VATICAN - As Pope Francis continues to straddle the fine line between calling for the end of persecution of Christians in Iraq and blessing American airstrikes against the Islamic State (also known as the “Caliphate,” ISIS, or ISIL), there is increasing concern for the pontiff’s — and the public’s — safety. Earlier this week, the Roman newspaper Il Tempo published a disturbing report that Francis is “in the crosshairs” of ISIS for “bearing false witness” against Islam.
USA - Who runs the world’s most lucrative shakedown operation? The Sicilian mafia? The People’s Liberation Army in China? The kleptocracy in the Kremlin? If you are a big business, all these are less grasping than America’s regulatory system. The formula is simple: find a large company that may (or may not) have done something wrong; threaten its managers with commercial ruin, preferably with criminal charges; force them to use their shareholders’ money to pay an enormous fine to drop the charges in a secret settlement (so nobody can check the details). Then repeat with another large company.
USA - After a week of talk of eliminating the "cancer" of ISIS, President Obama said Thursday that he was not planning to significantly expand the war against the Islamic extremist movement anytime soon. His remarks came after days of heated debate inside the top levels of his own national security bureaucracy about how, where, and whether to strike ISIS in Syria. But those deliberations – which included a bleak intelligence assessment of America's potential allies in Syria - failed to produce a consensus battle plan. And so Obama, who has long been reluctant to enter into the Syrian conflict, told reporters Thursday that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for confronting ISIS on a regional level. Those inside the administration advocating for going after ISIS in both Iraq and Syria were sorely disappointed – and lamented their boss's lack of urgency in rooting out a threat that only days before was being described in near-apocalyptic terms.
UK - Professor Mel Greaves claims that most cancers cannot be cured and experts should look at ways of preventing and managing the disease instead. Most cancers cannot be cured and scientists should give up trying and, instead, look for ways to manage the disease, the director of the Centre for Evolution and Cancer at The Institute of Cancer Research, has claimed
PAPUA NEW GUINEA - A volcano in eastern Papua New Guinea has erupted, disrupting flights and spewing rocks and ash into the air. Mount Tavurvur on New Britain island erupted early on Friday, forcing local communities to evacuate. Officials said there have not been any reports of deaths or injuries so far. Local residents of the island's Rabaul district were advised to remain indoors to avoid falling ash. Australia issued travel warnings against visiting the island. Papua New Guinea lies on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and is home to a number of active volcanoes. The same volcano destroyed Rabaul town in 1994 when it erupted simultaneously with nearby Mount Vulcan.
TURKEY - Abu Ali, a commander of a moderate Syrian rebel group in northern Syria, proudly shows a black laptop partly covered in dust. "We took it this year from an ISIS hideout," he says. As we switched on the Dell laptop, it indeed still worked. Nor was it password-protected. But then came a huge disappointment: After we clicked on "My Computer," all the drives appeared empty. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Upon closer inspection, the ISIS laptop wasn't empty at all: Buried in the "hidden files" section of the computer were 146 gigabytes of material, containing a total of 35,347 files in 2,367 folders. Abu Ali allowed us to copy all these files - which included documents in French, English, and Arabic - onto an external hard drive.
GERMANY - Ordinary Germans are spooked about the future. Businesses are starting to see black clouds on the horizon. And an economy that has been the envy of Europe is showing cracks, shrinking unexpectedly last quarter amid the conflict in Ukraine. It might seem like enough to put any leader into trouble. But Chancellor Angela Merkel's popularity remains sky-high — with nobody in sight to touch her.
