Pastor: Ramadan sign on church drew call

Pastor: Ramadan sign on church drew call

DAllastown, pa.

A pastor is decrying an angry phone message and social media posting from a school board member who’s also a Republican convention delegate about a church sign that reads: “Wishing a blessed Ramadan to our Muslim neighbors.”

The Rev. Christopher Rodkey said he got a call June 11 about the sign outside St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, in Dallastown, Pa., from an unidentified man who called the sign “despicable” and referred to Islam as a “godless” and “pagan” religion.

Rodkey said he looked up the caller’s number and found it belonged to Matthew Jansen, a member of the Spring Grove Area School District and an elected delegate to the Republican National Convention who supports Donald Trump.

14 children die as boats overturn

MOSCOW

Fourteen children died in a storm while boating on a lake in Russia’s northwestern region of Karelia, prompting investigators to detain four people who organized the outing despite cyclone warnings, officials said Sunday.

Several boats with children overturned Saturday in a storm in Syamozero, 75 miles east of the border with Finland, according to Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the nation’s main state investigative agency.

Of 47 children and four adult instructors in the boats, 14 children died, Markin said.

Syrian forces advance on IS-held air base

BEIRUT

Syrian government forces advanced to within 6 miles of the Islamic State-occupied Tabqa air base in the northern part of the country Sunday, part of a push to try to unseat the extremist group from its de facto capital, Raqqa.

Government forces recaptured the nearby Thawra oil field from IS militants, according to a Syrian journalist Eyad al-Hosain, who is embedded with the army.

The activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which smuggles news out of IS-held territory, reported that fighter jets struck the town with cluster munitions, killing at least 10 civilians.

UK referendum campaign resumes

LONDON

Britain’s long and difficult referendum campaign has resumed in earnest after a three-day halt caused by the killing of Labour Party lawmaker Jo Cox in a brazen knife and gun attack.

The death has cast a pall over the referendum set for Thursday, and its impact on the eventual results – if any – is unclear.

The campaign tone was perhaps a bit more moderate Sunday as both sides in the bruising battle over whether Britain should remain a member of the 28-nation European Union seemed to take a more-civil approach.

The content remained the same: the “remain” camp predicts economic doom if Britain leaves the EU while the “leave” campaign warns of the perils of uncontrolled immigration unless Britain strikes out on its own.

Boeing in talks to sell planes to Iran

TEHRAN, IRAN

Boeing Co. is negotiating a deal to sell 100 airplanes to Iran, state-run media reported Sunday, a sale potentially worth billions that would mark the first major entry of an American company into the Islamic Republic after last year’s nuclear deal.

Chicago-based Boeing declined to discuss details of the talks or the figure of 100 planes, attributed to Ali Abedzadeh, the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization.

Associated Press