A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Egypt said Sunday that security forces have killed 19 militants in a shootout, including the gunmen suspected of killing seven Christians in an attack on pilgrims traveling to a remote desert monastery.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said the militants were tracked to a hideout in the desert west of the central province of Minya, the site of Friday’s attack, which also left 19 people wounded.

It said the alleged militants opened fire when they realized they were being besieged by security forces. It did not say when the shootout took place. [ Source: CBN News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday in Sharm el-Sheikh, as part of his country’s efforts toward a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, known to be affiliated with Hamas, published details of a draft agreement under discussion, which would be implemented in stages over three years.

Among the conditions would be an agreement by Israel to lift 70% of its restrictions on goods and movement in and out of Gaza, including at its two border crossings at Kerem Shalom and Erez. United Nations infrastructure and energy projects would move forward and would create 30,000 jobs for Palestinians in Gaza. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – U.S. employers added 250,000 workers in October, the last month before midterm elections in which incumbent Republicans have pinned their campaigns in part to the success of President Trump’s economic policies.

Unemployment held steady at the 3.7 percent reached the month before, the Labor Department said in a statement Friday, the lowest since December 1969. The payroll expansion was 32 percent higher than the average estimate of 190,000 from economists surveyed by FactSet, and compared with revised growth of 118,000 a month before.

“We saw a nice rebound in October,” Joseph Song, an economist with Bank of America, told the Washington Examiner. Discounting the distortions due to Hurricane Florence, whose landfall on the East Coast skewed September’s data, “you still get a relatively strong number,” he added. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump has been acting like a candidate on the ballot this week, staging daily double-header rallies and blasting out ads for Republicans up for election on Tuesday. Given the stakes for his presidency, he might as well be.

A knot of investigations. Partisan gridlock. A warning shot for his re-election bid. Trump faces potentially debilitating fallout should Republicans lose control of one or both chambers in Congress, ending two years of GOP hegemony in Washington. A White House that has struggled to stay on course under favorable circumstances would be tested in dramatic ways. A president who often battles his own party, would face a far less forgiving opposition.

On the flip side, if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate, that’s not only a victory for the GOP, but a validation of Trump’s brand of politics and his unconventional presidency. That result, considered less likely even within the White House, would embolden the president as he launches his own re-election bid. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said on Monday he would push for new action at the United Nations Security Council to try to end hostilities in Yemen and find a political solution to the war there.

Yemen, one of the poorest Arab countries, is locked in a nearly four-year-old war that pits Iran-aligned Houthi rebels against the government backed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the West. The conflict has killed at least 10,000 people and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Hunt had agreed with UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths that the time was right for the Security Council to act to bolster the UN-led process, the Foreign Office said in a statement, without specifying exactly what action Britain would take. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A swarm of earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault, the largest measuring a 4.1 magnitude, rumbled through the Hollister area and the Salinas Valley Friday morning. CBS San Francisco, citing officials, reports the quakes rattled nerves but caused no major damage.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the 4.1 quake hit at 5:58 a.m. PDT 12 miles southwest of the small community of Tres Pinos. It was followed by quakes measuring 3.6, 3.2 and 3.0.

The USGS said the quakes were most strongly felt in nearby Hollister followed by Salinas, Gonzales, Monterey, Carmel Valley and Santa Cruz. [ Source: CBS News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Trump administration on Friday restored U.S. sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, but carved out exemptions for eight countries that can still import oil from the Islamic Republic without penalty.

The sanctions take effect Monday and cover Iran’s shipping, financial and energy sectors. They are the second batch the administration has re-imposed since Trump withdrew from the landmark accord in May.

The 2015 deal, one of former President Barack Obama’s biggest diplomatic achievements, gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, which many believed it was using to develop atomic weapons. Trump repeatedly denounced the agreement as the “worst ever” negotiated by the United States and said it gave Iran too much in return for too little.

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(Worthy News) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet with North Korea’s No. 2 official in New York next week, as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing diplomatic effort to persuade Pyongyang to embrace complete denuclearization on the peninsula.

The meeting with Mr. Pompeo and Kim Yong Chol, vice-chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, will be a “good opportunity to follow through” on U.S.-led efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons development program, the top U.S. diplomat said Sunday.

“We continue to make good progress … [and] I’m confident that we will advance the ball again this week” toward complete verifiable denuclearization on the Korean peninsula, Mr. Pompeo said during an interview on CBS’s Face The Nation. This week’s meeting will be one of several conducted by the Secretary of State in the weeks and months since Mr. Trump’s landmark summit in June with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Pakistan’s authorities have struck a deal with a hard-line Islamist party to end a protest over the acquittal of a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy.

As part of the deal, proceedings will begin to bar Asia Bibi from leaving the country.

The government will also not prevent protesters legally challenging the Supreme Court decision to release her.

Asia Bibi was convicted in 2010 of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, but was acquitted earlier this week. [ Source: BBC (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – At least seven people have been killed in Egypt by gunmen who opened fire on a bus carrying a group of Coptic Christians, officials say.

A number of people were also injured in the attack in the Minya region, south of the capital Cairo.

The bus was heading towards a local monastery, a senior Coptic cleric says.

The Islamic State group says it carried out the attack. Islamist militants have targeted Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority repeatedly in recent years. [ Source: BBC (Read More…) ]

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