USA - Its been almost nine years since the last major hurricane struck the US Mainland. That's 3,230 days. Remember, we are talking MAJOR hurricanes, of Category 3 strength or higher. The last major hurricane was Hurricane Wilma which hit Florida on October 24, 2005. This is unprecedented in the hurricane record since 1900. It’s a full 2 1/2 years ahead of the second-longest US hurricane drought ever recorded. Of course, we have had hurricanes since 2005. 2010 was a very active year in the Atlantic basin, with 19 named storms. Twelve of those were hurricanes and five of those were major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher). Amazingly, in 2010, none of those hurricanes made landfall in the United States. That means the hurricane drought for the US Mainland will eventually end… maybe even this year…
SAUDI ARABIA - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has warned that the West will be the next target of the jihadists sweeping through Syria and Iraq, unless there is "rapid" action. "If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month," he said in remarks quoted on Saturday by Asharq al-Awsat daily and Saudi-backed Al-Arabiya television station. "Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East," said the king who was speaking at a welcoming ceremony on Friday for new ambassadors, including a new envoy from Saudi ally the United States. The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has prompted widespread concern as it advances in both Syria and Iraq, killing hundreds of people, including in gruesome beheadings and mass executions. Lack of action would be "unacceptable" in the face of the phenomenon, King Abdullah said.
EUROPE - Scientist transmits message into the mind of a colleague 5,000 miles away using brain waves. Scientists used EEG headsets to record electrical activity in the brain. Electrical activity from words ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ were converted into binary. The greeting was sent from Thiruvananthapuram, India to Strasbourg. A computer translated the message and then used electrical stimulation to implant it in the receiver’s mind, appearing as specific flashes of light. According to the researchers, this is the first time humans have sent a message almost directly into each other’s brains
UK - Let’s start with a riddle. If South Yorkshire Police can mount a raid on Sir Cliff Richard’s home in pursuit of evidence linked to a single allegation of child sex abuse 30 years ago, why were South Yorkshire Police incapable of pursuing multiple allegations against multiple men who raped 1,400 children over 16 years? We have seen child-grooming cases before, but the disgusting stories revealed in the report by Professor Alexis Jay amount to evidence of abuse on an industrial scale.
EUROPE - EU bans on powerful vacuum cleaners and incandescent light bulbs have provoked a popular backlash across Europe including in traditionally pro-European countries such as Germany. The European Union is considering pulling the plug on high-wattage hair dryers, lawn mowers and electric kettles in a follow up to its controversial ban on powerful vacuum cleaners.
USA - The decisions that determined the fate of the great nations and empires that failed to survive the 20th century are well known. For the Kaiser's Germany, it was the "blank cheque" to Austria after Sarajevo. For Great Britain, the 1939 war guarantee to Poland. For the Third Reich, it was the June 1941 invasion of Russia. For the Empire of the Sun, the decision to attack Pearl Harbor. And for the Soviet Empire, it was the invasion of Afghanistan. As for the United States, historians may one day concur with the late General Bill Odom. For the lone superpower to survive that century, the decision to invade and occupy Iraq was the most disastrous blunder in its history.
UK - The United States is poised to ask Britain and Australia to support air strikes in Northern Iraq, according to reports. President Obama is set to authorise airstrikes and aid drops around the Iraqi town of Amerli, home of Iraq's Turkmen minority, where 12,000 people have been under siege by Isil extremists for two months. Officials in the US say that the siege represents a similar humanitarian crisis to that faced by thousands of Yazidis who were trapped on Mount Sinjar, which led to warnings that the massacres could descend into genocide. Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations special representative for Iraq, has said that the situation in Amerli "demands immediate action to prevent the possible massacre of its citizens." Joining air strikes, however, would represent a significant escalation in Britain's role in Iraq. A government source stressed that no requests from the US have been received.
ISRAEL - Israel would not survive as a nation if it had to lay down its weapons, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has insisted. He said that while the British Jewish community was “filled with pain” over the loss of life in Gaza, Israel was “understandably and justifiably” defending itself from Hamas rocket attacks. More than 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting this summer but Chief Rabbi Mirvis said that the death toll in Israel from rocket attacks would be “tens of thousands” had it not been for the success of its hi-tech “Iron Dome” missile defence system. He said that Israel had not set out to kill Palestinian civilians but that war was “not clean”. “During this war it has been a truism that if Hamas would lay down its weapons, there would be peace,” he said. “If Israel would lay down its weapons, there would be no Israel.
“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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