THAILAND - Look on and despair. A decade ago Thailand was a shining example - rare proof that in South-East Asia a vibrant democracy could go hand-in-hand with a thriving economy. Contrast that with Thailand on May 7th, left in disarray after the Constitutional Court demanded that the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, step down with nine members of her cabinet over her decision to remove the country’s head of national security in 2011, in favour of a relative. For all the pretence of due legal process and distaste at Ms Yingluck’s nepotism, this was not an offence that merited the ousting of a prime minister. Instead, the ruling is a measure of quite how far Thailand has fallen, how deeply it is divided and how badly its institutions are broken. Unless Thais step back from the brink, their country risks falling into chaos and anarchy, or outright violence.
USA - A warning from US scientists that Oklahoma may be hit by a major earthquake has caused a run on insurance policies for tremors in the heartland state, adding to the woes of residents already in the firing line of devastating tornadoes. Oklahoma City resident Mark Myers said that after the USGS issued their warning, he called his insurance agent to look into coverage. "When you see a warning for a major earthquake in Oklahoma, which I understand is pretty rare, it makes you aware of what could happen," Myers said just after speaking to an agent. Tornadoes have been a persistent concern for Oklahomans, with an average of 50 hitting a year, usually during the March to August season, causing billions of dollars in damage. But there has also been a lot of shaking, with 183 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater on the Richter scale occurring in Oklahoma from October 2013 through April 14, the USGS said.
TEXAS, USA - There have been more than 300 earthquakes reported in Parker County since December, according to just-published research conducted by an earthquake study team. In preliminary findings released Wednesday, the team reported that the quakes show a complex fault system in the area near Reno and Azle, which started experiencing quakes for the first time in November. The progress report from the SMU North Texas Earthquake Study said the relation of the quakes to two nearby waste-water injection wells remains a major question. Preliminary locations for the earthquakes show them occurring within one to two kilometers of the well sites.
ACAPULCO, Mexico - A strong earthquake shook the southern Pacific coast of Mexico as well as the capital and several inland states Thursday, sending frightened people into unseasonal torrential rains that were also bearing down on the coast. The 6.4-magnitude quake in southern Guerrero state was centered about 9 miles (15 kilometers) north of Tecpan de Galeana, according to the US Geological Survey, and was felt about 171 miles (277 kilometers) miles away in Mexico City, where office workers streamed into the streets away from high-rise buildings. There were no reports of injuries or major damage, though a section of highway collapsed in Tecpan, near the epicenter. The town shook ferociously, causing a "wave of panic" and some roofs to cave in, Mayor Crisoforo Otero Heredia said.
VATICAN - Pope Francis received the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church in audience on May 8 and said that the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christian unity. The Pontiff’s remarks come one year before the centenary of the Armenian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians perished at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish regime.
WASHINGTON, USA - The prophetic words delivered in 1789 by President George Washington in his first inaugural speech echoed loud and clear Wednesday evening in the chamber of the US Capitol’s Statuary Hall — this time in the voice of Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, author of the best selling “The Harbinger.” The venue was a one-of-a-kind prayer meeting called “Washington: A Man of Prayer, 2014,” commemorating the events of April 30, 1789, when, after being sworn in at Federal Hall, Washington, accompanied by Congress, proceeded to St Paul’s Chapel where, as one of his first official acts, he offered a prayer of dedication to God on America’s behalf.
MIDDLE EAST - It is spring in the Middle East. The rising temperatures and the end of rain and snow make fighting more pleasant. The stifling heat and humidity of the summer are yet to begin. Ultimately, the fighting and trauma have markedly exacerbated the profound mistrust between Shi’ites and Sunnis. At the crux is the role of Shi’ite Iran in the new-old Middle East.
VATICAN - Pope Francis warned the church against being a "school of religion," saying it needs more than "great ideas," "beautiful temples" and "fine museums" - Christians need to "bear witness" - witness that might even include "persecution and death." The Pope's remarks came during a homily yesterday, where he used the example of the martyrdom of St Steven to emphasize that the Christian who does not witness his faith in real life becomes sterile, Vatican Radio reported.
