ISRAEL - The Israeli and German armies have conducted joint exercises in urban combat in recent weeks — the largest joint training ever between the two countries. Over a hundred German soldiers arrived in Israel three weeks ago to train at the Tze’elim army base in the south. In addition to infantry and logistics troops, Germany sent five heavy military vehicles. News of the exercises was published simultaneously with this article in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. The German soldiers will remain here until Friday. The German defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said during a visit to Israel in May that her country's closest security operations were with Israel. Israel has received five submarines from Germany, with a sixth expected soon.
GERMANY - The president of German parliament has called for more transparency in the transatlantic trade negotiations. As it stands, Norbert Lammert cannot picture the Bundestag passing the EU trade pact with the USA. Norbert Lammert, the president of the German Bundestag, said on Wednesday that he could not picture the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) being ratified by German parliamentarians without further information about how it was negotiated and put together.
PHILIPPINES - The Archdiocese of Manila has reportedly been forced to start recruiting new priests to deal with a "three-fold" increase in exorcism requests and reported demonic possessions in the Philippines. "These days we have around 80 to 100 cases at any given time," Father Jose Francisco "Jocis" Syquia, chief exorcist at the Archdiocese of Manila Office of Exorcism, shared with Catholic News Service.
POLAND - A high-ranking Polish priest who was fired after coming out as gay has accused the Catholic Church of making life 'hell' for millions of homosexuals. Father Krzystof Charamsa was stripped of his post earlier this month on the day he announced he was in a relationship with another man.
CHINA - Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times has published an editorial asserting that Beijing is “not frightened to fight a war with the US” as a result of the passage of a US warship near disputed islands in the South China Sea. The guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen violated the 12-nautical mile zone China claims around Subi and Mischief reefs in the Spratly archipelago yesterday, a move observers have described as a deliberate provocation.
EUROPE - The endless wave of migrants - for which we have utterly failed to prepare - will unleash extremist politics throughout the Continent. The extraordinary aerial photo of a column of refugees and migrants tramping through the fields of Slovenia may come to symbolise the moment the EU began to fall apart. The irony can be lost on no one: it was in order to prevent such scenes happening again in continental Europe that the alliance was forged in the first place in the late 1950s.
USA - Earlier this month, it was reported that less than two weeks before the economic collapse of 2008, several members of Congress took their money out of the stock market. Many high ranking government employees were given a heads-up about the impending market crash in secret meetings with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Then they used that information to engage in insider trading.
USA - First it was wildfires, then it was unprecedented flooding, and now it is earthquakes. In the past two weeks alone, more than 400 earthquakes have shaken San Ramon – a small city that sits approximately 45 miles east of San Francisco. Never before have so many earthquakes been recorded in that area in such a short span of time. Standing alone, that earthquake swarm may not mean that much. But when you stand back and look at all of the unusual events that have been happening since late September, a very disturbing picture begins to emerge.
EUROPE - A doctor working in German hospitals has revealed the horrifying chaos which could face the NHS if thousands of migrants from the Middle East manage to reach Britain - including the return of killer diseases eradicated generations ago.
ISRAEL - Two thousand years ago, Titus destroyed the Second Temple and exiled the people of Israel from their land. One minute we had a home, with a military and a currency, with priests and a Temple in which to worship God, our own legal system and a Jewish-Hebrew regime, and the next - we were at the mercy of our hosts, who did not even ask us to settle down among them.
USA - A Texas seventh-grader is standing up for her religious beliefs after she alleges her teacher forced students to deny that God is real, and threatened them with failing grades if they don’t agree.
UK - Dead family members could be brought back to life using their history on social media to power virtual avatars. Family members could be kept alive forever virtually so that living relatives could interact with their avatars, an academic has suggested.
UK - Tonnes of perfectly good food are thrown away in the UK every year. Why, asks Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I've witnessed some pretty grim scenes in the food business down the years - appalling conditions in the poultry industry, crazy EU fishing laws, all kinds of greed and folly.
GERMANY - At the beginning of this year, Angela Merkel had a good claim to be the most successful politician in the world. The German chancellor had won three successive election victories. She was the dominant political figure in Europe and hugely popular at home. But the refugee crisis that has broken over Germany is likely to spell the end of the Merkel era.
AFGHANISTAN - Afghanistan, battered by worsening security, is reaching out to an old ally and patron — Russia — just as the Kremlin is seeking to reassert its position as a heavyweight on the world stage. President Ashraf Ghani has asked Moscow for artillery, small arms and Mi-35 helicopter gunships for his country’s struggling military, Afghan and Russian officials say, after the US and its allies pulled most of their troops from Afghanistan and reduced financial aid. The outreach has created another opening for the Kremlin, stepping up the potential for confrontation with Washington. East-West relations are already strained over such issues as Ukraine and Middle Eastern policy. “Russia is seizing the opportunity,” a US official said.