Los Angeles Emergencies and Threats
USA - Los Angeles is prone to many natural and man-made threats. Los Angeles is particularly vulnerable to the destructive affects of wildfires, flooding, mudslides, earthquakes, and extreme heat. Because of the many threats faced, the importance of readiness as a City and for residents cannot be overstated. Part of disaster preparedness is being aware of the kinds of hazards and disasters you might be subject to living in as a Los Angeles resident.
Here is, at least, a partial list:
Earthquakes, Fire, Tsunami, Severe Weather and Flooding, Extreme Heat, Extreme Cold, Landslides, Hurricane, Tornado, Terrorism, Cybercrime, Public health threats, Chemical Emergencies and Air Quality.
Catholic Bishop: Pope Francis ‘Using His Platform to Embolden Sinners’
USA - Bishop Joseph Strickland of the Catholic diocese of Tyler, Texas tweeted out a video on Friday that featured Father Jason Charron delivering a video message that criticized Pope Francis for his recent remarks on homosexuals and said that the pope was “using his platform to embolden sinners.” “This priest speaks truth that needs to be shared,” said Bishop Strickland in his tweet.
On the video, Father Charron says: “I am sure you heard today, as many people have, that Pope Francis again has called for the decriminalizing of homosexual acts among other things on his return flight from his African visit home to the Vatican.”
“And it struck me that a lot of the Pope’s public comments, you know, revolve around this issue of homosexuality as though that were the center piece of his ministry,” said Father Charron. “You don’t hear a whole lot of comments from him calling for the defense of persecuted Christians in places like, oh, I don’t know, China.”
“This is the great shame - that he has abandoned his first love and instead of preaching the Gospel, emboldening the saints and calling sinners to repentance, he’s using his platform to embolden sinners and to shame the saints into silence in conformity with the world.”
More than 1,000 children were given puberty blockers
UK - More than 1,000 children at the NHS's controversial child transgender clinic were handed prescriptions for puberty blockers, a new book has claimed, as former staff compare it to the 'doping of East German athletes'. The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London will close later this year after being slammed in a report amid accusations it was rushing children onto puberty blocking drugs.
Now former clinicians at the service have revealed how 'incredibly complex' children were handed the life-altering drugs after just one assessment - despite having a multitude of mental health or background issues. GIDS was formerly the sole provider of gender dysphoria and gender identity services for children and young people across the whole of the UK.
The controversial clinic treated at least 9,000 children for gender dysphoria from when it opened in 1989, but a review led by senior paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass warned that 'it has become increasingly clear that a single specialist provider model is not a safe or viable long-term option'. It came amid reports the service had become overwhelmed with a waiting list of up to two years. It came despite concerns there was 'scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision making'.
The confirmed closure of the service for young people at Tavistock later his year has been hailed as a victory by campaigners. The NHS has confirmed that the clinic will be replaced by local hubs at existing children's hospitals, which will provide more holistic care with 'strong links to mental health services'.
The Worst January Job Cuts ‘Since The Great Recession’
USA - It appears that the tsunami of layoffs that started late last year is starting to accelerate. January was a horrible month for job losses, and major layoff announcements are coming fast and furious here in February. Challenger, Gray & Christmas just issued a report that concluded that last month “was the worst January for job cuts since the Great Recession in 2009”…
- Disney has decided to tell approximately 7,000 employees to hit the bricks
- Yahoo has announced that it will be laying off “more than 20% of its workforce”
- Ebay was doing quite well, but now they have decided that 4 percent of their workers are no longer needed
- Affirm announced it’s cutting 19% of its workforce
- As the US housing crash deepens, JPMorgan Chase has concluded that now is the time to “cut hundreds of mortgage employees”
- GoDaddy just let their workers know that they plan to “reduce the size of our global team by about 8%”
- Micron is one of the biggest private employers in Idaho, but now it intends to “reduce its global headcount by about 10% over the next year”
- GitHub has become yet another victim of the downsizing trend in the tech industry
- Nomad Health just laid off approximately 20 percent of their entire corporate workforce
- Zoom is giving the axe to approximately 1,300 workers
- Boeing was supposedly going to be hiring more workers, but instead the company just announced that thousands of positions in finance and human resources will be eliminated - “We expect about 2,000 reductions this year”
- Do you remember when Dell computers were still popular? Unfortunately, the tide has turned and now Dell has been forced to get rid of 6,650 workers
I could go on and on if you would like. There are countless other firms that have also just announced significant layoffs. We truly have not faced economic conditions like this since the Great Recession… Unfortunately, we are still only in the very early chapters of this new crisis. As I have been warning for years, things will eventually get much worse.
