The World and Everything in It - November 11, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

China is exerting its economic clout to influence U.S. culture.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, another professor is suspended for exercising his right to free speech on campus. We’ll talk about it.

Plus getting to know an early pilgrim.

And commentator Whitney Williams on when the best thing you can do is bust out a window.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday November 11th. 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, Kristen Flavin with today’s news.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden responds to high inflation numbers » President Biden visited a port in Baltimore Wednesday to tout the infrastructure spending bill passed last week by the House.

BIDEN: It’s going to modernize our ports with $17 billion in investment. $17 billion in investment. It’s going to reduce congestion. We’re going to address maintenance and repair backlogs, deploy state of the art technologies and make our ports cleaner and more efficient. And we’re going to do the same with our airports and freight rail.

The president highlighted the $1 trillion spending package as a way to help fix supply chain woes and lower prices on a range of goods.

BIDEN: Along with other plans that I’m advancing, this bill is going to reduce the cost of goods to consumers, businesses, and get people back to work. Helping us build an economy from the bottom up and middle out, where everybody’s better off.

But his optimistic message clashed with new government numbers released earlier in the day. Consumer prices climbed 6.2 percent in October, compared to a year ago. That’s the highest level in three decades.

The president called reversing that trend a top priority.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said price hikes would be temporary. But Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said they might last through next summer. The Labor Department says Americans now spend about 15 percent more on goods than they did before the pandemic.

Jan. 6th records ruling and possible appeal » The National Archives is preparing to turn over White House records related to the Jan. 6th Capitol riot. Barring a court intervention, it plans to deliver the files to Congress tomorrow. WORLD’s Paul Butler reports.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: The House committee investigating the riot subpoenaed the documents earlier this year. President Biden said he would not invoke executive privilege to stop their release.

Former President Trump sued, alleging he still had executive privilege to protect the files. But on Tuesday, a federal judge rejected that claim.

Judge Tanya Chutkan said the sitting president was best suited to discern what White House records needed to stay private. In her ruling, she said the court is “not best situated to determine executive branch interests.”

Trump immediately filed an appeal.

The House committee is seeking documents created by former chief of staff Mark Meadows, presidential adviser Stephen Miller, and White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin, as well as call records and visitor logs.

The committee is trying to determine what level of responsibility Trump may bear for inciting the crowd that stormed Capitol Hill.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

Japanese prime minister re-elected » AUDIO: [Sound of man speaking Japanese, followed by clapping]

Japan’s parliament re-elected Fumio Kishida as prime minister on Wednesday.

Kishida became the nation’s leader last month when his predecessor stepped down after just one year in office. Kishida called for an election almost immediately, and his Liberal Democratic Party won a majority of seats in parliament.

The better-than-expected showing gives the prime minister a stronger position to advocate for his priorities. Those include strengthening Japan’s military.

Kishida’s party has long advocated for revising the pacifist constitution drafted under U.S. influence at the end of World War II.

Kishida met briefly with President Joe Biden during last week’s climate conference in Scotland. But he said he hopes to visit Washington before the end of the year to discuss threats in the region. Those include North Korea’s nuclear program and China’s growing military aggression.

Special counsel recommends Hatch Act revisions » The Office of Special Counsel is recommending changes to the law that’s supposed to prevent government officials from influencing elections. WORLD’s Leigh Jones has that story.

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: In a report released Tuesday, the office said 13 former Trump administration officials violated the Hatch Act during the 2020 presidential campaign.

They include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and presidential adviser Jared Kushner, who is also the president’s son-in-law. All of the Trump administration officials named in the report advocated for the president’s re-election while speaking in their official capacity.

The report urged Congress to amend the act to allow fines for Senate-confirmed presidential appointees and commissioned officers who violate its rules.

