A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – For the first time ever, a delegation of evangelical leaders from the United States met with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for nearly three hours at the presidential palace in Cairo on Wednesday to talk about a series of issues including the persecution of Egyptian Christians by Islamic extremists.

“I appreciate the opportunity to meet with President el-Sisi to discuss the concerns we have, as American evangelicals, for the plight of religious minorities in Egypt, especially those who are our brothers and sisters in Christ,” Family Research Council President and Baptist Pastor Tony Perkins said in a statement shared with The Christian Post.

Perkins was joined by other prominent evangelical activists and authors such as religious freedom advocate and informal Trump administration advisor Johnnie Moore, evangelical writer Joel Rosenberg, Egyptian-born Christian pastor and author Michael Youssef, and former Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – An evangelical coalition that lobbies for immigration reform has asked the Trump administration to extend the “Temporary Protected Status” program for four nations.

Signatories for the EIT’s letter included Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Shirley V. Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities; Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; and the Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

The TPS program allows for nationals from certain designated countries to remain in the United States due to temporary conditions that would make it dangerous to return them, such an armed conflict or a major natural disaster. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump on Thursday agreed to expand the use of disaster aid to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid and other infrastructure wrecked by Hurricane Maria, a senior White House official told Reuters.

Under the plan, the federal government will pick up 90 percent of the costs – up from the typical level of 75 percent – and allow for funds to be released in a faster, more flexible way, an approach that recognizes the massive devastation on the island and its dire financial problems, the official said.

The plan, agreed with Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello, provides for third-party advisers to estimate how much money is required for projects and how it is spent – a provision aimed at protecting taxpayer dollars in what is expected to be a massive, long-term effort to rebuild the island. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The ozone hole over Antarctica shrank to its smallest peak since 1988, NASA said Thursday.

The huge hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer reached its maximum this year in September, and this year NASA said it was 7.6 million square miles wide (19.6 million square kilometers). The hole size shrinks after mid-September.

This year’s maximum hole is more than twice as big as the United States, but it’s 1.3 million square miles less than last year and 3.3 million square miles smaller than 2015. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – After the Obama administration approved the sale of a Canadian mining company with significant U.S. uranium reserves to a firm owned by Russia’s government, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assured Congress and the public the new owners couldn’t export any raw nuclear fuel from America’s shores.

“No uranium produced at either facility may be exported,” the NRC declared in a November 2010 press release that announced that ARMZ, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned Rosatom, had been approved to take ownership of the Uranium One mining firm and its American assets.

A year later, the nuclear regulator repeated the assurance in a letter to Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican in whose state Uranium One operated mines. [ Source: The Hill (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Economists expect job growth of 310,000 in October, a rebound after the impact of hurricanes Harvey and Irma resulted in a 33,000 decline in September.

The weak September employment report was the biggest shocker in U.S. economic data, after hurricanes ripped through Texas, Florida and other parts of the South in late August and early September. Other data has mostly come in strong, including GDP, which has now grown at 3 percent for two quarters in a row.

“Our forecast is for 325,000. It’s going to be a big number,” said Seth Carpenter, chief U.S. economist at UBS. “You’re going to get a kind of soft average for those two months.” [ Source: CNBC (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The House on Thursday passed a bill to repeal a panel created by Obamacare to cut Medicare if it spends too much.

The House voted 307-111 to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a subject of ire from Republicans and some Democrats. Lawmakers say the board takes away congressional authority over entitlement spending.

The bill that got hefty support from Democrats faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, but top sponsor Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., is optimistic. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – House Republicans’ long-awaited tax overhaul bill will keep the top individual rate at 39.6 percent for high-income earners and will immediately and permanently cut the corporate rate to 20 percent.

The legislation seeks to revamp the tax code in a major way for the first time since 1986, incorporating long-sought goals of congressional Republicans to keep more money in the pockets of individuals and families and boost incentives for businesses by closing loopholes.

The bill would collapse seven tax brackets for individuals to four brackets with rates of 12, 25, 35 and 39.6 percent.

The bill would also increase the standard deduction so single filers earning up to $12,000 and joint filers earning up to $24,000 would pay no income tax. [ Source: Roll Call (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.

I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.

So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations. [ Source: Politico (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Former surrogates of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., from the 2016 campaign are fuming about the Democratic National Committee in response to Donna Brazile’s disclosure of “proof” that the Hillary Clinton campaign took over the DNC’s finances and operations in an effort to tip the scales in Clinton’s favor for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

With many noting they have been crying foul since the primary, multiple liberal figures in the Democratic Party took the opportunity issue a fresh cadre of demands to change the DNC, which earlier this year picked an Establishment-favorite, Tom Perez, to lead over the liberals’ preferred candidate, Rep. Keith Ellison.

“Today we heard from Donna Brazile that what many suspected for a long time, is actually true: the DNC secretly chose their nominee over a year before the primary elections even occurred, turning over DNC control to the Clinton campaign,” said Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, a former DNC vice chairman. Gabbard, declared the 2016 primary “rigged,” resigned from the DNC in February 2016 in order to endorse Sanders. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]