USA - Children's advocates want the American Psychological Association to condemn the tech industry's practice of using persuasive psychological techniques to keep kids glued to their screens. The advocates, citing research that links excessive use of social media and video games with depression and academic troubles, say it's unethical for psychologists to be involved in tactics that risk harming kids' well-being.

USA - Over 500 scientists have come together to officially denounce Darwinism, claiming his theory of evolution is false and based on bad science. In a paper entitled, “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism,” scientists have thrown serious doubt on natural selection’s ability to create complex biological systems.

CALIFORNIA - California’s firefighters are currently tackling 15 wildfires across the country with Holy Fire in southern California spreading to 9,600 acres. Holy Fire has spread to 9,600 acres and is only 5 percent contained according to reports from fire officials. This is more than double the size of the blaze was on Wednesday night. The growth of the fire is threatening residential areas, with around 20,000 residents under mandatory evacuation orders. Schools have been closed in Menifee, Perris and Lake Elsinore in line with air quality concerns. 

USA - Bankruptcy soars as the country grapples with an unprecedented debt problem. America, you officially have a debt problem, and I am not just talking about the national debt.  Consumer bankruptcies are surging, corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, state and local government debt loads have never been higher, and the federal government has been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the federal debt ever since Barack Obama entered the White House. 

USA - President Trump’s attacks on the media, whom he dubbed “enemies of the people,” have struck a chord with supporters. A new poll found that 43 percent of Republicans want to give him the power to shut down certain news outlets. Public trust in the press has diminished since the days of Woodward and Bernstein, falling by 30 percentage points since the late 1970s.

USA - American cities with massive foreign born populations went the strongest for failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton against President Trump in the 2016 election. A map compiled by the New York Times’ Matthew Bloch, Larry Buchanan, Josh Katz, and Kevin Quealy reveals Clinton’s “democratic bastions” of “cities’ hues of blue,” noting the most pro-Clinton cities in the country were: New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia, The Bay Area and Minneapolis. These same six cities and metropolitan areas also have another common characteristic: They are densely populated with foreign-born arrivals.

ISRAEL - The Israel Air Force retaliated by striking targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening after 19 people were treated for injuries resulting form rocket attacks from Gaza against southern Israel. A rocket hit Eshkol Regional Council at 06:00 am Thursday, critically injuring a 30 year old woman and lightly wounding another man from shrapnel. Following the barrages throughout the night, the IAF struck over 100 terror targets including a plant used to manufacture components intended for the construction of tunnels as well as a tunnel for maritime terrorism along Israel’s coast. The rocket fire also comes as a senior Hamas official said that UN and Egyptian-mediated cease-fire talks between the terror group and Israel have reached “advanced stages,” with a deal expected to be signed soon.

GERMANY - Children from Islamist households in Germany represent a "not insignificant potential threat," the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence service, Hans-Georg Maassen said Monday. In a new report cited by the Funke media group, the BfV said there were signs the "radicalization of minors and young adults" was becoming more likely and happening faster and earlier. The BfV document estimated that some 300 children in Germany were affected. Children in some of these families are "educated from birth with an extremist world view that legitimizes violence against others and degrades those who aren't part of their group," the report said. It expressed concerns about families who had traveled to war zones in the Middle East, as well as those who had remained in Germany.

USA - I won’t comment on the general political actions of California’s Governor Brown. I will say that he is doing what all environmentalists are doing and that is taking natural and normal events and presenting them as unnatural and abnormal. Of course, this means they are trying to blame humans for every single change that occurs in nature.

UNITED NATIONS - A prominent UN adviser has been exposed by Newsweek as the man at the center of a 14-month-long investigation into sexual abuse. The report accuses him of making repeated unwanted advances towards younger men. The Newsweek report now claims that the man is India-born Ravi Karkara, who worked as senior adviser to the former deputy executive director of UN Women, Lakshmi Puri, until recently. Aashish Khullar had worked alongside Karkara at the UN Major Group for Children and Youth, an area in which the Indian official specialized, having also worked as a youth consultant for UNICEF and Save the Children. “There was a prevailing sense among all who had worked with him that misconduct was his modus operandi. No one was surprised when this was formally raised,” Khullar said.

USA - The Joe Biden Foundation has launched a campaign that seeks to protect gender-confused children from parents who do not affirm their desire to transition to a gender that is incompatible with their biological sex. A press release from the former vice president’s foundation Tuesday states the new initiative, dubbed “As You Are,” claims it is parental rejection that leads to the high rates of severe mental illness among LGBTQ youth: “Family rejection significantly contributes to negative outcomes” for LGBTQ young people, specifically severe depression and suicidal ideation, states the Biden Foundation. “Rejecting behavior is not limited to a parent disowning or kicking out their child,” the foundation says. “It can also include subjecting young people to ‘conversion therapy,’ blocking their access to LGBTQ friends and networks, or keeping a young person’s LGBTQ identity ‘secret.’”

AUSTRALIA - An Australian judge has incurred the wrath of child protection and gay rights advocates after stating that incest and pedophilia may no longer be considered taboo – just as gay relationships are now more accepted than they were in the 1950s and 60s. District Court Judge Garry Neilson was recorded as saying that sexual contact between adults and children or siblings may no longer be regarded by society as “unnatural” or “taboo.”

AUSTRALIA - Australia's most populous state was declared entirely in drought on Wednesday and struggling farmers were given new authority to shoot kangaroos that compete with livestock for sparse pasture during the most intense dry spell in more than 50 years. Much of Australia's southeast is struggling with drought. But the drought conditions in the state of New South Wales this year have been the driest and most widespread since 1965. The state government said Wednesday that 100 percent of New South Wales' land area of more than 800,000 square kilometers (309,000 square miles) was now in drought. Primary Industries Minister Niall Blair said farmers were enduring one of the driest Southern Hemisphere winters on record.

INDONESIA - Bali and Lombok have been struck by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake causing buildings to collapse days after more than 300 died in major earthquakes in Indonesia since Sunday, the Southeast Asian nation's meteorology and geophysics agency said. The latest quake was felt strongly on the island and followed a 6.9 quake on Sunday that killed at least 131 people and damaged thousands of houses, and another measuring 6.4 on July 29 which resulted in 14 deaths. A witness told Reuters the latest quake sent people into the streets in panic and caused buildings to collapse. A humanitarian crisis is also looming in Lombok, where thousands have been left homeless and in desperate need of clean water, food, medicine and shelter.

USA - Major changes are happening to our planet, and the experts are groping for answers.  In recent days some have suggested that what we are witnessing is the natural progression of “man-made climate change”, but that explanation has generally been received with a lot of skepticism.  Something truly dramatic appears to be happening to the globe, and it isn’t just because the amount of carbon dioxide in the air suddenly reached some sort of magical “tipping point”.