USA - Americans are dipping into their savings, if they have any, even more than they did last year, a new survey finds. Nearly 70 percent of Americans report having less than $1,000 in savings, and the pattern touches all age groups. Even those making $100,000 to $149,999 a year had less than $1,000 or nothing at all in savings 44 percent of the time, according to GoBankingRates.com, which released its findings Monday.
Spendthrift habits seem to have increased from last year, when the Los Angeles-based financial website found 62 percent of more than 5,000 adults had less than $1,000 in savings. This year’s survey asking the same question to more than 7,000 adults, 69 percent of whom said their savings account total lacked a comma. Half of those, 34 percent, had saved a big fat goose egg, an increase of 6 percent from the year prior, when 28 percent reported having $0 in savings.
USA - Do you remember the old Saturday Night Live sketches in which comedian Chris Farley portrayed a motivational speaker that lived in a van down by the river? Unfortunately, this is becoming a reality for way too many Americans. As the middle class has shrunk and the cost of living has increased, a lot of people have decided to quite literally “live on the road”.
USA - All over America sick and twisted people are dressing up like creepy clowns in order to frighten the living daylights out of others. This trend started back in August, and since then social media has helped it spread like wildfire. So far there have been creepy clown sightings in 11 different states, and Mississippi and Kentucky have been added to the list since my last article. A lot of young kids seem to think that this is a great idea for a “prank”, but authorities are taking the creepy clown phenomenon very, very seriously because in recent days the threats of violence have become much more chilling. Individuals posing as “creepy clowns” on social media are openly naming specific schools that they plan to target and are threatening to commit horrific acts of violence. That may sound like an interesting plot for a Hollywood horror movie, but in real life these kinds of threats have very serious consequences.
ISRAEL - The charred lump of a 2,000-year-old scroll sat in an Israeli archaeologist's storeroom for decades, too brittle to open. Now, new imaging technology has revealed what was written inside: the earliest evidence of a biblical text in its standardized form.
SYRIA -Weekend US airstrikes against a Syrian army base in Deir Ezzor, a protracted error which killed 83 Syrian soldiers and opened up the base for ISIS to overrun it, carried on longer than it should have, because when Russia made the call to warn the Americans, the guy who was supposed to answer it wasn’t there.
EUROPE - There you have it: a perfect summary of the European Union philosophy. In comments which were presumably made without embarrassment, a clutch of senior EU officials last week provided the Telegraph with a concise summing up of how this thing works. The UK, they said, will be forced to give up on Brexit when faced with “the bureaucratic nightmare” in which it will be entrapped by the most vindictive (sorry, the toughest) negotiations that could be devised.
USA - The most important issue in the US presidential election is the one neither of the two main capitalist candidates, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, is talking about: the increasing likelihood that the next US president will order direct military action against Russia, China or North Korea, all countries that possess nuclear weapons.
USA - Everybody knows that what just happened in New York City was an act of Islamic terror, so why won’t Barack Obama use those words? 28-year-old Afghan immigrant Ahmad Khan Rahami only had one motivation when he planted those improvised explosive devices. He wanted to use violence to promote the cause of Islam.
USA - President Obama said that nations will have to give up some of their autonomy and freedom to achieve security on Tuesday during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Obama told the audience that he believes global security can be achieved with the help of international institutions like the UN.
USA - I noticed some weird things about the pressure cooker bomb attacks that took place in New York City and New Jersey this weekend and the subsequent arrest of the alleged perpetrator. Some things just don’t add up. Trust me, you won’t even need to don your tinfoil because none of this is outrageous.
GERMANY - An estimated 320,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Germany on Saturday in mass protests against an Obama-backed transatlantic free-trade deal between the EU, US and Canada. Germans are afraid of losing their rights to big corporations who are merely seeking profits at the expense of the environment and people. EU’s 27 trade ministers will gather in Slovakia’s Bratislava on September 23. They are expected to negotiate an annex to the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which aims to establish a free trade zone. A similar deal between the European Union and the United States, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), was pronounced dead last month by German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel.
BELGIUM – Belgium, a country with an 800% spike in euthanasia over a period of 10 years – has just euthanized its first underage person. This follows a 2014 law allowing minors to be euthanized in particularly critical cases. Not much information was given to the press by physicians from the national committee for euthanasia. It was merely reported that the person was a minor, and that they were critically ill, according to Reuters. Wim Distelmans, who chairs Belgium’s Federal Control and Evaluation Committee on Euthanasia, wrote in an email that the procedure was performed last week by a local doctor. The overall practice was legalized in Belgium in 2002, and is still considered controversial in many places worldwide.
USA - When The Satanic Temple officially opens its doors on Friday, Salem will become home to the organization’s international headquarters. But pitchfork-wielding mobs protesting the move seem unlikely, as the fire-and-brimstone theology of the Puritans who once populated the city has given way to a “live and let live” attitude in present day Salem. Less than a mile from Gallows Hill — the notorious spot where villagers executed more than a dozen people accused of witchcraft in the 1690s — an 1882 Victorian house on Bridge Street will serve as The Satanic Temple’s first physical headquarters, said Lucien Greaves, the temple’s spokesman.
UK - Theresa May has criticised European Union leaders who have been threatening Britain ahead of its Brexit negotiations, warning them that they "will sign up to a deal with us". The Prime Minister hit out at EU leaders after they said they will make Brexit "very painful" for Britain to ensure the UK is worse off outside the bloc.
GERMANY - Angela Merkel on Monday signalled for the first time that she was prepared to change her controversial refugee policy in the wake of heavy losses to the resurgent far-Right in regional elections. “If I knew what change in refugee policy the people in Germany want, I would be prepared to consider it,” Mrs Merkel said.
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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