A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – An Iranian court has sentenced a Chinese-American man to a decade behind bars on charges of spying for the United States.

The dual national was identified as Xiyue Wang, a 37-year-old history researcher, according to Mizan Online, a website affiliated with the judiciary. He was not previously known to be among the handful of Americans detained in Iran.

The man was “gathering information and was directly guided by America,” deputy judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejeie said on state television Sunday, adding that the “sentence can be appealed.” [ Source:Fox News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – North Korea could be increasing its plutonium production in an effort to ramp up its stockpile of nuclear weapons, according to a new report. The country has added additional plutonium since September, thermal imagery appeared to show.

An analysis of the images by United States think tank 38 North, which specializes in North Korean affairs, said the country may have increased production of plutonium at its main nuclear plant from September to June.

“The Radiochemical Laboratory operated intermittently,” the report said. “And there have apparently been at least two unreported reprocessing campaigns to produce an undetermined amount of plutonium that can further increase North Korea’s nuclear weapons stockpile.” [ Source: International Business Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A Cuban appeals court has surprised the homeschooling world by reversing a one-year prison sentence imposed on pastor Ramon Rigal for taking his children out of government schools and homeschooling them.

He was ordered to a year in jail and she to a year of home detention. In the trial, the judge refused the couple permission to bring in witnesses.

Now, the Cuban appeals court has reversed the one-year jail sentence on Ramón Rigal without overturning his conviction, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association, which is supporting the pastor. His wife’s sentence of one-year of house arrest remains. [ Source:WND (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Sunday said he doesn’t think Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has the votes to pass the Senate GOP’s healthcare bill.

“I don’t think right now he does,” Paul, a vocal critic of the Senate’s healthcare plan, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“But this bill keeps most of the ObamaCare taxes, keeps most of the regulations, keeps most of the subsidies,” he said. “And creates something that Republicans have never been for, and that’s a giant insurance bailout superfund.” [ Source:The Hill (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Several Muslims protested the addition of metal detectors at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount compound in Old Jerusalem, which reopened Sunday after a deadly attack two days earlier.

Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy head of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, told Palestinian media that the detectors were “illegitimate.” He said security would only be ensured by preventing the entry of “settlers” and removing “Israeli soldiers” — Border Police officers stationed at the site — from the compound. [ Source:Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The amateurish nature of the infamous meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and two Russian lobbyists in June 2016 undermines a major accusation in a so-called dossier: its assertion of a long, information-trading relationship between Russian intelligence and Donald Trump and his aides.

If the Trump team had such a productive Moscow liaison for years, as the dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, and his Russian sources claim, then why did the president’s son need to listen to two nominal Russian sources, a former U.S. intelligence official asks.

“If the Trumps actually had a long-standing relationship with the Russian intelligence services and were regularly receiving information on Hillary Clinton — this is one of the claims in the Steele dossier — there would be no reason to accept a meeting with an unknown lawyer who claimed to have compromising information,” Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and State Department counterintelligence official, told The Washington Times. [ Source (Read More…) ]