NASHVILLE (BP) — The Bible-based Creation Museum near Cincinnati has unveiled three new exhibits, including “Dragon Legends” about dragon folklore.
Dragon Legends highlights tales of dragons from around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Australia, China, Europe and the Middle East, according to the museum’s website, displaying the writings of ancient historians and armaments possibly used by dragon slayers. The Creation Museum says the tales are evidence that dinosaurs and humans lived together.
Completing the new displays, which opened Memorial Day weekend, are the high-tech insect display “Dr. Crawley’s Insectorium” and the “Verbum Domini” collection of Bibles and related artifacts from the famed Green Collection amassed by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green.
Travelers at certain points in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana will see an expansive billboard campaign announcing the exhibits at the 70,000-square-foot museum.
Other upcoming museum features include the June 15 opening of 20 zip lines totaling 12,000 feet, an expansion to the museum’s petting zoo and the July debut of the “Fires in the Sky” planetarium exhibit focusing on comets.
The zip line course will include 12 bridges spanning a lake and dozens of acres of forested property.
The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., is an outreach of the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, which has announced plans to build a full-size Noah’s Ark in Williamstown, Ky., about 40 miles south of Cincinnati.
BABY RESCUED FROM SEWER PIPE IN CHINA — A newborn baby in eastern China is in stable condition after his miraculous rescue from a sewer pipe.
Firefighters and hospital personnel saved the 6-pound, 2-ounce boy after he was found trapped May 25 in a pipe below a toilet in a public restroom of a residential building in Jinhua, a city in Zhejiang province.
It remains uncertain if he was the victim of a mother who tried to dispose of him under a regime with a coercive “one-child” policy or simply the victim of an accident. Police originally treated the incident as possibly an attempted murder. By May 30, the baby was released from the hospital to its maternal grandparents and the mother had not been charged. Police were labeling the incident an accident.
The unidentified, 22-year-old single mother told police she secretly gave birth in the toilet, but her son slid into the sewer pipe, according to an AP account based on a report by the government-operated Zhezhong News. She informed the landlord when she could not pull her baby from the pipe and remained on the scene during the rescue without identifying herself as the mother, according to some reports.
Firefighters removed the section where the baby was trapped with his arms at his sides in an L-joint by cutting above and below his body through the pipe, which was about three to four inches in diameter. They were unable to pull him out, so they took him inside the pipe to a hospital. Healthcare workers used pliers and saws to take apart the pipe.
The baby had a low heart rate as well as some minor abrasions but was largely unharmed, AP reported.
Bioethics specialist Wesley Smith said on his blog, “It strikes me that the symbolism of this story captures the zeitgeist of the times.
“Do most people believe that fetuses and babies are the moral equivalent of solid waste? Of course not. But too many sure talk as if they do.”
The Chinese Health Ministry announced in March that 336 million abortions had occurred since the government implemented stricter family planning practices in 1971. China established its “one-child” population control program in 1979. The policy has resulted in not only reports of authorities carrying out forced abortions and sterilizations but also accounts of infanticide.
PORNOGRAPHIC CONTENT COULD SLOW YAHOO AD SALES — Yahoo’s motive for buying Tumblr could be to increase advertising sales, tech writer Shelly Palmer of ShellyPalmer.com wrote, but there’s a dark side of Tumblr that may hinder Yahoo’s revenue-boosting efforts.
Gina Chan, a writer for Quartz, reported May 19 in an article titled “Tumblr deal is Marissa Mayer’s first real attempt to make Yahoo hip again” that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer purchased the website to try to garner the interest of a younger audience.
Despite Mayer’s attempt to appeal to young adults, Yahoo also inherited what Palmer called the “darker, more mature side” of Tumblr, which acts as a hub for pornography.
Palmer noted in his May 26 article, “Tumblr: The First Step to Yahoo’s Porn Empire,” that Yahoo may find difficulties selling advertisements in areas of Tumblr’s website with strictly adult content. In order for Tumblr to compete with online rival Facebook, Yahoo would need a new type of advertising that would hook viewers, Palmer wrote, “many of which are anonymous, porn mongers or kids who are really too young to be a benefit to advertisers.”
