The World and Everything in It - February 2, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Who will replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer? We’ll look at President Biden’s criteria for the candidate.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, WORLD Tour.

Plus rediscovering old hymns for the French-speaking church.

And western civilization as a house that’s fallen into disrepair.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, February 2nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: 

Putin signals willingness to continue diplomatic talks » Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday accused the United States and its allies of ignoring Russia’s top security demands. But he said Moscow is willing to continue talks to ease tensions over Ukraine.

It was the first time in more than a month that Putin himself has signaled that an invasion might not be imminent … and diplomacy may continue.

But neither side is budging on Russia’s key demands … including that Ukraine be barred from ever joining NATO.

And White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Moscow continues to pretend that it’s Russia’s security, not Ukraine’s, that is under threat.

  PSAKI: When the fox is screaming from the top of the hen house that he’s               scared of the chickens, which is essentially what they’re doing, that fear isn’t reported as a statement of fact.

But the Biden administration says it does welcome more diplomatic talks. The United States has proposed negotiations on lesser Russian demands.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov are expected to speak again soon. And the White House says direct talks between President Biden and Vladimir Putin are also possible.

FBI chief Wray: China still engaged in large-scale hacking operations targeting U.S. tech » FBI Director Christopher Wray says the threat to the United States and its allies from the Chinese government is “more brazen” and damaging than ever before.

Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this week, Wray said that even as Russia-Ukraine tensions dominate headlines, China remains the biggest threat to U.S. interests by stealing U.S. innovation.

WRAY: The Chinese government steals staggering volumes of information and causes deep, job-destroying damage across a wide range of industries.

In 2015, the United States and China announced a deal at the White House to not steal each other's intellectual property or trade secrets for commercial gain. But that agreement appears to be worth little more than the paper it's printed on.

Wray said the FBI has more than 2,000 open investigations into Chinese efforts to steal American information or technology.

WRAY: The harm from the Chinese government’s economic espionage isn’t just that its companies pull ahead based on illegally gotten technology. While they pull ahead, they push our companies and workers behind.

He said the bureau is opening new cases to counter Chinese intel operations every 12 hours or so. And he added that the communist government is pilfering more personal and corporate data than all other countries combined.

Pfizer asking US to approve vaccines for kids under 5 » Drugmaker Pfizer is applying for emergency authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5 years old. And a vaccine for young children could be ready by the end of this month. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports..

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Pfizer is seeking authorization for a two-dose course for young kids … while awaiting data on a three-dose course. And the company is expected to submit that application very soon.

Young kids would receive the vaccine at one-tenth the strength of the adult shot. Early Pfizer data has shown the shots to be safe and to produce an immune response.

But last year Pfizer announced the two-dose shot proved to be less effective at preventing COVID-19 in kids ages 2-5. That was partly due to the more contagious omicron strain. But regulators urged the company to add a third dose to the study.

The FDA authorized vaccines for kids ages 5 to 12 in November.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Job openings rose in December amid worker shortages » U.S. employers stepped up their hunt for workers in December despite the impact of the omicron wave.

The Labor Department says the number of posted jobs rose to 10.9 million on the last day of December. That was up 1.4 percent compared with the previous month.

Companies were still desperate to hire workers last month yet had trouble finding enough people to fill the open jobs. There were approximately 1.6 available jobs for every person actively seeking work that month.

Even so, most economists expect that job gains likely took a hit in January, as the omicron surge sickened millions of workers.

Authorities order national lockdown of federal prisons » 

Authorities have placed federal prisons on a nationwide lockdown. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JS: The Justice Department ordered the lockdown at more than 120 facilities. That after two inmates died in an altercation involving the violent MS-13 gang … at a Texas prison on Monday.

Officials were worried about possible retaliation … that could even spread to other facilities.

Nationwide lockdowns are not common. Authorities took that step last January after the Capitol riot. They also gave the order in spring of 2020 at the height of the pandemic to curb the spread of the virus.

The Bureau of Prisons has come under scrutiny in recent months after several inmate deaths. The Justice Department recently announced that the bureau’s director, Michael Carvajal, is resigning in the wake of a report from the Associated Press. That report detailed alleged corruption and misconduct within the agency.

Federal prisons are also suffering the nationwide shortage of workers.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: filling a Supreme Court vacancy.

Plus, an allegory for our cultural collapse.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 2nd day of February, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up, replacing Justice Stephen Breyer.

Breyer is one of just three liberal justices on the high court and last week he said he’s planning to retire later this year when the current term is over.

That brings to an end nearly three decades of service on the high court. President Bill Clinton named Breyer to the court in 1994.

