USA - Statistics reveal that abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide for the fourth year in a row, as the number of abortions nearly quadrupled the number of deaths from infectious diseases in 2022. Worldometer, a database that keeps track of statistics about health, the global population and other metrics in real-time, continuously compiles information about the number of abortions worldwide. The last available snapshot of the Worldometer from 2022, captured on December 31 by the internet archiving tool The Wayback Machine, shows that more than 44 million abortions took place last year.
USA - Leftists when discussing “climate change” generally advocate for less carbon emissions and sometimes eating bugs. But Jane Goodall has a more sinister idea in mind to solve the so-called crisis: fewer human beings. An anonymous Twitter user last Friday uncovered footage of Goodall speaking to the World Economic Forum in 2020.
EUROPE - Member states in the European Union want to act more independently in international politics, an idea supported by the United States. But that's easier said than done. A collective sigh of relief rang out over Berlin and Brussels in November 2022, as the results of the US midterm elections came in: the power shift in Congress toward the Republicans was less dramatic than many had feared and former President Donald Trump took a heavy blow. Under Trump, the trans-Atlantic relationship had hit rock bottom.
ISRAEL - The United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency session to discuss firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to Jerusalem’s flashpoint Temple Mount, which drew a flood of international condemnations on Tuesday, a source said Tuesday. A date has not been set for the Security Council meeting — which was formally requested by the United Arab Emirates and China on behalf of the Palestinian and Jordanian UN missions — but it could take place as early as Thursday, a diplomat on the top panel told The Times of Israel.
GERMANY - Berlin has no plans to send modern Western-made tanks to Ukraine, as the risks involved are too high, a German lawmaker said on Monday. Such a move could make NATO a direct party to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev and lead to an escalation, Michael Mueller told Germany’s ARD broadcaster.Berlin will continue to refrain from any “ill-considered unilateral moves,” Mueller, who is a member of the German Bundestag’s Foreign Policy Committee, told ARD’s Morganmagazin show.
ISRAEL - A fringe religious group on Monday night asked newly installed National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for permission to perform the Passover ritual sacrifice on the Temple Mount this coming spring. The “Returning to the Mount” group makes this request every year, to no avail. But Ben Gvir, who ascended the Temple Mount on Tuesday morning, is no normal police minister, and they stand a better chance than ever before to get permission to perform the controversial animal sacrifice ritual. “Each year, we make many efforts to advance the Passover sacrifice, both in national educational campaigns and in practice, as each year we attempt to make the sacrifice in its proper place and time,” the group said.
USA - Politifact’s Jeff Cercone joins the army of the biased and unqualified in telling us what the truth is and what it is not. The “fact-checker” scheme invented by the far-left is a means to discredit the truth. Fake “fact-checkers” are used to proclaim that the truth is a lie. This is an effort to keep the American people in the dark about the reality of the world around them.
NORTH KOREA - Communist dictator Kim Jong-un of North Korea used his party’s end-of-year meeting to make a call for “an exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal” through the “mass-producing of tactical nuclear weapons,” state media revealed on Sunday. The regime-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) ...noted that Kim explicitly stated that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not strictly defensive weapons and are necessary to “firmly safeguard the Republic’s absolute dignity, sovereignty and right to existence.” North Korea, alongside ally China, has been at war with neighboring South Korea and its ally, America, since 1950 – a war that ceased active hostilities in 1953.
USA - An earthquake rattled parts of Northern California on Sunday for the second time in two weeks. The 5.4-magnitude quake was centered about 30 miles south of Eureka. On December 20, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake also struck near Eureka. Now one quake prediction research firm warned that the next big one could be imminent.
JORDAN - Jordan’s king says he is prepared for conflict should the status of Jerusalem’s holy sites change as Israel prepares to swear in what is likely to be the most right-wing government in its history. King Abdullah II told CNN’s Becky Anderson in an exclusive interview this month that there is “concern” in his country about those in Israel trying to push for changes to his custodianship of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, warning that he has “red lines.”
SWITZERLAND - You Don’t Have to be a Conspiracy Theorist to be Worried About the World Economic Forum. Samuel Greg, a Distinguished Fellow in Political Economy at the American Institute for Economic Research and author, most recently, of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World, has written a good piece for the Spectator about the WEF on the eve of Davos 2023.
UK - The UK’s retail sector had a bruising year in 2022 as more shops closed their doors than at any other point for at least five years. Around 47 sites shut up shop for the last time every day last year, according to new analysis.
UK - Shoppers have taken to social media to express their confusion and frustration over Easter eggs already being on sale in UK supermarkets. Despite the Christmas period ending just a few days ago, stores have begun preparing their shelves for another big annual event – Easter, which falls on April 9 this year.
POLAND - Prices are surging in Poland, making it among the European Union nations with one of the highest inflation rates. "Low inflation is indeed the problem of this era.” Thus said John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in late 2019, espousing the dominant view at the time. Fast forward to the present, and the problem is the exact opposite. Just about every country in the world has grappled with soaring prices in 2022.
GERMANY - It was a turbulent year for Germany's government — and 2023 promises to be just as nerve-wracking. Despite various mishaps and disputes, Germany's coalition government — comprising the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), environmentalist Greens, and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) — is looking to the future with optimism. The leaders of the three parties published a guest commentary in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which they wrote: "We want to make Germany more caring and fair, more modern and digital, competitive and climate neutral." They could have written the same a year ago.
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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.