A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Human error and a lack of adequate fail-safe measures during a civil defense warning drill led to the false missile alert that stirred panic across Hawaii over the weekend, a state emergency management agency spokesman acknowledged on Sunday.

Elaborating on the origins of Saturday’s false alarm, which went uncorrected for nearly 40 minutes, spokesman Richard Rapoza said the employee who mistakenly sent the missile alert “has been temporarily reassigned” to other duties.

Rapoza said an internal investigation of the blunder would be completed by week’s end and that the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency welcomed outside review by the Federal Communications Commission, which has jurisdiction over wireless U.S. alert systems. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Parishioners prayed Sunday for those killed and for families still searching for missing relatives in a Southern California community ravaged by mudslides, and authorities announced another body had been found, increasing the death toll to 20.

The body of 30-year-old Pinit Sutthithepa was discovered Saturday afternoon. His 2-year-old daughter, Lydia, remained missing. His 6-year-old son, Peerawat, nicknamed Pasta, and his 79-year-old father-in-law, Richard Loring Taylor, also were killed in the mudslides.

“This family is one of several that lost multiple family members,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said. “And we know that the suffering of those who knew and loved all of the victims is immense.” [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has likened communism to Christianity and Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square to the veneration of the relics of saints.

“Maybe I’ll say something that someone might dislike, but that’s the way I see it,” Putin said in an interview for the documentary Valaam, an excerpt of which was broadcast on Russia 1. “First of all, faith has always accompanied us, becoming stronger every time our country, our people, have been through hard times.

“There were those years of militant atheism when priests were eradicated, churches destroyed, but at the same time a new religion was being created. Communist ideology is very similar to Christianity, in fact: freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice – everything is laid out in the Holy Scripture, it’s all there. And the code of the builder of communism? This is sublimation, it’s basically just an excerpt from the Bible, nothing new was invented.”

Putin went further by comparing the Communists’ attitude to the Bolshevik leader Lenin to the veneration of saints in Christianity. “Look, Lenin was put in a mausoleum. How is this different from the relics of saints for Orthodox Christians and just for Christians? When they say that there’s no such tradition in Christianity, well, how come, go to Athos and take a look, there are relics of the saints there, and we have holy relics here,” Putin concluded. [ Source: RT (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump said Sunday that a program that protects immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children is “probably dead,” casting a cloud over already tenuous negotiations just days before a deadline on a government funding deal that Democrats have tied to immigration.

At issue is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Barack Obama to shield hundreds of thousands of these individuals, known as “Dreamers,” from deportation. Trump, who has taken a hard stance against illegal immigration, announced last year that he will end the program unless Congress comes up with a solution by March.

“DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military,” the Republican president tweeted. “I, as President, want people coming into our Country who are going to help us become strong and great again, people coming in through a system based on MERIT. No more Lotteries! #AMERICA FIRST.” [ Source: CBN News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday said it had destroyed a border-crossing Hamas attack tunnel, the third in recent months, that penetrated hundreds of meters into both Israeli and Egyptian territory from the Gaza Strip, in an airstrike in southern Gaza on Saturday night.

“We completed the destruction of a third terror tunnel,” spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters early Sunday morning, denying claims made by Hamas that it was a smuggling tunnel.

The tunnel, which was constructed differently from most tunnels in Gaza, began in the city of Rafah and crossed into Israel under the Kerem Shalom Crossing, through which hundreds of trucks ordinarily cross into the coastal enclave with goods from Israel each day, he said. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Trump administration is preparing to withhold tens of millions of dollars from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, cutting the year’s first contribution by more than half or perhaps entirely, and making additional donations contingent on major changes to the organization, according to US officials.

US President Donald Trump has not made a final decision, but appears more likely to send only $60 million of the planned $125 million first installment to the UN Relief and Works Agency, said the officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Future contributions would require the agency, facing heavy Israeli criticism, to demonstrate significant changes in operations, they said, adding that one suggestion under consideration would require the Palestinians to first re-enter peace talks with Israel. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Palestinians are being offered Abu Dis as the capital of a future Palestinian state, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday.

Abu Dis is a Palestinian town on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where Al-Quds University, one of the largest Palestinian universities, is located.

Abbas’s comments came during a speech he delivered to a meeting of the Palestinian Central Council, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s second-highest decision-making body. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – For the 16th year in a row, North Korea tops the list of 50 countries ranked for the worst persecution of Christians in the world, according to the Christian watchdog organization Open Doors USA.

A close second is Afghanistan, which jumped up one place since last year’s ranking. With the exception of North Korea, all the countries that cracked the top 10 are predominantly Muslim and most are in the Middle East and Africa.

“Open Doors exists to support and to advocate for persecuted Christians where ever they may be in the world,” Open Doors USA’s CEO and president, David Curry, said in announcing the list in Washington on Wednesday (Jan. 10). “We are asking that the world begin to use its power and its influence to push for justice, that we would use the list to direct us where justice is needed most in the world today.” [ Source: Christian Headlines (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – In the wake of Vice President Mike Pence’s announcement last October that the United States government would provide direct aid to persecuted Iraqi Christians struggling to rebuild following the liberation of the Nineveh Plains, the Trump administration has taken concrete steps to follow through on its promises.

Trump’s administration announced that it has renegotiated an agreement with the U.N. to ensure that vulnerable Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities victimized by the Islamic State in Iraq will get the U.N. assistance they were previously denied.

The administration has also announced that it’s accepting proposals by private organizations on the ground in Iraq to receive direct assistance from the U.S. government to rebuild the ancestral homelands of Christians and other minorities destroyed by the jihadi death cult. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – The Philippines’ most active volcano rumbled back to life Sunday with lava rising to its crater in a gentle eruption that has prompted authorities to evacuate thousands of villagers.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology warned a “hazardous eruption” of Mount Mayon, located in Albay province in the northeastern Philippines, is possible within weeks or even days.

Renato Solidum, who heads the volcanology institute, said three steam-explosions at the volcano since Saturday have spewed ash into nearby villages and may have breached solidified lava at the crater and caused lava to start to flow out of the 2,460-meter (8,070-foot) volcano. [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]