His retirement gives President Biden his first chance to seat someone on the Supreme Court, a choice he’s telegraphed about as plainly as any president has in recent memory: saying that the nominee will be a black woman.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about what we might expect is Mike Schietzelt. He is a Constitutional Law Fellow at Regent University School of Law in Virginia. Mike, good morning!

MIKE SCHIETZELT, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, let’s just start with the only thing we know right now, and that is the race and sex of the nominee. Some ask how this is even legal, given laws against discriminating on the basis of sex and gender do exist. They say it should be the best qualified candidate, demographics aside. Even among those who don’t have a problem with considering demographics to make the court more diverse, they say, why are Asian judges, Native American judges, and so on, being told they won’t even be considered.

So here’s my question: is this entirely within a president’s discretion? And are there any rules that do apply when searching for someone to fill an empty seat on the Supreme Court?

SCHIETZELT: It’s a great question. Keep in mind that Joe Biden isn't the first person to have restricted himself in this way. President Bush wanted to pick a black justice to replace Thurgood Marshall. President Reagan had committed himself to choosing a woman for his first nominee and he chose Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981. So this isn't entirely unprecedented.

Now, to be fair to President Biden, he did also say that it will be a person of the highest qualifications. And that is, of course, the you know, one of the things that he's going to be looking for – there are no – I wouldn't say there are any formal qualifications that are required by law, but you want somebody who has an impeccable resume.
But other than that, I mean, you want somebody who's going to be young, who's going to have the ability to last on the court for a while. This is an important part of the president's legacy. And, of course, there are always political considerations at play.

REICHARD: Well we know the president hasn’t made his nomination yet, but analysts have put together a short list of potentials. Which of the prospective nominees have caught your eye, Mike, as strong candidates?

SCHIETZELT: Well, there are three I think that really stand out. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is widely regarded to be the front-runner. She's been on the D.C. Circuit since last summer, I believe. She has spent many years as a trial court judge in the U.S. District Court in DC. She just went through the confirmation process last year. So they know that she's confirmable. She has the impeccable resume you'd be looking for. Harvard Law. She's young, she's 51 years old, so she's right there in that wheelhouse. The second I would say is justice Leandra Krueger of the California Supreme Court. She's been recognized as a rising superstar since very early in her career, very much the same way Brett Kavanaugh was on the right. She served in the Solicitor General's Office. She's argued 12 times before the United States Supreme Court. She clerked for Justice Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court. I should have mentioned that Judge Jackson clerked for Stephen Breyer, so she would be the second person to replace the judge she clerked for. Back to Leandra Kruger, though. She's been celebrated when she was appointed to the California Supreme Court—attorneys on the left and right praised that decision. And again, she's very young at 45 years old. The third potential replacement, I would say, is Judge J. Michelle Childs of the district court of South Carolina. And the interesting thing about this is that she's being pushed by Representative Clyburn from South Carolina who we know has great sway. He definitely has the president's ear. His endorsement was likely or had some influence on the South Carolina primary that turned the president's campaign around. So it'll be interesting to see who he picks toward the end of this month.

REICHARD: Speaking about Judge Childs, then. This idea of diversity on the court. Most of the justices are Ivy League graduates. They have a certain kind of pedigree on their resume. What about this diversity of life experience? It does seem that Judge Childs fits that broader definition of diversity. What do you think?

SCHEITZELT: Absolutely. You want somebody who thinks, you know, we talk about qualifications … let's back up a step. We talk about qualifications all the time. And we tend to think of it in ways that I've described—somebody who has the resume, somebody who has the clerkship, somebody who has the law school, and the honors on their degree. But I think there are a lot of people out there who have never been to law school who exercise better judgment than many attorneys and possibly many judges. So there is this idea that a different life experience makes the court more representative of the people, which is always a concern when you talk about the nine justices on the Supreme Court. They tend to reflect Ivy League backgrounds, all except for Justice Barrett, currently, have an Ivy League background. So I think there is something to that, right? You want somebody who is able to think like the average person out there, which is not to say anything about Judge Childs' ability to do the job or her substantive experience. From what I understand she has great credentials. She has an LLM from my law school, Duke University. So she's definitely got the intellectual rigor there. She's got the capability to do the job. But there's definitely something to be said for having that diverse life experience and not having been raised in you know that elite background.

REICHARD: Well, we know that whoever President Biden picks, the ideological makeup of the bench won’t change. Six mostly conservatives to three consistent liberals. But are there other ways a new justice could influence the court, aside from casting votes and opinions?

