This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Multitudes have questioned how the assassination attempt by the now-dead Thomas Matthew Crooks against President Trump at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, could have happened.

Congress continues to review it, and commentators have insisted the public does not yet know all the facts.

Among the unanswered is how Crooks was able to get onto the roof of a building within the sight line of Trump with a rifle on July 13. He had been spotted by rally goers, yet he was not stopped. Other questions remain today circling around the Secret Service, which in blunt terms failed that day.

The near-catastrophe already has cost the Secret Service chief her job.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Greenpeace is one of most visible environmental groups in the world.

It was launched more than 50 years ago in Canada and has been active in its chosen wars against global warming, deforestation, fishing, whaling and more.

But its American division now it is facing an existential threat in the form of a lawsuit over its work with others, including Indian tribes, to attack the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,200-mile pipeline project to move crude oil from the Bakken Shale field to Illinois.

The Wall Street Journal, in fact, said it appears fossil-fuel billionaire Kelcy Warren is about to land "a knockout punch" on the organization.

His company, Energy Transfer, was behind the pipeline, and his lawsuit is over the Greenpeace group's obstruction.

He's seeking $300 million in damages over the project that eventually was completed.

The confrontations developed starting in 2016 when Greenpeace, Indian tribes and others literally camped out in North Dakota to impede the work on the project.

"Warren sees green activists, who he once said should be 'removed from the gene pool,' as a serious threat to the industry. Starting with protests of Keystone XL, which successfully derailed that project, activists have targeted pipelines across the country," the report explained.

He said, in a previous interview, "Everybody is afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that it may look wrong if you fight back with these people. But what they did to us is wrong, and they're gonna pay for it."

He's worth an estimated $7 billion, and his lawsuit charges that Greenpeace groups incited the Dakota Access protests, "funded attacks to damage the pipeline, and spread misinformation about the company and its project," the report said.

It is going to trial in February in the fossil fuel-friendly North Dakota.

Greenpeace has claimed it played a limited role in the protests, but leaders acknowledge that the threat of massive damages makes the case an existential threat.

"Greenpeace says losing its affiliate—and influence—in the U.S. would have a profound impact on the group's ability to address climate change," the report said.

Indian tribes claimed the pipeline threatened sacred sites and drinking water.

The report noted, "In Warren's view, Greenpeace was largely to blame for a construction delay he said cost the company millions of dollars, and Energy Transfer sued the group for $300 million under a law created to prosecute the mafia that could allow the company to claim triple that amount. When a federal judge dismissed the suit, the company filed a new one in a North Dakota state court."

A Greenpeace official said a negative outcome for the environmental group would set a "really dangerous precedent."

Greenpeace, which has admitted it could lose the case, has prepared contingencies, including bankruptcy.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A university abruptly has deleted its commitment, posted online, to constitutional free speech after some students insulted police officers filling out arrest paperwork, and the officers demanded they be cited for "interference."

The situation developed at the University of Dayton, according to a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The organization contacted the school about its online commitment that students enjoy "the full expression of their thoughts, positions, and opinions on all contemporary and intellectual issues," because school officers "subjected students to interrogation in direct retaliation for the students' criticism of police."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

JERUSALEM – Overnight Sunday Israel Air Force jets conducted a series of airstrikes in northwestern Syria, targeting sites assessed to be used by Iranian or Iranian-backed forces, which were thought to produce chemical weapons.

According to Syrian state media, at least 14 people were killed in the strikes – thought to be some of the heaviest and widest-scale in years – with dozens more wounded. Reports suggest at least 10 sites were hit in Masyaf, in the Hama region. There were additional claims that there were attacks in Hama, Homs, Tartus, and Damascus, although later transpired impacts in the latter three locations were caused by falling Syrian interceptor missiles.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor aligned with the Syrian opposition, said there were four attacks in less than three hours, targeting military sites west of Hama where "where Iranian militias and experts are stationed to develop weapons in Syria," and a floating object off the coast of Baniyas, according to the Jewish Chronicle.

Among the sites hit was the so-called Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, a major military research laboratory for chemical weapons. The center is thought to house a team of Iranian military experts – in other words members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – who according to Israel are involved in the production of precision surface-to-surface missiles.

Even before the Swords of Iron war, which Hamas started with Iranian backing on Oct. 7, Israel has consistently targeted weapons shipments from Iran, as well as men and materiel in situ in Syria. The Islamic Republic has used its leverage over President Bashar al-Assad's government, which it helped remain in power during the bitter fighting of the Syrian Civil War, to help create its land bridge to move weapons and men closer to Israel.

Jerusalem has neither officially confirmed nor denied reports about IAF planes striking targets in Syria, although it rarely broadcasts when it has done so. However, in February Jerusalem revealed it had attacked more than 50 targets belonging to Hezbollah and other Iran-backed terrorist groups in Syria since Oct. 7.

