The $1.5 million figure provided to the Journal on Wednesday only covers the cost of the four AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles used to shoot down the ‘UFOs’ over Alaska, Lake Huron, and the Yukon region in Canada, excluding funds spent by the Coast Guard, Navy, and National Guard in searching for the debris.

One of the missiles failed to hit its target, requiring another $400,000 Sidewinder to send the unidentified object plummeting into one of Michigan’s Great Lakes. The string of shootdowns came after a Chinese high-altitude balloon entered US airspace in late January, which was also downed by a US fighter jet.

It is morally right and strategically sound for us to assist in a Russian defeat in Ukraine, but the British Army must be restocked with replacements for the huge amounts of equipment it has sent there. That is not presently happening, nor is the Treasury making the necessary provisions for that to happen in the future. With 6,000 shells being fired by Ukraine each day, we in this country are down to less than a week’s supply. Jens Stoltenberg, head of NATO, recently said that Ukraine is using shells at a far faster rate than our ability to replenish.

It is situations like this that Ben Wallace had in mind when he recently admitted the British Army has been ‘hollowed out and underfunded’ in recent years, a truly extraordinary statement for a serving defence secretary to have made in public. It echoes the statement last month of a ‘senior American general’ – and by all accounts it was a very senior American general – to the effect that the British Army was ‘no longer regarded as a top-level fighting force’.

Historically many of our post-war crises have come out of an ever clearer blue sky. Few predicted Kim Il-sung’s invasion of South Korea in 1950, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Falklands invasion, Saddam’s assault on Kuwait, or the attack on the Twin Towers. ‘Surprises happen so often in history,’ Paul Wolfowitz, the former US deputy secretary of defense, remarked after 9/11, ‘that the surprising thing is that we’re still surprised by them.’ Having a reserve of heavy artillery and shells is the minimum needed to respond to such surprises.

For those of you that have not been paying attention, the apocalyptic alliances that we have been anticipating for years have now formed. It is going to be the US and Europe on one side, and Russia and China will be on the other. All of the marbles are at stake, and both sides have plenty of nuclear weapons.

In my entire lifetime, the United States has never been closer to an apocalyptic war than it is right now. If our leaders were smart, they would be looking for a peaceful way out of this mess while it is still possible. But instead, Joe Biden just continues to [talk] about how it is important for us to back the war in Ukraine for as long as necessary… It appears that we could end up fighting Russia and China at the same time, and that sort of a nightmare scenario will not be good for any of us.

The Japanese Defense Ministry on Wednesday pointed out a major obstacle to Kishida visiting the Ukrainian war zone: Japan’s pacifist constitution technically does not allow the Self-Defense Forces to provide military protection for traveling dignitaries, even the prime minister.

The G-7 nations will discuss their concerns about Russia, which Japan is still technically at war with. The two nations never formally concluded World War II, in part due to some lingering territorial issues. Japan once again brought up the disputed Northern Territories (which Russia calls the Kuril Islands) immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine. Japan announced on Wednesday it will guarantee a $5 billion World Bank loan to Ukraine, with an offer to step in and make the payments if Kyiv cannot. Tokyo added half a billion dollars in financial support on top of the loan.

The deployment will more than quadruple the US military presence on the island, according to the Journal. According to the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center, there were 23 American soldiers in Taiwan as of autumn 2022.

These Americans have been acting as advisers and trainers for the US weapons and equipment sent to Taipei. The new troops will also train the Taiwanese in tactics “to protect against a potential Chinese offensive,” according to unnamed US officials.

There were also Taiwanese troops in the US, with “a contingent” training alongside the Michigan National Guard in the north of that state, the Journal reported. When reached for comment, the Pentagon said only that the US “commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid.”

Susan Hough, a seismologist at the United States Geological Survey, said that in many cases, people end up living next to fault zones for resource reasons. “If you are living along the base of the mountains, there may be more water there,” Hough said.

The skyrocketing credit card balance has coincided with an increase in the interest rates paid on such debt, crunching household budgets as high inflation eats away at the savings that many amassed during the pandemic. Americans are falling behind in Biden’s economy with low-paying jobs, 40-year-high inflation, and a loss in the value of their net assets due to inflation pushing prices to record highs.

As a last resort, Americans turn to their credit cards to get by, hoping they will be able to pay them off next month. This cycle is maddening for Americans who work hard and can’t seem to get ahead. Now, they are falling behind. It’s a key reflection of the health of the American consumer. The debt on credit card continues to tell us that the American consumer is tapped and spent.

And yet at a time like that, instead of refocussing and rebuilding the American economy and prosperity for middle class people, instead of focusing on securing our own border, which is absolutely out of control, where a tsunami of trespassers continue to pour into this country… instead we are projecting overseas.

But should we really be surprised by Francis’s position? This is the Pope who takes every opportunity to declare the Bible is wrong, after all. He kicked off his papacy by declaring evolution and the big bang theory were real.

