A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Following the closure of a number of churches in recent weeks, Coptic Christians in the south of Egypt have renewed calls on local authorities for an end to discrimination.

Two churches in two separate villages in the southern province of Minya have been shut down by the authorities, a statement by the Minya diocese said.

It said worshippers were harassed at both churches and pelted with rocks at one of them.

‘We have kept quiet for two weeks after the closure of one of the churches, but due to our silence the situation has worsened … it is as if prayer is a crime the Copts must be punished for,’ said the statement, which was released on Saturday. [ Source: Christian Today (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Following the closure of a number of churches in recent weeks, Coptic Christians in the south of Egypt have renewed calls on local authorities for an end to discrimination.

Two churches in two separate villages in the southern province of Minya have been shut down by the authorities, a statement by the Minya diocese said.

It said worshippers were harassed at both churches and pelted with rocks at one of them.

‘We have kept quiet for two weeks after the closure of one of the churches, but due to our silence the situation has worsened … it is as if prayer is a crime the Copts must be punished for,’ said the statement, which was released on Saturday. [ Source: Christian Today (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Tensions continued to boil along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) warning civilians in the area to keep away from the frontier after terrorist groups in the Palestinian enclave threatened retaliation following the destruction of an attack tunnel by Israeli forces on Monday.

At least seven Palestinians were killed — including a senior Islamic Jihad commander and his deputy — after Israel blew up a tunnel stretching from the Khan Yunis area in central Gaza into Israeli territory.

Two members of Hamas’ military wing were also killed during rescue efforts, in what was the deadliest incident in the Strip since the 50-day war fought with Israel in 2014. [ Source: i24 News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The White House said Monday that the indictments of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates have nothing to do with President Donald Trump.

The White House also said that President Trump has “no intention or plan to make any changes in regards to the special counsel.”

“But look, today’s announcement has nothing to do with the president, has nothing to do with the president’s campaign or campaign activity. The real collusion scandal, as we’ve said several times before, has everything to do with the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, and Russia,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

“There’s clear evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with Russian intelligence to spread disinformation and smear the president to influence the election. We’ve been saying from day one there has been no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and nothing in the indictment today changes that at all,” she said. [ Source: CNS News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday hailed the IDF for destroying an attack tunnel from the Gaza Strip discovered near a kibbutz inside Israeli territory, with the two leaders attributing its discovery to Israel’s new “breakthrough technology.”

Israel destroyed the tunnel Monday morning. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said at least five Palestinians were killed and 9 others were wounded when the IDF blew up the tunnel.

In remarks at the weekly Likud faction meeting, the prime minister said the long-rumored advanced technology to locate the attack tunnels had been utilized in the recent operation. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Facebook says a Russian group posted more than 80,000 times on its service during and after the 2016 election, potentially reaching as many as 126 million users.

The company plans to disclose these numbers to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the testimony. The person declined to be named because the committee has not officially released the testimony. Facebook, Twitter and Google will testify at three hearings Tuesday and Wednesday.

Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, plans to tell the Judiciary panel that 120 pages set up by Russia’s Internet Research Agency posted the material between January 2015 and August 2017. The company estimates that roughly 29 million people were directly “served” these items in their news feeds from the agency over that time period. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Paul Manafort indictment is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective — as we have been arguing for three months.

Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy.

There are twelve counts in all, but those are the two major allegations. [ Source: National Review (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – As the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria comes to a close, U.S. military and counterterrorism officials are setting their sights on the group’s growing presence in the war-torn country of Yemen.

The number of U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State’s Yemeni faction has increased in the past several weeks as the mission for American drones and warplanes against the group’s bastions elsewhere in the Middle East ramp down.

A trio of deadly strikes this month against Islamic State training camps in Yemen marks a refocus by American counterterrorism forces back onto the Gulf state that has been a regular target of U.S. forces battling the al Qaeda faction known as al Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula, or AQAP, for the past two decades.

But strikes in the country this month are the first time Washington has gone after the Islamic State inside Yemen. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election last year dropped two bombshells Monday, announcing a guilty plea from a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian operatives, and unsealing charges of money laundering and tax evasion against two top Trump campaign figures.

George Papadopoulos, the foreign policy adviser, admitted he had been in touch with Russian-connected figures trying to arrange a meeting between candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and sought to dig up “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

At one point, a Russian-connected operative said they had “thousands of emails” on Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Papadopoulos was arrested in July and pleaded guilty in early October, but the charges and plea were not unsealed until Monday. His attorneys said in a court document that he had been cooperating with investigators to offer information and documents to prosecutors in exchange for dropping an obstruction of justice charge. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Saudi Arabia plans to extract uranium domestically as part of its nuclear power program and sees this as a step towards “self-sufficiency” in producing atomic fuel, a senior official said on Monday.

Extracting its own uranium also makes sense from an economic point of view, said Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, head of the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KACARE).

In a speech at an international nuclear power conference in Abu Dhabi, he did not specify whether Saudi Arabia seeks to also enrich and reprocess uranium – steps in the fuel cycle which are especially sensitive as they can open up the possibility of military uses of the material. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]