A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Arrests of Christians in Iran usually spike as Christmas approaches, but this year has been especially severe, sources said.

More than 150 Christians have been detained across the officially Shia Muslim country in the last month, and arrests are expected to continue.

“The current situation has been described by some as unprecedented,” Miles Windsor, advocacy and development manager at Middle East Concern (MEC), told Morning Star News. “There are a huge number of arrests and detentions.” [ Source: Morningstar News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Under pressure from conservatives, President Trump said Thursday he would veto a stopgap spending bill unless Congress added money for his border wall — dooming a bipartisan compromise worked on in the Senate, and putting the government careening toward a partial shutdown.

Mr. Trump’s veto vow sent House Republicans scrambling. They wrote a new bill that added $5.7 billion is additional border security to a measure that would fund dozens of other departments and agencies at their current levels through Feb. 8.

The bill passed the House on a 217-185 vote, and heads to the Senate for a high-noon showdown Friday. Absent action, much of the government will run out of funding hours later at midnight. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump has signed a massive $867 billion farm bill that reauthorizes agriculture and conservation programs without any cuts to the food stamp program.

Trump signed the bill Thursday after the Agriculture Department announced plans to tighten work requirements for recipients of food aid. Negotiations over the farm bill had stalled for months in Congress over a provision by the House to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and over the Senate’s unwillingness to go along.

Trump had voiced strong support for stricter work requirements. [ Source: Fox (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Nation of Islam defiantly defended its government-funded work teaching religion to federal prisoners on Thursday, calling the program “a great benefit and blessing to the American Penal System.”

A black nationalist group led by Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam preaches that white people are “blue-eyed devils” and Jews are “the synagogue of Satan.” Its leaders have received at least $364,500 in contracts and awards from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2019, the Washington Examiner first reported on Wednesday.

Demetric Muhammad, a long-time leader in the Nation of Islam Research Group, wrote a vehement defense of the group’s contract work with the Bureau of Prisons. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Jim Mattis has resigned on principle as Pentagon chief after President Trump decided to slash U.S. troop presence in Syria and Afghanistan, citing in a letter the need for “a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned” with the president’s.

In his strikingly frank resignation letter, Mattis issued what amounted to a stark rebuke of Trump. He outlined his beliefs in alliances, opposition to Russia and China, being respectful to allies, and standing up to authoritarianism before concluding that Trump differed with him on key principles.

He said, “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.” [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 struck off Russia’s sparsely populated far east on Thursday, but officials said the threat of a tsunami had passed and no damage was reported.

The quake off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, which was initially measured at magnitude 7.8 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), before being revised downwards, struck 82 km (50 miles) west of Nikolskoye at a depth of 9 km. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Russia has conducted another successful test of its ship-based hypersonic missile, a weapon the United States is currently unable to defend against, according to two people with direct knowledge of a U.S. intelligence report.

The people, who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity, said Russia has carried out five total tests of its ship-based hypersonic missile since 2015.

The last known test of the device, dubbed “Tsirkon,” was successfully conducted Dec. 10 and reached a top speed of Mach 8, approximately eight times the speed of sound, or about two miles per second. [ Source: CNBC (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Israel moved quickly Thursday to fill the coming power vacuum after President Trump said U.S. troops were being withdrawn from Syria, vowing to ramp up its own military campaign against Iranian-backed proxy groups in the country — a clear sign that the war between Jerusalem and Tehran will continue with or without U.S. involvement.

“We will continue to act very aggressively against Iran’s efforts to entrench in Syria,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised speech Thursday. “We do not intend to reduce our efforts. We will intensify them, and I know that we do so with the full support and backing of the United States.”

Mr. Netanyahu made the comments amid a backlash in the U.S. from lawmakers of both parties who say Mr. Trump is putting Israel, its strongest ally in the region, in grave danger of increased exposure to Hezbollah and other extremist groups allied with Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad. The ramifications for Israel were just one of aspect of the global fallout from Mr. Trump’s stunning declaration Wednesday morning that he believes the war on the Islamic State in Syria has been won and that it’s time for American forces to come home. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The U.S. population grew in the past year at its slowest rate in over eight decades, with growth in the South and West continuing to outpace the Northeast and Midwest, according to figures the Census Bureau released Wednesday.

The numbers, which cover the year ended July 1, show the country’s population rose by 0.6% to 327.2 million people. That was the lowest rate since 1937 in data going back to 1901, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. [ Source: Market Watch (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on Friday to endorse a ceasefire agreed by the warring parties in Yemen’s Hodeidah region and authorize an advance U.N. team to begin monitoring the deal, diplomats said.

The 15-member council has spent several days wrangling over a British-drafted text and the United States, unhappy with Britain’s efforts, came up with its own version on Thursday. The council will vote on Britain’s draft and Washington is not expected to put its text to a vote, diplomats said. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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