USA - In an October prayer call hosted by a Christian-nationalist MAGA pastor, Representative Mike Johnson was troubled that America’s wickedness was inviting God’s wrath. Talking to pastor Jim Garlow on a broadcast of the World Prayer Network, Johnson spoke ominously of America facing a “civilizational moment.” He said, “The only question is: Is God going to allow our nation to enter a time of judgment for our collective sins? … Or is he going to give us one more chance to restore the foundations and return to Him?” The segment was filmed October 3, just weeks before Johnson’s unexpected rise to become speaker of the House. Garlow pressed the clean-cut Louisiana congressman to say “more about this ‘time of judgment’ for America.” Johnson replied: “The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable.” He cited, as supposed evidence, the decline of national church attendance and the rise of LGBTQ youth — the fact, Johnson lamented, that “one-in-four high school students identifies as something other than straight.”

ISRAEL - On any given day, the maze of alleys inside the Old City of Jerusalem is teeming with tourists, souvenir hawkers luring customers to their shops, and pilgrims of the three Abrahamic faiths on their way to visit their holy places. However, since Hamas’s brutal onslaught in Israel and the outbreak of the war on October 7, the area inside and around the ancient walls has become eerily quiet. Nevertheless, temporary police controls have never prevented East Jerusalemites from rallying in the past, sometimes violently. Omar, a local 27-year-old nurse, said that today the circumstances of the conflict are different: “The war this time was started by the other side.” “The events of October 7 were awful,” Omar continued. “And on a very large scale. Whole families of civilians were affected, children, young ravers, and also Arabs. It doesn’t feel like the usual round of skirmishes, but rather like an existential war,” he added.

USA - Geoffrey Hinton has spent a lifetime teaching computers to learn. Now he worries that artificial brains are better than ours. “There’s a very general subgoal that helps with almost all goals: get more control,” Hinton said of AIs. “The research question is: how do you prevent them from ever wanting to take control? And nobody knows the answer. To some, it’s a Copernican tale, in which our intuitions about the specialness of the human mind are being dislodged by thinking machines. To others, it’s Promethean — having stolen fire, we risk getting burned.

USA - It isn’t just your imagination. We really are witnessing a full-blown societal meltdown. Earlier today, a song entitled “We Don’t Need Another Hero” popped into my head. Of course that song was recorded by Tina Turner for a 1985 film called “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” which featured Mel Gibson in his prime. I hadn’t thought about that song for many years, and so I pulled it up on YouTube and listened to it. Needless to say, it really is a great song. But why would I be thinking about it today? There had to be another reason. I started going through the news, and I quickly realized what that reason was. In the United States today, there are millions upon millions of people that are completely and utterly lawless. We really have become a “Mad Max society”, and the future of our country is going to be exceedingly bleak if we continue going down this road.

USA - The reason why customers are thankful that those products are locked up is because they would never be in stock if they weren’t locked up. That is how bad our shoplifting epidemic has become. Crime is completely and utterly out of control in this nation. During the first six months of this year, retail theft was up 109 percent in the city of Los Angeles. In response to this tsunami of theft, retailers are starting to lock up products all over the nation. But if we don’t start locking up the criminals, we are literally going to have to lock up everything. Unfortunately, right now we cannot lock up all of the criminals, because the number of criminals far exceeds the number of empty spots in our prisons. Even though we have more people locked up than any other nation on the entire planet, our streets are still absolutely teeming with predators. This is what an advanced stage of social decay looks like, and it isn’t pretty. During a recent interview with CNBC, the CEO of Target insisted that customers are thankful that the retailer is now locking up body wash, toothpaste and deodorant… they would never be in stock if they weren’t locked up.

UK - Over the past few days, British politics has unravelled so spectacularly that we can no longer kid ourselves we live in a 'free country'. Or even a functioning democracy, come to that. The week began with the sacking of an outspoken Home Secretary — nominally in charge of the police — because she had the audacity to insist the Met enforce the law without fear or favour and stop turning a blind eye to rampant anarchy and vile anti-Semitism on the streets of our capital city. This was rapidly overshadowed by an unelected Prime Minister appointing as Foreign Secretary a former Prime Minister who resigned seven years earlier after his campaign to remain in the EU was rejected by the British people in a referendum.

USA - The last woolly mammoths died out about 4,000 years ago, but if the folks at Colossal Biosciences have their way, a calf will be born by 2028. Scientists at the company aim to rebuild the woolly mammoth genome using samples from unearthed specimens, filling in the gaps with DNA from modern Asian elephants. The two species share 99.6 percent of their genome, so this is not as big of a stretch as it may sound. With permafrost melting in the Arctic Circle, the remains of more and more woolly mammoths are being exposed and excavated, including ones whose skin and fur have clung on for all these years. These specimens provide the necessary genetic material.

