A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – In an ongoing bid by the government of Sudan to take over leadership of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC), police on Sunday (Oct. 22) arrested five SCOC church leaders after they refused to comply with an order to refrain from worship, sources told Morning Star News.

Police officers arrived at the SCOC-Harat church in the Hai Al Thawra West area of Omdurman and ordered the Christians to cancel the worship service. Omdurman lies across the Nile River from Khartoum. When the church leaders refused, police arrested them, the sources said.

One source told Morning Star News that they were charged with disturbing the public before they were released late last night. Angry police spoke harshly to them during the arrest, threatening that they would not be released, the source said, but after questioning they were released at 11 p.m. [ Source: Morning Star (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A judge failed to show up at a hearing for a pastor facing accusations of child abuse in a case in Zanzibar that Muslims have kept alive after charges were twice dismissed, sources said.

Shortly after charges were filed on the semi-autonomous island off the coast of Tanzania in November 2014, police closed the case against pastor Yohana Madai of the Free Pentecostal Church of Tanzania in Tomondo village, near Zanzibar Town. They cited lack of evidence and witnesses, according to the Pastors Alliance of Zanzibar.

The accusers got the case re-opened last April in order to slander the pastor and drain the 70-member church resources, according to the alliance. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israeli organization that exposes incitement in the Palestinian media, says Youtube is censoring the organization by shutting down their account.

“YouTube closed down Palestinian Media Watch’s main account, making hundreds of important videos inaccessible to governments, think tanks and media, who find this material of critical importance,” the organization said on its website.

The closure follows accusations that PMW’s content is harmful and dangerous. [ Source: CBN News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Lawyers think they have finally found the smoking gun in the IRS’s tea party targeting scandal: an email from an IRS agent to her supervisors alerting them that the agency was, in fact, singling out some groups’ applications for extreme scrutiny “primarily because of their political party affiliation.”

The email was released last month as part of a massive document dump in a class-action lawsuit filed in Ohio by hundreds of conservative groups who were targeted for extra review and intrusive questioning.

It contradicts the IRS’s official stance over the years contending that conservative groups were wrongly scrutinized, but it was a result of their behavior, not their politics. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Justice Department on Wednesday night released a former FBI informant from a confidentiality agreement, allowing him to testify before Congress about what he witnessed undercover about the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favorable decisions during the Obama administration.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores confirmed to The Hill a deal had been reached clearing the informant to talk to Congress for the first time, nearly eight years after he first went undercover for the FBI.

“As of tonight, the Department of Justice has authorized the informant to disclose to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as one member of each of their staffs, any information or documents he has concerning alleged corruption or bribery involving transactions in the uranium market, including but not limited to anything related to Vadim Mikerin, Rosatom, Tenex, Uranium One, or the Clinton Foundation,” she said. [ Source: The Hill (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Krasnodar, a Russian attack submarine, left the coast of Libya in late May, headed east across the Mediterranean, then slipped undersea, quiet as a mouse. Then, it fired a volley of cruise missiles into Syria.

In the days that followed, the diesel-electric sub was pursued by the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, its five accompanying warships, MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and P-8 Poseidon anti-sub jets flying out of Italy.

The US and its allies had set out to track the Krasnodar as it moved to its new home in the Black Sea. The missile attack up-ended what had been a routine voyage, and prompted one of the first US efforts to track a Russian sub during combat since the Cold War. Over the next weeks, the sub at points eluded detection in a sea hunt that tested the readiness of Western allies for a new era in naval warfare. [ Source: Wall Street Journal (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – North Korean Choi Kwanghyuk is one of the lucky ones.

The 55-year-old managed to escape from the work camp where he was sent after being targeted and persecuted by the government for his Christian faith.

“We couldn’t raise our voice during a service, we couldn’t sing out loud during a worship … that was hard,” Choi told Fox News through a translator. “Also, we had to hide so that other people could not see us.” [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a message for the world during his opening speech at the 19th Communist Party Congress: China supports an open economy, and it will further liberalize its markets to foreign investors.

But while the leadership talks of financial liberalization, some facets of life inside the world’s second-largest economy are becoming a lot less free.

That’s especially true for digital communication inside China. Regulators have moved aggressively to curtail what the country’s more than 750 million internet users can or cannot do online. While Beijing has shut out access to Google and Facebook in the past, new restrictions introduced this year have been some of the strictest ever, according to experts. [ Source: CNBC (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its accompanying strike group of destroyers have left the Middle East, where they had launched airstrikes against ISIS, to back up US forces in the Pacific, the US Navy announced on Wednesday.

The Navy says the Nimitz is heading to the Pacific on a previously scheduled visit, but it will be the third carrier in the region joining the USS Ronald Reagan, which stays in Japan year-round, and the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is currently in the Pacific well east of Japan.

According to the Navy, the Nimitz just finished three months fighting ISIS, with over 903 bombs dropped. ISIS fighters are now surrendering en masse as US-backed regional forces close in on them. [ Source: Business Insider (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Hezbollah is planning to withdraw its forces from Syria in 2018 in order to bolster its presence along the border with Israel, Lebanese news site Lebanon 24 reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, Hezbollah’s high command issued a new order mandating that the last remaining Hezbollah fighters must leave Syria in early 2018.

For the past five years, Hezbollah forces have been fighting alongside the Syrian military in the country’s brutal civil war. It is believed that the Shiite terrorist group, alongside other Iranian-backed militias, helped turned the tide in favor of Syrian President Bashar Assad. [ Source: Israel Hayom (Read More…) ]