‘You Cannot Take Jesus Away From Us’: Iranian Christians Testify About Being Imprisoned for Christ

(Worthy News) – Two Iranian Christians are pleading with the world to hear the cries of the Iranian people as they recounted their own ordeal of being imprisoned for their faith.

In remarks before hundreds gathered at a Wednesday afternoon plenary session at the State Department for the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh explained how Jesus Christ sustained them and miraculously intervened when they were jailed. The women were born into Muslim families who became Christians as young adults; the two friends met in Turkey while studying theology in 2005.

The two women were arrested in 2009 by the Iranian regime because of their Christian faith and spent 259 days in one of the nations most notorious prisons. They were subjected to daily interrogations and mental torture, were said to have committed various offenses — apostasy, blasphemy, promoting Christianity in Iran — and were sentenced to execution by hanging. During their ordeal, Iranian officials also routinely threatened their lives and the lives of their families in order to pressure them to recant their faith, but they refused. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

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Mismanaged, overcrowded forests provide fuel to historic California wildfires, experts say

(Worthy News) – Neglect and mismanagement have left western U.S. forests overcrowded, firefighting experts say, leaving them more susceptible to the kinds of major wildfires that are currently ravaging California.

California state and federal officials have responded to about 4,500 fires this year that have burned nearly 400,000 acres of land, easily outpacing last year’s record burns.

Fires are bigger and lasting longer in part due to hotter and drier weather that most experts say is caused by climate change. But overcrowding has also made the fires more intense: The Department of Agriculture reported in December that about 27 million trees had died statewide on federal, state, and private lands since November 2016. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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U.S., Mexico meeting in Washington to talk about NAFTA, but Canada is left out

(Worthy News) – Canada’s continental partners are simply trying to work through difficult bilateral sticking points on NAFTA, federal insiders insist, even as the Canadian government appears to have been left out of ongoing talks between the United States and Mexico.

A senior government official said Tuesday that the U.S. and Mexico’s return to the table to sort out their differences is a positive sign for the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement – even if Canada wasn’t invited to take part.

Top Canadian negotiators are expected to rejoin NAFTA talks by mid-August although no meetings have been scheduled yet, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter in public. [ Source: Global News (Read More…) ]

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