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Hilarion Heagy, an Eastern Catholic monk and priest, recently renounced Christianity and embraced Islam triggering multiple headlines in Islamic media and consternation among some who knew him to be a devout Christ follower.“Since news of my embrace of Islam has now officially gone public, my message inbox has been jammed full and my phone has been ringing off the hook,” Heagy, who now also goes by his new Muslim name, Said Abdul Latif, wrote in a post on Medium on Feb. 20. “It is currently impossible to speak to everyone and to answer every question that’s been fielded to me....

TEL AVIV - Russian-Israeli oligarch Leonid Nevzlin announced on Tuesday that he planned to give up his Russian passport in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Everything that Putin touches dies," Nevzlin wrote in a Facebook post. "I am against the war. I am against the occupation. I am against the genocide of the Ukrainian people." Nevzlin was among the first prominent Russian oligarchs to establish self-imposed exile in Israel, fleeing what he has described as a campaign of politically-motivated persecution by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2003, Nevzlin fled Russia for Israel amid a Kremlin-backed investigation into his Yukos...

As reported by Josh Shepherd on the Roys Report, “Brady ‘Phanatik’ Goodwin, founding member of Grammy-nominated Christian hip-hop group, The Cross Movement, and in recent years an apologetics teacher, stated Monday in a video posted online that he has renounced his Christian faith.”As he stated in his Facebook video, “I sent a letter to my church withdrawing my membership and saying that I am denouncing the Christian faith that I have believed, professed, proclaimed, and defended for the last 30 years of my life.”In Goodwin’s video, which is delivered with candor and pain and graciousness, he explains how his doubts...

Americans urgently rushed to their embassies to renounce their citizenship last year amid the virus pandemic, social unrest, economic crash, and political firestorms.Americans Overseas said a record 6,705 Americans gave up their citizenship in 2020, a 260% increase from 2019 when 2,577 renounced their citizenship. Even with consulates closed in the early part of the year because of the virus pandemic, renunciations still managed to nearly triple over the prior year. Before 2020, the highest year on record was 5,411 cases in 2016, ahead of former President Trump winning the 2016 presidential elections. Americans Overseas estimates some 9 million Americans...

<p>More Americans renounced their US citizenship in the first quarter of 2015 than any previous quarter in history, according to the IRS.</p> <p>A record 1,335 Americans living overseas renounced their citizenship in the first three months of 2015, according to the Internal Revenue Service.</p>

3,000 Americans around the world renounced their citizenship last year. Meet five U.S. citizens who have given up their passports -- or are thinking about it -- to escape an overly complicated tax code. I threw up after renouncing View photo.Donna-Lane NelsonName: Donna-Lane Nelson, 71Lives in: Geneva, Switzerland I renounced my U.S. citizenship in 2011. After I did it, I was so emotional that I threw up outside the embassy. During my renunciation, I broke down. It was like getting a divorce. America gave me my education, a good career path, and I came from a beautiful part of the...

The football World Cup taking place in Brazil this year indirectly prompted Benedict XVI to bring forward his resignation as pope by a year, his private secretary has said.

The U.S.'s crackdown on global tax evaders is prompting some Americans in Asia to rethink their citizenship, attorneys there say, in part amid an increasing burden of paperwork required by U.S. tax law. "When I became an immigration lawyer 30 years ago, people really were excited about going to America. Now, more than half of my clients are people thinking of other alternatives rather than people seeking to immigrate to America," said Eugene Chow, the principal of Chow King & Associates in Hong Kong. "My mentor, who is in his early 80s, said to me, 'You became an immigration lawyer...

London-based American lawyers, who specialise in tax and immigration, report a threefold increase over the last five years in the number of American citizens who are giving up their citizenship - a process known as “renunciation”. Across the world 1,781 Americans renounced their citizenship in 2011 compared with just 231 in 2008, when US tax laws changed, although it remains unknown how many are adopting British rather than any other nationality. Many decide to give up their American citizenship after tiring of the lengthy US tax return process, which requires them to pay tax on their total income regardless of...

Tolstoy’s pamphlets are the least-known part of his work, and his attack on Shakespeare 1 is not even an easy document to get hold of, at any rate in an English translation. Perhaps, therefore, it will be useful if I give a summary of the pamphlet before trying to discuss it.Tolstoy begins by saying that throughout life Shakespeare has aroused in him “an irresistible repulsion and tedium.” Conscious that the opinion of the civilized world is against him, he has made one attempt after another on Shakespeare’s works, reading and re-reading them in Russian, English and German; but “I invariably...