SCHIETZELT: Yes. You know, there was a justice—and it's slipping my mind, maybe Justice White—who said that every time you wind up replacing one justice, you essentially end up with a new court. It always changes the dynamic when you change one person on the court. They spend a lot of time together. I mean, there's a lot of solitude when you're a judge. A lot of time spent trying to make these decisions, trying to avoid the appearance of ethical impropriety. So these justices, they spend a lot of time together. And when you change just one personality, that can have a huge impact on the court. And of course, if you choose somebody who, you know, Stephen Breyer had this massive tower – had, I don't mean to speak about him in the past tense – but he's a man of towering intellect. He was an academic, a Harvard law professor before he joined the federal bench. And that's difficult to replace. So it's gonna change the dynamic even if you pick somebody with a towering intellect like Leandra Kruger's, you know, it's going to change dynamics and there's really no way around that.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about Senate procedure now. Of course the Senate must confirm the president’s nominee. As of 2017, the Senate rules have changed for Supreme Court picks. The filibuster is not a factor. That means Republicans won’t have a meaningful say in who Biden picks. But there are a couple of reasonably moderate Democrats who will have a say. Do you foresee any possible circumstance under which Sen. Joe Manchin or another Democrat says “no” to the president’s pick?

SCHIETZELT: I think the only way that plays out is if they pick somebody who is much further to the left than any of these three women. Now, all three of these women are that we've named here—Judge Childs, Justice Kruger, and Judge Jackson—they're all fairly moderate picks in the grand scheme of things. They definitely rest to the left of someone like me, but they are fairly moderate and I don't think that's going to be a problem for any of the moderate senators on the left. And already we've seen that Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham—both senators from South Carolina—have come out pushing Judge Childs as well. So if Judge Childs were the nominee, there seems to be at least two Republicans that would cross over and vote for the nominee. .

REICHARD: Final question here: assuming Biden makes his choice very quickly, how quickly could a new justice be seated?

SCHIETZELT: The new justice won't be seated until the new October term in October of this year. So Justice Breyer has agreed to serve until the end of this term or until a replacement is confirmed, whichever of those two dates is later. So whoever's confirmed won't be won't be seated for cases until October of this year.

REICHARD: But they certainly want to push this through before the Midterm election, I assume.

SCHIETZELT: Oh, certainly. And this is a lifeline for the president who's had a very difficult time pushing any of his legislative agenda through or getting any sort of traction with any of the actions that he's taken right now. It's been one blunder after another. And this is a way for him to project or to gain some confidence with the electorate that he's capable of doing this job, that he's capable of making a solid selection. This is something that he'll be able to take to the voters and say, you know, we can get the job done.

REICHARD: Mike Schietzelt with Regent University School of Law has been our guest. Mike, thanks so much!

SCHIETZELT: Thank you so much, Mary.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Delegation meets with military junta—We start today in West Africa.

AUDIO: [Man speaking French]

The military junta that took over Burkina Faso last week has declared its top commander the country’s new president. It also announced a restoration of the constitution. Speaking on state television Monday, a junta spokesman said that would ensure continuity until the appointment of “transitional bodies.”

Later that day, a delegation from the Economic Community of West African States met with junta leaders. Shirley Ayorkor Botchway is Ghana’s foreign minister.

BOTCHWAY: The discussions were very frank, they seemed very open to the suggestions and proposals that we made to them. For us it’s a good sign.

The African Union has suspended Burkina Faso from all its activities since the coup. Its members will meet Thursday to consider sanctions … a step taken against other military regimes that recently took over Mali and Guinea.

Priest killed in Pakistan—Next we go to Southeast Asia. 

AUDIO: [Sounds of people crying, camera shutters]

Christians in Pakistan held a funeral Monday for a priest murdered on his way home from mass.

William Siraj was driving with two other priests in the northwest city of Peshawar on Sunday when two men attacked them.

AUDIO: [Man speaking Urdu]

Church leaders are calling the attack a terrorist incident. No group has claimed responsibility.

But militant attacks have increased since the Pakistani Taliban ended a cease-fire with the government last month. The group has grown increasingly bold since the Taliban takeover in neighboring Afghanistan.

Terror attacks are a constant threat to Christians in Pakistan. Siraj’s funeral was held in the same church where a bombing killed 70 worshippers and injured 100 others in 2013. More than 3,000 people attended the service.

Canadian trucker convoy reaches Ottawa—Next to North America.

AUDIO: [Sound of truck horns, cheering]

A convoy of 18-wheelers driving across Canada reached Ottawa over the weekend. Drivers are protesting a vaccination mandate for truckers on cross-border routes. Both the United States and Canada require the vaccines.

Thousands of people turned out to join the protest once it reached the capital. Many voiced frustration with Canada’s pandemic restrictions, including mask mandates.

