GERMANY - Germany is being bossed by its Western partners because it lacks sovereignty, and its policymakers demonstrate poor leadership skills, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a meeting with young Russian scientists on Wednesday. Putin weighed in on the EU’s push to wean itself off Russian energy following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, arguing that by implementing the measure, Germany was only hurting itself.
AUSTRIA - In the vast expanse of finance, few narratives unfold with the dramatic cadence of Austrian magnate Rene Benko’s ascent and sudden plunge. Once commended for masterminding lavish acquisitions, Benko’s financial realm – identified as Signa Holding, an extensive European property empire – has commenced insolvency proceedings in Vienna. This event has reverberated significantly within the complex network of European finance.
TAIWAN - China has reacted sharply to rhetoric from politicians in Taipei ahead of a presidential election on the island. China is willing to allow “plenty of space” for peaceful reunification with Taiwan, but will not tolerate separatist activities, government spokesperson Chen Binhua warned on Monday. The official was responding to comments by Taiwanese pro-independence politicians ahead of a presidential election on the self-governing island. Chen, who is spokesperson for China’s State Council for Taiwan Affairs Office, said Beijing will not show leniency toward forces in Taiwan if they promote separatism. “I want to emphasize that Taiwan independence means war,” Chen stated as he condemned Lai and Hsiao as separatists. He further accused the pair of distorting the facts and downplaying the risks of separatist activities to deceive voters ahead of the 2024 election.
USA - After years of inflation, US consumers are shouldering a burden unlike anything seen in decades — even as the pace of price increases has slowed. It now requires $119.27 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic. Since early 2020, prices have risen about as much as they had in the full 10 years preceding the health emergency. It’s hard to find an area of a household budget that’s been spared: Groceries are up 25% since January 2020. Same with electricity. Used-car prices have climbed 35%, auto insurance 33% and rents roughly 20%. Those figures help explain why Americans continue to register strong dissatisfaction with the economy: Consumers’ daily routines have largely returned to their pre-pandemic normal, but the cost of living has not.
USA - Until the 1970s, the majority of people were fit as a fiddle! No keto, vegan, or paleo diets. No home aerobics or gym memberships. No fancy fitness tech or wellness influencers. They also weren't drinking protein shakes or counting calories. So, what went wrong?
CHINA - China has brought back masks and social distancing in a chilling echo of lockdown as they battle a mystery pneumonia outbreak four years on from Covid. Alarming footage has emerged of mask-wearing crowds inside Chinese hospitals as fears of a new pandemic sweep across the globe. Areas in the north of the country such as Beijing and Liaoning have been hit the hardest, with reports emerging last week that hospitals are being overwhelmed with sick children.
USA - Agents within US Customers and Border Protection (CBP) are prohibited from using traditional gender pronouns during initial engagements with members of the public, according to an internal government memo recently obtained by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The memo, requested via FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) by Heritage’s Oversight Project, ordered agents to avoid using “he, him, she, her” pronouns “until you have more information about, or provided by, the individual,” Fox News reports. CBP, an entity of the Department of Homeland Security, told agents that “if an incorrect pronoun is used and corrected by the individual, acknowledge the oversight and use the correct pronoun,” Fox noted.
VATICAN - Pope Francis postponed a series of meetings because of a lung inflammation and breathing difficulties, the Vatican said Monday morning. Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, said in an emailed statement that a CT scan ruled out pneumonia but added that doctors had inserted a cannula to provide antibiotics. The pope lost part of a lung following an illness some 50 years ago. Francis, the first pope from the Americas, turns 87 next month and has battled ill health for years, canceling multiple engagements and appearing in public in a wheelchair.
USA - The handwriting was on the wall. An Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled “I’m a Ukrainian, and I Refuse to Compete for Your Attention” summed things up nicely: a media junket the author’s friend had been organizing to Ukraine was canceled. The TV crew instead left for the Middle East. The United States controls how the war in the Ukraine proceeds and always has. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said it was the American side which scuttled any chance of peace in Ukraine as early as March 2022, soon after the war began. “The only people who could resolve the war over Ukraine are the Americans. During the peace talks in March 2022 in Istanbul, Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They had to coordinate everything they talked about with the Americans first. However, nothing eventually happened. My impression is that nothing could happen because everything was decided in Washington.”
HUNGARY - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that the US and EU strategy of indefinitely funding Ukraine’s battle with Russia, in the hope that an unlikely battlefield loss will bring about regime change in Moscow, is futile. “What was the strategy of the West in that war? I'm simplifying it a little bit, but this is the fact. Our strategy was that the Ukrainians will fight and will win on the front line. The Russians will lose… and that loss will create a change in Moscow,” he explained, according to a video of the speech published by Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for the Hungarian government on Sunday. “That was the strategy: We finance, the Ukrainians fight and die,” he added. However, he said, “where we are now, it is obvious that the Ukrainians will not win on the front line.” “There is no solution on the battleground. The Russians will not lose. There will be no political change in Moscow. This is the reality,” the Hungarian leader stated.
GERMANY - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his cabinet have led Germany into a “serious national crisis,” Markus Soeder, the prime minister of the nation’s most populous state, Bavaria, told journalists on Saturday. Berlin can now hardly find a way out of this predicament, the politician warned, adding that the government’s “budget emergency” would likely turn into another burden for ordinary Germans.
ISRAEL - Israel hosted Elon Musk on Monday, where he toured sites of the October 7 massacre and was shown footage of the violent acts committed by the terrorist organization on Israeli soil. Musk voiced support on Monday for Israel after it came under attack by Hamas terrorists, saying one challenge was "ultimately stopping the propaganda that is convincing people to engage in, you know, murder." After hearing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Hamas must be destroyed in a live online chat, Musk said: "There's no choice." Musk, visiting Israel during its war on Hamas in Gaza, added: "I'd like to help as well."
UK - Sitting down to Christmas dinner this year, your plate may be a bit more empty than usual, with farmers going through one of the toughest harvests on record. Britain will be forced to rely on cold storage supplies as potato crops are predicted to hit a record low of 4.1 million tonnes. Those buying for their Christmas dinner might also find empty shelves when they’re looking for cauliflower and broccoli, and smaller sprouts than usual.
USA - A ‘Gender Diversity Tree’ calling on festival attendees to ‘protect trans kids’ was also the subject of considerable blowback. A museum in the US state of Wisconsin has been accused of promoting “cultural propaganda” after it featured some non-traditional entries in its annual Christmas tree festival this year, including one adorned with red ornamental pentagrams paying festive homage to Beelzebub.
USA - Work is being ramped up to produce plutonium “pits” – spherical shells about the size of bowling balls that are a vital component of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal. For two decades, the Pentagon and Congress have been concerned about the US ability to produce the cores of nuclear warheads, including the plutonium pits. Since 1989, the US has not been able to produce pits in quantities required to refresh or renew a stockpile of 3,708 warheads (about 1,770 warheads are deployed and 1,938 are held in reserve).
“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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