USA - It isn’t just the price of oil that is collapsing. The last time commodity prices were this low was during the immediate aftermath of the last financial crisis. The Bloomberg Commodity Index fell to 110.4571 on Monday – the lowest that it has been since April 2009. Just like junk bonds, industrial commodities are a very reliable leading indicator. In other words, prices for industrial commodities usually start to move in a particular direction before the overall economy does.
USA - The Opec oil cartel no longer exists in any meaningful sense and crude prices will slump to $50 a barrel over the coming months as market forces shake out the weakest producers, Bank of America has warned.
UK - More than five trillion pieces of plastic - weighing as much as two large cruise liners - are floating in the world's oceans. The total weight of all the plastic pollution in the seas is estimated to be almost 269,000 tonnes. An international team of scientists made the calculation after gathering data from 24 expeditions mounted over a period of six years between 2007 and 2013.
MIDDLE EAST - My first missions to support an aircraft carrier in 1983 were flown in the Gulf of Oman in an EP-3 ARIES I/ORION aircraft, providing coverage for a US aircraft carrier from a land base. Then, even the slightest movements by Iran in the Persian Gulf would send the massive aircraft carrier stationed there scrambling for the wide open maneuver space of the North Arabian Sea. This has changed.
USA - Despite an improving economy and jobs picture, the public is more pessimistic than it was after the 2008 financial crisis that it is possible to work hard and become rich, according to a New York Times poll. The poll, which explored Americans’ opinions on a wide range of economic and financial issues, found that only 64 percent of respondents said they still believed in the American dream, the lowest result in roughly two decades. Even near the depth of the financial crisis in early 2009, 72 percent of Americans still believed that hard work could result in riches.
USA - While there are plenty of Bible verses to mention while discussing immigration, President Obama on Tuesday quoted one which isn't so great, mainly because it's not real. "The good book says don't throw stones at glass houses, or make sure we're looking at the log in our eye before we are pointing out the mote in other folks eyes," Obama said during a speech in Nashville. One problem, though: The Bible never mentions glass houses.
UK - It's bringing disruption to northern UK with no power in thousands of Scottish homes but what does the phrase, 'weather bomb', mean? With waves reaching heights of 52ft off the Outer Hebrides on Wednesday morning and wind speeds of 77mph, it's fair to say the UK is experiencing severe weather. The Met Office is predicting widespread gales for the northern half of the UK with blustery wintry showers, perhaps thundery, with snow likely across northern parts at times.
GREECE - Greece’s Athex Composite GD, -7.35% tanked almost 13% Tuesday — the biggest drop for the index on record, according to FactSet. The renewed jitters came after the government, in a surprise move late Monday, said it would bring forward presidential elections to December 17, potentially, setting the scene for snap elections in early 2015.
FRANCE - France faced calls to avoid a “war of secularism" after a court banned a nativity scene in a town hall, igniting a nationwide row yesterday. The court in Nantes ordered regional authorities in the western town of La Roche-sur-Yon to remove the crib from the mayoral entrance hall, following a complaint from the secular campaign group Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée [The National Federation of Free Thought]. The council is appealing against the decision, and has received backing from far-Right Front National leader Marine Le Pen, who described it as “stupid and blinkered secularism”. Bruno Retailleau, the local senator, exclaimed: “Next we’ll be banning epiphany cakes at the Élysée Palace.” He threatened to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
GERMANY - Military experts of the SPD group in the German Bundestag are calling for an EU "military academy" and "permanent military headquarters" along with other steps toward establishing an EU army. "As Social Democrats, we want to be the driving force in Europe of a parliamentary controlled European army," declared its "Working Group on Security and Defense Policy" in a position paper.
ISRAEL - A sheikh giving a spontaneous sermon at the al-Aqsa mosque recently called for the “slaughter” of the Jews, saying they were “the most evil creatures to have walked this Earth.” “Talking about the traits of the Jews requires one to get into a special mode, because we are dealing with people to whom every single vile trait has been attributed,” the sheikh says. “They were the masters of these vile traits, and they taught their secrets to others.”
USA - With demand increasing across the West, Colorado is drawing up a strategy to keep some of the trillions of gallons of water that gush out of the Rocky Mountains every spring — most of which flows downstream to drought-stricken California, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. Colorado wants to ensure its farms, wildlife and rapidly growing cities have enough water in the decades to come. It's pledging to provide downstream states every gallon they're legally entitled to, but not a drop more. "If anybody thought we were going to roll over and say, 'OK, California, you're in a really bad drought, you get to use the water that we were going to use,' they're mistaken," said James Eklund, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which wrote the draft after a series of public meetings.
GERMANY - The meeting did not take place in the Dusseldorf Parkhotel, but in Berlin’s Hotel Adlon. Sitting in the audience was not Fritz Thyssen and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, but Thyssen-Krupp CEO Heinrich Hiesinger and other current heavyweights of German big business. And of course, the Social Democratic Party Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is not Adolf Hitler.
GERMANY - A new type of anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing “Islamisation” of the country. The new protests, which began in the city of Dresden in the former East Germany, feature no neo-Nazi slogans and have nothing to do with the traditional far right. Instead the demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call of the protests against the East German communist regime that brought down the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, “Wir sind das Volk”, or “We are the people”. They say they want to preserve Germany’s Judeo-Christian Western culture.
GERMANY - For the third time this year, monthly German exports surpassed the 100 billion-euro threshold, with the figures for October showing no sign of a major impact of geopolitical crises in the Middle East or Ukraine. In October, Germany exported goods to the tune of 103.9 billion euros ($127.9 billion), thus improving September's record of 102.5 billion euros, the National Statistics Office Destatis reported Tuesday. In a year-on-year comparison, shipments abroad rose by 4.9 percent and imports increased by 0.9 percent from October 2013 to October 2014. The country's trade surplus amounted to 21.9 billion euros in October, up from 17.8 billion euros a year earlier.
“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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