AUDIO: We're fighting for freedom my man. We're going to keep fighting Trudeau. You've got nothing on us Trudeau. We're going to win, we're going to win, we're going to defeat you Trudeau, freedom, freedom.

On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced the protest and announced he’d tested positive for COVID-19. He said he had mild symptoms and urged people to get vaccinated.

Lunar new year—And finally, we end today with a world-wide celebration.

People across Asia—and those living around the world—welcomed the Lunar New Year on Tuesday.

AUDIO: [Sound of chanting, followed by bell]

Buddhist monks in Taiwan rang a bell…

In the International Space Station, Chinese astronauts hung bright red banners…

AUDIO: [Man speaking Cantonese]

And sent greetings to family and friends back home.

AUDIO: [Sound of drums, cymbals]

And where pandemic restrictions allowed, lion dancers paraded down city streets like this one in Melbourne, Australia.

The coming year will be known as the Year of the Tiger.

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Imagine you’re out walking around, you’re minding your own business, you pass under a palm tree. You’re in Florida, of course. And suddenly—boink—something hits you on the head.

A very specific something, an iguana.

How can this be? You should know that when it gets below 50 degrees, as it has recently in Florida, iguanas can go dormant—fall asleep right there in the tree and they’re not be able, obviously, to hang on so they fall.

I am describing the phenomenon of “raining iguanas”—it’s a real risk.

One man in Fort Lauderdale shot a video of an iguana after he fell from a palm tree:

AUDIO: Big old boy’s struggling. They never let you get this close to them. He’s cold, he fell right out the tree. And now he’s trying to warm up. He’s gonna warm up all right.

He’s not wrong. And when the iguana comes to, I imagine he’ll scamper back up into that tree and just consider it all a bad dream.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 2nd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Maybe you have some old hymn favorites. Perhaps some sacred songs your grandparents sang that you really love. Or maybe recently rediscovered hymns.

EICHER: Well, next up, we have a story about a musical duo from the province of Quebec in Canada. They are bringing the joy of old songs to French-speaking Christians around the world.

Here’s WORLD’s European Correspondent Jenny Lind Schmitt with their story.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT, CORRESPONDENT: It’s an early Friday evening at La Prairie Church in Montbeliard, France. In the middle of sound checks and instrument tuning, Sebastian Demrey and Jimmy Lahaie take a break to talk to a host from the local Christian radio station, Radio Omega.

RADIO OMEGA: Bonsoir à tous, on est quasiment en direct…Bonsoir, Jean-Philippe…Bonsoir.

Demrey and Lahaie call themselves Heritage Music. They give new life to classic hymns in French and introduce them to a new generation. While that’s a growing trend in English churches, it is still relatively new in French congregations. And there are many fewer artists doing this work.

As the back-stage interview draws to a close, Demrey invites listeners to the concert.

DEMREY: Moi je vous invite à venir ce soir. On va passer un très bon moment. Si vous aimez l’accent canadien, ça va être génial aussi.

Demrey and Lahaie are from Quebec, but most of their French-speaking audience lives outside Canada. This is their first foreign tour since 2020. As the concert begins, there is palpable joy on both sides, as artists and listeners find each other again in the same room.

SONG: CROWN HIM…

But what about that long hiatus? Not only did it affect their careers, like so many other performers, it also affected how they lived and thought about their faith. Was it strong enough to survive when they couldn’t worship in person? Sebastien Demrey says the lockdown and subsequent period have been revealing.

DEMREY: I know for a fact that for a lot of people when churches reopened, a lot of people didn’t come back to church physically, they were just okay with the online. And sometimes they didn’t even watch the online. So we can see the importance of being rooted in the faith. Even If the building’s closed, if the internet’s closed, well, how deep is our faith?

Demrey and his wife worshiped at home with their family during the lockdown. It took adjustment, but his kids loved it, and the experience fostered new depth in his relationship with them. Even as churches reopen, he hopes Christians can rebuild roots in their faith to make sure they’ll be ready the next time a crisis arrives.

The hymns Demrey and Lahaie sing were written in past centuries, when mortality rates were higher and life seemed more tenuous. That has been particularly meaningful during the pandemic.

SONG: PLUS PRES DE TOI…

Many of the hymns are translated from English originals. At times, the depth and meaning comes across richer in translation. One example is Plus Pres de Toi, –Nearer, My God to Thee:

“Nearer to you, Lord, nearer to you,

Hold me in my pain, Lord, nearer to you.