It also wants lawmakers to clarify which areas of the White House should be off-limits to political activity. President Trump hosted the 2020 Republican National Convention at the White House amid pandemic restrictions against large gatherings. Despite its recommendation, the report found the convention did not violate restrictions against campaign influence.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

Border fight between Belarus and Poland » European Union ambassadors agreed Wednesday to broaden sanctions against Belarus. That in retaliation for a growing migrant crisis on the country’s border with Poland.

AUDIO: [Vladimir Makei]

Belarus’ foreign minister called the move “political blackmail.” He said his country would seek a solution to the crisis with help from its allies in Moscow.

As many as 4,000 migrants are staying in makeshift camps on the border with Poland. Temperatures in the region dip well below freezing at night.

A UN spokeswoman accused both sides of using the migrants as pawns in a political game.

SHAMDASANI: What we are seeing is politically charged and security charged responses from both sides, from the Belarussian side as well as from the Poland side, whereas we are calling for a human rights based response to this situation.

Germany’s foreign minister accused Belarus on Wednesday of partnering with Russia to destabilize the West by encouraging migration. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said over the summer his country would no longer stop migrants from entering Europe. That move was widely seen as retaliation for sanctions imposed on his authoritarian regime last year.

Judge OK’s Flint water settlement » A federal judge has approved a $626 million settlement to end litigation over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Most of the money will come from the state. It was accused of overlooking the risks of switching the city’s water source without treating it. The resulting corrosion in old pipes led to contamination from lead and bacteria.

The settlement makes money available to every child exposed to the water and every adult who can show an injury. It also compensates certain businesses and anyone who paid water bills in Flint during 2014 and 2015.

I’m Kristen Flavin. Straight ahead: China bends U.S. entertainers to its political will.

Plus, coming home through brokenness.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 11th of November, 2021. You’re listening to The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up: China plays economic hardball.

For many years China has faced accusations of underhanded business practices. But more recently Beijing has stepped into the “celebrity influencer” game. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher reports.

KANTER: My message to the Chinese government is, “Free Tibet.” Tibet belongs to Tibetans...

JOSHUA SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter took to Twitter a few weeks ago to show support for Tibetan independence. He also wore shoes bearing the slogan “Free Tibet” during the Celtics’ game on October 20th against the New York Knicks.

Backlash came swiftly.

AUDIO: [Man speaking Mandarin]

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman called Kanter’s comments “not worth refuting.” But the Chinese streaming platform Tencent banned video feeds of all Celtics games in China.

And this isn’t the first time Beijing has lashed out at NBA players and coaches over critical comments. During the 2019 Hong Kong riots, Beijing effectively cancelled the Houston Rockets in China after manager Daryl Morey expressed support for Hong Kong’s independence. As payback, China ordered all Rockets merchandise pulled from stores and banned streaming of the team’s games.

Zane Zovak is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He says this kind of economic pressure is becoming much more common.

ZOVAK: So it seems to be a little bit of a template here for, you say anything about China or against the official narrative, and they're going to come out against you.

And Zovak says China isn’t just going hard in the paint. Beijing has also cancelled critics in areas of show business outside the NBA.

ZOVAK: They seem to be targeting any sort of influential figures, or celebrities, or anything in the media that might cut against the official narrative. So in the past, and there's some notable examples…

According to Zovak, last year in the lead up to the latest Fast and Furious movie, actor John Cena made an innocuous comment about Taiwan being its own country. After an outcry, Cena released a video apology, in Mandarin.

ZOVAK: ...And I think the message there was very clear that, you know, this is just an example of him to sort of kow-towing away to China and the fact that one of their main state media companies is behind the production. And this again, being not the exception, but the rule...

But show business isn’t the only business in which China has been bullying U.S. companies. Derek Scissors is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

SCISSORS: We've also had companies which have said, you know, either stated or used maps that imply Taiwan is separate from China, have been harassed by the Chinese. There have been informal boycotts organized, which are usually encouraged by the government...

But this isn’t just simple harassment. There’s also a lot of what Scissors refers to as “normal coercion” taking place.

