The World and Everything in It: December 14, 2023

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us.

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We hope you value today’s program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The U-S and Canada have reason to believe India is targeting leaders of the Sikh minority group living abroad. We hear what’s behind a recent assassination attempt in New York.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, repurposing American shopping malls when customers stop coming. Plus, a visit to Bethlehem.

AUDIO: This year, Christmas celebrations are canceled in Bethlehem, and for obvious reasons.       

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on what C. S. Lewis would think about today’s Ivy League schools.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, December 14th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Anna Johansen Brown with today’s news.

SOUND: [Funeral procession]

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel - Hamas update » Israelis mourned the loss of one of their own yesterday at a funeral service for Lieutenant Colonel Tomer Grinberg.

Grinberg was one of nine Israeli soldiers killed during a Hamas ambush in Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood Tuesday.

A total of 10 soldiers were killed in 24 hours, making it the worst single-day loss for Israel since 15 soldiers died on October 31st.

Attorney Saadia Gopstein lives in Israel. He said the lives of those soldiers is a heavy price to pay.

GOPSTEIN: But really, what choice do we have? This is a fight for our survival. And unless and until we eliminate the Hamas and the terror threats, we have no future. We’ll all be killed.

SOUND: [IDF fighting in Gaza]

Meanwhile, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the fighting continues in northern Gaza.

When asked yesterday about reports that the Israel Defense Forces was flooding tunnels used by Hamas with seawater, Hagari would only say that the military was using “a range of creative means to damage the tunnels.”

SOUND: [LA protesters]

Israel - U.S. update » Meanwhile, in the U.S. dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters shut down a major freeway in downtown Los Angeles.

And at the White House, President Biden met privately with the families of eight Americans believed to be held hostage by Hamas.

Speaking to reporters afterward, those families made a special plea:

RELATIVE: Pray for us, pray for our families, pray for our leaders, pray for the President. And that the Pope and all that he can do is to push. We'd love a Christmas miracle. We would love all of our loved ones to come back and be with us for Christmas.

The president faces criticism for comments he made earlier this week accusing Israel of quote indiscriminate bombing in its campaign in Gaza.

But National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters yesterday, much of that blame lies with Hamas.

KIRBY: As the president has said, Hamas could release the hostages today. They could surrender all those responsible for the October 7th attacks and lay down their arms and the war would stop immediately. If they really cared about the Palestinian people the way they claim to, they would do this. That they haven’t done it, I think, speaks volumes.

Officials from Hamas-controlled sources in Gaza say more than 18,500 Palestinians have died since the conflict began.

Hunter Biden not testifying » Hunter Biden appeared on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, but did not testify at a scheduled closed-door meeting with House Republicans. The president’s son has requested a different kind of meeting with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer.

BIDEN: When you said, “We can bring these people in for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose.” Well, I've chosen. I am here to testify at a public hearing today.

Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan say they wanted to interview the president’s son first.

JORDAN: What we want is the facts and the way you get the facts in every single investigation I've been involved in is you bring people in for an interview behind closed doors where you can get those facts. And then, as the chairman said, we'd love for him to come public.

House Republicans are threatening to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress.

House Impeachment Inquiry » Also on Wednesday, the House formalized an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

The House voted along party lines to back the impeachment inquiry that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened earlier this year.

Republicans have been investigating the president for allegedly participating in a “influence peddling” scheme while he was vice president.

Congressman James Comer speaking before the vote:

COMER: Since January, we have learned some of the following: the Biden's created 20 shell companies, most of which were created while Joe Biden was vice president. The Biden's and their associates then raked in over $24 million through the shell companies.

Democrats say the evidence doesn’t point where Republicans claim it does. Congressman Jamie Raskin:

RASKIN: They've got a mountain of evidence, but all the evidence shows that Joe Biden is not guilty of any presidential events. In fact, their own witnesses came to their only public hearing on impeachment and, to a witness, said that they did not see sufficient evidence to justify impeachment.

The White House has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing on the part of the president.

SCOTUS Trump » The Supreme Court will hear a case related to the January 6 Capitol riots that could affect former President Donald Trump. WORLD’s Alex Carmenaty has more.

ALEX CARMENATY: The case of Fischer vs. the U.S. challenges how prosecutors apply a statute outlawing the obstruction of an official proceeding.

Former Boston police officer Joseph Fischer was indicted on seven charges for his alleged role in the January 6th U.S. Capitol riot. One of the charges involves obstruction.

