A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – U.S.-backed forces have advanced roughly 5 kilometers, or 3.1 miles, in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa over the past week, pushing back Islamic State militants in a grueling offensive to seize the terrorist group’s last significant stronghold.

Army Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition battling ISIS, told the Washington Free Beacon that although Syrian Democratic Forces now control 55 percent of the city, the military expects difficult fighting ahead.

Dillon said at a Pentagon briefing earlier this month that SDF troops were steadily closing in on ISIS fighters, but acknowledged progress had slowed from the first two weeks of the operation when the Kurdish-led forces achieved rapid territorial gains. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The first quarter of 2017 saw 248 persecution incidents wherein Christians were harassed, threatened or attacked for their faith in India. More recent records indicate the number of incidents in first six months of 2017 is now up to 410 incidents. This represents an enormous increase in persecution as there were only 441 incidents reported in 2016 for the entire year.

These attacks can often be brutal. “When the Christians are beaten by the extremists, they receive injuries mostly on their heads or their vital body parts. The assaulters do not care if the person dies in the attack. They know that they will not be punished because the Government (and hence the judiciary) will take their side. In most of the cases the assaulters go unpunished,” One local OD partner reports. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Israel’s Shin Bet security agency on Tuesday unveiled the discovery of a complex money-transferring scheme run by the Gaza-ruling Palestinian terror group Hamas.

Hamas operatives in Gaza used the network to send funds to families of Palestinian terrorists residing in eastern Jerusalem. The Israel Police and the Shin Bet uncovered the scheme in a joint operation. Security forces Monday raided eight eastern Jerusalem homes of families receiving the terror funds. At least $30,000 in cash and a vehicle were seized in the raids.

Among those receiving the Hamas funds was the mother of Tarek Abu-Arafa, who was involved in the 1994 kidnapping and murder of IDF soldier Nachson Wachsman. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday congratulated North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un on the occasion of his country’s “Liberation day,” amid a high-stakes nuclear standoff between Pyongyang and Washington.

“The Korean people offered the most precious sacrifices for their freedom and dignity,” Abbas said in a telegram to Kim, the PA’s official news outlet, Wafa, reported.

The US and Korea have locked horns over the hermit nation’s nuclear and missile programs, with US President Donald Trump also ratcheting up the rhetoric and promising Pyongyang “fire and fury.” [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America’s adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud.

The Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch — a Washington-based legal-watchdog group — analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011–2015 American Community Survey and last month’s statistics from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The latter included figures provided by 38 states. According to Judicial Watch, eleven states gave the EAC insufficient or questionable information. Pennsylvania’s legitimate numbers place it just below the over-registration threshold.

My tabulation of Judicial Watch’s state-by-state results yielded 462 counties where the registration rate exceeded 100 percent. There were 3,551,760 more people registered to vote than adult U.S. citizens who inhabit these counties. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – President Obama had insisted for years that he didn’t have the power to grant a broad tentative deportation amnesty for Dreamers — then just ahead of the 2012 election, and facing severe criticism from Hispanic leaders, Mr. Obama discovered he did in fact have the power.

Thus was born DACA, which has been in effect for five years as of Tuesday and has become perhaps the most controversial policy of the Obama era.

Nearly 800,000 young adult illegal immigrants have been protected by the program, giving them a chance to get driver’s licenses, legally hold a job, collect tax benefits — even to earn a law license or, in some special cases, to join the U.S. military. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The federal government collected record amounts of both individual income taxes and payroll taxes through the first ten months of fiscal 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016 through the end of July), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Through July, the federal government collected approximately $1,312,691,000,000 in individual income taxes.

At the same time, it collected $976,278,000,000 in Social Security and other payroll taxes.

This year’s record of $1,312,691,000,000 in October-to-July individual income taxes is $3,259,140,000 more than the 2015’s previous record of $1,309,431,860,000. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The North Korean regime has continued to position itself as one of the world’s worst persecutors of the religious, torturing and killing people who practice their faith, according to a State Department report released Tuesday.

The 2016 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom determined that the government led by dictator Kim Jong Un continues to delineate brutal punishments for those who engage in faith-bound acts outside of worshipping the country’s leadership. The punishment includes “executions, torture, beatings and arrests.”

“An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners, some imprisoned for religious reasons, were believed to be held in the political prison camp system in remote areas under horrific conditions,” the report stated. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Trump administration denounced the Islamic State terror group on Tuesday for carrying out “genocide” against Christians and other religious minorities in areas under its control.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the group is “clearly responsible for genocide” against Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Shiite Muslims in Syria and elsewhere. His comments were made as the State Department released its annual report on international religious freedom.

Tillerson said he was making the pronouncement to “remove any ambiguity” about previous genocide assertions made by his predecessor, John Kerry, who in March 2016, determined that genocide was occurring in Islamic State-held areas but was criticized by lawmakers and religious groups for not declaring genocide was taking place earlier. Neither administration’s genocide determination carries with it any legal obligation for the US or others. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A defiant President Trump doubled down Tuesday on his initial claim that activists on both the left and the right were responsible for violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he warned that eradicating public monuments linked to slavery could diminish the legacies of Founders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Defending his first, roundly criticized assessment that “many sides” were guilty of violence during Saturday’s clashes, the president said he didn’t single out white supremacists initially because he didn’t have all the facts at the time and didn’t want to rush to judgment for the sake of political correctness.

“I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct,” the president said. “Unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.”

But Mr. Trump also said at a contentious news conference at Trump Tower in New York that leftists committed much of the violence, while the media blamed only the “alt-right” movement. [ Source (Read More…) ]