A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – A Fars Air Qeshm cargo 747 airliner left Tehran at 8 a.m. on Sunday and landed in Damascus at 10:30 a.m., returning to Tehran at 5 p.m. The 747 allegedly transported weapons to Hezbollah in September, according to a report from Fox News that was based on Western intelligence assessments. The aircraft also made suspicious flights in July and August to Damascus and Beirut.

“The Iranians are trying to come up with new ways and routes to smuggle weapons from Iran to its allies in the Middle East,” a source told Fox News in September. Israel has warned about Hezbollah using areas in Beirut to store weapons. This same cargo plane made another suspicious trip on November 29 to Beirut. On December 25, it flew into Damascus and left by the evening, in a pattern that matches the one it flew on Sunday. Air strikes on December 25, which Russia and Syria blamed on Israel, struck west of Damascus soon after.

According to observers online who track suspicious flights and military activity, the arrival of the flight coincided with activity by at least two other flights off the coast of Lebanon that were collecting intelligence. “If I had to guess I would say they were targeting Iranian facilities in Syria and possible weapons transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Rick Francona, a retired US Air Force intelligence officer and former CNN military analyst tweeted Sunday morning. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The United States and Israel are working to block a renewed Palestinian Authority drive to become a member state of the United Nations.

The move would effectively hand the Palestinians unilateral statehood recognition outside the context of any final status agreement with Israel.

Under past peace initiatives, including the Oslo Accord, Palestinian statehood recognition was expected to be granted at the conclusion of a peace process with Israel. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel hangs in balance due to a new US legislation, which is expected to take effect next month, that threatens to bankrupt the government in Ramallah and collapse its security apparatus.

The Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump back in October and recently approved by the US Congress, would allow US authorities to seize assets from any foreign “terrorist entity” that receives financial aid from the American government.The law would also permit any US citizen to sue the PA for its involvement in terror activity and be compensated by the money received through financial aid.

In order to avoid being subjected to controversial lawsuits, the PA’s leadership might reject any kind of financial aid from the Trump administration, including the funds meant to preserve the coordination between the PA and Israeli security forces in the West Bank. [ Source: Ynet News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, was banned from posting on Facebook for 24 hours after a 2016 post of his was flagged for “dehumanizing language.”

Following the ban Graham said in a Facebook post on Friday that the flagged statement, which was from April, was about North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” that focused on which bathrooms transgender individuals were legally allowed to use.

He also shared the content of that flagged post, urging his followers to judge whether it contained hate speech. The post was critical of Bruce Springsteen canceling a North Carolina concert over the bill’s existence. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration must halt a policy shift that cut the money hospitals received under a program intended to provide cheaper drugs to uninsured patients.

Created in Congress in 1992, the 340B program has become more controversial amid claims from pharmaceutical companies and other opponents that some safety-net hospitals are abusing the deep discounts provided by drugmakers.

In 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a proposal to cut the payments hospitals receive by nearly 30 percent. The industry’s top lobbying group and others sued to stop the rule, which went into effect this year and was expected to cost healthcare providers billions in lost revenue. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday he felt less concerned about President Trump pulling U.S. troops from Syria following a two-hour lunch with him at the White House.

“We had a great lunch. We talked about Syria and he told me some things that I didn’t know that make me feel a lot better about where we’re headed in Syria,” Graham told reporters shortly after the meeting. “He promised to destroy ISIS. He’s going to keep that promise. We’re not there yet, but as I said today, we’re inside the 10-yard line and the president understands the need to finish the job.”

Graham is one of a plethora of lawmakers who opposed Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. military personnel from the war-torn country. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned in part due to the announcement. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Sunday calling for more peace talks between the leaders in the new year following their active engagement in 2018, South Korea’s presidential office said.

Moon’s office said Kim also expressed regret that he couldn’t make a planned visit to Seoul, South Korea’s capital, by the end of December as pledged by the leaders during their last summit in September in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The Blue House didn’t fully disclose Kim’s letter.

Through three summits between Moon and Kim this year, the Koreas agreed to a variety of goodwill gestures and vowed to resume economic cooperation when possible, voicing optimism that international sanctions could end to allow such activity. [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The iconic photograph of a 2-year-old Honduran girl crying as her mother is questioned by a U.S. Border Patrol agent reached the cover of Time magazine before it was revealed that the toddler wasn’t caught up in President Trump’s zero-tolerance border policy and wasn’t separated from her family.

For the White House, the misrepresentation of the photo and its use on the magazine cover with Mr. Trump staring down at the child is one of this year’s most egregious examples of “fake news” that Trump officials say is intentionally used to try to take down the president.

The widely published photograph tops a long list of news items during the past two years that damaged the Trump administration before being retracted, corrected or otherwise proved false. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Ohio state legislature has failed by one vote to override Gov. John Kasich’s veto of a bill banning abortion as early as six weeks, which is when a baby’s heartbeat can first be detected.

Had it passed it would have been one of the most restrictive measures on abortion in the country. The fetal heartbeat bill would have made it illegal for doctors to perform surgical abortions at that stage, subjecting them to one year in prison if found guilty of doing so.

The state Senate needed 20 votes for an override. Without debate, only 19 senators voted to do so and 13 voted against the veto on Thursday. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump reported ‘big progress’ in trade talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, providing an optimistic start to what could be a make-or-break year for ties between the world’s two largest economies.

The two presidents spoke at length by telephone Saturday, with each expressing satisfaction with trade talks initiated after their meeting earlier this month in Argentina. Trump said in a tweet that negotiations were “moving along very well” toward a comprehensive deal, while Chinese state media said Xi believed both sides wanted “stable progress.”

Just had a long and very good call with President Xi of China. Deal is moving along very well. If made, it will be very comprehensive, covering all subjects, areas and points of dispute. Big progress being made!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2018

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