U.S. retail sales rise in January; December revised sharply lower

(Worthy News) – U.S. retail sales unexpectedly rose in January, lifted by an increase in purchases of building materials and discretionary spending, but receipts in December were much weaker than initially thought.

The report from the Commerce Department on Monday is welcome news for the economy after a raft of weak December data, as well as a sharp moderation in the pace of job growth in February. Still, the relatively strong retail sales report will probably not change expectations for sharp slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter.

Retail sales rose 0.2 percent. Data for December was revised down to show retail sales dropping 1.6 percent instead of tumbling 1.2 percent as previously reported. The drop in December was the biggest since September 2009 when the economy was emerging from recession. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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U.S. Set to Become World’s Leading Exporter of Oil

(Worthy News) – By 2024, the United States will begin to export more oil than Saudi Arabia and become the world’s leading exporter by 2024, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Exports continue to explode from the United States as its shale fields continue to boom, the IAE stated in its annual five-year oil outlook. The forecast sees U.S crude output increasing to 16 million barrels per day, up from its record of 12 million barrels per day.

“The second wave of the U.S. shale revolution is coming,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

He continued by stating, “it will see the United States account for 70% of the rise in global oil production and some 75% of the expansion in LNG trade over the next five years. This will shake up international oil and gas trade flows, with profound implications for the geopolitics of energy.”

The U.S. became the world’s largest oil producer in 2018, and now on the verge of becoming the world’s largest exporter as well.

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80 Nigerian Pastors Meet with Wycliffe Associates To Accelerate Bible Translation in the Shadow of Boko Haram

(Worthy News) – Wycliffe associates recently hosted a conference on Bible translation for 80 Nigerian Pastors, in a country where Islamic militancy has displaced millions and led to severe persecution against Nigeria’s sizeable Christian population.

The conference was designed to implement the MAST strategy among local translators in Nigeria, a method which Wycliffe hopes to use to achieve its goal of translating the Bible into every language by 2025.

“Our breakthrough MAST strategy is accelerating Bible translation beyond anything we could have imagined, even a couple of years ago,” said Wycliffe CEO Bruce Smith.

MAST (Mobilized Assistance Supporting Translation) focuses on equipping local believers with digital technologies and translation tools that enable the local church to do most of the translation work on its own in a collaborative fashion.

The new method allows for rapid translation in places where foreign missionaries are often forbidden.

“Word is spreading. Even people living in areas of intense persecution, violence, or danger, now have hope,” said Smith.

Experts, moreover, estimate that over half of Nigerians cannot speak English and that 250 of Nigeria’s 500 languages are without a mother-tongue Bible translation.

President Trump expressed deep concern twice last year over religious violence perpetrated against Christians in Nigeria by terrorist group Boko Haram, which seeks to create an Islamic State and eradicate a Western influence with which the country’s Christians are often associated.

“Violence continues to escalate in Nigeria and across Africa, and we don’t have much time before some locations could close to Westerners,” said Smith of a country that has the highest possible score for violence in Open Doors U.S.A.’s rating system for persecution.

Wycliffe seeks to get the MAST method off the ground and the requisite digital technologies to believers in Nigeria before this window of opportunity shuts.

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In Israel, A Stand Out Year For Artificial Intelligence Technologies

(Worthy News) – Artificial Intelligence technologies in Israel saw significant growth in 2018, in the number of companies raising funding, the amounts invested, as well as new products released, a new report by Start-Up Nation Central shows.

Israel is home to a vibrant AI ecosystem that grew from 512 companies in 2014 to 1,150 by the end of 2018 (120% increase in 4 years). These include companies that develop core AI technologies as well as companies that utilize AI-technologies for their vertical-related products and services, such as healthcare, cyber security, autonomous driving, among others.

Start-Up Nation Central’s report shows that in 2018, AI-related companies accounted for 17% of the total number of 6,673 active Israeli tech companies in Israel tracked by Start-Up Nation Finder, SNC’s innovation discovery platform. Strikingly, 32% of all funding rounds and 37% of the total capital raised went to AI-related companies, representing a 94% increase from the number of funding rounds raised by AI-related companies in 2014, and an 85% increase in the amount of capital raised. The total capital raised by AI companies in 2018 ($2.25B) more than tripled from the amount raised in 2014 ($516M) —-a peak year in terms of capital raised by Israeli AI companies. [ Source: Forbes (Read More…) ]

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Qu’ran Desecration Hoax Forces 200 Christian Families to Flee Mob Violence in Pakistan

(Worthy News) – Two hundred Christian families were recently driven out of their homes in Karachi, Pakistan, after a Muslim couple instigated a mob against four women whom they claimed had desecrated a Koran.

International Christian Concern noted that the couple had previously been asked to leave their apartment by their Christian landlord after stirring up strife against believers in the community.

