A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hopes to use his first visit to Lebanon this week to step up pressure on Iran and its local ally, Hezbollah. But he could face resistance even from America’s local allies, who fear that pushing too hard could spark a backlash and endanger the tiny country’s fragile peace.

Hezbollah wields more power than ever in parliament and the government. Pompeo will meet Friday with President Michel Aoun and will also hold talks with Lebanon’s parliament speaker and foreign minister — all three of whom are close Hezbollah allies. He will also meet with Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a close Western ally who has been reluctant to confront Hezbollah.

“We’ll spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present to them,” Pompeo told reporters earlier this week. [ Source: Fox News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Amid talk of possible terror blacklisting of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, President Trump greeted Iranians around the world on the Persian new year (Nowruz), on Thursday, while condemning the “dictatorial” regime in Tehran, and saying he joined those praying for “the rebirth of liberty in Iran.”

Iranians, Trump said in a statement, were “sadly” not able to enter fully into the joy of the occasion because of “the heavy burden of the oppression of their country’s ruthless and corrupt regime.”

“We pledge never to turn a deaf ear to the calls of the Iranian people for freedom, and we will never forget their ongoing struggle for human rights,” Trump said. [ Source: CNS News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The number of religious “nones” in the United States are now statistically equal than the number of evangelicals, according to a political scientist who analyzed data from the recently released 2018 General Social Survey.

The GSS, a biennial project run by NORC (National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago, was released this week and showed how America’s religious landscape continues to change.

Ryan Burge, a political science researcher at Eastern Illinois University, analyzed data from the survey. He used a Reltrad (religious tradition) classification code to compensate for the oversample of African Americans in earlier waves of data. [ Source: Christian Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that reducing the federal debt needs to return to the forefront of the agenda, warning that the government’s finances are unsustainable.

“I do think that deficits matter and do think it’s not really controversial to say our debt can’t grow faster than our economy indefinitely — and that’s what it’s doing right now,” Powell said at a press conference following the central bank’s monetary policy decision. “I’d like to see a greater focus on that over time.”

Deficit reduction has fallen from the agenda of Congress and the White House in the Trump era, even as the federal debt held by the public has risen to near $16 trillion and deficits have crept upward back to the $1 trillion level. Trump and Congress have cut taxes and increased spending. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) concluded its meeting at 2 PM ET today and announced that the Federal Reserve would not raise fed fund rates. The revised dot plot—which records individual committee members’ projections for where interest rates will be at year-end—indicated that the Fed will pause any further rate hikes until 2020.

Nine members moved their dots to predict zero hikes in 2019, joining two members who already shared that dovish view.

The decision to pause rate increases comes amid a significant downward revision to gross domestic product (GDP) growth projections: the Fed said it now expects the U.S. economy to grow at a rate of 2.1 percent this year, lower than the 2.3 percent it had projected at the December meeting. [ Source: Yahoo (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Midwestern farmers have been gambling they could ride out the U.S.-China trade war by storing their corn and soybeans anywhere they could – in bins, plastic tubes, in barns or even outside.

Now, the unthinkable has happened. Record floods have devastated a wide swath of the Farm Belt across Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and several other states. Early estimates of lost crops and livestock are approaching $1 billion in Nebraska alone. With more flooding expected, damages are expected to climb much higher for the region.

As river levels rose, spilling over levees and swallowing up townships, farmers watched helplessly as the waters consumed not only their fields, but their stockpiles of grain, the one thing that can stand between them and financial ruin. [ Source (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday that addresses campus free speech as well as other higher education issues, according to several sources familiar with the White House’s plans.

Trump said earlier this month he would issue an executive order “requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars.”

But it’s not clear how the policy set to be unveiled on Thursday would work. Trump, who previously threatened to withdraw federal funding to the University of California, Berkeley, has said he wants “very costly” penalties for schools that don’t “support free speech.” At the CPAC speech where he mentioned the executive order, he brought to the stage Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who was punched in the face while recruiting on the UC Berkeley campus for the conservative youth group Turning Point USA. [ Source: Politico (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Andrew Gillum announced a plan Wednesday to register and turn-out 1 million new and low-propensity Florida voters in an effort to crush President Donald Trump’s reelection chances in the nation’s largest swing state.

“Voter registration is red flag No. 1,” the former Tallahassee mayor told POLITICO, calling increased voter registration crucial to the Democratic Party’s ability to survive and thrive in Florida.

“We’re looking at a target of 1 million,” he said. “We’ve got over 3 million people eligible to vote, and that’s to say nothing of the 1.4 million returning citizens” — former felons in line to have their voting rights restored under a constitutional amendment approved by voters last year. [ Source: Politico (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Rwanda has proposed the world’s first country-wide DNA database, a project that will involve collecting samples from all of the country’s 12 million citizens in an effort to crack down on crime.

The scheme has prompted concerns from human rights campaigners who believe the database could be misused by the government and violate international human rights laws.

Plans for the database were announced by Rwanda’s Minister for Justice and Attorney General, Johnston Busingye. [ Source: UK Independent (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Israel and the U.S. have successfully intercepted a series of medium to long-range ballistic missiles in a joint drill.

The missile test in southern Israel was conducted Tuesday by the Defense Ministry along with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Rafael, an Israeli defense technology company.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded the tests, noting that Israel has earned a place “among global leaders” in the development of missile defenses. [ Source: Israel Hayom (Read More…) ]

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