A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – A group of Cuban church leaders died in a plane crash Friday on the way home from a denominational retreat in Havana.

The ten married couples, co-pastors from Holguín in East Cuba, had spent three days at a Nazarene seminary in the island’s capital. They sang and prayed together on the bus back to Jose Marti International Airport to catch their return flight, Cuba Church of the Nazarene President Leonel López told Nazarene Communications Network (NCN) News.

But they never made it back home. The 20 pastors were among more than 100 people killed when their Boeing 737 airplane crashed shortly after takeoff from Havana around noon on Friday. Just three survivors remain. It’s the deadliest aviation accident in Cuba in three decades. [ Source: Christianity Today (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Syrian military has declared that it has taken full control of all areas around the capital, Damascus, for the first time in six years.

“Damascus and its surroundings… are completely secure,” spokesman Gen Ali Mayhoub said on state television.

The announcement came after troops cleared Islamic State (IS) militants from the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp and the Hajar al-Aswad district. [ Source: BBC (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Abu Dis neighborhood bordering east Jerusalem will be the capital of a Palestinian state in US President Donald Trump’s planned peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid said Monday.

“Over the weekend, different sources began saying that in the American paper that will be presented next month, Abu Dis will be mentioned as the capital of Palestine,” Lapid said at a Yesh Atid faction meeting.

“This brings up two questions,” Lapid said. “One, is the two-state solution back on the table with the prime minister’s agreement? Two, is Abu Dis acceptable to Netanyahu as the future Palestinian capital? [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The US ratcheted up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday by further tightening economic sanctions against the cash-starved leftist regime.

The latest round of financial restrictions bars American companies or individuals from purchasing any debt owed to the Venezuelan government or its state-owned enterprises. The order massively restricts the Maduro regime’s ability to liquidate assets in a bid to raise much-needed revenue.

The latest round of sanctions comes on the back of Maduro’s contested re-election on Sunday. The US refused to recognize the election result after Venezuelan officials credited Maduro with taking 68 percent of the ballots, far ahead of his closest rival Henri Falcon, who only managed 21 percent. The main opposition party, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, boycotted the election. [ Source: Deutche Welle (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Less than a week after Stefan Halper was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign, public records reveal that the 73-year-old Oxford University professor and former U.S. government official was paid handsomely by the Obama administration starting in 2012 for various research projects.

A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election. Meanwhile, a search of public records reveals that between 2012 and 2018, Halper received a total of $1,058,161 from the Department of Defense. [ Source: ZeroHedge (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A group of congressional Republicans plans to introduce a resolution Tuesday calling for the appointment of a second special counsel to investigate alleged misconduct at the FBI and Justice Department.

The resolution is backed by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus as well as two of the group’s co-founders — Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla.

Fox News has learned the 12-page resolution will ask a second special counsel to probe matters related to three topics: The ending of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, the progress of the Trump-Russia investigation from its origins through the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, and abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the warrant application process. [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The federal cash welfare program would be renamed the “JOBS Program” under legislation set to be moved this week by House Republicans.

Today, cash welfare is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. But Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee aim to advance a reauthorization this week that would change the name to “Jobs and Opportunity with Benefits and Services.”

The committee is scheduled to move the legislative package Wednesday. It would limit states’ ability to redirect welfare funds to other purposes, setting aside job training programs. It also would institute new metrics for measuring states’ success on getting recipients into jobs. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – An obscure special status obtained by several of special counsel Robert Mueller’s attorneys could prevent a judge from ousting Mueller’s lawyers from their role in the prosecution of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in federal court in Virginia.

Several court filings indicate that when lawyers from Mueller’s office appeared in federal court in Alexandria earlier this year, they did so not only as representatives of Mueller’s office but as special assistant United States attorneys (SAUSAs) attached to the United States attorney’s office there.

That designation gives the Mueller prosecutors a kind of dual status that could complicate any attempt by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III to try to shift the case to federal prosecutors based in Alexandria — a possibility the judge mentioned on a couple of occasions during a contentious hearing earlier this month. [ Source: Politico (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Israeli arms industry is expected to lose $1.3 billion in revenue each year and as many as 22,000 workers could lose their jobs when the latest agreement for military aid from the US kicks in at the end of this year, the Defense Ministry warned at a Knesset Finance Committee meeting on Monday.

Committee chairman Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) called to renegotiate the 10-year aid agreement with the US, because it “will increase aid, but our society will crumble from the inside.”

The Memorandum of Understanding negotiated between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-US president Barack Obama’s administration changed the previous terms of military aid. Until now, up to 26% of the aid, adding up to billions of shekels each year, could be spent inside Israel. In the new deal that will gradually be phased out beginning at the end of the US’s government’s Fiscal Year 2018 (i.e., on October 1, 2018), until all American military aid will have to be spent in the US, resulting in losses for local industry. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Israel and the United States are seeking to prevent the passage of a UN Security Council resolution creating an international force in Gaza.

According to the Hebrew news site YNet, the resolution introduced by Kuwait in collaboration with the Palestinians seeks to protect civilian demonstrators in areas of armed conflict. It is in reaction to the ongoing riots on the Gaza border, in which Israel has used live fire against attempts to storm the border fence and commit acts of terrorism.

The US and Israel hope to prevent the resolution from gaining a majority in the 15-seat council. YNet notes that the current makeup of the council makes this unusually difficult. If the resolution passes, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has promised to use the American veto to block its implementation. [ Source: Algemeiner (Read More…) ]

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