Voters across Europe have lost faith in politics partly because of “unachievable targets” on renewable energy, said German Energy Minister Peter Altmaier, who rejected calls from a group of other EU countries to boost the share of renewables to 33-35% of the bloc’s energy mix by 2030. Altmaier made the comments during an on-the-record exchange between the 28 EU energy ministers, who are gathered in Luxembourg today (11 June) for a meeting of the Energy Council.

Energy ministers are expected to thrash out a joint position on three clean energy laws which are currently being negotiated in the EU institutions – the Renewable Energy Directive, the Energy Efficiency Directive and a regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union. “Germany supports responsible but achievable targets,” Altmaier said from the outset, underlining Berlin’s efforts to raise the share of renewables to 15% of the country’s overall energy mix.

But he said those efforts also carried a cost for the German taxpayer, which he put at €25 billion per year. “And if we are setting targets that are definitely above 30%, that means that within a decade, our share has to be more than doubled – clearly more than doubled,” Altmaier pointed out. “We’re not going to manage that,” Altmaier said referring to an objective of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020 in Germany. “Nowhere in Europe is going to manage that,” he claimed. “And even if we did manage to get enough electric cars, we wouldn’t have enough renewable electricity to keep them on the road,” he stressed.

That all changed in March, when the "America First" president went on the offensive. "What happened for a period of time is the president was constrained by different members" of his administration, said Edward Alden, a specialist on US economic competitiveness at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the president has become increasingly confident in his own judgment on these issues... He is willing to do radical things he promised during his campaign and for many years before that."

In its latest move, the White House on Friday announced stiff 25 percent tariffs on Chinese imports, sparking immediate retaliation from Beijing. The move, which Trump justified as payback for the theft of American intellectual property and technology, reignited a trade spat between the world's two largest economies, spooking markets and worrying business leaders.

Trump and his most hardline advisors - led by Peter Navarro, who is openly hostile to China - are convinced that the US will win a trade war. Their argument: Washington's trade partners, especially Beijing, have much more to lose than the United States, given their dependence on selling to the US market.

In June 2015, Governor Greg Abbot signed legislation creating the state gold bullion and precious metal depository. The facility will not only provide a secure place for individuals, business, cities, counties, government agencies and even other countries to store gold and other precious metals, the law also creates a mechanism to facilitate the everyday use of gold and silver in transactions. In short, a person will eventually be able to deposit gold or silver – and pay other people through electronic means or checks – in sound money.

The facility began accepting deposits of precious metals on Wednesday, June 6. Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar became the first depositor. He praised the depository as a secure place to store gold and silver. “Once you’ve made that deposit, it is going to be there tomorrow and in the future, until you make a decision to withdraw it or you want to sell it,” he told the Texas Tribune.

By making gold and silver available for regular, daily transactions by the general public, the new depository has the potential for wide-reaching effect. Professor William Greene is an expert on constitutional tender and said in a paper for the Mises Institute that when people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

The Texas Bullion Depository creates a mechanism to challenge the federal government’s monopoly on money and provides a blueprint for other states to follow. If the majority of states controlled their own supply of gold, and people began using precious metals in daily transactions, it could conceivably make the Federal Reserve completely irrelevant.

The pope set his prepared text aside to speak off the cuff to the group, urging everyone to help society regain respect for the value of every child and the plan of God for families. “Children are to be received as they come, as God sends them,” he said. “I have heard that it is typical during the first months of pregnancy to do tests on the baby and if the child is not well or has something wrong we do away with it. Just to keep life peaceful, an innocent child is killed.”

“We do as the Nazis did to safeguard the purity of the race, but we do it with ‘white gloves,’” he said.

The General of the WCC, Rev Olav Fykse Tveit, said the meeting would be a “very useful and significant workshop to dig a bit deeper” into the problems of xenophobia as an expression of populism, as well as its links to racism, conflict, and violence in countries around the world.

Last September, the Vatican launched a two-year campaign to change people’s minds about migrants and to encourage a more welcoming attitude toward them worldwide. Our world “faces not a migration crisis, but a crisis of global solidarity... Be part of a worldwide campaign to reach out to migrants, change perceptions, open hearts and minds, and strengthen the bonds that unite us all.”

