VATICAN - Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is facing increasingly strong opposition inside the Vatican. The conservative clan of the Roman Curia – the powerful governing body of the Holy See – accuses him of a laxist vision of Catholic doctrine, particularly regarding the status of homosexual couples and divorced people in the Church. Our Rome correspondent Natalia Mendoza reports from the Vatican’s corridors of power on this growing conflict between tradition and modernity.
USA - Survey after survey has shown that Americans overwhelmingly agree that this country is moving in the wrong direction. So how did we get here? I often write about the economy, politics, crime, immigration, homelessness, corruption, drugs, the mainstream media, online censorship, government surveillance, war and many other challenges that our nation is facing. But none of them is America’s biggest problem. Ultimately, America’s biggest problem is the fact that our country has become completely saturated with evil. From the very top of society to the very bottom of society, we have eagerly embraced evil, and just about every form of wickedness that you can possibly imagine is exploding all around us. If we do not reverse course, there is no future for us.
USA - Bottles of plastic water contain hundreds of thousands of toxic microscopic plastic particles, new research has found. The findings are likely to shock anyone who has swapped from tap to bottled water, believing it was better for their health. Drinking water from a bottle could mean you are contaminating your body with tiny bits of plastic, which scientists fear can accumulate in your vital organs with unknown health implications.
UNITED NATIONS - In 1958, Mao Zedong decreed that Chinese citizens should destroy the humble sparrow because the birds were eating much-needed grain in a country where hunger was a constant companion. Dutifully, people took up the challenge, shooting the birds, breaking up nests, smashing eggs, and beating drums to scare the animals and prevent them from landing to rest. After two years, hundreds of millions of birds were dead as the sparrow approached extinction across China. But destroying the sparrow resulted in one of the most devastating famines in recent history, killing 15-40 million Chinese citizens (the exact number remains subject to debate).
USA - JP Morgan say it could well be a "boiling frog" phenomenon for the economy, as higher deficits and ballooning debt servicing costs could easily become unsustainable. A boiling frog situation is one in which people fail to act on a potential problem that grows over time, causing it to become more severe until it eventually bubbles over. A frog thrown in boiling water might jump out, but if the water comes to a boil slowly, it's too late by the time it notices it's being cooked. Anyway, JPM argue that: national debt hit a fresh $34 trillion this month [which increased by $1 trillion in just 15 weeks]. Unlike US Congresspeople, frogs are not stupid. If you tried to boil a frog, it'd notice as the temperature increased and hop out once it got too hot for comfort.
AFGHANISTAN - The Taliban in Afghanistan, who took control of the nation when Joe Biden abruptly withdrew American military personnel, leaving behind thousands of civilians and billions of dollars worth of American war machinery, now reportedly are seeking access to nuclear weapons. The report said it’s not been noticed much, but Afghanistan “has a long-standing nuclear energy program that was taken over by the Taliban mujahideen when they took control of Afghanistan in August 2021.”
USA - A former psychic who repented of occult practices after turning to Jesus Christ warned that Fox News potentially opened their viewers to demonic activity by airing an act of divination during primetime last week. "The deception of putting something that seems good out there while pushing a demonic agenda is heartbreaking," Jenn Nizza told The Christian Post. Nizza, an author and podcaster who runs Ex-PsychicSaved.com and has written about how dabbling with tarot cards as a young teenager ultimately led her deeply into occultism, said she found it "completely alarming" when Fox News host Jesse Watters invited a medium on his show last week to discern the country's political future using tarot cards. Nizza believes Americans are now particularly vulnerable to such things given the country's political turmoil, which she warned could lead them down a "rabbit hole of destruction" amid their concerns over what will happen in the near future.
USA - There has been a lot of buzz lately about a recently released film by Netflix titled ‘Leave The World Behind’ based on a novel by the same name. The plot revolves around a catastrophic collapse in the US triggered by a cyber attack (and mass drone attack) that shuts down the internet and disrupts the global economy, leading to questions of who might have been behind the sabotage?
USA - Private US companies are seeing their earnings and profit margins collapse after the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes have lifted financing costs, and are increasingly going broke, according to a new report. Larger companies have been mostly insulated from the pain so far. But these corporations often use mid-sized private firms as suppliers, and the failure of smaller businesses could disrupt supply chains and boost costs for bigger enterprises, according to the report from Marblegate Asset Management and Rapid Ratings on Monday.
GERMANY - German politics is heading for a shake up. Genuine conservatives have had enough of leftist policies. As Alternative für Deutschland approach 40% support in East Germany, a right-leaning CDU faction announce plans to break away from the Union and found a new party that will cooperate with AfD. In September, three East German states – Saxony, Thüringen and Brandenburg – will hold elections for state parliament. Alternative für Deutschland are now by far the strongest-polling party in each of these states. In Saxony, for example, they are polling at an all-time high of 37%: The SPD – the party of federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz – has fallen to just 3% support here, well below the threshold for entering parliament, and support for the liberal FDP has all but evaporated.
USA - In his 1902 book, Proverb Lore, Edward Hulme said people used the phrase “rare as a black swan,” to express “the greatest impossibility the speaker could imagine.” Then, in 1697, Europeans finally saw actual black swans on the continent of Australia. And the meaning of “black swan” changed. It came to mean something difficult or impossible to have foreseen. According to dictionary.com, it means, “an occurrence or phenomenon that comes as a surprise because it was not predicted or was hard to predict.”
UK - Barclays bank is in the process of axing 5,000 jobs worldwide in a cost-cutting drive. As part of a push to improve Barclays' profits and cut costs, the jobs were axed from the bank's 84,000-strong workforce in 2023 - and a quarter of these are thought to be in the UK. The jobs were lost through a mix of redundancies and vacancies which will not be filled following a hiring freeze, according to Sky News. This represents one of the most notable cost-cutting measures implemented at Barclays since the financial crisis of 2008.
USA - On Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Morning in America,” Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Patrick Ryder stated that the US has started Operation Prosperity Guardian to try to stop Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea, but “We have no indications right now that the Houthis are going to cease these attacks.” Co-host Adrienne Bankert asked, “We have seen now deadly force being used against some of these rebel militant groups, these terror organizations because of their brazen attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Are we expecting to see more of that, especially in light of this recent explosion?” Ryder answered, “This has become a real threat in this incredibly vital waterway, this international waterway, through which 10-15% of global commerce and trade transit on any given day. And so, it’s very important that the international community come together and address this international problem.
USA - If new discoveries completely disprove old theories, shouldn’t those old theories be discarded? For decades, scientists have been assuring us that many of the fossils that they have been digging up are extremely old. In some cases those fossils are supposed to be tens of millions of years old, and in other cases they are supposed to be hundreds of millions of years old. But in recent years new discoveries have thrown that entire paradigm into question.
ITALY - Without a shared military, EU countries are “defenseless sparrows in a world of eagles,” Antonio Tajani has said. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has called on EU leaders to establish a common European army. Without a joint military, Tajani argues, the bloc cannot have a credible foreign policy. “If we want to be bearers of peace in the world, we need a European army,” Tajani told Italy’s La Stampa newspaper on Sunday.