Almost 17 years to the day, on Sept. 6, 2007, Israel conducted "Operation Orchard," which destroyed Syria's heretofore secret nuclear program in the Deir ez-Zor (or Dair Alzour according to the International Atomic Energy Agency) region of Syria. That attack followed the even more daring "Operation Opera," the 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq.

What it does show is a clear pattern of Israel following the so-called "Begin Doctrine," which stipulates that Israel would not tolerate the attainment of nuclear weapons by their implacable enemies and would do whatever possible to prevent this eventuality.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

JERUSALEM –– A new report into the BBC's coverage of the Israel-Hamas war revealed Britain's flagship news service broke its own reporting guidelines on more than 1,500 occasions since Hamas' Oct. 7 onslaught.

The research revealed a "deeply worrying pattern of bias" against Israel, according to its authors who analyzed four months of the BBC's output across television, radio, online news, podcasts and social media, according to the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

British-Israeli lawyer Trevor Asserson – a long-term BBC critic – led the research, which used artificial intelligence to analyze a breakdown of certain terms – including "genocide" – over the first four months of the Israel-Hamas war, which produced alarming statistics.

Asserson's team included some 20 researchers and 20 data scientists who, using artificial intelligence, trawled through some nine million words of coverage across several languages and various platforms. The Spectator will release the report – which runs to some 100 pages – on Monday.

Indeed, the analysis showed Israel was linked to the term "genocide" more than 14 times the number Hamas was, despite the fact the Gazan terrorists entered southern Israel on Oct. 7 with the intention – by its own admission – of slaughtering as many Jews as they could get their hands on.

Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons lamented the bare statistics, which he said "appears to be an extraordinary indictment of BBC reporting, which seems to be working to project Hamas propaganda."

The report found that in BBC coverage, Israel was associated with war crimes, genocide, and international law violations far more often than Hamas was. It also claimed that the BBC downplayed Hamas terrorism, and asserted the BBC's Arabic service was among the most biased global media outlets in covering the Israel-Hamas conflict.

While its charter claims it strives for objectivity and balance, this more usually relates to the U.K.'s political scene where it is felt it'd be more problematic if there was an obvious editorial stance. However, over the years its staff has shown a clear bias for Democrats over and above Republican politicians – especially former President Donald Trump – and it has frequently been accused of anti-Israel bias too.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The fight is in court now, over whether a Virginia county will be allowed to charge a Christian ministry property taxes on its building while exempting other organizations that own buildings, and represent other religious, from those costs.

It is the chief of the Rutherford Institute, John W. Whitehead, who explained, "The First Amendment not only affirms the right to religious freedom for people of all faiths, but it also requires that the government treat all faiths equally and not favor or disfavor one over the other."

He continued, "This is the slippery slope that affects us all, whether you're talking about religious freedom, free speech, or privacy: if the government is allowed to deny freedom to one segment of the citizenry, it will eventually extend that tyranny to all citizens."

The fight is over a decision in Blacksburg, Virginia, where officials decided to refuse the Bradley Study Center, a nonprofit Christian Scholars Network site that ministers to Virginia Tech community members with worship services, prayer meetings and Bible Studies, a tax exempt status.

The Rutherford Institute said it has "challenged a local government's refusal to recognize CSN as a religious association that uses its property exclusively for charitable, religious, or educational purposes, which would thereby qualify CSN for a property tax exemption under the Virginia Constitution and state laws."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Education bureaucrats in the leftist enclave of Colorado have decided that students in the Jefferson County school district will be subjected to housing rules, on school trips, based on "gender identity."

And their action has gotten them named in a federal lawsuit.

It is the Alliance Defending Freedom that says it has filed a case against the school district for "violating parents' fundamental right to make decisions about the upbringing and education of their children."

The district's policy demands that students are assigned to share overnight accommodations based on "gender identity."

That means girls could be forced to share intimate areas, even beds, with a boy who simply says he's a girl.

Problematic is the decision by school officials to refuse to tell parents that while "girls" will be housed on one floor and "boys" on another, they have "redefined the words 'girl' and 'boy' to mean a student's self-asserted 'gender identity' rather than sex."

Further, the district "refuses to give parents truthful, pertinent information about their children's overnight accommodations, thus hampering parents' ability to make informed decisions about their children's education and privacy," the legal team said.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Managers of a seniors apartment complex decided to ban the word "Bible" in their community room announcements, which cover a wide range of topics of interest to residents.

And now they're getting questioned by a religious rights legal team at the American Center for Law and Justice.

The ACLJ has announced it has sent a demand letter to the complex in North Carolina over a decision by managers to violate the religious liberties of a resident.