A most disturbing image appeared in 2015 when former Argentinian citizen Jorge Mario Bergoglio visited an old friend, in his new job as Pope Francis. The friend was Bolivian Marxist President Evo Morales. He gave him a ‘communist crucifix,’ that depicted Jesus crucified on a hammer and sickle. The only plausible reason he would give such a bizarre gift is that he recognized a ‘fellow traveler.’

The Catholic church has little to do with Christianity. As George Bernard Shaw said, Christianity is the greatest thing in the world. It is just a pity nobody ever tried it. Pope Francis is making sure as a Marxist that nobody will try it. He is making the new religion of environmentalism and global warming the opiate of the masses.

He praised the despotic Kim Jong-un and said North Korea 'has great potential for the future.' Not so for the political press corps. 'So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN,' Trump tweeted of the two networks he sees as most needlessly antagonistic toward his administration. 'They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea.'

'500 days ago they would have “begged” for this deal – looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!'

It follows calls for social media and online gaming firms to have a statutory “duty of care” to protect children from mental ill health, abuse and addictive behaviour. Speaking at the NHS Confederation conference in Manchester, Mr Stevens said Britain’s children were hit by a “double epidemic” of mental illness and obesity.

He also called for more action to tackle unhealthy lifestyles, and said he hoped to see “renewed pragmatism” from the Government in its updated childhood obesity strategy, due to be published soon. "The average person in this country spends twice as long on the toilet as they do exercising,” the NHS chief executive said.

Based on models including those of burnable materials in cities, they calculated the amount of soot and dust that would be thrown into the air by the blasts, the consequent blotting of the sun and damage to the atmosphere. They found that the “nuclear autumn” of such destruction would damage agricultural output by up to 20 per cent, enough to affect widespread food shortages even on the other side of the world.

Professor Pearce said modeling showed that if the US were to fire 1,000 nuclear warheads, 50-times more Americans would die than did on 9/11, even if no missiles were fired back. The altered atmosphere would be expected to result in an overall drop in global temperature, a 19 per cent reduction in rainfall as well as an increase in ultraviolet radiation.

The study warns that its estimated long-term casualties suffered by the aggressor nation are likely to be a significant underestimate, because they reflect only the predicted deaths directly resulting from food shortage, but not the violence and unrest that such deprivation would cause.

Children are being needlessly ripped from homes at such an alarming rate that hundreds of parents in one state have gone so far as to create a counter-kidnapping organization to stop it. As TFTP reported last week, a parent’s rights organization filed a letter in federal court last Tuesday asking a federal judge strike down Minnesota’s current child protection laws for being too expansive and removing children from loving and safe homes without due process.

“Families are being abused, and in some cases, destroyed, as a result of laws that are inappropriate,” said Dwight Mitchell, the lead plaintiff in the case and founder of the parents’ association. “This is legal kidnapping.” This legal kidnapping is happening in states across the country and it is contributing to the very real epidemic of child trafficking. The reality of such practices within the United States foster system is outright horrifying.

As Snopes and the mainstream media in general attempts to smear those who try to call attention to alleged and very real child trafficking, the government’s own data shows how irresponsible this is. While there are certainly some outlandish theories being presented online, the facts are outlandish enough to warrant serious scrutiny. Until this epidemic is taken seriously, the government, the media, and all those who deny it will remain complicit in keeping it going.

The total corruption of the print and TV media led to the rise of Internet media such as Wikileaks, led by Julian Assange, a prisoner since 2012. Assange is an Australian and Ecuadorian citizen. He is not an American citizen. Yet US politicians and media claim that he is guilty of treason because he published official documents leaked to Wikileaks that prove the duplicity and criminality of the US government.

It is strictly impossible for a non-citizen to be guilty of treason. It is strictly impossible under the US Constitution for the reporting of facts to be spying. The function of the media is to expose and to hold accountable the government. This function is no longer performed by the Western print and TV media.

Washington wants revenge and is determined to get it. If Assange were as corrupt at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, National Public Radio, MSNBC, etc, he would have reported the leaker to Washington, not published the information, and retired as a multi-millionaire with Washington’s thanks. However, unfortunately for Assange, he had integrity. Integrity today in the Western world has no value. You cannot find integrity in the government, in the global corporations, in the universities and schools, and most certainly not in the media.