USA - 'Antisemitism is 'a sign that the society itself is breaking down', journalist Bari Weiss has warned, as she excoriated the 'hip, young people with pronouns in their bios' who cheered when Hamas murdered 1,200 people on October 7. Weiss, who is Jewish, said she had been devastated to see how people 'poured into the streets of our capital cities to celebrate the slaughter.' Pro-Palestine activists around the world chanted for an end to Israel, and said Israel only had itself to blame for the October 7 attack.

USA - As a congressman of faith, Mike Johnson is hardly alone. Like the new Republican speaker, 88 percent of House members called themselves Christian at the start of the 118th Congress. Like him, a majority are Protestants. Breaking it down further, Johnson is one of 57 Baptists, making it the second largest denomination in the House, behind the 122 Catholics. Despite Christianity’s numerical advantage in Congress, Johnson has argued repeatedly that his religion is under nationwide attack by, as he put it in one 2006 op-ed, a “sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts [that] has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image.”

USA - The Walt Disney Company is rolling out more LGBTQ content as its latest superhero movie The Marvels crashed and burned at the box office on its opening weekend. Disney is currently promoting two high-profile gay and transgender-themed streaming shows on its family-friendly Disney+ service as well as Hulu. In the past two years, Disney has fought Florida over its anti-grooming Parental Rights in Education law, created multiple transgender characters for its children’s shows, put gay characters at the center of its big-budget movies, and even launched an LGBTQ-themed apparel line. This year, Disney eliminated 7,000 jobs worldwide as its profitability cratered. CEO Bob Iger is planning on slashing an additional $2 billion in spending in the months ahead.

HUNGARY - Hungary's ruling Fidesz party is set to introduce a bill to the nation's parliament which will create a special office to monitor activities that “threaten the sovereignty of the country.” The new department would be tasked with overseeing the inflow of foreign funding to political parties, media, and public organizations thought to be targeted for influence or manipulation by hostile governments or financial interests, such as Hungarian-American billionaire and serial financier of liberal causes George Soros. Orban had recently complained at a party meeting that foreign actors were manipulating the levers of Hungarian society through civil society groups and media “financed by Brussels or through the Soros network.” “They have openly said that they want a change of government in Hungary,” he said.

EUROPE - Europe’s tallest active volcano, Mount Etna [3,357 metres / 11,014 feet], has erupted once again, launching lava more than a kilometer into the air above its southeast crater, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) has reported. The eruption on the Italian isle of Sicily, which is the first in three months, came after several days of volcanic tremors and the emission of large clouds of scalding gasses. A fountain of molten rock was seen surging into the air while lava made its way down Etna’s slopes. The resulting clouds of ash were carried to coastal towns north of Catania, peppering the nearby counties and covering cars and buildings, according to the Etna Observatory. The volcanic ash will settle and provide fertile soil for the surrounding vineyards and gardens, another reminder of the relationship that local farmers share with the mountain on their doorstep.

More than a dozen volcanos are erupting at the same time worldwide, and three new eruptions joined the list this week. The Smithsonian Institute’s Global Volcanism Program tracks new eruptions and updates its list of currently erupting volcanos on Wednesdays. The most recent update shows three new eruptions, bringing the list’s total to 19 eruptions at once. The list doesn’t include all erupting volcanos. The new volcanic eruptions have some people voicing their concerns on social media. “Volcanoes erupt simultaneously in Italy, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Philippines. Totally normal, right?” one person posted on X, formerly Twitter. "That’s normal. That’s what Earth’s volcanos do: they erupt,” volcanologist and science journalist Robin George Andrews posted on X. “And there’s enough of them that some will always be erupting at the same time. You know what *would* be weird? If absolutely no volcanoes were erupting.”

ICELAND - Iceland 'is on edge' as experts say earthquakes that have been rumbling beneath the surface for days and have torn through a town are a precursor to a volcanic eruption. Sinkholes have opened up around the town, and now aerial footage captured by the Coast Guard shows a chasm running through the centre, with smoke pouring out of the gaping splits as magma rises. Meanwhile, authorities are urgently preparing to build defence walls around a nearby geothermal power plant which they desperately hope will protect it from lava flows - amid concerns that a volcanic eruption could be imminent. Located between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates, among the largest on the planet, Iceland is a seismic and volcanic hot spot as the two plates move in opposite directions.

USA - High above Times Square the images flash: a bloodied pacifier, rope-bound hands, an empty wheelchair, pictures of the 240 Israeli people taken hostage by Hamas. The images are part of Don’t Look Away, a campaign launched by Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Over a month into the Israel-Hamas war, American Evangelicals are providing moral and material support to Israel, hosting fundraisers and poster campaigns, and sending volunteers and supplies. With more than 100 million Evangelicals in the United States, it is a deep well from which to draw.