NewsWatch

Iran: Troops and Weapons to Venezuela

JihadWatch.org, 12/9/20, “U.S. Southern Command chief says Iran’s Quds Force is sending weapons and troops to Venezuela” [Excerpts]: “Iran and Venezuela have been strengthening their relationship...”

Admiral Craig Faller, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, warns about “the ‘alarming and concerning’ arrival of military personnel from the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), notorious for its terrorist activities in other countries including Syria and Iraq. Faller also confirmed that the military is seeing an ‘uptick’ in weapons shipments from Iran to Venezuela, although he did not specify the specific arms being supplied.”

The Iranian proxy Hizballah has already been described as having a “sanctuary” in Venezuela, which clearly poses a real threat, not only to the Latin American region but also to American national security.

Colombian President Iván Duque, whose country borders Venezuela, claimed that the Maduro regime is currently negotiating the purchase of medium- and long-range missiles from Iran, although they remain in the preliminary stages.

(https://bit.ly/2VZ5QFg)

Spider Eyes Shining in the Rocks

Creation.com, 12/7/20, “Spider eyes shining in the rocks” [Excerpts]: Have you ever shone a flashlight into grassland at night, and seen pin-pricks of light like tiny bright jewels twinkle back at you? There’s a good chance they were spider’s eyes. Scientists recently discovered several rare spider fossils entombed in a geological formation in South Korea. The rock formation is allegedly 110 million years old, yet two of the fossil spiders have “quite remarkable” eyes that still reflect light—as brightly as today’s living spiders. This is the first time an eye still able to reflect light has been found in the fossil record.

Many spiders have an ingeniously-designed structure inside one pair of their eyes called the tapetum (Latin for ‘tapestry’), made of photonic crystals. The tapetum reflects light back through the retinal cells to aid night-time vision, and in spiders it is often shaped like a tiny canoe. Many other animals such as cats and dogs also have tapeta in their eyes, though these are of a different design.

A partially-‘evolved’ tapetum would make hunting for food difficult or impossible, and lead to starvation. Spider eyes appear in the fossil record already fully-formed and fully-functional with special features that meet all the practical vision needs of the spiders, with no sign of partial or transitional development. Indeed, although the fossils represent an extinct spider family, they are just the same as contemporary spiders in every respect, and there is no evidence whatsoever of any evolution having taken place. 

The scientists who discovered the fossils said that “a very special situation” had preserved them. The spiders were rapidly buried as part of a deposit of enormous depth and area. Nowhere on the earth are depositional events of such size occurring today. These sedimentary formations of stunning magnitude, found everywhere and containing many exquisitely-preserved fossils, are clear, irrefutable evidence of a world-altering event—the biblical Flood that occurred around 4,500 years ago.

(https://bit.ly/37NohSS)

‘Buffer Zone’ Blocks Out Constitution

OneNewsNow.com, 12/9/20, “‘Buffer zone’ blocks out Constitution” [Excerpts]: The Supreme Court may soon decide whether to take up a case involving Pittsburgh’s “buffer zone” law.  

Attorney Elissa Graves of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the law firm representing the 40 Days for Life campaign, says the core of this case is that the right to free speech is for everyone, not just for those in power.

“The government cannot silence speakers just because it doesn’t like what they say,” Graves continues. “But that’s what the city of Pittsburgh is trying to do. It has created this 30-foot diameter buffer zone where sidewalk counselors cannot speak to women outside of the Pittsburgh Planned Parenthood.”

That, says Graves, is unconstitutional.... The ADF attorney notes that the Supreme Court held in 2014 that a 35-foot buffer zone in Massachusetts was unconstitutional. That decision, however, applies only to the Massachusetts law.

(https://bit.ly/3md4QZ2)