NEW ZEALAND - Strong winds are expected to fan forest fires that have been burning for a week through New Zealand’s South Island, forcing thousands of people from their homes. Early on Sunday, 155 firefighters were battling the blaze on the ground with air support from 23 helicopters and three fixed wing planes, making it the largest aerial firefight on record in New Zealand. Up to 3,000 people have been forced to leave the Wakefield and Pigeon Valley areas, the civil defence controller, Roger Ball, told a news conference on Saturday. More people were likely to be forced from their homes on Sunday. Fires started on Monday and Tuesday and quickly spread. On Wednesday, authorities declared a state of emergency.
GERMANY - The woman largely expected to take over as chancellor of Germany has echoed calls by her mentor Angela Merkel and French ally Emmanuel Macron for a “European army” to avoid becoming a “plaything” of Russia, China, and the United States on the global stage.
GERMANY - Ambassador Richard Grenell has accused Berlin of failing to meet its defense spending commitments under the alliance. While the German government has backed plans to gradually increase spending, some see it as a waste. US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell on Sunday criticized Germany's pledge to incrementally raise its defense spending to 1.5 percent until 2024 in an interview with German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
USA - Mike Pence is the most hated vice-president in modern American history, and mountains of abuse have been heaped upon his wife Karen Pence. The left hates them with a passion, and the reason they are hated so much is actually very simple. It is because they are Bible-believing Christians. In America today, there is so much fuss about the political rancor between “the right” and “the left”, but what we are facing in this country is so much deeper than that. In reality, we are in the midst of a culture war that has been raging for decades, and the anti-Christian worldview that the left espouses has been winning that war. But now Donald Trump and Mike Pence are attempting to reverse the tide of the battle, and this is driving the left nuts. And even though Mike Pence is a very mild-mannered individual, celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Joy Behar have made national headlines by viciously attacking his Christian faith.
USA - Farmers all across the middle part of the country are going bankrupt at an astounding rate, and over half of all farms in America are now losing money. The trade war with China has been the most devastating crisis to hit the US farming community in decades, and at this point there is no end in sight. Farm after farm is being financially wiped out, and we haven’t seen this kind of economic pain for farmers since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In fact, it is being reported that bankruptcies in the key farming regions of the country are way above the level that we witnessed during the last recession.
USA - The Baltic Dry Index represents the cost of renting an ocean-going container ship to move goods from, say, Chinese factories to the Port of Los Angeles. The more stuff being made and sold, the higher the demand for such ships, and thus the higher the price to rent one. And vice versa. This is definitely one of the vice versa times. After rising to robust levels in mid-2018 the Baltic Dry Index has since plunged by about two-thirds.
USA - With the release of “Green New Deal” plan authored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and endorsed by Kamala Harris, Corey Booker and other prominent Democrats), the real agenda of the Democrats has now become clear. That agenda is best described as this: Murder the babies, demolish all buildings, block the sun, kill free speech, ban all airplanes and declare a new utopia.
USA - Fully 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online 'almost constantly', according to the latest Pew Research Center poll, increasing concerns, about what The Atlantic's Jean Twenge calls the most crucial question of our age... "have smartphones destroyed a generation?" But, as we detailed previously, there is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives - and making them seriously unhappy.
GERMANY - German businesses have admitted they are terrified at the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, with business bosses pinning the blame on Britain for the financial threat. Berlin firms have revealed they are panicking over the “fatal” consequences if the UK breaks free from the EU without a deal, which could trigger a “massive crisis” across the continent, according to industry chiefs.
FRANCE - French firms are beginning to panic about the prospect of a no-deal Brexit which they fear will bring about a “nightmare scenario” and hit their businesses where it hurts most. With just 49 days to go until the UK leaves the EU, some of the 30,000 companies across the English Channel who export to Britain are trying to be one step ahead of the expected chaos by taking contingency measures. Theresa May is due to fly into Dublin today to meet Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadker to discuss the Irish backstop in an effort to thaw the Brexit stalemate.
UK - Theresa May has secured a Brexit victory in Brussels, pressuring EU chiefs into reopening talks on the future relationship with the aim of ensuring the Irish backstop never comes into force. Backstop negotiations will now reopen, the BBC reports, with Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay expected to travel to Strasbourg on Monday. A joint statement issued by the PM and the European Commission said President Juncker had “expressed his openness” to change the Political Declaration. The statement said he was eager to make it “more ambitious in terms of content and speed when it comes to the future relationship between the European Union and the UK”. Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki said: “Instead of sending anyone to hell, together find a solution that will be good for the EU, but also allow you to have a strong business partner in Britain after #Brexit.”
EUROPE - Emmanuel Macron has abruptly canceled his trip to the Munich Security Conference, with the Élysée saying he is focused on domestic issues amidst the ongoing Yellow Vest protests – but German media is seeing Russia in all this. The cancellation comes as the French president was accused of attempting to torpedo the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which is funded by Russian energy giant Gazprom and supported by Germany – as well as Belgium, Austria, Greece and Cyprus, and the Netherlands.
GERMANY - Germany’s new Christian Democrat leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has called for the creation of a European army amid growing global instability caused by sabre-rattling leaders in Russia, China and the US. Angela Merkel’s successor used a speech in Brussels to outline a key CDU party campaign theme with European Parliament elections coming up in May. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer warned the EU would be left trailing behind global superpowers Russia, China and the USA unless it stepped up to the plate militarily. She also predicted the EU’s external borders would need extra protection for many decades to come in the face of a sustained migrant crisis. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer’s speech focused on the idea of a “Europe of security” and she insisted an EU army was a “logical step” in pursuit of that goal.
AUSTRALIA - Climate change is a hoax developed as part of a secret plot by the United Nations to undermine democracies and takeover the world, a top adviser to Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, has warned. Maurice Newman, the chief business adviser to the prime minister, said the science showing links between human activity and the warming climate was wrong but was being used as a “hook” by the UN to expand its global control. “This is not about facts or logic. It’s about a new world order under the control of the UN,” he wrote in The Australian. “It’s a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO2 emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found, after nearly two decades of temperature stasis, to be in error,” he wrote.
USA - In a leaked military manual on “unconventional warfare” recently highlighted by WikiLeaks, the US Army states that major global financial institutions — such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — are used as unconventional, financial “weapons in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war,” as well as in leveraging “the policies and cooperation of state governments.”
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.
“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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