A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Syria said Israeli jets attacked several military sites near the capital Damascus and the central city of Homs early Monday, killing four civilians, including an infant.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said Israel launched strikes both from the air and sea, targeting Iranian-linked bases near Homs and at least 10 targets near Damascus, including a base where Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces are headquartered and a weapons research center.

Israel did not comment on the attack — one of the most extensive series of strikes in several months, coming less than a week after a trilateral summit with Russia and the United States concerning Tehran’s activities and military presence in the region. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Europe has found a way of circumventing U.S. sanctions on Iran. The governments of France, Germany and the United Kingdom have developed a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to enable European businesses to maintain non-dollar trade with Iran without breaking U.S. sanctions. That SPV, known as INSTEX, is now up and running.

The three governments announced the successful implementation of INSTEX at a meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on June 28, 2019. The meeting was chaired on behalf of the EU by the Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Helga Schmid, and was attended by representatives of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Iran.

In a statement, Schmid said:

France, Germany and the United Kingdom informed participants that INSTEX had been made operational and available to all EU Member States and that the first transactions are being processed. Ongoing complementary cooperation with the Iranian corresponding entity (STFI), which has already been established, will speed up. They confirmed that some EU Member States were in the process of joining INSTEX as shareholders, the special purpose vehicle aimed at facilitating legitimate business with Iran. They are also working to open INSTEX to economic operators from third countries. [ Source: Forbes (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The United States and China agreed on Saturday to restart trade talks after President Donald Trump offered concessions including no new tariffs and an easing of restrictions on tech company Huawei in order to reduce tensions with Beijing.

China agreed to make unspecified new purchases of U.S. farm products and return to the negotiating table, Trump said. No deadline was set for progress on a deal, and the world’s two largest economies remain at odds over significant parts of an agreement.

The last major round of talks collapsed in May. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A Christian evangelist in India, who felt called to minister to sick people in hospitals, was arrested for “forced conversions” after a local religious leader tipped the police to the fact he was passing out pamphlets.

Boban Koshy, a member of the Faith Family Church, felt called to give healing words to sick people under the rubric of Matthew 25:36, “I was sick, and you visited me,” and was on his way to Kottayam Medical College during the six hours of the day he tends to devote to visiting hospitals when he was accosted on the road by an unwelcome fellow traveler.

The man, part of one of the organizations for Hindu zealotry sprawling across India in the wake of Narendra Modi’s reelection in May, said that Boban was forcing conversions to Christianity. Police arrived shortly after to bring the evangelist in for questioning before releasing him, though not without continuing to monitor him, Boban said.

Persecution Relief recorded 477 incidents of hate crimes against Christians in India in 2018, and 180 in the first 5 months of 2019 alone, 21 of which, from both years, occurred in Kerala State, where Boban was arrested.

India’s 1949 constitution nominally guarantees the freedom of religion, though many Indian states have supplemental “anti-conversion” laws that forbid manipulated conversions, allowing judges the interpretive license to attribute bad faith to evangelists any time a person converts from Hinduism to Christianity.

Boban is doing okay after his incident and resting in quiet confidence in the Lord, according to Persecution Relief, but asks for prayer for his son and daughter, who he says need jobs.

The post Indian Believer Called to Comfort the Sick Arrested and Monitored by Police appeared first on Worthy Christian News.

by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper met with NATO officials in Brussels Thursday, the same day special envoy Brian Hook was in Paris to drum up support from nuclear deal partners for the US’s position on Iran.

In a closed-door session, Esper assured allies that the US was not looking for war with the Islamic Republic, and was ready to hammer out an updated nuclear agreement “with no preconditions,” according to NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.

“One important message is that the United States has so clearly stated that they don’t want a war,” Stoltenberg told reporters after the meeting of Esper’s comments, which reportedly opened with the US intention to avoid a military conflict in the Middle East.

On Friday, European signatories to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) met with Iranian leaders in Vienna to espouse the unanimous opinion that Iran must stay in the nuclear deal even in spite of US sanctions, the meeting yielding a promise from Iran to do so, according to a Chinese delegate, despite former threats by the Persian Gulf country to begin enriching uranium beyond allowed levels.

Hook, in London the same day following his Paris stop, reiterated to reporters the US’s plan to deprive Iran of $50 billion in oil assets and to penalize all transactions between European companies and Iran, promising the US will also begin looking into secretive channels of oil trade between Iran and China.

The post American Delegates Reiterate US 'Maximum Pressure" Campaign on Iran to Allies, While Iran Agrees to Stay in Nuclear Deal appeared first on Worthy Christian News.

by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A $4.6 billion aid package will head to the southern border to alleviate worsening conditions for migrants, following a 305-102 vote that capped gridlock in Congress and a rift in the Democratic party.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had originally rallied Democrats to oppose the bill, crafting her own version in its place that included provisions to reduce funding to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, reduce border wall funding, and require migrant facilities not meeting certain health standards to be shut down within 6 months.

Pelosi relented on Thursday after 18 Democrats from the centrist Problem Solvers Coalition refused to support the new bill and voted in favor of Trump’s, reasoning that “at the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available.”

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), from the progressive wing of the party, accused the moderate Democrats of the Problem Solvers Caucus of “child abuse” for not supporting Pelosi’s version of the bill, which they had argued would infringe on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s ability to address human trafficking, and ultimately mean no funding got to the children in need due to the unlikelihood of Trump approving it.

“Those kids within a day are going to start getting some of the relief they need. That’s what I call good government. I don’t call that child abuse,” responded Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D-N.J.), a Problem Solvers member.

Apprehensions at the border spiked to their highest level in over a decade in May, simultaneous to the Trump administration disclosing that the Office of Refugee Resettlement will be almost completely bereft of funds by July.

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the Trump administration to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire Thursday, leading Trump to suggest a delay to the census count beyond April of next year.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in the majority decision, cited the failure of the administration to provide a “reasoned” explanation of why it wanted to do so, seeing its claim that citizenship data would help in enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as “contrived.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, dissented, calling the decision’s presumption of foul play on the part of the administration a slippery slope rooted in bad faith.

“Unable to identify any legal problem with the Secretary’s reasoning, the Court imputes one by concluding that he must not be telling the truth,” Thomas wrote in his rebuttal, which recommended the court reverse its decision. “With today’s decision, the court has opened a Pandora’s box of pretext-based challenges in administrative law,” he further added.

Trump echoed Thomas’s sentiment in a tweet Thursday to the effect that “only in America” is a government not allowed to ask whether respondents are citizens in a national census, saying he was seeking the counsel of lawyers to see whether the census could be delayed until the Supreme Court was supplied with enough information to permit the addition of the question.

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