SCISSORS: Claiming that U.S. firms had cooperated with U.S. investigations of Chinese goods, or technology theft, singling out U.S. firms for monopoly investigations, when the Chinese encourage monopolies among state owned enterprises.

One area of Chinese bullying in particular? Intellectual property theft. It takes place in two forms. Scissors describes the first as “coercion.”

SCISSORS: Coercion is when the Chinese come to a company that's selling to China and saying, “Boy, you're making a lot of money in China, you know, if you really want to continue making a lot of money in China, you need to put your best technology out there.” And then the technology gets taken and reverse engineered and so on.

The second form is outright theft.

SCISSORS: You know, you have people working with or in cooperation with American companies. And they'll just steal things, steal technology, steal ideas, steal information, and they'll bring them back to China, maybe to start their own firm up, maybe as a deal with a Chinese firm. But either way, the technology now becomes available in China, where it’s protected in the US.

And that gives the Chinese enormous advantages—both commercially and strategically.

SCISSORS: On the commercial side, if you develop a product and you spent years and you put millions of dollars into it, and I'm just like, “Thanks!” Now, you know, we’re even--except I didn’t spend any of that money. All my money can go to undercutting the price and trying to drive you out of business.

And on the strategic side, Scissors says the Chinese are looking to obtain technology they haven’t been able to develop themselves, including things like semiconductors. Taking that technology from someone else allows them to vault over the time and energy it would take to develop them on their own.

The U.S. government has called out Beijing for strong-arming U.S. businesses. But Scissors says that hasn’t made much of a difference.

SCISSORS: The Biden administration talks like it's a priority. They don't really act like it is. We have an agreement with the Chinese that coercion would ease and China would improve its laws protecting intellectual property. But the Chinese pass laws all the time. Laws don't mean anything, the only thing that matters is their behavior.

Zane Zovak says compared to Beijing’s other forms of corporate coercion, spats with Hollywood and sports leagues may not seem like that big a deal. But if the Chinese government can pressure U.S. celebrities to say what it wants, it needs to be taken seriously.

ZOVAK: It's going to be one of those things, where if it's not taken super seriously now, you know, 20, 30, even 40 years down the line, then the international world may look very different than it does now.

Because whoever controls the message controls reality.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: more campus problems.

A South Carolina university dropped the curtain on a theater professor over alleged “insensitivity.”

Coastal Carolina University in Conway relieved professor Steven Earnest of his teaching duties, at least for now. This, after he publicly disagreed with how administrators handled a racially charged misunderstanding.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: His suspension is one of several instances lately of colleges muzzling the speech of faculty.

Joining us to talk about it is Steve West. He’s an attorney and writes about religious liberty issues for WORLD Digital. Good morning, Steve!

WEST: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: Well, let’s start with that misunderstanding and the response to it. What happened to set all of this in motion?

WEST: Well, this conflict at Coastal Carolina University started back in September after a conversation between a visiting artist and two nonwhite students after class. One of the students wanted to get to know more classmates who aren’t white, so the other student wrote a list of names of possible acquaintances on the classroom whiteboard. They did not erase the list, unfortunately, which offended several students entering the next class who misunderstood. Those students believed whoever had written the list must have been singling out their nonwhite peers.

So, the school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee looked into it and concluded that the names on the board had been presented as a resource for newer students who wanted to build community with students of color. Even so, the committee apologized, writing in an email to students that the “faculty and students involved as well as the Theatre Department as a whole are deeply sorry to anyone who was affected by this incident.”

REICHARD: Okay, so there was an investigation and an apology after that. Did that end it?

