In The News:

Genesis 12:3 looms:

Obama Plans To Extract Timetable For Israeli Pullout From West Bank

U.S. President Barack Obama has demanded a timetable for
an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

Israeli sources said Obama, scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20,
wants a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan from Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu during the president’s visit. The sources said the Israeli plan
would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to
establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014.

“Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about
photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source said. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”

On March 1, the Israeli daily Makor Rishon reported that the next
Netanyahu government would destroy numerous Jewish communities in the West
Bank. The newspaper quoted Likud negotiators as saying that the plan
depended on Yesh Atid ending its alliance with Jewish Home, led by Naftali
Bennett.

“We are going to difficult decisions,” a Likud negotiator was quoted as
telling a Yesh Atid parliamentarian. “If you do not break up your pact with
Bennett we won’t be able to uproot communities if there is a need for
difficult decisions. Together we can do it.”

Other Israeli newspapers, quoting Likud sources, carried similar
reports. They said the first step by Netanyahu would be the dismantling of
Jewish communities in the West Bank deemed isolated.

The sources said the White House warned that Obama’s forthcoming visit
could characterize U.S. relations with Israel over the next four years. They
said Obama aides stressed that Congress, which approved $3.1 billion in
military aid to Israel for 2013, supported the establishment of a
Palestinian state as a U.S. priority.

“The Obama people are making this a litmus test of Netanyahu’s
leadership and credibility,” the Israeli source said. “Obama supporters in
Congress have sent Netanyahu a similar message.”

U.S. Carrier In Front Line Of Obama's Battle With Congress Over 'Sequester Cuts' With More To Follow

Docked in its home port in Virginia rather than patrolling the waters of the Persian Gulf, the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and its 3,360 officers and crew are this weekend on the front line of the latest conflict to embroil America.

The battleground is not military but budgetary, however, as the Truman's nuclear-powered might is shackled by a rancorous new fight between President Barack Obama and his Republican foes.

The two sides are locked into an apparently endless fiscal confrontation over radically different political and fiscal philosophies on the role of government. The resulting conflict over spending cuts and tax rises seems certain to dominate Mr Obama's second term in the White House.

With an impasse over a new deal to tackle the national debt, mandatory across-the-board US federal spending cuts of $85 billion kicked into effect this weekend.

The Pentagon has to find more than half of that money. And among the most controversial savings is delaying the Truman's deployment to the Middle East even as tensions there rise over Iran's nuclear programme.

U.S.: Releasing Millions In Aid To Egypt

North Korean Test May Mean Iran Has A Nuclear Missile Warhead

 A U.S. think tank has raised the prospect that
Iran acquired nuclear weapons capability.

[See also: Connecting the dots: N. Korea’s nuke was bought and paid for by a key end-user — Iran]

The American Foreign Policy Council said the administration of President
Barack Obama was quietly mulling the possibility that Iran and North Korea
succeeded in a joint nuclear weapons project. The Washington-based council cited the North Korean nuclear test last month of what was believed to have been that of an Iranian missile warhead.

During Secretary of State John Kerry’s listening tour of the Middle
East, one troubling regional issue might go unspoken: the possibility that
Iran already has nuclear weapons capability,” the council said in a report.

The report, titled “Does Iran Already Have The Bomb?” said Iran was
believed to be testing its nuclear warheads in North Korea. Senior fellow
James Robbins, who wrote the report, said the likelihood of an Iranian
nuclear weapons capability would top Obama’s agenda during his visit to
Israel on March 20. The national security specialist said the emergence of
an Iranian atomic bomb would “represent a U.S. foreign policy failure of
historic proportions.”

The administration has determined that Iran remained undecided over
whether to acquire nuclear weapons. But Western intelligence sources said
an Iranian delegation attended the North Korean underground nuclear test on
Feb. 12, believed to have marked a breakthrough in the joint weapons
program.

“Iran and North Korea have long cooperated on nuclear and ballistic
missile technologies,” Robbins said. “Iran’s ballistic missiles are based on
North Korean designs, and the two countries have long exchanged defense
scientists and engineers.”

Cardinals In Rome Begin Talks On Next Pope

The College of Cardinals will hold daily talks leading up to a conclave in which a new Pope will be chosen.

The election process comes after Pope Benedict XVI stepped down after nearly eight years in office leading the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

He was the first pontiff to resign in 600 years.

The first pre-conclave meeting on Monday morning is to be headed by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

Cardinals - known as the "princes" of the Church - will discuss future challenges to the Church and discreetly weigh up possible papal candidates.

The conclave - to be held in the Sistine Chapel - is expected to take place next week, though not all of the 115 cardinals involved have yet arrived in Rome.

China Assaults Home Churches

China’s crackdown against its thriving home-church movement is surging, only a few months after it was reported the communist nation’s attacks on Christians had subsided, according to a new reportfrom the Chinese-focused human rights group China Aid.

China Aid said its research shows a 42 percent increase in persecution over the past 12 months.

China Aid founder Bob Fu, who says the Chinese government is wary of organized groups, confirmed, “Experts say the Communist Party in China has long felt threatened by any movement that galvanizes a large sector of the population, fearing it could wield political clout.”

Now, he said, “The nation has become more systematically hostile to worshipers.”

China Aid spokesman Mark Shan told WND the government appears to intend to do what is necessary.

“There is a major effort now to wipe out the house churches by any means. The government will shut down the church,” Shan said. “Or, they will force the house church members to join an official church.”

Shan says that the government’s approach to home churches varies based on the region, the size of the church, or the officials in charge.

“Sometimes they will raid the house church meeting and try to intimidate the people into leaving and not coming back,” Shan said. “Other times they will impose fines on the people or give them short-term jail sentences. Or, sometimes if they feel especially threatened by a house church, they’ll send some of the people to a labor camp.”

Egyptian Christians Arrested In Libya, Besieged In Egypt

The plight of Egypt's 8-10 million Christians continues to worsen as the Arab Spring-turned-Islamic Revolution continues to bring Sharia Law more into the mainstream across the region.

Over the weekend, Dr. Ashraf Ramelah, director of Voice of the Copts, an organization that seeks to highlight the suffering of Egyptian Christians, reported that 100 Egyptian Christians working in neighboring Libya had been arrested on charges of sharing their faith with local Muslims.

What is more likely, suggested Ramelah, is that Libyan Muslims are following up their church attack by trying to fully eliminate the presence of Christians in their area.

Now more than a week in captivity, Ramelah is unsurprised that the Egyptian regime has done nothing to free these Christians, though he hopes the international community will live up to its claims of justice.

"Silence from Egyptian authorities regarding this incident is only expected since its Islamist government is known to degrade minorities inside Egypt," wrote Ramelah. "Voice of the Copts requests western leaders and human rights organizations around the world to intervene to ascertain fair hearings for the Egyptians as soon as possible."

Locust Swarm Of Biblical Proportions Plagues Egypt

An estimated 30 million locusts are currently plaguing southern Cairo, as Egyptian official struggle to find a way to dispose of a swarm the size of which they could not have predicted.

Locusts swarm Egypt every year, but typically in manageable numbers. The size of this year's swarm came as a complete surprise, and is reportedly causing enormous damage.

Egypt's military is deploying whatever means at its disposal to deal with the problem, but the country might have to wait until predicted strong winds later this week carry the swarm away toward Saudi Arabia.

News of the swarm comes just weeks before the biblical festival of Passover, when Jews and many Christians commemorate the divinely-guided exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt.

A major component of the Exodus story is God's afflicting of Egypt with 10 plagues, one of which was a locust swarm of exaggerated size.