CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
A free service of Jesus Christ is Lord Ministries
News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
SPECIAL EDITION March 21, 2014
THE FIVE MAJOR STORIES UNTIL 1:30 CT
1. U.N. REPORT: IRAN CONTINUES TO PERSECUTE CHRISTIANS
A new report from the United Nations says the election last year of self-professed moderate President Hassan Rouhani has not brought Iran’s Christians any relief. In fact, the Islamic Republic’s Bible believers are being more persecuted than ever. The detailed report finds Iran has continued to imprison Christians for their faith and designated house churches and evangelical Christians as “threats to national security.” At least 49 Christians were among 307 religious minorities being held in Iranian jails as of January 2014, noted the UN, which also blasted the regime for its hostility to Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians and Dervish Muslims.
“These are indicators that President Rouhani has no influence over hard-liners, who remain fully in charge of the judiciary and security apparatus, government entities that are responsible for the most severe abuses against religious minorities,” Dwight Bashir, deputy director for policy at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom told FoxNews.com.
Among the Christians held in Iranian prisons is American citizen and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, who is serving an eight-year prison term for alleged crimes related to his faith. President Obama has called for Abedini’s release, even as his administration has negotiated a disarmament deal with Iran.
“This report is as an important reminder about the true nature of the Iranian regime,” Senator Mark Kirk, (R-III), told FoxNews.com. “We can’t pretend we are negotiating with Western moderates – we are negotiating with Islamic radicals who persecute Christians, Baha’is, other religious and ethnic minorities and women, while denying all of its citizens basic human rights — including the freedom of speech and assembly.”
In 2013, Iranian authorities arrested “at least 42 Christians, of whom 35 were convicted for participation in informal “house churches,” in association with churches outside the Islamic Republic of Iran, perceived or real evangelical activity and other standard Christian activities.”
Iran’s opaque justice system imposed prison sentences on Christians ranging from one to ten years. “Under the law, religious minorities, including recognized Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians, also face discrimination in the judicial system, such as harsher punishments,” said Shaheed, who is an internationally recognized expert on human rights.
While the persecution detailed in the report includes wrongful imprisonment and even death sentences, it also takes more subtle forms. Ahmed Shaheed, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, said Iranian Christians have reported having viruses planted on their computers after visiting Christian websites.
Iran’s regime issued a flurry of angry responses to Shaheed’s report. “The enemies’ ploy is a vicious circle, which changes according to the political situation,” Mohammed Javad Larajani, head of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, told the state-controlled Tehran Times. Larajani has in the past been an advocate of the stoning of women as punishment and called for Israel’s destruction near the Holocaust memorial in Berlin in 2008.
Saba Farzan, a German-Iranian journalist and director of political studies at the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, told FoxNews.com: “The situation of Christians and other religious minorities in Iran is very dire because the Iranian regime is a Sharia state. This dictatorship oppresses viciously all these precious groups with the abhorrent justification of Islamic law [Sharia] and by that it violates Iran’s constitution and a long-lasting tradition within Persian culture of peaceful tolerance and respect toward fellow Iranians with diverse religious backgrounds,” Farzan said.
Such treatment of Christians belies Rouhani’s stated policies, noted Morad Mokhtari, an Iranian who converted to Christianity in 1988 in Tehran and works as a human rights researcher at the New Haven-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. Mokhtari told FoxNews.com that in Rouhani’s December Draft Citizens Rights Charter, the document states “Holding and attending religious rituals of the religions identified in the constitution [Christianity, Jewish, Zoroastrian] is permitted.” Mokhtari described the charter as the “good side” of Rouhani’s attitude toward some minorities but, practically speaking, the impact has been non-existent.
“For the Christians who are identified as religious minorities in the constitution, there is still no equal rights to hold and attend to their religious services even in official churches,” Mokhtari said. “Since Rouhani got power, at least two official Protestant churches in Tehran have been banned to hold any religious services in the Persian language.”
Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
2. BEWARE: THAT’S NOT AVON CALLING AND IT ISN’T THE IRS
The largest phone scam the Internal Revenue Service has ever seen has targeted more than 20,000 taxpayers, the agency’s inspector general said Thursday. Thousands of victims have lost a total of more than $1 million. As part of the scam, fake IRS agents call taxpayers, claim they owe taxes, and demand payment using a prepaid debit card or a wire transfer. Those who refuse are threatened with arrest, deportation or loss of a business or driver’s license, said J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
Real IRS agents usually contact people first by mail, George said. And they don’t demand payment by debit card, credit card or wire transfer.
The inspector general’s office started receiving complaints about the scam in August. Immigrants were the primary target early on, the IG’s office said. But the scam has since become more widespread.
Tax scams often escalate during filing season, George said. People have been targeted in nearly every state. “This is the largest scam of its kind that we have ever seen.The increasing number of people receiving these unsolicited calls from individuals who fraudulently claim to represent the IRS is alarming.”
The script is similar in many calls, leading investigators to believe they are connected. The inspector general’s office is working with major phone carriers to try to track the origins of the calls, the IG’s office said. The scam has been effective in part because the fake agents mask their caller ID, making it look like the call is coming from the IRS, George said. In some cases, fake agents know the last four digits of Social Security numbers, and follow up with official-looking emails.
They request prepaid debit cards because they are harder to trace than bank cards. Prepaid debit cards are different from bank cards because they are not connected to a bank account. Instead, consumers buy the cards at stores, and use them just like a bank card, until the money runs out or they add more.