WEST: Oh no. When professor Steven Earnest did not agree, more trouble followed. He felt students could have been a little less reactive, a little more thick-skinned. He sent an email saying, “Sorry but I don't think it’s a big deal. I’m just sad people get their feelings hurt so easily. And they are going into Theatre?” So, students criticized Earnest’s emails and accused him of being racially insensitive and dismissive of students of color. He responded by clarifying that he was “just defending our guest artist.” After several students called for Earnest to be fired and boycotted theater classes. Earnest got an email from his dean that told him not to report to class—essentially, suspending him. So, in the words of Earnest’s attorney, Ruth Smith, “Rather than protect its faculty and support a faculty member’s right to speak the truth, CCU threw its faculty member under the bus.”

REICHARD: Pretty strong words. Has there been any legal action?

WEST: Not yet. Right now, Earnest is working through the college’s grievance process.

REICHARD: Steve, other similar cases have cropped up in recent years, is that correct?

WEST: That’s correct. You know, listeners may remember UCLA suspended professor Gordon Klein in the summer of 2020 when he declined to allow black students to take an altered exam to accommodate for trauma caused by George Floyd’s death and the protests that came after that. Klein got his job back within several months, but claims he experienced emotional distress and damage to his reputation—harms for which he‘s suing the university.

More recently, a fellow faculty member accused a music professor at the University of Michigan of “a racist act” for showing students a 1965 film staging of Othello—featuring actors in dark makeup. The music school dean criticized the professor, Bright Sheng, in a statement and referred him to the Title IX office for an investigation and he was also partly suspended from teaching. That’s according to the Academic Freedom Alliance, a group that went to bat for Sheng in an Oct. 18 letter to the school.

REICHARD: As you know, there is always more at stake in these kinds of cases than we might first think. Steve, what are the broader implications?

WEST: Well, I reached out to Ronnie London, who heads up the Faculty Defense Fund for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and he talked to me about a number of possible factors that have led to the uptick in faculty controversies. For example, he pointed to social media’s role in publicizing such incidents, increasing partisanship, and a generation of students more apt to favor silencing and punishing viewpoints they disagree with than to engage them in debate—so really, what’s at stake is increasing ambivalence or even hostility to free speech rights. That’s troublesome for anyone resting on that fundamental free speech guarantee.

REICHARD: But this also says something about students, doesn’t it?

WEST: Sadly, it really does. It suggests a kind of emotional fragility among some students. As Ronnie London told me, “When you are at the point where you are exposed to speech and it is so triggering to you and so troubling to you, maybe the answer is that you need to seek help outside of the classroom for that rather than saying the classroom should cater to each individual’s potential triggers.” But, you know, I’d say at the heart of this issue is a fragile identity that leads some to perceive disagreement as threat. Students, like all of us, need a firmer ground for identity—what scripture calls, “Christ in me, the hope of glory.”

REICHARD: Fragile identity. I’m going to remember that phrase. Steve West writes about religious liberties for WORLD Digital. You can read his work at WNG.org. You can also subscribe to his free weekly newsletter on First Amendment issues, Liberties. Steve, always good to have you on. Thank you!

WEST: Thanks so much, Mary.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Those red phone booths in Britain are an iconic sight and have been for nearly a hundred years.

But with mobile phones taking over land line phones, regulators have ordered removal of nearly half of those cheery little booths.

Still, the boxes have a champion within the U.K.’s telecommunications agency. It wants the remaining booths to stay put. Turns out those phones are a lifeline for people in need; 150,000 emergency calls made from them just last year. And thousands more calls made on behalf of child safety and suicide prevention.

Other unused call boxes have been repurposed as storage units for public defibrillators, mini community libraries—even art galleries!

BROWN: The creative spirit!

REICHARD: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 11th. We’re so glad you’ve turned to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: getting to know a pilgrim father.

William Bradford is one of the most famous Pilgrims and for good reason. He served as governor of Plymouth colony for more than 30 years. And most of what we know about Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving comes from his book, titled: Of Plymouth Plantation.