The applicable law, the ACLJ revealed, is the Fair Housing Act.

"This is yet another in a series of attacks on Christian residents of senior apartment complexes. We continue to defend the rights of Christian residents to live out their faith free from censorship," the organization explained.

In this case, officials "banned our client from advertising his Bible study because the advertisement contained the word 'Bible' in it," the legal team noted.

"Our client leads a weekly Bible study with fellow residents in one of the complex's small conference rooms. Before June, our client was able to advertise his Bible study with no restrictions at all. Without notice or any indication that the advertisement violated any sort of policy, the complex removed his advertisement and replaced it with 'Spiritual Services.'

"When our client approached an employee of the complex, our client was told that the managing company does not allow 'Bible' to be included in the activities that appear in the calendar. Notably, however, nonreligious events freely appear on the apartment's calendar without any censorship," the ACLJ said.

The legal team's announcement said many senior living facilities mistakenly think they must refrain from association with, or mention of, faith.

"Contrary to this belief, the FHA prevents these facilities from treating religious activities differently from secular activities. Specifically, the FHA requires that residents be treated equally without regard to their particular religion. Even if the apartment complex was applying a neutral policy that had a discriminatory effect on a protected class, such as religion, federal courts have recognized that an FHA violation could still be established," the ACLJ reported.

The report said the center already has established that it lets residents advertise their events, and there is "nothing neutral about a policy that prevents advertisements with the word 'Bible' in them."

The legal team explains the conduct is "discriminatory and violates federal law" and it expects a response to its letter in just days.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The outcome of November's presidential election will affect the U.S. military in the profoundest ways possible. The beliefs, values, practices and potential deployments of America's armed forces under the leadership of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance versus Kamala Harris and Tim Walz could not be more different.

As Army Lt. Col. (Ret.) Darin Gaub, who for a decade commanded thousands of soldiers, told WorldNetDaily: "Throughout the Biden presidency, I began hearing for the first time in my life that people are telling their children to do something else rather than join the military – and I can't blame them."

Gaub, a former UH-60 Blackhawk pilot and co-founder of the nonprofit Restore Liberty, explained simply: "Many of today's military leaders are inadequate, and in the military, everything ultimately comes down to leadership."

As far as November's presidential election, Gaub started with the obvious: Harris' and Walz's uninterrupted embrace of the Biden-Harris administration's profoundly leftist ideology "would continue to significantly affect the morale of those who serve the country."

"For example," he told WND, service members "would be forced to endure at least another four years of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion deciding who gets promoted based on everything but merit." And that, in turn, would result in families across the nation continuing to dissuade their children from joining the military in the first place, he said.

Gaub warns that "only those who comply with an agenda that has nothing to do with our military war-fighting capacity will be promoted."

He fully expects the poor decisions of the Biden administration to continue into a Harris presidency. "Over the last three-plus years of the Biden administration, we've witnessed the evacuation of the strategic air base of Bagram in Afghanistan, which was soon followed by the tragedy of our surrender in Afghanistan," Gaub said, affirming that "a message of weakness was seen and heard around the world for the years to follow."

"It all boils down to inadequate leadership," he stressed. "Under the Biden administration, it was easy to predict that Kabul would fall into the hands of terrorists, Russia would invade Ukraine, the militarization of China would continue and the Middle East would flare up to threaten a global war."

Gaub offered a much more positive outlook for the Trump-Vance ticket at the helm. "Americans will have patience and allow them to do the things that need to be done to right this sinking ship," he said. They would also have to factor in what happens in the Senate and the House, he noted, which would have a major impact regardless of who occupies the White House.

"But from a military perspective, with Trump as commander-in-chief," Gaub expects that "we'll see some very aggressive moves" in reforming America's armed forces. This would include a return to merit-based promotions only, he said. "With good leadership in place and an industrial base that's capable of producing the arms and ammunition the military needs, we'll also see military readiness transform in a fashion that projects strength to the rest of the world."

As a result, he concluded, threats from Russia, China, North Korea and other countries would subside.

"The American people just have to remember that it takes time to build and rebuild, as it's far easier to destroy a country," Gaub admitted, which is what the Biden-Harris administration has been doing via its "woke" assault on the U.S. military.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

President Donald Trump has moderated his pro-life position since eight years ago, when he was described as strongly pro-life. Of late, he's admitted the possibility for early abortions, within limits.

But he's been under criticism for changing his policy at all.

And that's not entirely fair, according one of the more prominent pro-life organizations in the country, Operation Rescue, run by chief Troy Newman, who long has been integral in America's fight against abortion.

It's because society has seen a drastic shift in recent years, largely prompted by the nonstop campaign from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on behalf of the members of the lucrative abortion industry.