A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Iranian officials could sabotage U.S. efforts to broker a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, according to one of President Trump’s top advisers on the issue.

“Iran is very likely a significant spoiler to our efforts — if we’re lucky enough to actually get traction on negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians,” Jason Greenblatt, the White House special representative for international negotiations, said Monday.

“It’s a little bit connected to what’s going on with Iran, generally; there are other spoilers as well,” Greenblatt told the Christians United for Israel Annual Summit in Washington, D.C. “We’re just going to have to do everything we can to make sure that they don’t undermine our efforts, they don’t cause mischief, significant trouble. We are watching it closely, but it’s not something I can discuss in public.” [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Iran has enriched uranium beyond a 3.67% purity limit set by its deal with major powers, the UN nuclear watchdog policing the deal said on Monday, confirming a move previously announced by Tehran.

“[International Atomic Energy Agency] Director General Yukiya Amano has informed the IAEA Board of Governors that Agency inspectors on July 8 verified that Iran is enriching uranium above 3.67% U-235,” an IAEA spokesman said.

A report to member states obtained by Reuters said that the agency had verified the enrichment level using online enrichment monitors, and that samples had also been taken on Monday for analysis. [ Source: Israel Hayom (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The United States and China are set to relaunch trade talks this week after a two-month hiatus, but a year after their trade war began there is little sign their differences have narrowed.

After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Japan just in late June, U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to suspend a new round of tariffs on $300 billion worth of imported Chinese consumer goods while the two sides resumed negotiations.

Trump said then that China would restart large purchases of U.S. agricultural commodities, and the United States would ease some export restrictions on Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL]. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Tehran warned Tuesday that Britain’s seizure of an Iranian oil tanker will not go “unanswered” after denying earlier in the week that the ship detained in Gibraltar was carrying crude to Syria, which would put it in violation of EU sanctions.

According to the semi-official Tasnim news agency, cited by Reuters, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, said that Iran would respond if necessary to the ship’s detention.

“Capture of the Iranian oil tanker based on fabricated excuses … will not be unanswered and when necessary Tehran will give an appropriate answer,” Bagheri said. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The final version of a UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office report was released at the beginning of July, detailing Christian persecution worldwide and citing a failure of Western governments to even recognize it.

The report, originally commissioned by UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt in December of last year, recommends the UK place sanctions on countries where Christian persecution is widespread, among other stopgap measures it says are designed to halt a process coming close to “genocide.”

Among errors in the U.K.’s judgment regarding Christian persecution was a “religion-blind” policy toward foreign aid, which often contributed, for example, to radical Muslim education in countries like Pakistan that fueled persecution toward Christians.

As part of this pattern, the report found that Christian persecution had “to some significant extent been overlooked in the West”.

“Quite rightly, witnesses felt, there was an outcry from the UK government over the Rohingya Muslim crisis in Myanmar, but politicians and media said very little about the Christian minority groups who were targeted as much as the Rohingyas, and who also had to leave their homes and country,” wrote Bishop of Truro Philip Mount Stephen, who gathered evidence for and composed the report.

In terms of statistics gathered from Christian NGOs and foreign aid workers, the report notes that of 197 countries in the world, 144 reflect significant trends of Christian persecution, while 80% of the people persecuted for their faith worldwide are Christians.

“The sense of misguided political correctness that has stopped us standing up for Christians overseas must end,” said Foreign Secretary Hunt, responding to the report’s claim that Christians are the most persecuted faith in the world.

Proposals for the protection of Christians in the report included the adoption of a UN security council resolution, religious literacy training on the extent of Christian persecution for Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) workers, and coinage of a term comparable to “Islamophobia” and “Antisemitism” to denote the unbridled hatred and persecution of Christians going on around the world.

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(Worthy News) – A house church in India was violently attacked Sunday, June 30th during a worship service, marking the third Sunday in a row the church was harassed by Hindu radicals.

Mrs. Sheeja, a 13-year veteran of house church planting, had already told the 15 members of her church near Hyderabad not to sing or use musical instruments so as not to stir up the ire of local radicals all too zealous for a reason to close down Christian worship.

“I have asked my church members not to clap their hands during the praise and worship time to avoid any kind of noise,” Sheeja told International Christian Concern.

Her attempt to appease the spirit of persecution was ultimately in vain, as four men stormed the hall where the believers met for worship and began threatening violence if they did not disband.

In May Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a two-thirds majority in India’s parliamentary elections, leading many Christians to fear a change in the Indian constitution–which nominally recognizes freedom of religion–would soon be in the works, meaning deeper entrenchment of religious persecution in India.

“Under a new ‘Hindu Constitution’ which Modi and his party wants to implement, all these freedoms we take for granted may not exist,” said the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations shortly after the BJP election victory.

Since Modi’s initial election in 2014, India has jumped 18 spots on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List for Christian persecution, from 28th to 10th.

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(Worthy News) – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is gearing up to deport more than one million illegal immigrants who have been denied asylum or otherwise have final removal orders.

Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli defended the plan during a Sunday appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, the New York Daily News reports.

ICE is “ready to just perform their mission, which is to go and find, detain and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders,” Cuccinelli said. [ Source: Washington Free Beacon (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo announced today that the U.S. Department of State has created the ‘Commission on Unalienable Rights,’ which is designed to advise the Secretary on “human rights grounded in our nation’s founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Pompeo.

“The commission is composed of human rights experts, philosophers, and activists, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents of varied background and beliefs, who will provide me with advice on human rights grounded in our nation’s founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said the secretary at the State Department.

“It’s a sad commentary on our times that more than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, gross violations continue throughout the world, sometimes even in the name of human rights,” he said. “[T]he time is right for an informed review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy.” [ Source: CNS News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Attorney General William Barr said Monday that he believes the Trump administration can legally add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, though the Supreme Court ruled against its inclusion last month.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said he has been in regular contact with President Trump about the question, which the president is determined to see featured on the decennial survey.

“I agree with him that the Supreme Court decision was wrong,” Barr told the AP. The attorney general added that he thinks there is “an opportunity potentially to cure the lack of clarity that was the problem and we might as well take a shot at doing that.” [ Source: The Hill (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A federal appeals court on Monday declared a Florida county’s ban on atheists and other non-religious groups from giving invocations before public meetings unconstitutional, even as it ordered the narrowing of an injunction against the practice.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Brevard County violated the First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause” by allowing clerics from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other monotheistic religions and denominations deliver invocations at county commissioner meetings, while excluding atheists, secular humanists and others deemed outside the “mainstream.”

“Brevard County’s haphazard selection process categorically excludes certain faiths – some monotheistic and apparently all polytheistic ones – based on their belief systems,” Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus wrote for a three-judge panel. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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