A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Three U.S. Navy aircraft carriers joined South Korea forces on Saturday to begin joint naval exercises in the waters off the Korean Peninsula in a show of force against North Korea as President Donald Trump ends his five-country Asia tour.

The USS Ronald Reagan, USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt strike groups operated together, marking the first time three American aircraft carriers have trained together since 2007, according to the U.S. Pacific Fleet which released a video of the training on Sunday. The carriers will conduct several training activities, including air defense drills, sea surveillance and defense air combat, until Tuesday.

The four-day exercises also will involve 11 U.S. Aegis ships and seven South Korean naval vessels, including two Aegis ships. The Aegis technology refers to missile tracking and guidance. [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Saad Hariri, who resigned as Lebanon’s Prime Minister on November 4, said on Sunday that he is free to leave Saudi Arabia, refuting claims that Riyadh had put him under house arrest.

“I am free here [in Saudi Arabia]. If I want to travel tomorrow, I will,” Hariri told Future Television, a broadcaster close to his political party. “I’ll return to Lebanon very soon.”

It was his first television appearance since his shock resignation announcement last week during a visit to Saudi Arabia. [ Source: Deutche Welle (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – US President Donald Trump and his advisors have begun formulating a new peace plan that is set to surpass in scale prior Israeli-Palestinian peace-making initiatives, the New York Times reported Saturday.

The report says Trump’s main advisors currently working on the plan are special advisors Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, deputy national security adviser Dina H. Powell, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and others from the State Department and National Security Council.

The team is said to consult with the consul general in Jerusalem, Donald Bloom.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complimented Trump and his advisors last week for “taking a fresh approach” and “thinking out of the box.” [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A Houston federal judge has given FEMA three weeks to decide if its going to change its policy of denying disaster relief to religious institutions, rejecting FEMA’s attempt to delay a challenge by three Texas churches.

Since the devastation by Hurricane Harvey in late August, FEMA has denied houses of worship access to federal disaster aid grants due to their religious status while allowing other nonprofits and businesses to apply, but Judge Keith Ellison has given the agency until Dec. 1 to change that policy.

If FEMA fails to change the policy within the deadline, the judge said he would issue a ruling. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Tens of thousands of people joined a nationalist march in Warsaw on Saturday, organised to coincide with Poland’s independence day.

Marchers chanted religious slogans such as “God, honour, country” and some called out racist chants including “Pure Poland, white Poland”.

An “anti-fascist” counter-protest attracted about 2,000 people. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A once-empty parking lot at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s top secret aircraft plant in Palmdale is now jammed with cars that pour in during the predawn hours.

More than a thousand new employees are working for the time being in rows of temporary trailers, a dozen tan-colored tents and a vast assembly hangar at the desert site near the edge of urban Los Angeles County.

It is here that Northrop is building the Air Force’s new B-21 bomber, a stealthy bat-winged jet that is being designed to slip behind any adversary’s air defense system and deliver devastating airstrikes for decades to come. The Pentagon is aiming to buy 100 of the bombers by the mid-2030s for at least $80 billion, though the exact amount is classified. [ Source: LA Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A powerful earthquake that rocked northeastern Iraq on Sunday (Nov 12) killed at least six people and injured 150 others in the country, officials said.

“Four people were killed by the earthquake” in Darbandikhan, the town’s mayor Nasseh Moulla Hassan told AFP.

Another two people were killed in Kalar, according to the director of the hospital in the town about 70 kilometres south of Darbandikhan.

The US Geological Survey said on its website that the 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck 30 kilometres southwest of Halabjah at 9.18pm (2.18am Singapore time Monday). [ Source: Channel News Asia (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Arab League will hold an extraordinary meeting next Sunday at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss “violations” committed by Iran in the region, according to a memorandum.

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates supported the Saudi request, which was also approved by Djibouti, the current chair of the pan-Arab bloc, said the document shown to AFP by diplomats on Sunday (Nov 12).

Tensions have been rising between Saudi Arabia and Iran, including over League members Qatar and Lebanon. [ Source (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Javier Gonzalez has joined a human tide of more than 130,000 U.S. citizens arriving in Florida since Hurricane Maria wrecked Puerto Rico, grateful for a place to start over but resenting how their island has been treated since the disaster.

More than a million Puerto Ricans — about 5 percent of Florida’s population — already call the state home, and given the outrage many feel over President Donald Trump’s handling of the storm, political observers say this voting bloc could loosen the Republican Party’s hold on this battleground state.

Puerto Ricans are not the gift to the Republican Party that the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora has been historically. They’ve tended to favor Democrats, given their support for public education and social services. Around 70 percent of Florida’s non-Cuban Latinos voted for Hillary Clinton.

Both parties are courting the new arrivals to Florida, which Trump won last year by just 112,000 votes out of 9.6 million cast. [ Source (Read More…) ]