He says his actions didn’t constitute obstruction, and that the Enron-era statute applies to white-collar crime, not incidents like January 6.

Obstruction charges leveled against Trump could be affected by the ruling.

For WORLD, I’m Alex Carmenaty.

SCOTUS Mifepristone » The U.S. Supreme Court will also hear a case involving the abortion drug mifepristone.

An appellate court’s ruling earlier this year left in place some rules protecting unborn babies from the pill. It can’t be sent through the mail or be given to women after seven weeks of pregnancy.

The Biden administration is appealing the lower court’s order while pro-life physicians are challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug.

Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Erin Hawley is representing the physicians.

ERIN HAWLEY: The FDA must answer for the damage that is caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous chemical abortion drugs are.

The Supreme Court is only ruling on questions of how the drug is dispensed, not the FDA’s original approval of the pill.

I'm Anna Johansen Brown.

Straight ahead: the backstory to an alleged plot to kill critics of the Indian government. Plus, visiting a cave in modern-day Bethlehem.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 14th of December, 2023.

This is WORLD Radio, and we’re glad to have you along today. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up on The World and Everything in It. The killing of a political activist in Canada  and the diplomatic breakdown that followed.

Here’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in September, followed by sound from a handful of news organizations.

TRUDEAU: Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

NBC NEWS: So this activist fought for an independent Sikh homeland in India. He was gunned down in his truck in June outside a temple.

AL JAZEERA: Canada has already expelled an Indian diplomat, a sign it believes the allegations are credible.

CBC NEWS: The reaction very blunt from India's External Affairs Ministry…

EURONEWS: An escalating row between Canada and India has seen diplomats from both countries expelled.

And then the week after Thanksgiving, U.S. prosecutors unsealed an indictment against an individual caught plotting to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.

BROWN: What’s behind these assassination attempts?

Joining us now to talk about it is WORLD’s Canadian Correspondent, Alexandra Ellison. She’s been following this story for World’s Global Desk.

Alexandra, good morning.

ALEXANDRA ELLISON: Good morning!

BROWN: Well, let’s start with some context. Who are the Sikhs and why is India at odds with them?

ELLISON: Yeah, so Sikhs are followers of Sikhism, which is part of a religious minority actually in India making about 2% of the population. And the history can trace back to some of the conflicts that happened in 1984. The Indian government did something called Operation Blue Star, where they had military actions ordered against Sikh militants who were fortified in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. So this led to large casualties and conflicts where two Sikh bodyguards even ended up killing the current prime minister at the time.

So Sikhs are a minority. So they had this idea where they want to create a separate state in Punjab, called Khalistan. And this idea has largely been popularized within Western countries. So we see that there's a large Sikh diaspora in Canada and the United States. So this this movement has become popularized there. They're more or less A little less so within India itself.

BROWN: It seems to me, that there are two major figures in the news right now. The first one is Hardeep Singh Nijjar. He was killed in Canada in June,  and Prime Minister Trudeau alleged the Indian government had something to do with it. Who was he, and how does he fit into this?

ELLISON: Hardeep Singh Nijjar was the chief coordinator in the Canadian chapter of the Sikhs for Justice, which is an advocacy group, advocating for this independent state of Khalistan. And the problem is, is that many times, the Indian government will get confused with, you know, the work that Nijjar was doing was peaceful, just advocating trying to promote this idea of having a separate state. Yet, there's groups like Babbar Khalsa, which, you know, committed a large terrorist attack against an Air India plane, which is one of the largest terrorist attacks in Canadian history. So India has overall just said any Sikh separatist group is identified as a terrorist group.

BROWN: The second major figure is Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Who is he and why did Indian government officials allegedly target him?

ELLISON: Pannun is a Sikh separatist leader as well, in New York City working for the same organization that Nijjar was working for, Sikhs for Justice, and the Indian government has him listed as a terrorist, even though the work that he does is peaceful. And he has been a large advocate for the movement, he plans to have a vote happening this coming January in San Francisco where he'll get a group of Sikhs together and they will vote for this idea of having a separate state called Khalistan. But although this vote is important, and it would show that there's people that want this idea, it wouldn't actually do anything. It's more just to show the Indian government that this is what some people want.

BROWN: So of course, as you said earlier, Nijjar lost his life in June, and then Pannun was targeted. Alexandra, you had the chance to interview Pannun this past week and you asked him if he fears for his life:

PANNUN: The underlying question is—is not the threat that I’m facing. I don’t fear death. The underlying issue is the existential threat that the Sikh community is facing under these successive regimes.

