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The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia

All photos by Noah Friedman-Rudovsky. Noah Friedman-Rudovsky also contributed reporting to this article.

For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women. There was no other explanation. No way of explaining how a woman could wake up with blood and semen stains smeared across her sheets and no memory of the previous night. No way of explaining how another went to sleep clothed, only to wake up naked and covered by dirty fingerprints all over her body.

MDS volunteers tackle mud in High River

This is a typical scene Dyck encountered in the MDS clean-up. --MDS photo

Gerald Dyck talks with Darcie Janzen (MDS meal organizer for volunteers) in the MDS trailer.

Editor's Note:  The response to the flood disaster in High River, Alta, has been overwhelming.  Here Gerald and Lee Dyck, who spent a week there directing clean-up efforts, give a first-hand account of the their time there.  Dyck is the MDS director for British Columbia.

Jewish ex-gay group faces suit for consumer fraud

A month after the nation’s leading Christian “ex-gay” group apologized and announced plans to close, a similar Jewish group is facing a first-of-its-kind lawsuit for consumer fraud.

On Friday (July 19) the New Jersey Superior Court will hear arguments in the lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the group Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing.

COMMENTARY: Preaching in the shadow of the Trayvon Martin verdict

Preaching on the Sunday morning after the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin verdict seemed daunting. It turned out not to be so.

The worship bulletin was already printed. Hymns had been chosen. So were the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary. It seemed perfectly served up for a guest preacher like me rewriting the sermon on the fly.

Ex-president Morsi

On the first anniversary of his inauguration as Egypt’s first ever elected president Mohamed Morsi found himself facing demonstrations, unprecedented in size, demanding his dismissal. At times it felt as if the entire population was on the streets, the vast majority asking Morsi to go.

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