REICHARD: One descendant of Bradford says there’s even more to the man than most of us know. And he’s spending his retirement spreading the word. WORLD Special Correspondent Sarah Schweinsberg has his story.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: It's a rainy, October day in Plymouth, Massachusetts. A couple dozen people file into a church gym where a pulpit has been set up under a basketball hoop. Visitors sit in folding chairs. They’ve come to watch a presentation about William Bradford.

SOUND: [Clapping]

A tall man with white hair and a quick smile walks to the front. He looks like he’s stepped straight out of a painting of the first Thanksgiving. He’s wearing a black waistcoat with shiny buttons, a cape, and knickers with tall socks. His black leather shoes clack on the wooden gym floor.

This is David Bradford. A 12th generational descendant of William Bradford.

BRADFORD: My mission, I'm David Bradford. I've always wanted to share, to be his mouthpiece, wanting to really share directly his words and his history without being any kind of a filter. I just wanted to be faithful.

To do that, David tries to bring William Bradford’s life—well—to life. And to do that, David recites stories from Bradford’s history Of Plymouth Plantation.

Today, he starts with a story from the Pilgrim’s time on the Mayflower. Bradford recounted how halfway across the Atlantic, an overstressed ship beam cracked.

BRADFORD: And one of the main beams in the mid-ships was bow-ed and crack-ed, which put us in some fear that the ship would be unable to perform the voyage.

A giant screw jack saved the day. The device was actually part of a typesetting press—used to clamp inked typesetting fonts onto paper. But the crew repurposed it to hold the beam in place.

BRADFORD: There was a great iron screw, we brought with us on the island, which raise-ed the beam into its place. And so we committed ourselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed.

William Bradford actually wrote Of Plymouth Plantation in the third person, as a reporter. But to make them more personal, David tells his stories in first person.

BRADFORD: I’ve committed to memory probably, I'm gonna say close to an hour of dialogue.

In order to accurately portray Bradford, David learned the Pilgrim's unique dialect. A fusion of English, Dutch, and the group’s own way of pronouncing words. They said the silent K’s in know—like K-no. And separated out past tense -ed endings. They liv-ed in Plymouth.

BRADFORD: If you really listened to what they actually sounded like, you probably would have a hard time understanding it. It was really thick.

David got interested in his famous ancestor when he was a homeschooling dad of four. One of his sons loved history and kept asking questions about William Bradford. And so David began to learn.

He discovered that William Bradford had a tumultuous childhood. He was born in 1590 in Yorkshire, England, and by the time he was 7 he was an orphan. Relatives raised him and helped him get a good education...but they also died. By the time he was grown, he had lost 10 close family members.

David Bradford tells the audience that during his difficult childhood, William Bradford developed a deep faith in God and understood the uncertainty of life. His faith didn’t waiver even when his wife, Dorothy, fell off the Mayflower and drowned just as they arrived at Cape Cod.

BRADFORD: God was teaching him don't count on these things in life. They're temporary. And if anybody was a was a Christian man, who knew that and lived his life, saying, I'm here to please God, and to be found faithful with God, and I'm going to live my life that way, because I'm not promised tomorrow. It was William Bradford.

Bradford was a strong leader. The colony unanimously elected him as its second governor when he was just 30. The colony would re-elect him 30 more times.

Bradford led the colony after they’d lost half their number during the first winter in America. He also established democracy and self-government and entered into a peace treaty with the local Wampanaog Native Americans that lasted more than 50 years.

He died at age 67. Before his death, he wrote a poem about his life. David Bradford recites it for the audience.

BRADFORD: He says, from my years young, in days of youth, God did make known to me His truth. In wilderness, he did me guide and in strange lands, for me provide. Off left of them whom I did trust. How vain is to rest on Dust. A man of sorrows I have been, and many changes I have seen. Faint not poor soul in God still trust, fear not the things that suffer must, for whom he loves, he doth chastise. And then all tears wipes from  their eyes, farewell, dear children, whom I love. Your better Father is above.

David Bradford says the more he studies William Bradford… the more he feels like he knows him personally.

