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.
Third earthquake rattles Israel in less than 24 hours
ISRAEL - Fears of a major earthquake have been ramping up in Israel in recent days after two major shocks devastated parts of Türkiye and Syria this week, killing thousands. Both shocks were also felt in Israel. Israel is located on the Great Rift Valley, which runs the entirety of the country's border with Jordan, and is considered "disaster-prone", raising grave concerns in the Jewish state.
Are We Really In A Polycrisis Of Doom?
USA - I hear a lot of chatter from readers of Technocracy News & Trends that with all the potential disasters building up, 2023 could be a disastrous year. I agree that the possibility for calamity is more likely today than at any time in the last 40-50 years. There is no guarantee that it will happen the way we anticipate.
Food Crisis - Be careful before you buy chickens to raise for their eggs. A basic setup for raising chickens costs about $600 to get started, and that would buy a lot of eggs even at inflated prices. Plus, you have to feed and care for them and honestly, they can be pretty messy leaving little deposits in the yard.
The UN and the WEF are waging war against farmers to cut back on the use of growth-enhancing crop fertilizers. This stupidity already caused the collapse of Sri Lanka where a 30% drop in output caused hunger, starvation and massive riots against the government. The people were so mad that they actually drove their Biden-esque president into exile.
North Korea to expand preparations for war
NORTH KOREA - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un led a meeting that called on the country's military to expand its combat drills and move toward "perfecting the preparedness for war," state media reported on Tuesday. The meeting of the military commission of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea "discussed in depth the major military and political tasks for 2023," according to state-run Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea's top military brass called for "constantly expanding and intensifying the operation and combat drills of the [Korean People's Army] to cope with the prevailing situation and more strictly perfecting the preparedness for war," KCNA said.
Kim said he expected the North's armed forces to "perform ever-victorious feats" and demonstrate "matchless military strength," according to the report. The meeting, which was held on Monday, marked the North Korean leader's first public appearance in roughly 40 days. The continuing military buildup comes as the country is facing a food shortage that some experts believe is the worst since the devastating famine of the 1990s.
The Dutch Army is fully integrating into the German Army
EUROPE - The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted increased defense preparations across Western Europe. Many nations have increased spending and procurement to bring their forces up to date. Additionally, NATO nations have increased joint training operations to improve interoperability. Perhaps most notably, the Dutch Army announced that all three of its combat brigades would be integrated into the German Army.
Both countries operate the Leopard 2 main battle tank and over 70% of the population of the Netherlands speaks German. Failing that, over 90% speak English, so the language barrier between the two armies is minimal. With the Dutch Army of roughly 8,000 soldiers fully integrated into the German Army, it would create a force of about 50,000 personnel. Moreover, the two armies are considering joint purchases of future military equipment and standardization of regulations.
TikTok users have had their data stolen by Chinese intelligence
UK - The former US Secretary of State and former director of the CIA is claiming that the Chinese Government is using viral social media app Tiktok to spy on people and excessively collect their data. In an exclusive interview with ITV's Good Morning Britain, Mike Pompeo said that every user of the app in the UK has had their data stolen by the Chinese intelligence services.
In his final few months working alongside former American president Donald Trump in office, Mr Pompeo tried but failed to get TikTok banned in the United States. And now he says he has seen evidence that Beijing is using the social media site to illegally obtain and monitor the nine million or so users of the app across the UK.
Speaking to the ITV breakfast show he said that as the former head of the CIA he was limited in what he could say about the supposed data breach but made it absolutely clear that he thought Rishi Sunak's government needs to put urgent measures in place and ban the app saying it poses a "national security risk".
Speaking to GMB he said: "Every kid on TikTok in the United Kingdom has had their data stolen by the Chinese intelligence services called the MSS. They're tracking where they are, they're tracking what they're doing, they're tracking how long they are doing it, they know who their friends are, they're working against your people from inside of London, inside your cities."
Church of England announces plans to use gender-neutral alternatives for GOD
UK - After priests asked to be allowed to use gender-neutral terms instead of referring to God as “he,” the Church of England announced that they are now considering alternatives. The Church stated that it would launch a new project on the subject in the spring to determine whether or not to propose changes. Any potential changes that would deviate from millennia-old Jewish and Christian teachings would have to be approved by synod, the Church’s decision-making body.
The Rt Rev Dr Michael Ipgrave, Bishop of Lichfield and vice-chair of the liturgical commission responsible for the matter, said the Church had been “exploring the use of gendered language in relation to God for several years”. It is currently unknown what would take the place of the phrase “Our Father” in the Lord’s Prayer, the central Christian prayer that Jesus Christ is said to have instructed his disciples to say together down the generations.
Christianity seems to be in long-term decline
USA - Upon joining the Presbyterian ministry, in the mid-1970s, I served in a town outside Richmond, Virginia. New church buildings were going up constantly. When I arrived in Manhattan in the late ’80s, however, I saw a startling sight. There on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 20th Street was a beautiful Gothic Revival brownstone built in 1844 that had once been the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion. Now it was the Limelight, an epicenter of the downtown club scene.
Thousands of people a night showed up for drugs and sex and the possibility of close encounters with the famous of the cultural avant garde. It was a vivid symbol of a culture that had rejected Christianity.
I began to notice “repurposed” church buildings all over the city. They were now condominiums, gyms, art galleries, coffee shops, pubs, and clubs, a trend that continued as my time in the city went on. In 2014 the New York Archdiocese of the Catholic Church announced that it was closing dozens of empty church buildings, and hundreds of other Protestant congregations faced dwindling membership and were unable to maintain their church homes.
10,000+ killed in Türkiye-Syria earthquakes
TURKEY - The death toll from the catastrophic earthquakes in southern Türkiye and northwestern Syria has now moved past 10,000, officials said on Wednesday. Rescuers, meanwhile, continue to clear the rubble and look for survivors. Teams from dozens of countries are helping locals in both states.
In Türkiye, over 8,500 people were killed and nearly 50,000 injured, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters after arriving in Kahramanmaras, a city in the province where the epicenter of the 7.7 magnitude quake was recorded. According to Erdogan, nearly 6,500 buildings were destroyed. Vice President Fuat Oktay said earlier that more than 450,000 residents who had lost their homes were being housed in student dormitories.
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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.
