A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – The 2020 budget proposal that the White House sent to Congress includes the full $3.3 billion aid in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by President Obama.

Israel can rest easy: The spending cuts axe being wielded by US President Donald Trump has so far spared military aid to Israel. Israel is due to receive $3.3 billion under the 2020 budget proposal that the White House sent to Congress yesterday.

The aid to Israel is set out in a memorandum of understanding signed by President Obama in his last year in office. [ Source: Globes (Read More…) ]

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A cross was recently removed from Zhongxin Church in Henan, Province, China, and replaced with a Chinese flag, as the Chinese government continues its campaign to reinvent Christianity.

Pastor Li Juncai and three members, Wao Raoyun, Bai Yun, and Ma Yanfang, were taken into custody on February 20th when law enforcement “forcibly destroyed the lock and opened the gate” to the church, according to a local witness.

A state-registered church until 2013, Zhongxin since withdrew its membership to the communist party’s “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” (TSPM), which forbids member churches from preaching the cross or the resurrection.

According to Pastor Li’s son, his father was charged by police with “disrupting public service” when he requested the officials to explain their legal jurisdiction in entering the church and removing the cross.

Aside from 4,000 crosses removed from churches in Henan province, an additional 1,400 Christian items have been destroyed in Xiayi County, as the government focuses on replacing Christian religious iconography with communist party symbolism.

“The government is forcing us to tear up portraits of the Lord Jesus,” explained the wife of an elderly Xiayi County resident in October of last year after police forcibly entered her home and told her husband his social benefits would be taken away if he did not put up a portrait of Chinese communist founder Mao Zedong.

The Chinese government has repeatedly outlined its plan to “Sinicize” Christianity, or fit it to Chinese communist ideology, with President Xi Jinping citing the need for the state to “actively guide the adaptation of religions to socialist society” in an April 2016 speech.

China has risen 16 places in just one year on Open Doors U.S.A.’s recently published 2019 World Watch List for Christian persecution.

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(Worthy News) – Russia’s defense minister says the military has commissioned more than 1,000 new aircraft and thousands of tanks in the past few years.

Sergei Shoigu boasted of the military’s achievements during six years on the job, saying Monday in a speech to lawmakers that the armed forces have turned into a mobile force capable of projecting power abroad.

Shoigu noted that the military received more than 1,000 warplanes and combat helicopters and over 3,700 tanks in 2012-2018. He added that the army has formed 10 brigades armed with state-of-the-art Iskander missiles. [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani began a historic three-day visit to Iraq Monday to strengthen the nations’ relationship amid sanctions and isolation efforts by the United States.

Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the visit will help improve relations between the two nations that have long had an adversarial relationship, including a war between 1980 and 1988.

Rouhani told reporters Monday a stronger relationship with Baghdad is welcome, despite Iraq’s close ties with the United States and its efforts to fight the Islamic State. [ Source: UPI (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday vowed to push for U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, in what would represent a new contentious political gift to Israel from the Trump administration.

The South Carolina Republican said he aimed to change the current U.S.-designation of the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, as disputed territory. He spoke during a tour of the frontier with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The Golan is not disputed. It is in the hands of Israel and will always remain in the hands of Israel,” Graham said from a cliff overlooking Syria, where Syrian flags could be seen fluttering in the distance on buildings damaged in the country’s civil war. “My goal is to try to explain this to the administration,” he said. [ Source: Ynet News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – President Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget projects that he would add nearly as much to the national debt in eight years as former President Barack Obama did during his tenure.

The proposed trillions in added debt proposed by the administration run counter to Trump’s criticisms of Obama and congressional Democrats.

Trump’s budget runs trillion dollar deficits through 2022, despite major proposed cuts to entitlements and other domestic spending. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The attorneys for a church in Seattle filed a federal lawsuit on Friday against Washington state officials for forcing churches to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) lawyers representing Cedar Park Assembly of God, challenged the constitutionality and legality of a new state mandate that requires the Seattle-area church to fund abortion if it provides its staff members access to group health insurance.

“No church should be coerced to pay for abortions, least of all a church that dedicates its ministry to protecting and celebrating life,” ADF Legal Counsel Elissa Graves said in a press release. “Cedar Park believes and teaches that every human life begins at conception and is worthy of protection at every point until natural death.” [ Source: CBN News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Islamic State’s final enclave in eastern Syria was pounded with air strikes and artillery on Monday in a U.S.-backed assault aimed at wiping out the last shred of its territorial rule that once spanned a third of Syria and Iraq.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said earlier its fighters were encountering sniper fire and landmines and advancing slowly to avoid losses. The most hardened IS foreign fighters are still holed up in the area, the SDF has said.

The defeat of Islamic State at Baghouz will mark a milestone in the campaign against the jihadist group, ending its control of populated territory in the area straddling Iraq and Syria where it suddenly expanded in 2014 and declared a caliphate. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – British Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday that she had secured legal guarantees from the European Union that should convince British lawmakers to back her Brexit deal.

The guarantees would ensure that the deal’s most controversial provision, the so-called Irish backstop, would only apply temporarily after the UK leaves the EU on March 29.

“MPs were clear that legal changes were needed to the [Irish] backstop. Today we have secured legal changes,” May told reporters at a joint press conference with EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. [ Source: Deutche Welle (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Senate Republicans are preparing to change the rules to cut down on the time it takes to confirm hundreds of President Trump’s nominees later this month.

GOP senators said Monday that they expect the rules change proposal will come up this month as the caucus mulls deploying the “nuclear option” to force the measure through with only a simple majority instead of 60 votes.

The rules change, spearheaded by Blunt and GOP Sen. James Lankford (Okla.), would reduce the amount of debate time required for district court judges and hundreds of executive nominees once they’ve shown they can break a filibuster and have the support needed to be confirmed. [ Source: The Hill (Read More…) ]

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