Our leaders have been making incredibly bad decisions for decades, and now we are going to get to suffer the consequences of those bad decisions. This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen, but we wrecked it. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and most Americans are completely unprepared for what is coming next.
I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids - Now I’m Blowing the Whistle
USA - There are more than 100 pediatric gender clinics across the US. I worked at one. What’s happening to children is morally and medically appalling. I am a 42-year-old St Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor.
For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt.
I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.
All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier. Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue — and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.
Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.
Sea Level Is Stable Around the World…
USA - The Good News the Media Don’t Want Us to Hear. We have been studying climate change and potentially associated sea level changes resulting from melting ice and warming oceans for a half century. In the 1970s our primary concern was global cooling and an advancing new ice age. Many believe that increasing quantities of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere could result in rising levels of the sea in general. The record does not show this to be true. There is no evidence whatever to support impending sea-level-rise catastrophe or the unnecessary expenditure of state or federal tax monies to solve a problem that does not exist.
Tucker Carlson: The Climate Change “Religion”
USA - When the late author and political philosopher Michael Crichton discussed climate change activism two decades ago, he made a compelling case for why it should be considered a religion. As Fox News host Tucker Carlson said, his statements were among the rare ones that have aged perfectly well on the subject.
Climate change cultists have their version of the Garden of Eden as the planet before humans invaded it and turned it into something dirty. They also have their “original sin,” in their case the Industrial Revolution. Their “end times” event is climate catastrophe. Yes, it is a religion and the cultists are as fervent as the most extreme members of any other faith-based group.
“Nobody cares about data anymore; we saw that with COVID as well. Wear a cloth mask, said Fauci even as he privately admitted that cloth masks are useless to prevent the transmission of COVID,” Carlson said. “Take the COVID shot, Kathy Hochul told us, standing at a pulpit, because, and were quoting, ‘That’s what god wants.’ So once again, whatever this is, it is not science by definition, it’s religion. But despite the fact the Constitution prohibits the US government from having a state religion, that now is our state religion.”The climate change cult has more cheerleaders in media than even the Democrat Party.
‘The Church of England has been captured by woke ideology’
UK - Tim Dieppe, our Head of Public Policy, spoke to Talk TV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer about the Church of England’s plans to consider referring to God in gender-neutral terms. Commenting on just how far the Church of England is straying from God’s teaching and who God has revealed himself to be, he commented: “The Church has become so captured by woke ideology they don’t realise where they’ve got to.
“We worship God as a trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit. That’s how he’s revealed himself… To say, ‘we don’t really worship Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, but we worship Mother, sister and Holy Spirit’, well I’m sorry that’s now a different God. That’s something else. You’re now creating a different religion. You’re making God how you want him to be, not how God has revealed himself...
“I think this shows just how far from even attempting, pretending to be Orthodox, when you’re messing with the Trinity and messing with how we address God and how Christians have always traditionally addressed God as Father.”
Archbishop of York says sexual immorality is not sinful
UK - The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has confirmed in a BBC interview that he believes that sexual immorality is not sinful. The interview on BBC Radio Four’s Sunday programme on 22 January came following the Church of England’s (CofE) announcement that it would not allow ‘gay marriage’ but would allow ‘blessings’ for same-sex couples in civil partnerships in its churches.
The move is a landmark moment, confirming the CofE’s departure from its own Biblical teaching on human sexuality which states that marriage is “in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman.”
Andrea Williams, member of general synod for ten years and chief executive of Christian Concern, said: “The comments from the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, on the BBC embody the compromised position of the Church of England on human sexuality. The church and Christians are called to be distinct from the world around them and yet the Archbishop has shown he is ashamed of the clear teachings of Jesus Christ.”
Pope Francis faces 'civil war' at heart of church
VATICAN - From his reforms to his foreign relations, criticism of Pope Francis has intensified since the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI, revealing a climate of "civil war" at a time when the Catholic Church is engaged in a global conversation about its future. Benedict, a conservative German theologian who was pope for eight years before resigning in 2013, died on December 31 at the age of 95. Within days of his death, his closest aide, Georg Gaenswein, revealed Benedict's concerns at some of the changes made by his successor Pope Francis, notably his decision to restrict the use of the Latin mass.
The criticism was not new. Many in the conservative wing of the Roman Curia, which governs the Church, have long complained the Argentine pontiff is authoritarian and too focused on pastoral matters at the expense of theological rigour. But it was followed by the death of Australian cardinal George Pell, and the subsequent revelation that he had authored an anonymous note published last year that directly attacked Francis.