This is the pope who informed his flock that “relationships with Jesus are dangerous and harmful.” Breaking with centuries of Christian tradition, Pope Francis sparked fears that he is an illegitimate pope with a sinister agenda when he told a crowd of 33,000 pilgrims in St Peter’s Square in Rome that “a personal, direct, immediate relationship with Jesus Christ” must be avoided at all costs.

In 2017, Pope Francis called for a “one world government” and “political authority”, arguing that the creation of the one world government is needed to combat issues such as “climate change.” Speaking with Ecuador’s El Universo newspaper, the Pope said that the United Nations does not have enough power and must be granted full governmental control “for the good of humanity.” This includes Americans, he stressed, who according to the pope must be ruled by a world government “for their own good.”

In 2019, Pope Francis signed a historic covenant with leaders of the world’s major faiths, pushing us much closer to a one-world religion, one of the major goals of the New World Order. According to the document produced by Pope Francis and published on the Vatican’s official website, all religions must be considered equal, and Islam is as acceptable to God as Christianity. He then shocked the Christian world by hosting Islamic prayers and Quran recitals in the Vatican.

1. “The US has used Ukraine to prepare for a large war. They have publicly admitted that.” This is, in fact, implicit if not official policy articulated by the Biden administration. The president himself declared early last year that Putin “cannot remain in power,” a threat of forced regime change if there ever was one. Biden kicked off the week by visiting the capital of Ukraine, a literal war zone with no US military presence, as if to claim the conflict is as much ours as it is Ukraine’s (and it is, given that we’re footing about two-thirds of Ukraine’s defense cost).

2. “The West is guilty of escalation.” Since well before Russia invaded Ukraine, Washington has promoted the expansion of new member nations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, an alliance that exists in its present form for the express purpose of intimidating Russia. What started out as a warning to the Soviet Union that the US would defend its European allies against military aggression is now a vanity project for both of our political parties to look like heroes by further alienating the Kremlin from the rest of the developed world.

3. “They [the West] want to have a strategic defeat of Russia. …It means they want to have no more, anything to do with Russia. They want to have a global resistance against Russia.” What part of that contradicts anything the Biden administration, most of Congress, and virtually every former military official on cable news has said? They all say it.

Assume that right now Russia were to retreat from Ukraine and declare a truce. Who’s going to be the first to propose that the US and Europe resume regular trade and cooperation to stabilize Russia’s economy and its standing in the world? None of them will. They all expect a lasting minimizing of Russia, preferably without Putin in the picture.

Say whatever you want about Putin, he’s not irrational.

“Look at what they’re doing to their own peoples: the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversions and abuses against children, up to pedophilia, are declared to the norm, the norm of their lives, while clergymen and priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages,” Putin said.

“But I would like to tell them: look, please forgive me, to the holy scriptures – the main texts of all of the world’s religions. Everything is explained there, including that a family is the union of a man and a woman. But even these holy texts are now being questioned. The Anglican Church, for example, now plans to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God. What can we say here? ‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’,” Putin said, quoting a verse from the Bible.

According to the Russian president, “millions of people in the West” have come to “understand that they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe,” with their elites “seemingly going mad, and it seems there is no cure.” These are “their problems” and Russia will not interfere in other countries’ affairs, but “we are obliged to protect our own children –and we will do so: we will protect our children from degradation and degeneration,” Putin said.

In Bahrain, a one hour flight away, the Jewish community has been brought back to life. Jews are encouraged to visit with open arms. The same is happening in Morocco and perhaps soon in Oman, Saudi Arabia and who knows where else next?!

The Temple Mount is “open to everyone,” Ben-Gvir said in a video. “Muslims and Christians come here, and, yes, Jews, too.” Staring into the camera while walking through the compound, he added, “In a government in which I’m a member, there will be no racist discrimination.”

But the galaxies found in the Webb images appeared shockingly big, and the stars in them too old. The new findings are in conflict with existing ideas of how the universe looked and evolved in its early years, and don't match earlier observations made by Webb's less powerful predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

"We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find," Leja said in a Penn University statement. "It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question."

The news comes as other European countries face similar concerns with the risk of catastrophic drought and rising temperatures due to global warming, following the third hottest January on record. The unseasonable weather across the continent has seen water reserves sink in Spain, crop production slashed, and low tides leaving gondolas unable to navigate Venice's historic canals.

In Spain, one of the European countries most exposed to the risk of drought, there is also concern about current water reserves. Barcelona and large swathes of Spain's northeastern region of Catalonia have imposed water restrictions due to the lack of rain.

According to local reports, SatanCon 2023 is themed after an ancient springtime German holiday known as “Witches Night” or “Hexennacht.” Tickets for the “weekend of blasphemy and remembrance” have reportedly all been sold out.

“Satancon attendees must be 18 or over and have proof of COVID vaccination. Attendees must wear an N-95, KN-95, or disposable surgical mask. Gaiters, bandanas, and cloth masks will not be allowed,” a notice on the group’s website instructs Satancon 2023 goers.