ISRAEL - Does that headline surprise you? Maybe if you just got off a spaceship from Mars, or if you have been sleeping for the past 50 years. But if you have been following the news just a bit, you have probably noticed that over the past 20-odd years, the international community has been pouring billions of dollars of financial aid into the PLO and its offshoot, the Palestinian Authority, to help the poor refugees establish a state. As this massive influx of money has come in, the "Palestinian refugees" are still in camps with nothing, but Abbas and his PLO functionaries (and Hamas) have become millionaires. Simply put, someone is making millions off of international good will, but that is not helping resolve the problem, and is not providing assistance to those in need.
ISRAEL - While Shiites and Sunnis kill each other in Syria, an even more dangerous religious war could soon explode in Jerusalem, involving Jews, Muslims and Christians. I refer to the mounting Israeli-Arab tensions over control of the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, as Muslims call it, in Jerusalem's Old City, which is Judaism's holiest site and the third holiest for Islam. "The Temple Mount is a powder keg, and arsonists have the upper hand," blared a Wednesday headline in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
JORDAN - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a meeting in Amman last week, called on Jordan’s king and the Islamic foundation that administers the Temple Mount to exercise their authority to prevent disturbances at the holy site, according to details revealed in an Israeli report Monday.
EUROPE - European foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels Monday morning to discuss the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process amid growing calls by local politicians for the member states to unilaterally recognize Palestine as a state. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini of Italy, told reporters that the topic in front of the EU council of foreign ministers is boosting the EU’s role in a renewed peace process.
USA - Missouri's governor declared a state of emergency on Monday and authorized the state's National Guard to support police in case of violence after a grand jury decides whether to indict a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager.
USA - If only George Orwell could see us today. When he wrote “1984” back in 1948, he probably never imagined that the “totalitarian, bureaucratic world” that he imagined would ever actually become a reality. But that is precisely what is happening. We live at a time when the government monitors billions of our phone calls and emails and hardly anyone gets upset about it.
UK - Well David Cameron, perhaps learning a lesson from his stockbroker father, got his timing right. On the morning that he warns (in the Guardian) that red lights are flashing on the dashboard of the global economy, Japan announces that it has unexpectedly crashed into recession. Japan is still the world's third biggest economy. And its economic contraction, which caught markets by surprise, coincides with the prolonged flatlining of the eurozone (which was confirmed on Friday) and what looks like a long-term deceleration of growth in China. Apart from India and Mexico, most of the rest of the developing world and the so-called Brics - notably Brazil and Russia - are finding the going much tougher. Having pored over the 20 national action plans of the G20 members, including Britain's, I could not see any spending, investment, job creation or trade initiatives of size that looked brand spanking new.
JAPAN - Data showing Japan slipped into recession in the third quarter raised concerns on Monday about global economic health, hitting stocks and the price of oil. European shares fell and Wall Street looked set to open lower, according to index futures ESc1 1YNc1. Tokyo's Nikkei index N225 lost 3 percent, its biggest one-day drop since August, after the news that the world's third-largest economy unexpectedly shrank by an annualized 1.6 percent in July-September.
CHINA/USA - A flood of Chinese steel being dumped on to international metal markets is threatening to pitch the world’s two largest economies into a bitter all-out trade war. The US fired the first shots last week when the Department of Commerce imposed duties on the imports of carbon and alloy steel wire from China after complaints of dumping made by several North American producers. According to the ruling, some Chinese exporters of steel wire to the US will face anti-dumping duties of as much as 110.25 percent. In response to such anti-dumping rulings, China’s ministry of commerce has repeatedly warned the US authorities to resist protectionist policies and abide by their country’s global commitments to maintain free trade. However, as more and more Chinese metal floods on to global markets, the scene is being set for a broader breakdown in trade relations between Washington and Beijing.
VATICAN - On Tuesday the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity begins a four day plenary session which will include an ecumenical celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council document ‘Unitatis Redintegratio’. To celebrate the progress of the past half century, participants will attend ecumenical Vespers at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls on Thursday and a public commemorative session at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Friday morning. The decree, published on November 21st 1964 marked a major change in the Catholic Church’s relations with other Christians and led to the establishment of many different dialogue groups to try and overcome the deep divisions between the different Churches and communities.
UK - Christmas turkey suppliers could be at risk from the bird flu outbreak which has hit a duck breeding farm in Yorkshire. Thousands of birds have already been slaughtered at the farm in the Driffield area of East Yorkshire following the outbreak, the first of its kind in six years. Separate cases have been reported in Germany and the Netherlands. The risk to humans from the outbreak is virtually non-existent, experts have said, but if the disease spreads to turkey farms, it could lead to a shortage for Christmas. There are a number of turkey farms near to the outbreak.
USA - California is poised to rewrite its rules governing the use of agricultural pesticides that could subject organic farmers to mandatory use without much recourse. The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) closed public comment on October 31 on its Statewide Plant Pest Prevention and Management Program’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR), a 500-page-plus document that would give the agency authority to spray toxic chemicals avoided, for the most part, by the organic community if the agency decides that a pest is threatening economically important crops.
ISRAEL - At least four Israelis have been killed and eight injured as two men armed with a pistol, knives and axes attacked a West Jerusalem synagogue, police say. The attackers - Palestinians from East Jerusalem - were shot dead, police say. There have been several deadly attacks and clashes in Jerusalem recently amid tension over a disputed holy site. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to respond "with a heavy hand" to the attack - the deadliest in Jerusalem in six years. Hamas and another Palestinian Islamist militant group, Islamic Jihad, praised the attack. Israel has designated both groups as terrorist organisations. Visiting London, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the act of "pure terror… simply has no place in human behaviour".
EUROPE - Several decades following the rise of the European Union, questions still linger concerning the military role of the European supranational organization. The gross domestic product of the EU is second to that only of the United States. Yet, there have only been talks, plans and rough arrangements of coordination, usually though NATO. There is no great European army. Most countries that had armies before joining the EU have not changed. This has large implications both in the further integration of the EU and internal fiscal debates within EU member countries.
AUSTRALIA - David Cameron may have hailed the G20 meetings in Brisbane over the weekend as a success for the global economy. But in reality, the gathering of the world’s most powerful leaders will be remembered only for the abrupt departure of President Vladimir Putin.
“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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