For now, the immediate threat to Pannun’s life has been averted, but how did the United States thwart the plot to kill him?

So of course, as you said, Nijjar lost his life earlier this year. How did the United States hinder the plot to kill Pannun?

ELLISON: In May, Nikhil Gupta, who is an Indian national, he was living in India, he was recruited by an unidentified Indian government official, the indictment doesn't name the specific name, and this was to orchestrate the assassination of Pannun. So the indictment said that Gupta has criminal charges against him, and that if he were to complete this killing, then he would have the criminal charges dropped, and he'd also receive financial compensation. So Gupta ended up accepting the deal and he contacted a criminal associate to try to find a hitman. But it happened to be an undercover Drug Enforcement Association agent who was posing as the hitman. So what Gupta thought was him communicating to a hitman was actually the DEA receiving information on how to catch him. So this led to his arrest in the Czech Republic where he's now awaiting extradition to the US.

BROWN: Alexandra Ellison is a WORLD Correspondent in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. Thank you for covering this story for us!

ELLISON: Thanks for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Repurposing American shopping malls.

And there’s a reason behind that repurposing. According to Statista, e-commerce has risen by almost a quarter since 2019. Meanwhile, the foot traffic at urban retail centers has dropped by about the same. That’s hitting brick-and-mortar stores hard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Meaning empty stores in malls. So the retail behemoths that once hosted big-box stores like Macy’s and Sears are looking for alternative renters, and finding some you wouldn’t expect.

WORLD Radio Reporting Producer Mary Muncy has the story.

SOUND: [ASD KARAOKE]

MARY MUNCY: About 30 people are dancing to Christmas carols in the backroom of a mall storefront now called Arms Around ASD, or autism spectrum disorder. Some of the people are singing along. Most of them have special needs.

Volunteer Jenn Hartzog says Friday is the day when they have the most going on, and when they get the most walk-ins.

JENN HARTZOG: I love that we get a lot of walk bys. You know, people come in and say, what do you do here? Well, let me tell you.

Hartzog tells them they support people with autism and their families through therapy and self-care, all from the Asheville Mall.

In addition to retail staples like JCPenny and Old Navy, the mall has three non-profits, a mechanical bull, and an air-soft shooting range all things to try to get people into the mall and off of Amazon. Most of the mall’s spaces are filled and a few local shops have just moved in.

But other malls across the U.S. have been slowly losing renters over the last few years becoming “Zombie malls.”

SOUND: [WALKING AROUND THE INNSBRUCK MALL]

Just down the road from the Asheville Mall, the Innsbruck Mall sits mostly empty and quiet. The doors to the main mall building were locked, so I stayed outside.

AUDIO: It looks like the big-box stores closed. A few smaller things moved into it but nothing to really bring anyone back here.

There’s graffiti on the walls and trash in the corners. It’s become an eyesore.

Loren Keim is a professor at Lehigh University at the Goodman Center for Real Estate. He teaches real estate investment, analysis, and how to value large properties like skyscrapers, casinos and shopping malls.

LOREN KEIM: Well, I mean, we're always transitioning. We had downtown areas where everybody went and shopped. And it became difficult as we all started driving cars and trying to get there and figure out how to park to get in and out of downtown areas. So malls were built off highways, which typically did not go through cities.

Those were popular for a while. But then shoppers wanted a quick stop, so malls started transitioning to more outward-facing stores.

KEIM: Now, with so much being transitioned over to distribution, where we're going to Amazon, or we're going to any online store and ordering something, it's making it easier for shoppers to find hard to find items, and have it show up at their doorstep the next day, they don’t necessarily go out to shop.

Not only that, but there are so many malls in the U.S. that they compete with each other, and often a town can only support one.

So Keim says mall owners are repurposing that space into things other than retail. Some malls are becoming more like Main Streets, converting some of their unused retail space into apartments, office space, and gyms. Things that will generate foot traffic around whatever retail remains.

A lot of malls are also bringing in healthcare. In 2022, Nashville struck a deal with Vanderbilt University Medical Center to turn a nearby mall into a giant hospital.

But most malls are transitioning on a smaller scale, bringing in clinics, escape rooms, and sometimes churches.

PAUL KNIGHT: I'm Paul Knight. Actually Pastor Paul is what a lot of people call me. Lead Pastor of Hope Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Hope Church started renting a space in the Grand Cities Mall in 1996.