“Samina Riaz borrowed a copy of the Qu’ran from Khalid Khan, a nearby shopkeeper,” and descrated it herself, according to Aslam Masih, a local witness. Riaz subsequently used the tampered evidence to rile the mob against local Christians.

Pakistan’s famous “blasphemy law” received international attention recently with the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani woman who was held in solitary confinement for almost a decade after allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Prohibiting both defilement of the Qu’ran and insult to the Prophet’s honor under penalty of death or life imprisonment, the law is often used as a “means for personal revenge,” according to Cecil Shane Chaudhry, director of the National Commission for Justice and Peace in Pakistan.

“When charges are brought against Christians, the entire community suffers the consequences,” said Chaudhry.

Though Pakistan’s constitution nominally respects the right to religious freedom in the spirit of its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a 2018 U.S. State Department analysis ranked the predominantly Muslim country with China and Saudi Arabia in the top three of its list for worst religious persecutors.

It is estimated that Pakistan’s “blasphemy law” has resulted in the extrajudicial murders of over 60 people and that 200 other Pakistani Christians besides Asia Bibi have suffered under blasphemy charges, which often destroy the lives of the accused even when they do not result in capital punishment.

Pakistan ranks number 5 in Open Doors U.S.A.’s 2019 World Watch List and has the highest possible rating for violence against believers.

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Pelosi, Schumer warn of another government shutdown over Trump’s $8.6B wall proposal

(Worthy News) – President Trump’s pursuit of additional border wall funding in his fiscal 2020 budget proposal will only lead to another government shut down, warned Democratic leaders on Sunday.

Trump harmed millions when he “recklessy” shut down the government in pursuit of funds to build an expensive border wall, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a joint statement. But Congress refused and the president was “forced to admit defeat” and reopen the government, they added.

“The same thing will repeat itself if he tries this again,” they warned. “We hope he learned his lesson.” [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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Nasrallah: Israel is scared of war and is not prepared for one

(Worthy News) – Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Israel fears another war with the Lebanese Shi’ite group, and that the United States has imposed sanctions against it because the US and Israel “failed in their military campaigns.”

“What the Zion-American enemy failed to obtain during the military campaigns, it wants to achieve through imposing sanctions on the Syrian people, besieging the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, causing starvation in Yemen, and blacklisting Hezbollah,” Nasrallah said during a televised addressed marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Resistance Support Association, an organization that raises funds for the group.

“Israel is scared of a new war,” he said. “Every day you hear that Israel is not prepared for war in one way or another, and this week you saw Israel began using the American THAAD system. The Israelis do not believe in their defense systems and are afraid, and that is why they have set up US-made defense systems. The Israeli Army is afraid of war against us, and they know why. We’ll break them on the battlefield. No advanced missile defense systems will help.” [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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Trump’s Mideast envoy meets UN Security Council, offers no details on peace plan

(Worthy News) – US President Donald Trump’s Middle East adviser Jason Greenblatt met with the UN Security Council on Friday but gave no details of a much-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, diplomats said.

“There were no details,” Kuwaiti Ambassador Mansour al-Otaibi told reporters after the closed-door meeting. “There was a discussion from our side about the plan.”

The plan is expected to be released after the Israeli elections in April, but the Palestinians have already rejected it as biased in favor of Israel. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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Shi’ite militia leader in Iraq threatens U.S., slams ‘Zionist regime’

(Worthy News) – Two Shi’ite militia leaders spoke out over the weekend, with one threatening the US, and the other demanding American troops leave Iraq.

Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba spokesman Hashim al-Mousawi slammed the US and Israel after the US last week designated the group as a terrorist threat.

On March 5, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba on its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, under what the office calls its Counter Terrorism Designation.

The group, which is closely linked to Iran, in 2017 said US troops were a legitimate target. In February 2018, the group vowed to support Hezbollah in Lebanon in a war against Israel. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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Netanyahu warns Hamas: Don’t count on elections preventing major Gaza operation

(Worthy News) – Palestinians in the Gaza Strip should not assume that Israel won’t respond to their recent attacks with a major military operation in the territory just because of approaching elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, warning that the country will do whatever is necessary to restore security to southern communities.

Netanyahu’s remarks came hours after air force jets bombed Hamas targets in Gaza in the latest tit-for-tat fighting that has set the restive border region on edge. There was no immediate word on casualties from the strikes, which came after Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired a mortar shell at the Eshkol region of southern Israel on Saturday night.

“We have recently seen provocations and heads being raised from the direction of the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu said at the start to the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. “This has been done by dissidents, but this does not absolve Hamas. Hamas is responsible for everything that comes out of the Gaza Strip, and we respond accordingly, with assaults by Air Force planes against Hamas targets. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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