CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
A free service of Jesus Christ is Lord Ministries
News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
TOP OF THE EVENING TO YOU – THE TOP NEWS TO THIS HOUR
March 12, 2014
IRAN DOES A PHOTO OP TO TRY TO IMPRESS THE WORLD THAT IT’S CHANGED, THEN SHACKLES AN AMERICAN PASTOR AND SENDS HIM BACK TO PRISON IN GREAT PAIN
American Pastor Saeed Abedini has been shackled today and refused medical treatment at a hospital, as Iranian guards forcibly ban visitors.
A little over a week ago, Pastor Saeed – a U.S. citizen – was moved from Rajai Shahr Prison to a private hospital in Iran. He was told he would receive further tests on his deteriorating medical condition and undergo surgery to address chronic pain in his stomach area – the result of numerous prison beatings.
For the past week and a half, he has undergone various tests and received much needed nourishment. This had been a very positive development and a much needed reprieve for Pastor Saeed.
Today, that all changed. This morning Iranian guards lashed out violently against Pastor Saeed and an elderly relative who had been able to visit him in the hospital. Pastor Saeed was pinned down and shackled. His elderly relative was roughly handled and expelled from the hospital.
The guards stated that they had a court order banning visitors and instructing that he be shacked at all times. Hospital doctors also told Pastor Saeed that he must leave the hospital and return to prison. They are refusing to provide him with anything more than mere pain medication. They have denied him surgery – the only treatment that will help. They have even denied him test results.
The timing of both of these moves is very suspect. In what appears to be a move to put Iran in a favorable light, Pastor Saeed was moved to the hospital, something his Iranian family has been actively seeking for months, coinciding with the arrival of the High Representative of the European Union, Catherine Ashton in Iran. However, as soon as she departed Iran, Pastor Saeed was informed that he would be moved back to prison without receiving any real treatment.
The EU has been faithfully raising Pastor Saeed’s case for some time, and this move would allow Iranian officials to report that he was receiving medical treatment if his case was brought up during the EU’s visit to Iran. Each day Pastor Saeed is apart from his family and away from the care of physicians is another human rights abuse.
March 21st is the Iranian new year, a time when clemency is often granted to prisoners of conscience. If Iran wants the world to see it in a new light, now is the time to grant clemency for Pastor Saeed. Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said clemency could be possible. Now would be the time.
We are continuing to fight for Pastor Saeed’s freedom. Right now a legal team from both our U.S. and international offices is meeting with world leaders at the United Nations office in Geneva. Please continue to pray for him and share his story.
HUGE EXPLOSION IN SPANISH HARLEM, 12 ARE MISSING
CNN reports that New York City firefighters and rescue workers are still searching for 12 unaccounted for people after a huge explosion that ripped through two buildings in Spanish Harlem. The buildings that exploded were a piano store and an evangelical church, located around Park Ave. between 114th and 117th streets. The blast which occurred around 9am eastern, reportedly killed two, and left at least 24 injured, and authorities warned the death toll could rise.
PRESIDENT OBAMA MEETS WITH UKRAINE’S ACTING PRIME MINISTER
President Obama, in a diplomatic snub at Russia, met today with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk at the White House. The Obama administration and Congress are moving on several fronts to try to calm the Ukraine stand-off — and pressure Russia to cooperate — ahead of a looming Crimea referendum which would further inflame the crisis.
Sitting side by side in the Oval Office with Yatsenyuk, Obama said he hoped last-ditch diplomatic efforts might lead to a “rethinking” of Sunday’s referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia. If the vote does occur, Obama repeats, “We will not recognize any referendum that goes forward.” He warned that Russia could face “costs” and blasted the “slapdash election” as one being done at “the barrel of a gun.”
Yatsenyuk said Ukraine will “never surrender” in the fight over its territory. “Ukraine is and will be part of the Western world,” Yatsenyuk said in English.
A bipartisan group of senators also said they plan to travel to Ukraine on Thursday to meet with members of the interim government.
But, applying a carrot-and-stick approach, the U.S. is both courting and pressuring Russia. As Obama met Wednesday with the new Ukrainian prime minister, Secretary of State John Kerry announced plans to travel to London to again meet with Russia’s foreign minister in the hopes of calming the Ukraine crisis ahead of Sunday’s vote. Kerry argued that there are ways to resolve the stand-off and protect Russia’s interests in the region. He added: “We will do what we have to do if Russia cannot find a way to make the right choices here.” He was referring to sanctions and other steps the U.S. and other countries are poised to take.
In anticipation of that vote, the G7 world leaders said Wednesday they will not recognize that decision. The leaders of the seven nations, including the United States, said in a statement that any attempt by Russia to change the status of Crimea would be a violation of international law and a referendum to annex Crimea “would have no legal effect.”
“Given the lack of adequate preparation and the intimidating presence of Russian troops, it would also be a deeply flawed process which would have no moral force. For all these reasons, we would not recognize the outcome,” the statement said. The statement was from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the United States, along with the European Council and the European Commission.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday advanced sanctions legislation that would pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull Russian troops out of Crimea. It authorizes $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine’s new government and allows the Obama administration to impose economic penalties on Russian officials responsible for the intervention in Crimea or culpable of gross corruption. All Democrats supported the measure. Republican objections include how the U.S. will pay for the loan guarantees and provisions in the bill expanding the lending authority of the International Monetary Fund. House Republicans are pushing their own bill.