SOUND: [MALL ACTIVITY]

One day, Knight saw a lady pushing a Kmart cart up the center aisle of their worship center. She sat down in a chair, weeping. Her sister had just died and she came in to pray. Knight sat and talked with her.

KNIGHT: And I realized if I was in a regular church building on a corner someplace, this would never happen, people wouldn’t ever drive a grocery cart up the aisle of the church, to the front and pray. And I thought, “I love this.”

Later the church decided to buy its space in the mall, and in 2015 they bought the mall itself.

Now along with their church-proper, they have a childcare center and a food pantry. Tenants still rent storefronts from them, and that money goes back into keeping the mall a thriving city center. After all, what better place for a church than Main Street?

KNIGHT: I was giving a couple ladies a tour of our main worship area. And we stepped outside the doors, and the lady came to an abrupt stop. And she said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Where's the church end and the mall start?” I said, “That's the point.”

As the U.S. transitions to a new form of retail, infrastructure will have to change with it, and that will leave some spaces like the Innsbruck Mall collecting cobwebs. But Knight sees the disruption as an opportunity for redemption.

KNIGHT: The building has to be a tool, right? And the tool is something that we want to use in our context, to help more and more people encounter God's people, the church.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: When aspiring lawyers take the bar exam, it’s a moment of great tension to check online for the results.

One young man in California logged on with his whole family as witness:

PETER PARK: Dear Peter Park, the committee of bar examiners of the state bar of CA is pleased to report that you achieved a passing score on the July 2023 CA bar examination. Mom: (gasp) Pass! Pass!

His mom at the end there, so sweet! And Peter Park not only passed, but he became the youngest person to do so in state history…at the tender age of 17.

PARK FAMILY: [CHEERING]

He said hard work, discipline, and strategy got him here. Now that he’s sworn in as a practicing attorney, he’s taken a job with the Tulare County District Attorney. High ideals, too: Park says he is driven by the moral obligation to uphold liberty, equality, and justice.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 14th. You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you are! Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

One more quick reminder about WORLD’s December Giving Drive. This month is a crucial one for us. December is when the biggest share of our annual revenue comes in, and if WORLD has made a difference in your life, if you’ve gotten something from our programs, from our news reporting, features, and commentary, we’re asking that you support it at any level you can afford.

REICHARD: That’s right. And if you give either today or tomorrow, a generous WORLD Mover will give right alongside you and match your gift dollar for dollar, just an added incentive to give early if you can.

BROWN: Double impact! I do love a good deal!

REICHARD: Me, too. I took advantage, and I hope it generates some momentum. Sort of like the Little Engine That Could. Get started, get going, and pick up steam!

BROWN: The drive is going on all month long, and we’d really love to hear from you. Just go to wng.org/donate.

REICHARD: Easy peasy, yet so critical to keep this program coming to you and keep growing. wng.org/donate.

BROWN: And thank you so much!

Well, coming next on The World and Everything in It: an audio postcard from Bethlehem.

Christians in Bethlehem have long put on festive celebrations of Christ’s birth. But in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, Christian leaders in the city made a difficult decision.

MUNTHER ISAAC: This year, Christmas celebrations are canceled in Bethlehem, and for obvious reasons.

REICHARD: That’s Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He says that Palestinian Christians find it impossible to celebrate when civilians are dying in Gaza…and so many churches in Bethlehem will be foregoing festivities. Isaac’s church has replaced its traditional Christmas tree with a mound of rubble and a model of baby Jesus lying on top.

MUNTHER ISAAC: Jesus identifies with our suffering. So it's a message of comfort and hope to us.

BROWN: People who suffer. Perhaps now is a good time to remember the prince of peace who was born in humility to be a suffering servant as Isaiah prophesied.

WORLD reporter Jenny Lind Schmitt visited Bethlehem back in the Spring, and she brought back this audio postcard as a reminder of Christ’s humble first coming.

SOUND: [Footsteps on a trail]

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: Earlier this year, before the Israel-Hamas war shut down tourism, a group of Americans walked a path in Beit Sahour, the village just to the east of Bethlehem.

The Shepherd’s Field is an enclosed park at the top of a gently sloping hill. It’s one of two possible places in the village thought to be where the angels appeared to the shepherds, as recorded in Luke 2. The path leads down around stones and olive trees through an active archaeological site. Then one by one, the group members duck down through a small opening and disappear.

JOHN DELANCEY: Welcome everyone to this big cave. 

John DeLancey leads multiple tours to Israel each year as director of Biblical Israel Ministries and Tours. He’s led his group off the beaten track to this cave where there’s plenty of room for the 120 people to stand comfortably. And probably more than that number of sheep.