George said, “If someone unexpectedly calls claiming to be from the IRS and uses threatening language if you don’t pay immediately, that is a sign that it really isn’t the IRS calling,”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
3. MILITARY CUTS TO THE COAST GUARD MAY COST OUR NATION MORE
Budget cuts at the Coast Guard are coming at an unfortunate time. As the service, like other branches of the military, makes do with less, drug smugglers are increasingly turning to the high seas — and challenging the Coast Guard’s already strained resources. Officials tell Fox News that drug smugglers are moving some of their operations away from the U.S.-Mexico land border and out into the ocean where it’s easier to avoid law enforcement. And for U.S. patrollers, that theater is becoming harder and harder to defend.
Budget cuts at the Coast Guard are coming at an unfortunate time. As the service, like other branches of the military, makes do with less, drug smugglers are increasingly turning to the high seas — and challenging the Coast Guard’s already strained resources. Officials tell Fox News that drug smugglers are moving some of their operations away from the U.S.-Mexico land border and out into the ocean where it’s easier to avoid law enforcement. And for U.S. patrollers, that theater is becoming harder and harder to defend.
“As the Department of Homeland Security became more effective at stopping smuggling across the land borders, the cartels shifted some of the traffic to the maritime, so that is why we saw an increase in smuggling by boats,” said Capt. Jim Jenkins, Coast Guard commander for Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Casey Hehr, chief of law enforcement for the same sector, told Fox News that tracking the traffickers is like “finding a needle in the haystack.” The Coast Guard patrols 95,000 miles of coastline, covering 4.5 million square miles of maritime area. “There’s thousands of … square miles of water that we are actually responsible for securing,” Hehr said.
Overall, federal spending cuts have forced the Coast Guard to reduce its operating costs by 25 percent. While helping the government reach deficit reduction targets, this is also threatening efforts to reach President Obama’s goal of intercepting 40 percent of illicit drug shipments by 2015.
“We deal with the assets and the hours that we have, and we try to use them as best we can to stop the smuggling,” Hehr said. Over the last several years, the cartels have moved further offshore as their boats have gotten more sophisticated. The area they operate in has tripled in size in just this last year — and is now roughly the size of Montana.
Some of the modern smuggling boats have three engines and can hold up to 20 tons of drugs. Plus, they can travel hundreds of miles north of the border. “A huge part to the puzzle is the interdiction of these vessels before they reach shore,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Claude Arnold. “So if resources are cut, that’s going to have an effect, and our investigations are largely based upon those interdictions.”
Adam Housley joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in 2001 and currently serves as a Los Angeles-based senior correspondent.
4. DUKE UTILITY COMPANY IS CONTAMINATING RIVERS AGAIN
Duke Energy, the electric utility whose massive spill of toxic coal ash into a Virginia river six weeks ago is part of a federal investigation, illegally pumped as much as 61 million gallons of coal-ash wastewater into a second river from September to last week, North Carolina regulators charged on Thursday. Both the accidental spill and the deliberate releases occurred not far upstream from municipal drinking-water intakes.
The utility’s officials have said that the pumping was part of preparations for routine maintenance of two settling ponds that hold ash, the remains of coal burned to generate power. But regulators cast doubt on that claim on Thursday. “The state’s investigation revealed that the pumping activities ongoing at this plant far exceeded what would reasonably be considered routine maintenance,” said Tom Reeder, the director of the water resources division at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
A spokeswoman for the water resources division, Susan Massengale, noted that Duke had spent 31 days emptying 17.4 million gallons of water from one ash pond and 78 days releasing 44.4 million more from a second.
Peter Harrison, a lawyer for Waterkeeper Alliance, the New York-based environmental group that first uncovered the pumping, said Duke’s explanation was “absurd. They’ve essentially simulated a terrible coal-ash spill by pumping the pond out.”
Duke briefly addressed the releases in a statement on Thursday evening, saying that “water was being pumped to the existing, permitted outfalls and was being monitored according to the plant permit.” The statement said Duke notified state officials before beginning pumping.
Both Duke and state regulators already have come under intense criticism for an early February pipe rupture that allowed as much as 82,000 tons of coal-ash slurry to empty into the Dan River just upstream from Danville, Va., a town of 43,000, and four other communities that take water from the stream.
Environmental activists have long asserted that state regulators were lax in their oversight of Duke, and particularly the coal-ash impoundments at 14 plants where the utility generates or once generated power. After the Dan River spill, a federal grand jury opened an inquiry into the relationship to regularly sample water releases to gauge the level of pollution, but while the pumping log refers at one point to water samples, any test results that may exist have not been made public.
Releases that violate pollution standards are barred unless the utility has no other alternative, like sending divers into the pond, and conditions at the pond pose an imminent threat to people or property. Coal-ash wastewater can contain dozens of toxic substances, including arsenic, selenium, lead and mercury.
The state notice of violation delivered to Duke says the utility could be assessed as much as $25,000 for each day that the permit was violated.
5. MICHELLE OBAMA ARRIVES IN CHINA FOR AN OFFICIAL VISIT
(CNN)– First lady Michelle Obama is in China for an official visit to expand Sino-American relations, but she will refrain from talking about political differences.
Mrs. Obama, who flew Wednesday from Washington, D.C., is making a week-long trip to three Chinese cities and will speak with children at several schools about the importance of education and youth empowerment.
The U.S. first lady has several activities and events scheduled for today with Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan. “Her visit and her agenda
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Not many American families have been around the world,
but their money sure has.
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CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY – SPECIAL EDITION – THE FIVE MAJOR STORIES TILL 1:3O p.m. March 21, 2014