BRADFORD: He was pretty quiet. But very, you know, firm on what he, what he believed in. Very gentle was not an aggressive person, but he could be when he got angry I just feel personality wise he was someone who was easy to follow, because he led by example.

David is doing more and more reenactments these days—getting invites from historical societies, political organizations, and Christian schools curious about why the Pilgrims are significant.

David says he wants to tell William Bradford’s story because he embodies many of the characteristics people need today. Faith in God, virtue, and hope.

BRADFORD: And now I'm 67 years old, which is the age William Bradford was, Governor Bradford was when he died. So it's like, it's kind of a, you know, his life was over. And I'm now taking the baton. And I just want to share what he thought and what he felt was important enough for us to know.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 11th. 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.

Let us take a moment and talk about keeping this program funded. This is a quick reminder to you if you listen to this program and appreciate that we try to deliver the news in a way that doesn’t stress you out! November is “new giver month.” We’d ask that you please consider sending in some financial support this month if you’ve not done so before.

BROWN: A generous family stepped up with a dollar for dollar match. For every dollar you give, it’s doubled, up to $40,000! So making your gift go twice as far.

REICHARD: Every dollar really makes a difference and we take care to treat it with respect, using it carefully. Many small amounts add up quickly when we all work together.

Just go to wng.org/donate and make your first-ever gift today. wng.org/donate. Again, wng.org/donate. And thank you.

BROWN: Alright. Here’s commentator Whitney Williams on finding the bright side of things.

AUDIO: [Sound of crickets chirping]

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, COMMENTATOR: The sun dipped below the horizon, signaling the end of another long, but enjoyable day at our deer lease. My husband finally admitted that even if a wild hog were to stop by, he could no longer see through the scope of his hunting rifle. And I had my mind set on three things: burger, bath, bed. My husband turned on his headlamp and our family of five exited the deer blind and began making our way back to our four-wheeler through tall, thick grass.

AUDIO: [Sound of walking]

I started calculating as I walked, holding one of my son’s hands. OK, it’ll take about 20 minutes to get back to our truck. Then we have an hour-long drive back to civilization. We’ll grab a quick bite to eat, take quick showers—maybe I can be in bed by 9:30!

As we approached the truck, my husband patted his pockets in search of the keys. No keys. We got off the four wheeler and walked toward the truck with dread. Please don’t be locked. Please don’t be locked. It was locked. My husband shined his headlight inside: “Found them!” he said, frustration giving his voice an edge. The keys lay in one of our son’s car seats. For a few moments, we tried to figure out whom to blame, but that got us nowhere.

My husband found some wire cutters and cut a long, straying piece of barbed wire from a nearby fence, unwinding and straightening it out as best he could. He shimmied and jimmied to no avail. We called the local game warden—I don’t really know why, honestly—and he sent the local sheriff, who apparently had a special tool for such a time as this. We waited in the darkness with our boys, holding out hope. We figured busting a window would be cheaper and faster than calling a locksmith. But that seemed so dramatic. Surely there was another way. The sheriff finally arrived, bumping through the field toward my husband’s headlight. He agreed we had quite the situation on our hands, greeted our boys, and went to work, not responsible for any scratches or damage to our truck, of course.

AUDIO: [Sound of talking, eventual breaking]

After even more ineffective shimmying and jimmying, the sheriff adjusted his cowboy hat and lit up a cigarette: “Weellllllppp, which window y’all want me to break?” Apparently, he had ANOTHER tool for such a time as THAT.

We didn’t want a broken window. In fact, we tried our best to avoid it. But it turns out brokenness was a blessing in disguise. It was messy, of course, even sharp at times. But brokenness ended up being our saving grace, the very thing we needed to get back to where we were supposed to be. God used brokenness to bring us out of the darkness. He used brokenness to get us home.

I’m Whitney Williams.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet returns for Culture Friday.

And, a new movie about art and cats.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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: blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Go now in grace and peace.

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