EUROPE - Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have thrown their weight behind the creation of a new powerful eurozone finance minister post that would oversee economic policy across the bloc. Speaking in Paris on Tuesday French president Mr Macron said that a “revamp” creating the new economy chief and a eurozone-wide budget were key to helping the bloc weather future crises. The German Chancellor Ms Merkel, who is up for re-election next month, also separately backed deeper integration at her annual press conference in Berlin. Ms Merkel said the new “economics and finance minister” role could provide “greater coherence” to economic policy across the bloc. She also backed a plan for a European Monetary Fund that would redistribute money within the bloc to where it was needed.
MIDDLE EAST - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly told President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner that he wouldn’t stop payments to convicted terrorists “until his dying day,” a leading Palestinian newspaper said Monday.
ISRAEL - Raise a Red Heifer in Israel Project Update: Good News: Expecting Potential Red Heifers in 2018. Yitzchak Reuven shares an update on the Temple Institute's Raise a Red Heifer in Israel project with the exciting news that five red angus cows are currently carrying potential red heifer candidates. This good news of course coincides with this week's Torah reading of Chukat, in which the laws of the Red Heifer are presented. Even as we excitedly are anticipating the prospect of being able to nullify the ritual impurity of contact with death via the ashes of the red heifer, the Muslim death cult is being celebrated on the Temple Mount in the final days of Ramadan as candies are being handed out in packages bearing the faces of terrorist murderers of innocent Jewish men, women and children.
USA - Americans on average spent more on taxes in 2016 than they did on food and clothing combined, according to data released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (BLS) The same data also shows that in three years — from 2013 to 2016 — the average tax bill for Americans increased 41.13 percent. In 2016, according to BLS, “consumer units” (which include families, financially independent individuals, and people living in a single household who share expenses) spent more on average on federal, state and local taxes ($10,489) than they did on food ($7,203) and clothing ($1,803) combined ($9,006). The average tax bill for American “consumer units” increased from $7,423 in 2013 to $10,489 in 2016, according to data released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
ISRAEL - Senior members of the Trump administration and Israeli officials renewed talks over the possibility of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a promise repeatedly made by the president in the 2016 election campaign, during high-level meetings in Israel last week, the Times of Israel has learned.
USA - Floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey are likely to rise as more torrential rain pounds the US Gulf Coast, where at least eight people have already been killed in Texas and tens of thousands driven from their homes, officials said on Monday. Thousands of National Guard troops, police officers, rescue workers and civilians raced in helicopters, boats and special high-water trucks to rescue the hundreds stranded in the catastrophic storm that has crippled Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city.
CHINA - China has warned that the situation on the Korean Peninsula has reached “tipping point,” just hours after Pyongyang launched a ballistic missile. Meanwhile, North Korea has accused the US of driving the region towards an “extreme level of explosion.” Speaking at a regular news briefing on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the situation is “now at a tipping point approaching a crisis. At the same time there is an opportunity to reopen peace talks. We hope relevant parties can consider how we can deescalate the situation on the peninsula and realize peace and stability on the peninsula,” she added, as quoted by AFP.
FRANCE - “The fight against Islamic terrorism is the first priority of French diplomacy,” French President Emmanuel Macron told an assembly of French ambassadors Tuesday. Macron went on to tell the diplomats that “ensuring the security of our citizens must be the priority of our policy,” before announcing a major conference on the financing of terrorist networks that will be held in Paris in early 2018. “The security of the French people is the raison d’être of our diplomacy,” Macron said. “This is a visceral requirement. We must respond to it without flagging. The eradication of terrorism also means drying up its financing.” In his speech at the Presidential Élysée Palace lasting over an hour, Macron traced the lines of his “make France great again” politics and his dream of the country returning as a major player in international diplomacy.
USA - As a Humanities professor I have had the opportunity to teach psychology and social psychology for more than 20 years. Occasionally the knowledge obtained in these areas allows me analyze and understand social behavior and certain cultural trends. This is one those occasions.
USA - Every day, millions of people drink chlorinated tap water. Chlorine is used to keep our water clean by disinfecting it and killing germs. And it does a marvelous job at eliminating most pathogens from the water we drink. But the use of this powerful chemical has a downside. According to a report from the US Council of Environmental Quality, the cancer risk for people who drink chlorinated water is up to 93% higher than for those whose water does not contain chlorine.
UK - Low-fat diets could raise the risk of early death by almost one quarter, a major study has found. The Lancet study of 135,000 adults found those who cut back on fats had far shorter lives than those enjoying plenty of butter, cheese and meats. Researchers said the study was at odds with repeated health advice to cut down on fats. Those doing so tended to eat far too much stodgy food like bread, pasta and rice, the experts said, while missing out on vital nutrients.
EUROPE - Emmanuel Macron's recent row with Poland over EU directives has divided the bloc and portrayed France as the bully of Brussels, according to a global political risk analyst. Famke Krumbmuller, a German risk analyst, warned the French President was playing with fire by stoking up tensions with Eastern European states.
MIDDLE EAST - Talk of any US-led initiative to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is a “delusion,” charged Palestinian official Mahmoud Aloul, a Fatah deputy to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Aloul, considered one of the candidates to succeed Abbas as the head of Fatah, said in an interview with Saudi news site Elaph regarding the visit of an American delegation last week in Israel that, “These visits haven’t led to any results. We aren’t deluding ourselves; there can be no advancement in the peace process with the right-wing Israeli government under the leadership of Netanyahu.”
USA - In a sign that antifa anarcho-Marxists are ramping up the purge of historic monuments, they are now adding Indian fighters to their hit list. On Friday morning, the statue of Colonel William Crawford outside Crawford County Courthouse in Ohio was found decapitated. Colonel Crawford fought alongside General George Washington in various encounters against the British in the American Revolution. But, problematically in the eyes of leftists, he was also a veteran of British military campaigns with Native Americans in the French and Indian War, Pontiac’s Rebellion and Lord Dunmore’s War.
USA - Israel’s consul general in Houston said Monday that people were living like “cavemen” in the city as a result of the flooding brought on by the heavy rains from Harvey, saying many residents of America’s fourth-largest city were stuck without food, water and electricity. “It is like they returned to being cavemen. Everyone is waiting for it to end,” Gilad Katz told Israel Radio, adding that many homes will need to be gutted and rebuilt because of the flooding. He said that as a result of the rising water levels, many people were stranded in their homes and would not be able to leave until the water begins to recede. The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, predicted that the aftermath of the storm would require FEMA’s involvement for years.
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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