“The billion-dollar question remains,” Chan wrote. “Tumblr may transform Yahoo’s reputation among hipsters, but will Yahoo still need help on the crucial revenue front?”
9th CIRCUIT REJECTS 20-WEEK ABORTION BAN — The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated Arizona’s late-term abortion ban May 22.
The 2012 law banned abortion at 20 weeks into pregnancy or later based on evidence that a baby in the womb experiences pain by that point and such a late-term abortion is a risk to a woman’s health.
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based court unanimously struck down the measure, saying the state “simply cannot proscribe a woman from choosing to obtain an abortion before the fetus is viable,” the Arizona Republic reported. Viability typically is considered to arrive at about 24 weeks gestation, but some babies born before that point have survived.
A pro-life leader criticized the decision, saying the panel acted as a “self-appointed and unelected ‘Abortion Control Board.'”
“Substantial medical data — utilized even by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute — demonstrates that a woman seeking an abortion in Arizona at 20 weeks is 35 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester,” said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, in a written statement.
“At 21 weeks or more, she is 91 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester. But these judges incorrectly decided that the ‘abortion right’ is so enshrined in Supreme Court precedent that states cannot even enact restrictions aimed at protecting maternal health,” Yoest said. “The message is clear: Abortion is more important than protecting women’s lives.”
Arizona has not announced if it will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
MARYLAND HALTS ABORTIONS AT FOUR CLINICS — Maryland has suspended surgical abortions at four clinics in the state.
The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene announced the suspensions for the associates in OB/GYN Care abortion centers in a March 24 letter to the chairmen of two state legislative committees. DHMH Secretary Joshua Sharfstein said his department issued the suspension orders May 9 for associates in OB/GYN Care clinics in Baltimore, Frederick, Cheverly and Silver Spring for “serious deficiencies in the medical oversight of patient care.”
DHMH had suspended the licenses of three of the same four centers in March but canceled the suspensions after receiving correction plans and performing on-site inspections, Sharfstein said.
The Maryland State Board of Physicians, meanwhile, permanently revoked the medical license of abortion doctor Nicola Riley May 6.
The board initially suspended Riley’s license in 2010 after she injured a mother during an abortion. A Cecil County prosecutor indicted Riley on a count of first-degree murder, second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of late-term unborn babies. He dropped the charges in 2012, however, when an expert witness changed his testimony to say he was uncertain if the children died at a Maryland clinic or a New Jersey clinic.
MYANMAR TOWNS IMPOSE TWO-CHILD LIMIT ON MUSLIMS — Two townships in western Myanmar have enacted a two-child limit on Muslim families.
The new policy in the state of Rakhine does not apply, however, to Buddhists, who make up a majority of the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma, the Associated Press reported May 25. Muslims are in the majority in the two townships but constitute only four percent of the country’s overall population.
The rule may mean Myanmar is the sole country with such a limitation on a religious group.
Human Rights Watch has charged government officials in Rakhine with inciting an “ethnic cleansing” campaign against Muslims, according to AP. In violence nearly a year ago, machete-bearing Buddhist mobs in Rakhine killed hundreds of people and caused 125,000 people, primarily Muslims, to leave their homes.
GOSNELL’S LAWYER FAVORS LOWERING STATE’S ABORTION LIMIT — Even Kermit Gosnell’s defense lawyer believes Pennsylvania’s abortion limit should be lowered.
Speaking on Fox News May 22, Jack McMahon said, “I have come out of this case realizing that 24 weeks is a bad determiner. It should be like 16, 17 weeks. That would be a far better thing, because the babies would not be even arguably viable at that time. And I think the law should be changed to that.”
He also said he favored “more regulations” for abortion clinics.
McMahon made his comments after a Philadelphia jury convicted his client May 13 of the first-degree murder of three born-alive babies, as well as 21 counts of violating a state ban on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Gosnell’s other convictions included involuntary manslaughter in the death of a mother after an abortion. He received three consecutive life sentences without parole for the murder convictions.
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Compiled by Tom Strode, Diana Chandler and Beth Byrd of Baptist Press. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress ) and in your email ( baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).