BERLIN, GERMANY - Black-clad crowds stormed past closed and boarded banks, businesses and stores, shouting anti-fascist and anti-capitalist slogans in Berlin's trendy Kreuzberg district. But leftist protests like this one on May Day have for many years ended not in song but riots, car burnings and broken shop windows.
USA - A Satanic Black Mass re-enactment is scheduled to take place at the Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall at Harvard University on May 12, with the Mass performed by The Satanic Temple, which is being hosted for the event by the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club. A non-consecrated communion host will be used in the re-enactment, according to Lucien Greaves, spokesman for The Satanic Temple. “While Black Masses are supposed to utilize a consecrated host, ours is merely representative of a consecrated host,” Greaves told CNSNews.com. “It is not consecrated. We neither believe in nor invoke the supernatural.”
USA - With the situation in the Ukraine escalating and the US continuing to call for sanctions against Russia’s financial and political elite, Vladimir Putin is now not only mobilizing tens of thousands of troops on his Western front, but sending intercontinental strategic bombers across the Pacific Ocean. According to the US military, it’s the first time since the cold war that Russia’s incursions have come this close to America. What’s even more alarming is that Russia is making it clear that any attack on the Motherland would likely lead to widespread bombardment of western interests. Nuclear capable Russian bombers have been spotted all over the world as of late including in Guam, Japan, South Korea and Europe.
USA - New maps released by the California Geological Survey are concerning residents in the southern part of the state who just now are being told that thousands of properties across Los Angeles and Hollywood are erected near newly discovered fault lines. The CGS unveiled the preliminary copies of the maps — the first ones released by the agency in nearly two decades — earlier this year in January. “The mapped fault lines cut through more than 1,500 developed properties, according to a Times analysis of maps of the Hollywood fault and the Sierra Madre and Duarte faults in the northern San Gabriel Valley,” reporter Rong-Gong Lin II wrote on Tuesday this week for the newspaper. According to the Times, other properties that could be affected include the iconic Capitol Records tower in Hollywood, as well as landmark Sunset Strip hotels including the Mondrian, the Sunset Tower and the Standard.
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Rabbi Simcha HaCohen Kook, Rabbi of Rehovot and member of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, warned that the government relinquishing David's Tomb to the Vatican would be a "national disgrace." "Twenty years ago they wanted to do something similar, to give the burial place of King David away - and again today," the Rabbi stated to Arutz Sheva Wednesday. "Imagine if another nation did something similar [by giving away an ancient heritage or religious site - ed.] - there would be an outcry," he continued. "Now when Jews do it, the world is silent. We are tumbling down a deep abyss." Rabbi Kook noted that, unlike some Jewish religious sites, all the Rabbis in Israel have declared that King David's Tomb really is on Mount Zion - making giving the site away a national tragedy.
USA - Is Detroit destined to become a Chinese city? Chinese homebuyers and Chinese businesses are starting to flood into the Motor City, and the governor of Michigan is greatly encouraging this. In fact, he has formally asked the Obama administration for 50,000 special federal immigration visas to encourage even more immigration from China and elsewhere. So will Detroit be the first major city in the United States to be dominated by China? It could happen. Once upon a time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city in the history of the world and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country. But now it is a rotting, decaying, bankrupt hellhole that is in desperate need of a savior, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appears to be fully convinced that China can be that savior.
USA - Email exchanges between National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt suggest a far cozier working relationship between some tech firms and the US government than was implied by Silicon Valley brass after last year’s revelations about NSA spying. Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency’s vast capability for spying on Americans’ electronic communications prompted a number of tech executives whose firms cooperated with the government to insist they had done so only when compelled by a court of law. But Al Jazeera has obtained two sets of email communications dating from a year before Snowden became a household name that suggest not all cooperation was under pressure.
“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!
Read online or contact email to request a copy
