A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – Israeli intelligence agencies have prevented dozens of Islamic State terror group and Iran-sponsored attacks in various countries around the world by providing local authorities with key information, according to a television report on Tuesday.

The Mossad intelligence agency and the Military Intelligence Directorate supplied information that thwarted 50 attacks in 20 countries over the past three years, the Channel 12 report said.

One of the countries able to foil attacks based on Israeli intelligence was Turkey, whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a fierce critic of Israel, in particular regarding Palestinian issues. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Amid heightened tensions between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza-based terror group launched a highly unusual training exercise Tuesday night that simulated the capture of IDF special forces operating in the territory.

Gazans reported a spike in the movement of armed personnel in the streets, including along the border with Israel, before the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in the territory announced it was a military drill.

The drill saw the sudden raising of the alert level among all security agencies throughout the Strip, a general mobilizing of reserve personnel to the security services, the deployment of roadblocks, and the closure by Hamas of all land crossings and seaports[ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]. Fishermen were told they could not set out to sea.

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(Worthy News) – The United States is moving forward with plans to form a military coalition to safeguard strategic shipping lanes off Iran and Yemen amid raised tensions with Iranian leaders.

Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on July 9 that the Pentagon would provide command and surveillance assets for the coalition.

Allied nations joining the coalition would patrol waters near the U.S. command ships and escort commercial vessels with their nation’s flags through the heavily traveled waters between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. [ Source: Radio Free Europe (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The Trump administration is gearing up to expedite initial screenings of immigrants seeking asylum, moving to interview immigrants within one calendar day.

Asylum officers usually wait about 48 hours to interview and hear the case of an immigrant who has been detained after crossing into the United States.

However, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli has directed officers to interview detained immigrant within one calendar day. The news site Buzzfeed, which said it had obtained a copy of the directive released to CIS employees, first reported the policy change Monday. [ Source: VOA News (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday threatened he would veto a massive defense bill being considered by the House of Representatives, saying it provides less money than he wants for the military and disagreeing with some of its policy provisions.

The version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, up for a vote in the Democratic-led House sets $733 billion in military spending, $17 billion less than Trump’s fiscal-year 2020 budget request.

The Republican-led Senate last month passed its version of the measure, authorizing $750 billion for the Pentagon. Once the House passes its bill, the two chambers must come up with a compromise bill, which must pass both before being sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law or veto. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A judge in New York on Tuesday denied the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to shake up the legal team that was handling cases on the 2020 Census, adding another hurdle to the Trump administration’s bid to put a contentious citizenship question on the survey.

The department attempted to change the team of lawyers after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 27 against the first attempt by President Donald Trump’s administration to add the citizenship question, calling the rationale “contrived.”

But the Supreme Court left open the possibility that the question could be added if the government provided a different rationale. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Secret meetings between United States officials and Iranian representatives were conducted in a hotel in Erbil, Iraq, i24News reported Tuesday evening. The Iranian representatives are led by Hassan Khomenei, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei.

The Iranian delegation also included two officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iraj Masjedi, Iran’s special envoy to Iraq, according to the report.

i24News also said that sources suggest that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has experienced division recently, suggesting that the Islamic Republic is undergoing a soft coup. [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – More information has surfaced regarding the lockup of 100 members of the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China, in December.

49-year-old Liao Qiang, his 23-year-old daughter, and four other family members escaped to Taiwan last week, where they were interviewed at a Presbyterian church service in Tapei about the conditions that led to and followed their initial arrests on December 9 and 10.

“I knew it was no longer safe for us [in China], and that my children were most in danger,” Liao told The Associated Press, saying his daughter had had to notify Chinese officials of her location through social media whenever she left the house in the months following their arrest, while he himself was asked to sign a confession renouncing his faith and involvement in the church.

“If our elders decided to break up the church, then I can accept it. But it’s not up to [the government] to say it’s evil or illegal,” he told reporters.

Liao’s words echoed those of his pastor, Wang Yi, whose open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping was released by members of Early Rain Covenant church after he was taken into custody in December.

“In the modern totalitarian state that persecutes the church and resists the gospel, the disobedience of faith is an inevitable part of the gospel movement,” Yi had written in the letter originally penned in September with directions to church members to publish it in case of his disappearance.

Wang Yi’s wife, Jiang Rong was released on bail last month, but the fate of the rest of Early Covenant Church is still relatively unknown.

Liao Qiang and his family await a request for asylum in the US, and are receiving legal counsel from the Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, who hope to make the case to the Taiwanese government that the plight of the family constitutes a humanitarian case of religious persecution.

The case will have to be made expeditiously, as the family only has a 15-day tourist visa.

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The Egyptian government on Monday approved legalization of 127 churches, the culmination of a 2016 law by which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi sought to make the world’s largest Arab nation more officially inclusive of Coptic Christianity.

A presidential committee chaired by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly oversaw the process, bringing the total number of formerly unlicensed churches now granted legal status to 1,021.

On January 7th, 2019, the day on which Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas, President el-Sisi attended the inauguration ceremony of the Middle East’s largest Christian church—having gifted the building to the Coptic community himself—in what many saw as a turning of the tide in Egyptian politics.

The gesture seemed to dovetail with a 2017 meeting in which el-Sisi hosted a delegation of American Evangelical leaders, who afterward glowed with praise for the ostensibly tolerant spirit of the Egyptian leader. El-Sisi reportedly asked a group that included Johnnie Moore, Joel Rosenberg, and Michele Bachmann to pray for him in his battle against radical Islam.

Others familiar with the situation of Christians in Egypt remained unconvinced by the recent public relations campaign, as Christian converts from Islam, according to Open Doors USA’s fact sheet for Egypt, have no way of getting their conversions officially recognized by the government, thus putting them in a sort of legal no man’s land where they have frequently become prey to Muslim backlash and police reluctant to punish the crimes against them.

“While the upgrade in public rhetoric on religious tolerance coming out of Egypt’s presidential office is important in and of itself, it has not lead to a positive change in the situation on the ground,” Sara Salama, president of Coptic Voice, a non-profit supporting the Egyptian diaspora community, told National Review in June after Christians suffered Muslim mob violence a couple weeks straight.

It’s estimated that 90% of Egypt is Muslim, with Coptic Christians comprising 90% of the 10% leftover who practice minority religions, and evangelicals, Catholics, and heterodox Muslims representing less than a percentage of the population.

Egypt remains 16th on Open Doors USA’s World Watchlist for severe Christian persecution.

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Eight Iranian Christians were arrested by Iranian intelligence officials at the beginning of July, and are currently being held at an undisclosed Intelligence Ministry site in Bushehr, a southern port city on the Persian Gulf.

The houses and workplaces of the Christians were ransacked, and Bibles, cell phones, hard drives, IDs, credit cards and everything else containing the personal information of the detainees taken as evidence against the recent converts, according to Article 18, a religious freedom organization.

Khatoon Fatolahzadeh, an elderly woman, was released due to her age after six cars carrying Iranian intelligence agents surrounded her house.

A State Department report released at the end of June found that little to no religious freedom existed in Iran, with Christian converts punished as apostatizing or heretical Muslims, the religious status of citizens having been enshrined in Iranian law as a fixed and unchanging category after the 1979 revolution.

A strict “prohibition on proselytizing” enforced through panoptic Iranian intelligence services, who monitor and track converts, was another find of the report.

On April 16 other Christians in the same city lost their appeals and were sentenced for “propaganda activities against the regime through the formation of house churches.”

Iran is currently number 9 on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List for Christian persecution.

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