USA - US corn and soybean prices closed at new record highs Tuesday as a new survey showed worse-than-expected crop damage from a brutal drought across the country's central breadbasket. The price of corn jumped 1.7 percent to $8.3875 a bushel, while soybeans finished at $17.3025 a bushel, up 2.8 percent from Tuesday. That left the corn price up 68 percent from June and soybeans 39 percent higher. An all-time record hot July accompanied by nearly three months of extreme drought have baked the country's prime farmland in the mid-western and central states, where the world's largest corn and soybean crops are grown.
USA - A tropical storm forming in the Caribbean could pose a potential threat to Florida next week during the Republican National Convention. Computer models from the US National Hurricane Center predict Tropical Storm Isaac would grow into a hurricane. Some models had the storm striking Florida as early as Sunday.
LEBANON - Seven people have been killed and more than 70 wounded after fighting in northern Lebanon between two Muslim communities divided over Syria. Street battles between Sunnis and Alawites in the city of Tripoli continued for a second night running. Old rivalry between the two groups has been fuelled by conflicting loyalties in the conflict across the border. Syria was the dominant foreign power in Lebanon for some 30 years and attitudes to the conflict which erupted there last year colour Lebanese politics beyond Tripoli.
INDIA - [The Times of India reports that] India’s quest for a futuristic stealth fifth-generation fighter, which will see the country spend around $35 billion over the next 20 years in its biggest-ever defence project, has zoomed into the decisive phase now. India and Russia are getting all set to ink the full and final design or R&D phase contract for the 5th Gen fighter by this year-end or early-2013, say sources. It will again underline India’s firm rejection of the US offer of its Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) or the F-35 ‘Lightning-II’.
ISRAEL - Anti-aircraft missiles can only be intended for Israel's jets, because Sinai terrorists don't have aircraft. According to a report on Voice of Israel government-sponsored radio, Egypt has moved anti-aircraft missiles into the Sinai Peninsula. The radio station's Arab affairs analyst, Eran Zinger, reported Saturday that Egypt has deployed both anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles near Israel’s border in the Egyptian Sinai, without Israel’s permission. If the report is true, the move is an overtly hostile one toward Israel and can only mean that Egypt is preparing for hostilities with the Jewish state.
ISRAEL - Israel is in a political and security quandary. Officials are convinced it’s only a matter of time before Iran uses its nuclear capability against the Jewish state, living up to the dire threats its leaders have been making for years now.
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is determined to attack Iran before the US elections,” Israel’s Channel 10 News claimed on Monday night, and Israel is now “closer than ever” to a strike designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive.
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Senior defense officials have recently been visiting the ultra-Orthodox Shas party's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, to discuss a possible Israeli attack on Iran. Some want the 91-year-old rabbi to support it, others to oppose it.
EGYPT - Egypt is set to put tanks and aircraft on duty in Sinai for the first time since its 1973 war with Israel in a bid to tighten security in the region. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv has installed its Iron Dome anti-rocket system near the Egyptian border.
ISRAEL - Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has demanded that Egypt cease sending tanks to the Sinai without Israel's approval, a “blatant violation” of the 1979 peace treaty, the Maariv Hebrew-language website reported Tuesday. Mark Regev, spokesman for the Office of the Prime Minister, told Arutz Sheva, “We are not commenting” on the report.
USA - Deep in the West Virginia woods, in a small cabin powered by the sun and the wind, a bespectacled, white-haired man is giving a video tour of his basement, describing techniques for the long-term preservation of food in case of “an emergency.”
EUROPE - If August was relatively reassuring on the sovereign debt front, the signals that we are moving towards a “BLACK SEPTEMBER” for the euro are getting stronger. The distrust between the "virtuous" states and the most indebted ones has brought the EU dangerously near the point of no return. Earlier this month, in a now famous interview given to Der Spiegel, Mario Monti summed up the issues. “Tensions in the euro area these last years have exposed signs of the psychological dissolution of the European Union. If the euro becomes a factor in the disintegration of the European Union, the foundations of the European project will be demolished.”
AFRICA - Mali was once a model of African democracy. But ever since a military coup in March, Islamists have been on the march and have already imposed Sharia law in the country's north. There are fears that Mali could join Somalia as another failed state. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has already hinted that the international community will probably have to intervene.
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA - Nearly 100 boats and barges were waiting for passage Monday along an 11-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that has been closed due to low water levels, the US Coast Guard said. New Orleans-based Coast Guard spokesman Ryan Tippets said the stretch of river near Greenville, Mississippi, has been closed intermittently since August 11, when a vessel ran aground. The Mississippi River from Illinois to Louisiana has seen water levels plummet due to drought conditions in the past three months. Near Memphis, the river level was more than 12 feet lower than normal for this time of year.
USA - There may be another health benefit in drinking red wine. Scientists report a so-called “miracle molecule” found in red wine might help improve mobility and prevent falls among older adults. The ingredient is called ‘resveratrol.’ Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Duquesne University Jane Cavanaugh says they tested the effect on laboratory mice. “As these animals age, they lose some of their motor coordination. Very similar to how humans do as they age. And when we gave them the resveratrol, the older mouse had less loss of motor coordination.”
Resveratrol is also found in grapes, blueberries and other dark-skinned fruits.
“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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