A New Perspective on Constantine

by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Mike Pompeo is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia this week to “build out a global coalition…prepared to push back against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” following the downing of a $160 million unmanned U.S. drone by Iran on June 20.

The tour of U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states by the U.S. Secretary of State will begin in Jeddah and end in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before Pompeo heads to India, South Korea, and Japan, as the U.S. and its Middle East Sunni allies circle the wagons against Shi’ite Iran’s aggression.

In a press conference Sunday ahead of his trip, Pompeo warned of a “significant set of new sanctions” against Iran to be announced this week designed to curb the Islamic Republic’s ability “to foment terror, to build out their nuclear weapons system, [and] to build out their missile program,” the U.S. has blamed Iran for a series of attacks on international vessels in the region’s oil transport waterways over the last month.

Simultaneous to Pompeo’s meetings with Gulf Arab leaders, John Bolton, Meir Ben-Shabbat, and Nikolai Patrushev, representing the security concerns of the U.S., Israel, and Russia respectively in the evolving Iran crisis, met in Jerusalem Monday to begin a two-day summit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “a very important summit for ensuring stability in the Middle East during turbulent times.”

Despite continually holding out the olive branch to Iran contingent upon the abandonment of its nuclear weapons program, Trump said in an NBC interview aired Sunday that conflict with Iran would mean “obliteration like you’ve never seen before” for the Islamic Republic.

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(Worthy News) – Twenty Democratic presidential candidates attending a Planned Parenthood forum on Saturday vowed to defend abortion rights under nearly any circumstance while largely ignoring nuances around the issue that have already roiled their party heading into the 2020 election.

The event sponsored by Planned Parenthood Action Fund – the group’s political arm – was the first of the election season centered on abortion. It came on the sidelines of the South Carolina Democratic Party’s state convention, a pivotal gathering of the party faithful in the South’s first primary state.

The candidates were united in decrying a series of tough, recent abortion restrictions approved by Republican-controlled legislatures around the country geared to ultimately provoke a Supreme Court case that could overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A Rhode Island late-term abortion bill appeared to be finished after legislators voted it down last month in committee, but it turns out the Reproductive Privacy Act wasn’t going anywhere.

Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo signed the bill Wednesday night minutes after it won final approval following a dramatic week of political finagling, adding Rhode Island to the list of blue states expanding abortion access in the 2019 legislative session.

While red states have drawn the lion’s share of media attention for bills curbing abortion access, Rhode Island became the sixth state this year to remove restrictions, joining blue states Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New York and Vermont. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Faith leaders and anti-abortion groups are ramping up their efforts to reelect President Trump, rewarding a president who has become an unlikely hero of the Christian right because of his commitment to socially conservative causes.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition will spend tens of millions of dollars on a voter mobilization effort that aims to register 1 million Christians in key battleground states and reach 30 million people nationwide.

The group, which is led by conservative activist Ralph Reed, will pump literature into more than 100,000 churches across 18 states, primarily focusing on the presidential battlegrounds but also with an eye on contested House and Senate races. [ Source: The Hill (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Days before the US-sponsored Bahrain conference, the White House released its proposal to boost the Palestinian economy by offering a $50 billion aid package that can only be implemented through an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

The 40-page plan, which Senior Adviser Jared Kushner will push in Manama next week, rests on three initiatives, according to the document — to “unleash the economic potential” of the Palestinians, “empower the Palestinians to realize their ambitions,” and “enhance Palestinian governance.”

The plan — formally dubbed “Peace to Prosperity” — said that the economic package, if implemented, would double the Palestinians’ gross domestic product, create more than one million jobs in the territories, reduce Palestinian unemployment to single digits (it was 31 percent in 2018, according to the World Bank), and cut the Palestinian poverty rate by 50%. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Arab League Sunday reaffirmed a pledge to pay $100 million a month to the Palestinian Authority, a day after Washington unveiled its Middle East peace plan.

Arab finance ministers meeting in Cairo renewed a promise first made in April to boost “the Palestinian Authority’s budget with a $100 million monthly transfer… as it faces financial burdens,” a statement said.

They also insisted, in an implicit rebuke to the White House’s economic plan, on the “complete Arab support to the Palestinian state’s economic, political and financial independence.” [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The IDF has reportedly stepped up its alert status amid concerns that Iran could try and harm Israel as tensions between Tehran and Washington spiral, Channel 12 reported Sunday.

According to the report, which did not cite any sources, the defense establishment has completed a series of steps in recent days to ensure that it can respond to any developments, or any attempt by Iran to hit Israel, either from Gaza, Lebanon or Syria.

Iranian proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza have tens of thousands of rockets that can strike deep into Israel. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Top White House officials on Sunday warned that Iran should not mistake U.S. discretion for weakness after President Trump called off airstrikes last week in retaliation for Tehran’s downing of an American drone, and officials confirmed over the weekend that the Pentagon already struck back with cyberattacks on Iranian military systems.

Vice President Mike Pence and White House National Security Adviser John R. Bolton stressed that military options remain on the table after Iran shot down an American surveillance drone last week, just days after accusing Tehran of carrying out limpet mine attacks on civilian oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr. Trump considered responding to the drone downing with targeted attacks on Iranian radar and missile batteries but pulled back after learning that 150 Iranians would be killed. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Iran has increased its offensive cyberattacks against the US government and critical infrastructure as tensions have grown between the two nations, cybersecurity firms say.

In recent weeks, hackers believed to be working for the Iranian government have targeted US government agencies, as well as sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, sending waves of spear-phishing emails, according to representatives of cybersecurity companies CrowdStrike and FireEye, which regularly track such activity.

It was not known if any of the hackers managed to gain access to the targeted networks with the emails, which typically mimic legitimate emails but contain malicious software. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – US President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States would impose “major” new sanctions on Iran in two days — a move sure to exacerbate tensions with the Islamic republic inflamed by the downing of a US spy plane.

Trump tamped down the threat of military action on Friday, when he called off retaliatory strikes at the last-minute because the response was not “proportionate” to the drone’s destruction over the Strait of Hormuz.

But he had said military action is still an option and brandished the threat of sanctions ever since. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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