The note had described the current papacy as a "catastrophe", and among others criticised "heavy failures" of Vatican diplomacy under his watch. Pell, a former close adviser to Francis, was jailed for child sexual abuse before being acquitted in 2020. Then, at the end of the month, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller published a book adding fuel to the fire.
The former head of the Vatican's powerful congregation for the doctrine of the faith denounced Francis' "doctrinal confusion" and criticised the influence of a "magic circle" around him. He said critics of Pope Francis are already converging into a "current of thought capable of influencing the next conclave", and by extension the next papacy. A conclave, a global gathering of cardinals, would be called if Francis died or resigned.
Much-hyped tanks for Ukraine in short supply – WSJ
EUROPE - European NATO members are “dragging their feet” on sending Leopards to Kiev, the outlet says. NATO members have developed “sudden misgivings” about sending tanks to Ukraine because they don’t seem to have any to spare, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Finland, which pressured Germany to approve exports of Leopard 2 tanks, may only be able to send “a few” of its own – and most likely not until it formally joins the US-led military bloc.
This has left Berlin as the only major supplier of tanks to Kiev, something Chancellor Olaf Scholz had been keen to avoid, the Journal noted. “The fact that there are so few operational battle tanks and that they are so incompatible with each other should be taken as an alarm signal in Europe,” Nico Lange, a former German defense official who is now a senior fellow at the Munich Security Conference, told the Journal.
The US and its allies have spent over $120 billion to prop up the Kiev government over the past year, while insisting they are not a party to the conflict. Moscow has warned them that supplying Ukraine with weapons only prolongs the fighting and risks direct confrontation.
‘Division and disorder’ threaten US – Kissinger
USA - America is not fit to face new challenges to the world order, the former US Secretary of State claimed. Henry Kissinger has accused the US political establishment of a failure to demonstrate “domestic cohesion,” warning an audience at an event honoring former President Ronald Reagan that the country could not afford to isolate itself.
The US is suffering “domestic division and international disorder about arguments about who we are and what we stand for,” the former secretary of state and national security adviser told guests at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sunday.
This situation means that Washington “finds it difficult to muster the domestic cohesion necessary to face the challenges ahead of us,” Kissinger added.
Green Push is Making Global Power Supply More Vulnerable to Weather
USA - The ever-increasing use of green energy is making the world’s power supply more vulnerable to weather, a report on Wednesday has claimed. A report into the global production and consumption of electricity published by the International Energy Agency has predicted that weather will play an increasingly disruptive role on energy generation across the world as the shift to green energy continues.
It comes as green energy sources in the US and Europe sometimes struggle to keep up with demand, with winter weather in both America and the United Kingdom sometimes greatly disrupting energy security over the past number of years.
According to the IEA’s Electricity Market Report 2023, low-carbon emitting sources of energy are expected to continue to grow across the world over the coming years, but this growth will be somewhat contingent on weather events.
The organisation in particular has warned that extreme weather events, such as droughts and freezing temperatures, could negatively impact green power generation and — by extension — global energy supply security, with the report listing freezing temperatures in the US and droughts in Europe as being examples of the disruption such occurrences can cause.
Majority of Canadians say their country is ‘broken’
CANADA - Half of the people are ‘angry’ about what they view as the country’s mismanagement, a new survey shows. Over two-thirds of Canadians – 67% – believe their country is “broken,” according to poll results published Monday by the National Post and Leger. Respondents across the political spectrum see a large divide between the issues they deal with in their daily lives and the issues their government chooses to focus on.
Canadians are far from alone in their economic malaise. Recent polls show two-thirds of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track, and the economy is widely considered to be the primary challenge facing the US.
Disney to Lay Off 7,000 Employees
USA - The happiest place on Earth is swimming in a sea of red ink and pink slips. The Walt Disney Co is eliminating 7,000 jobs worldwide, or more than 3 percent of its workforce, as CEO Bob Iger aims to slash a stunning $5.5 billion in spending in an attempt to save the once formidable company.
Bob Iger announced the cuts Wednesday during Disney’s first quarter earnings report, saying it was not an easy decision to make. “I have enormous respect and appreciation for the dedication of our employees worldwide,” he said. “While this is necessary to address the challenges we face today, I do not make this decision lightly.”
Disney’s layoffs are part of a larger media industry bloodbath that has seen competitors including Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, and Netflix slash their headcount in the face of a weak consumer sentiment brought on by runaway inflation and the prospect of a prolonged economy under President Joe Biden.
Disney’s financial woes come as the company increasingly embraces transgenderism, critical race theory, and other forms of woke politics in its entertainment aimed at children. As Breitbart News reported, the Disney+ streaming channel series The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder is pushing reparations for slavery, claiming in its latest episode that America was founded on “white supremacy” and “still has not atoned” for its racism.
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.