A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Apparently, even being Asian doesn’t mean people won’t take you for being a white nationalist.

ESPN confirmed Tuesday night that it had decided to pull an announcer from calling a University of Virginia football game because his name is Robert Lee. This Robert Lee is Asian.

“We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties,” reads the ESPN statement posted at the popular Fox Sports college-football blog Outkick the Coverage. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Thousands of Iranian-backed fighters in Syria’s central desert region are advancing east, bringing Tehran closer to its goal of securing a corridor from its border, through Iraq and all the way to the Mediterranean and providing it unhindered land access to its allies in Syria and Lebanon for the first time.

The land route would be the biggest prize yet for Iran in its involvement in Syria’s six-year-old civil war.

It would facilitate movement of Iranian-backed fighters between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as well as the flow of weapons to Damascus and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iran’s main proxy group. It also positions Iran to play a prime and lucrative role in what is expected to be a massive rebuilding effort in both Iraq and Syria, which have been devastated in their ongoing wars. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – An national atheist organization wrote that the Christian Bible “encourages violence and racism” in an Monday letter intended to bully Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin.

“It should be no surprise that this hate-filled book has spawned hateful ideologies and groups to perpetuate those ideologies,” the letter read. “The Ku Klux Klan is and has always been, a Christian group. Klansmen began burning crosses ‘to spread the light of Jesus into the countryside.’ Hitler was a Roman Catholic and his soldiers wore a religious slogan on their buckle belts (Gott mit uns [God with us]).”

The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent the letter to Bevin and berated him for suggesting during an Aug. 15 radio show that proper teaching of Biblical virtues in schools would reduce instances of white supremacist violence. The organization claimed that religious education, and religion in general, would lead to “increased levels of all manner of societal ills, including: violent crime and homicide, poverty, obesity, teen pregnancy, and infant mortality.” [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Trump administration has triggered visa sanctions against four countries that have refused to take back citizens the U.S. is trying to deport — tapping a little-used but very effective tool for forcing compliance.

Officials at Homeland Security and the State Department confirmed the move Tuesday but declined to name the four countries.

Sources who tracked the deliberations in recent weeks, however, said the countries were Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Triggering the sanctions fulfills a campaign promise by President Trump, who had chided the Obama administration for not doing more to force countries to take back their deportees. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A key figure behind the so-called dossier featuring uncorroborated and salacious allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia will be questioned by investigators from the Senate Judiciary Committee today about the funding and sources for the document.

During last year’s heated Republican primary race, Fusion GPS, a private research firm founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, was initially paid about a million dollars by wealthy Republicans and then later worked for Democrats, all of whom wanted to dig up dirt on Trump and plant negative news stories, according to political operatives.

Simpson, who will appear in a closed session on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, hired the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to compile the now infamous dossier, which alleged that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian agents to damage Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent.

Republicans in Congress are stepping up their efforts to uncover the funders of and sources for that controversial document and its — so far — largely unverified claims as special counsel Robert Mueller’s high-profile probe of those alleged ties heats up. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Trump administration denied $96 million in economic aid and delayed $195 million in military aid to Egypt Tuesday due to the country’s poor human rights record.

“We have serious concerns regarding human rights and governance in Egypt,” an administration official said, according to CNN. “At the same time, strengthened security cooperation is important to U.S. national security.”

The move denotes a serious reversal in policy towards Egypt, which has long been one of the biggest recipients of U.S. economic and military aid, despite the country’s track record on human rights. Over the past 30 years, Egypt has received $80 billion in aid from the United States. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A North Korean mining firm, reputed to be a front for Pyongyang’s weapons development programs, attempted to ship materiel to Syrian officials tied to the country’s chemical weapons program, according to a confidential United Nations assessment of international sanctions against the North.

Details of the U.N. findings, first reported by Reuters, found officials from Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation {KOMID) had sent a pair of shipments of unknown contents to members of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre or SSRC. The Syrian government organization has been responsible for developing chemical and biological weapons for regime in Damascus since the 1970’s.

The shipments never arrived in Syria after being intercepted by international authorities from U.N. partner nations, Reuters reports. “Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria,” the U.N. review states.

KOMID has repeatedly trafficked in materials associated with ballistic missile development and other conventional arms programs, and was blacklisted by the U.N. security council as a result of those activities, Reuters reports. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A day of noisy but largely peaceful protests of US President Donald Trump’s speech in Phoenix turned unruly as police fired pepper spray and stun grenades at crowds after someone apparently lobbed rocks and bottles at officers.

A cloudy haze enveloped the night sky Tuesday outside the convention center where Trump had just wrapped up his speech as protesters and police clashed. People fled the scene coughing as the disturbance unfolded.

“People in the crowd have begun throwing rocks and bottles at police. They also dispersed some gas in the area,” Phoenix police spokesman Jonathan Howard said, adding that officers responded with pepper spray to “disperse the crowd.” [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Hong Kong braced for Typhoon Hato, a maximum category 10 storm on Wednesday, with hundreds of flights cancelled, trading in financial markets suspended and schools and most businesses in the Asian financial hub closed.

Streets were largely deserted as winds intensified and rain lashed down, with many skyscrapers in the heart of the financial center in darkness as the city battened down for one of the worst storms in years.

Hato churned up water in Hong Kong’s iconic Victoria Harbor and triggered large swells and massive waves on some of the city’s most popular beaches, with the weather observatory warning of serious flooding in low-lying areas.

Maximum winds near Hato’s center were recorded at a destructive 155 kmh (95 mph). Gusts in some residential areas were already causing damage, sending tarpaulins, roof screens and tree branches flying through the air. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The United States wants to know if the United Nations atomic watchdog plans to inspect Iranian military sites to verify Tehran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said Tuesday.

Haley will meet with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials in Vienna Wednesday for what she described as a fact-finding mission, which is part of President Donald Trump’s review of the deal Iran made with world powers to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of most sanctions.

“If you look … at past Iranian behavior, what you’ve seen is there have been covert actions at military sites, at universities, things like that,” Haley, a member of Trump’s Cabinet, told Reuters in an interview.

“There were already issues in those locations, so are they including that in what they look at to make sure that those issues no longer remain?” she said. “They have the authority to look at military sites now. They have the authority to look at any suspicious sites now, it’s just are they doing it?” [ Source (Read More…) ]