Even as my suffering does its work in silence,

Ever nearer you, Lord, hold me nearer to you”

DEMREY: When a song travels through centuries, it’s because the person that wrote it went through something and by faith decided to write. A lot of hymns were written out of tragedies and hard circumstances. They chose to keep the faith and to write songs about it and poems.

Demrey says we should be careful of what he calls “fast food” music in the church: Music that’s released, then vanishes quickly to make room for the next big song. He adds that whether old or modern, the church needs songs that are biblically and theologically strong—songs that exemplify the Apostle Paul’s exhortations to feed on the meat of Scripture.

DEMREY: So we just have to be careful that our music, what we sing in the church makes us reflect about salvation, about preaching the gospel, about being deeply rooted in the faith, and about when trials are going to come, how are we going to face those trials.

The duo originally started the Heritage collaboration for their own sake. In 2010 the friends realized they shared a love for the old hymns that their parents and grandparents sang. For fun, they decided to record an album of those songs before returning to other musical projects.

CONCERT AMBI

But their music struck a chord with the French-speaking world. Now they’ve made hymns the focus of their careers.

Lahaie explains the creative process of breathing life into these beloved songs:

LAHAIE: We’re revisiting the hymns without changing the melodies most of the time. So we change the chords and the rhythm. We keep the tableau, the old painting on the wall, we just change the color and the background.

SONG: GOLGATHA…

Lahaie and Demrey say their individual tastes and preferences rub off on each other. Lahaie is guitar and folk oriented. Demrey more piano and strings. Together their style ranges from pop to folk to jazz, with influence from their travels. Before the pandemic, they toured Madagascar and Reunion Island, and rhythms from those travels showed up in their next album.

DEMREY: We’re very much inspired by a lot of different styles of music. …We just don’t want lyrics and poor music. We want both forms of art: Lyrics, poetry, singing, great musicianship.

SONG: BLESSED ASSURANCE…

Demrey hints that Heritage Music has some contemporary music projects in the works for the future. But even if they do, they’ll keep singing the old classics. Songs that remind everyone in the audience where their real treasure is.

DEMREY: Lahaie: We have a hope that is way beyond the physical world. …We have a soul, and we know where our soul is heading after death. We have a bigger hope in Jesus than anything else.

APPLAUSE

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Here’s WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on foundations that don’t collapse.

JANIE B. CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: Is it just me, or is our house falling apart?

From my perspective of seventy-plus years, the 1970s were objectively worse than today. But seeds sown then appear to be re-seeding themselves now. I’ve always been interested in the history of ideas. But try to explain big philosophical/worldview trends to your average library book club. Is there a concrete image that can help us understand what’s happening?

Well, try this:

Imagine Western civilization as a house built on the ruins of Athens and Jerusalem. The foundation is Biblical truth applied to a civic understanding of all things in subjection to God. These truths are not quite self-evident and human selfishness and cruelty applies them haphazardly at best. Nevertheless, islands of mercy dot the landscape and universities are springing up, offering knowledge to anyone lucky enough to get there.

By the time of the early Renaissance, the house is solid and ready to expand. With the Reformation, literacy explodes. The foundation is still Biblical truth, the roof is God’s abiding presence, and the walls are geographical boundaries: almost all of Europe, soon expanded to North America.

“Revolutions” begin to hammer on the roof in the 1700s: scientific, rational, romantic. None of them could have come about without some unifying sense of spiritual reality. But by the time Darwin arrives, the shingles are gone and timbers are splintered. If evolution can explain the universe, who needs God? Marx and Nietzsche concur, and by the end of the 19th century the roof is gone, leaving the West open to the blinding sun of modernist materialism.

Materialists deny supernatural reality, but not objective reality. All that’s needed, they believe, is for science to explain everything in materialist terms, and then everyone will abandon their superstitions. On we go to a bright new world. Only it didn’t play out that way: Two world wars and massive destruction led to disenchantment with reality. What if everything we took to be real is only a social construct? Postmodernism began simmering in academic circles. If social realities can be constructed, they can also be deconstructed.

Modernism removed the roof. Postmodernism took away the floor.

The house of the West now looks like rickety walls surrounding rickety platforms built by warring tribes. The woke, the unwoke, the privileged, the marginalized, are all feverishly trying to reinforce their scaffolds with timbers taken from other scaffolds. It’s no way to build; in fact, it looks a lot like collapse.

But there’s another house. “As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 2:4-5). It has a sure foundation, leakproof timbers, solid walls.

Can you see it?

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Japan’s military. We’ll tell you why after decades of pacifism, the country’s leaders are starting to talk tough.

And, we’ll visit Louisiana where a new sports betting law has church leaders worried.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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.

Jesus said: "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45 ESV).

Go now in grace and peace.

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