DELANCEY: Why a cave? Because shepherds used caves for their flocks. As you know, the Shepherds played an important role in announcing the birth narrative of Jesus. 

The Judean hills are made up of limestone. As water dripped slowly through the layers of rock over the years, it hollowed out many caves like this one. Archaeological evidence shows they were used to keep sheep.

DELANCEY: But I want to talk a little about the role of the shepherd, because they were culturally speaking deemed unclean just by virtue of their occupation. 

Even though shepherds were shunned, the Mishnah, or Jewish oral traditions, referred to a special area near Jerusalem reserved for the shepherds who were responsible for raising the Passover lambs used in the Temple sacrificial system.

DELANCEY: The Mishnah hints that only those kinds of shepherds raising those types of sheep had permission to use the fields for their flocks.

Could it be that the shepherds that were in the vicinity of Jerusalem—and we know that the shepherds of the Luke 2 story were tending their sheep and allowing their sheep to graze their sheep in their fields at night.

It’s possible that the shepherds from the Luke 2 account were the ones raising the lambs to be sacrificed in the Temple. Then the angel sent them to see the newborn Christ Jesus who would one day make the final atoning sacrifice for his people.

SINGING: [O Come all ye faithful…]

Even though it’s stuffy and warm in the cave, and the sun is bright outside, Delancey leads the group in singing Christmas carols.

AUDIO: [People in a shop]

In nearby Bethlehem, the group visits Nissan Brothers olive wood shop. The Nissan family has made hand-carved nativity scenes in its shop for four generations. Each generation passed the craftsmanship down from father to son.

The family still uses Aramaic for worship and prayers in their local church community. John Nissan offers to pray for the group in his ancient language, to give them a flavor of the conversation between the shepherds and Mary and Joseph.

NISSAN: It is an honor to pray for you and to share with you the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic language, the language of the Lord. [Prays in Aramaic]

This year the Christmas season in Bethlehem is very different from the past. The main Christian churches in the city jointly decided to cancel all celebrations and only hold religious services. There will be no Christmas tree, no decorative lights, no public festivities.

Willma Juha is a Palestinian tour guide in Bethlehem. She says that everyone is feeling a weight of sadness because of the war, but that the meaning of Christmas still remains.

WILLMA JUHA: We feel sad, but all that we can do here is pray. Because the most important thing is the birth of Jesus and the prayers. So the festival is something extra. If they cancelled it, okay, we are sad. Our kids are sad because they enjoy it, but the most important thing is still here.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt in Bethlehem.

NISSAM: We love the Lord, we love you too, and welcome to Bethlehem.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. WORLD Commentator Cal Thomas says author C. S. Lewis can help us understand the new wave of anti-Semitism on campus.

CAL THOMAS: We are constantly told how necessary it is to find the “root causes” of everything, from crime, to illegal immigration, to the wave of antisemitism spreading across many college campuses.

Often, this call to examine root causes is simply a distraction that avoids coming up with solutions. Some may celebrate last weekend’s resignation of Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, after she refused to unequivocally denounce genocide against Jews. But it’s worth pointing out Magill will stay on as interim president until a replacement is found and will also remain a tenured professor. Let’s not kid ourselves that Magill’s resignation is going to solve anything so long as this attitude prevails among many faculty members and the boards that hire university presidents. The latest news involves a panel hosted by George Washington University that defended Hamas’ “right of resistance.” It will likely not be the last of such revelations as other universities confront this issue and their conduct codes.

Over the last decades, many academic institutions jettisoned basic standards by which right and wrong, good and evil can be defined and judged. If everybody is right; if truth is subjective, then nothing can be said to be wrong which has brought us to the current moral chaos.

Author C.S. Lewis knew right and wrong and how wrong dominates when standards disappear. In his classic book The Abolition of Man, Lewis wrote: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

It’s difficult to improve on that critique, but Lewis does in this quote that also has modern implications: “For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity…The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.”

The propagandists are in place throughout America’s education system, especially at the college level. The rotting intellectual fruit of their excesses can now be seen on campuses and in the streets as some students call for the elimination of the Jewish democratic state and the murder of Jews.

Lewis isn’t finished in his critique of academia: “An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man’s mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut…”

Yes, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. It is also a terrible thing to lose.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet.

And a few big name actors have a new take on Charles Dickens’ holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. We’ll review it. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. 

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. —James 1:2-4

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.