek to the U.S. border.

— The Associated Press