Washington has been more strident in its measures thus far against Russia than its allies have, with European countries from Germany to Britain fretful that a sudden deterioration in relations with Moscow could be harmful for their manufacturing exporters and financial institutions.
“Putin has miscalculated by playing a game of Russian roulette with the international community, but we refuse to blink, and will never accept this violation of international law,” said Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, who introduced the legislation. “Ukraine is confronting a menacing threat challenging its very existence and in their hour of need, we firmly stand with the Ukrainian people to choose their own destiny without Russian interference.”
The House overwhelmingly backed providing only the assistance to Ukraine last week and passed a resolution calling for sanctions on Russia Tuesday. Neither included language on the IMF, which the United States, European countries and others are working with to provide billions of dollars in loans to Ukraine’s cash-depleted authorities.
Putin and other Russian officials have threatened retaliation for any Western punishment over Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. But with the U.S. and its European allies ruling out military options, a broad consensus has emerged among the Obama administration and Democratic and Republican lawmakers that sanctions are the strongest option available.
Tensions are increasing ahead of the Russian-backed referendum this weekend in Crimea, where voters may declare the territory independent and propose becoming a Russian state.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
CHINA BELIEVES IT HAS SPOTTED DEBRIS FROM THE MISSING PLANE
China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported late today that a government website has satellite images of suspected debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished last week with 239 aboard.
According to the report, the satellite images from the morning of March 9 appear to show “three suspected floating objects” of varying sizes in the sea off the southern tip of Vietnam and east of Malaysia – a part of the original search area for the aircraft, which was enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. However, there was no immediate confirmation of the reported debris from the airline or Malaysian authorities.
Vernon Grose, a seasoned National Transportation Safety Board investigator and consultant, told Fox News his preliminary assessment was that if the plane disintegrated, he would expect to find large pieces of wreckage, including the wings, the horizontal stabilizer in the tail and the vertical fin. He said if the Chinese reporting is correct then very quickly the black box could be retrieved.
KERRY SAYS CLIMATE CHANGE IS TOP PRIORITY
Secretary of State John Kerry, deeming climate change a “top-tier diplomatic priority,” decided to make the controversial topic the subject of his first policy initiative and is instructing U.S. emissaries worldwide to push the agenda.
“Protecting our environment and meeting the challenge of global climate change is a critical mission for me as our country’s top diplomat,” Kerry wrote in his Policy Guidance, which was released Friday and marked his first since becoming secretary in February 2013. “It’s also a critical mission for all of you: our brave men and women on the front lines of direct diplomacy,” he said.
Kerry is pressing his case despite widespread, scientific disagreement on the issue — particularly the argument that burning fossil fuel for energy has sent global temperatures on a permanent, upward trend, increasing natural disasters like hurricanes and monsoons.
“The scientific facts are coming back to us in a stronger fashion and with greater urgency that ever before,” Kerry told diplomats and other State Department employees before laying out his seven-point directive, which largely calls for expanding and improving agreements with other countries on such related issues as “greenhouse gases” and “pollutants.”
However, two of the seven directives address the issue of carbon emissions as related to the use of coal and other fossil fuels — domestic energy sources that President Obama has pointedly tried to curtail as part of the country’s overall energy policy.
In addition, Kerry told agency officials to try to “mobilize and leverage billion of dollars of funding” to transform energy economies. And he told them to promote efforts to “limit public incentives for high-carbon energy production and fossil fuels,” which suggests cutting tax breaks for the coal and other industries, something the administration wants to do while increasing them for wind, solar and other so-called “green energy” initiatives. The State Department did not respond to a request to fully explain what Kerry meant in the directives.
That Kerry made climate change — or “global warming” — his first policy initiative comes as no surprise, considering he and fellow Democrats have rallied around the concept and just weeks before the policy announcement, he urged residents in Jakarta, Indonesia to take action or face drastic consequences, including devastating floods. “It’s not an exaggeration to say to you that your entire way of life that you live and love is at risk,” said Kerry, who also suggested climate change was “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”
However, his renewed push comes in the face of sharp criticism, led by Arizona Republican Senator John McCain. “Why should he talk about climate change when we have got 130,000 people in Syria killed?” McCain said on Phoenix radio station KFYI. He also argued Kerry should redirect his efforts, since, he said, the administration has so far failed in negotiations on the Syria crisis, Iran’s nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Just this week, Senate Democrats including Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, showed their solidarity on making climate change a priority with a 15-hour talk-a-thon on the issue on the chamber floor. The roughly 30 members of the so-called “climate cause” took shifts talking about the issue in a mostly deserted gallery from Monday night until early Tuesday morning.
JAPAN REMEMBERS AND MOURNS
“Many disaster survivors are still experiencing difficulties. It is important that all people of Japan unite their hearts and stand by each other for a long period so that they can live without losing their hopes and in good health.” -Japan’s Emperor Akihito
Throughout Japan, on March 11, the people of Japan paused to observe a moment of silence at precisely 2:46 pm in memory of the record-shattering tsunami and earthquake that devastated the nation in 2011, killing tens of thousands.
It is estimated that nearly 270,000 people are still displaced from the catastrophe, and while efforts are ongoing to rebuild and clean up radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, there is no knowing when, or if, the area will be habitable any time soon.
CBN quoted Japan’s Emperor Akihito as saying his heart breaks when he thinks of the Fukushima residents who have no idea if they can ever return home again.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
When any nation is in mourning, Christians everywhere should be in prayer.
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CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY – TOP EARLY EVENING NEWS STORIES – March 12, 2014