A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Snow, ice and a record-breaking blast of cold closed runways, highways, schools and government offices across the South and sent cars sliding off roads Wednesday in a corner of the country ill-equipped to deal with wintry weather. At least 10 people died, including a baby in a car that plunged off a slippery overpass into a Louisiana canal.

Icicles hung from a statue of jazz musicians in normally balmy New Orleans, and drivers unaccustomed to ice spun their wheels across Atlanta, which was brought to a near-standstill by little more than an inch of snow. The beach in Biloxi, Mississippi, got a light coating. And the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill canceled classes as the storm unloaded at least 8 inches of snow in Durham and Greensboro.

The storm turned the morning rush hour treacherous, though many people heeded warnings to stay off the roads. [ Source: CBN News (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused Saudi Arabia of double-crossing the Palestinians and betraying 1.6 billion Muslims by siding with the U.S. and Israel on regional affairs.

Despite Iran and Saudi Arabia’s decades-long proxy war of influence in the Middle East, revolutionary Shiite Muslim cleric Khamenei said Tuesday that his country was “ready to act brotherly even with those among the Muslims who were once openly hostile to Iran.”

He called on Muslim countries to unite against the U.S. and Israel’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a diplomatic earthquake that disregarded Palestinian claims to the city and upended an international consensus on its status. [ Source: Newsweek (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday used fiery rhetoric to slam US President Donald Trump’s changes to American policy on Jerusalem, and an official confirmed that the Palestinians will not be meeting with Vice President Mike Pence when he visit the region next week.

“[ Jerusalem] is the gate of peace and war, and Trump must choose,” Abbas said at a conference at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, referring to the American president’s decisions on Jerusalem as a “sin.”

At the White House on December 6, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and initiated the relocation the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the holy city, breaking with decades of American policy. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Israel Police and a group of Jewish worshipers clashed on Wednesday in the Temple Mount compound. Police said a group Jewish visitors violated the terms of the visit and created a provocation that caused a feud at the place. Videos of the incident show that Palestinians were also involved in the riots.

Police removed and detained a large group of people “in order to identify them and understand the chain of events,” according to a statement released after the incident.

Right-wing legal aid NGO Honenu said that some 40 Jewish visitors were detained in the incident. Police stressed that it is working “within a wide range of checks and balances, while keeping the law and the rules of the site, and will not allow anyone to break the law.” [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Another false alarm about a North Korean ballistic missile, and this time in Japan. On Tuesday, Japanese national broadcaster NHK issued an on-air apology for issuing an alert incorrectly claiming that Kim Jong Un’s regime had fired a ballistic missile.

“NHK news alert. North Korea likely to have launched missile. The government J alert: evacuate inside the building or underground,” the message, received by phone users with the NHK app installed on their devices, read.

Minutes later the broadcaster apologized for the error, saying: “The news alert sent earlier about NK missile was a mistake. No government J alert was issued.” [ Source: IB Times (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – An Eritrean Christian has opened up about the 13 years of suffering he underwent for his faith in prison, including being punished for months at a time in a confined cell where he could not even stretch his limbs. Despite the suffering, he refused time and time again to renounce his faith.

World Watch Monitor reported on Tuesday that Shiden first came to faith in his late teens, despite the country’s hostile treatment of evangelical Christians. He joined military service at the age of 22, but was caught during a secret worship meeting with other Christians.

From there he was moved to prison camps where he was made to suffer under harsh conditions, such as no sanitation, with guards taunting him and telling him to renounce his Christianity. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday that US troops will remain in Syria not just to fight jihadists but also to counter the power of Bashar al-Assad and his ally Iran.

In a speech on the US strategy to help end Syria’s seven-year civil war, Tillerson stressed that the mission of the US military is to destroy the Islamic State group and prevent its return.

But he also made it clear that the open-ended deployment is intended to help create enough stability for Syrians to be able to remove Assad from office and reject Iranian influence. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – About 76 percent of Americans support stricter laws on abortion, according to a new Marist Poll, a finding that is part of a consistent trend in data the company has collected in the past decade.

While 51 percent of respondents identified as pro-choice, 60 percent of them said they support limitations on abortions, such as backing a ban on the procedures after 20 weeks of pregnancy and opposing the use of tax dollars to pay for them.

About 61 percent of Democrats, 92 percent of Republicans, and 78 percent of independents said they want significant restrictions on abortion, according to the poll. [ Source: Daily Signal (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A California man suspected of stabbing a fellow diner last month is an illegal immigrant who’s been deported previously seven times, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells The Daily Caller.

The suspect, Eulalio Miniz Orozco, allegedly was captured on surveillance cameras on Dec. 21 getting up from his table while eating and brutally stabbing a fellow diner in the neck at Lola’s Supermarket in the Santa Rosa area. Orozco was arrested by local authorities Dec 28.

Orozco is also known as Ricardo Velasquez-Romero, according to ICE. ICE placed a detainer on Velasquez on Dec 28 “in connection to a stabbing that occurred in Santa Rosa, Calif,” ICE spokesman James Schwab told TheDC. [ Source: Daily Caller (Read More…) ]

(Worthy News) – A California man suspected of stabbing a fellow diner last month is an illegal immigrant who’s been deported previously seven times, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells The Daily Caller.

The suspect, Eulalio Miniz Orozco, allegedly was captured on surveillance cameras on Dec. 21 getting up from his table while eating and brutally stabbing a fellow diner in the neck at Lola’s Supermarket in the Santa Rosa area. Orozco was arrested by local authorities Dec 28.

Orozco is also known as Ricardo Velasquez-Romero, according to ICE. ICE placed a detainer on Velasquez on Dec 28 “in connection to a stabbing that occurred in Santa Rosa, Calif,” ICE spokesman James Schwab told TheDC. [ Source: Daily Caller (Read More…) ]