SOUTH AFRICA - For many Johannesburg residents, electricity is more often off than on. City Power says there were 1,407 power cuts from January 2021 to 28 May – excluding Eskom load shedding. The water and electricity systems run in tandem, and power cuts lead to water cuts because reservoirs need to be restarted. The latest City Power quarterly report says that load shedding has further damaged infrastructure because the constant stopping and starting of power stations cause surges. We accompanied city officials on a walkabout in the last week of May and were shown many illegal connections, which also caused blackouts. “The majority of the outages are due to cable theft, cable faults and trips due to illegal connections,” says Mangena. Power cuts are even more regular than water shedding in the city. It isn’t easy to call a collapse in a city as vibrant as Johannesburg, but when the network infrastructure that holds the metropolis together begins to flail and then to take down hospitals, the broadcaster and the economy, the red flags go up. The city carries the country and the collapse of one has an impact on the other.

SOUTH AFRICA - These young artists use art and photography from this era as foundations to build on more focused incarnations of the representation of South African life. This is evident in works by Simphiwe Majozi of the Through The Lens Collective, who pays homage to the role [dead] ancestors [believed to be alive] play in our lives. His new body of works is an illustration of the isiZulu custom of Inhlambululo, a ceremony performed after the death of a relative, whereby clothing and heirlooms are passed down to selected family members. This series highlights the belief that ancestors are an ever-present living element in the family and that these belongings act as a conduit to the community.

AFRICA - African religion is ancestor worship; that is, funeral preparations, burial of the dead with ceremony and pomp, belief in eternal existence of souls of the dead as ancestors, periodic remembrance of ancestors, and belief that they influence the affairs of their living descendants. Whether called Akw?sidai, Homowo, Voodoo, Nyant?r (Aboakyir), CandomblZ, or Santeria in Africa or the African Diaspora, ancestor worship centers on the ancestors and deities. This makes it a tenably viable religion, because living descendants are genetically linked to their ancestors. The author, a traditional king and professor, studies the Akan in Ghana to demonstrate that ancestor worship is as pragmatic, systematic, theological, teleological, soteriological — with a highly trained clerical body and elders as mediators — and symbolic as any other religion in the world. Ancestor worship follows prescribed rites and rituals, formulas, precepts for ritual efficacy, and festivities of honor with music and dances to provoke ancestors and deities into joining in the celebration.

AFRICA - The Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of the West African nations of Senegal, Mauritania, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau reiterated their opposition to homosexual practice Friday following a meeting of their conferences. “We have a positive teaching, which is to say that God created man and woman,” said the archbishop of Dakar, Benjamin Ndiaye, reporting on the meeting. “They are complementary and different, and we do not intend to have another opinion imposed on us, neither in the sense of a vigilante repression nor in the sense of a permission that would go against our convictions,” the archbishop said. The bishops have reiterated earlier declarations to “reject homosexuality and denounce pedophilia, which are contrary to our values,” he said.

RUSSIA - The Russian-based group behind the SolarWinds hack has launched a new campaign that appears to target government agencies, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations, researchers said Thursday. The prolific hacker group, which Microsoft refers to as Nobelium and is widely believed to be run by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, launched the current attacks after getting access to an email marketing service used by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, according to Microsoft. "These attacks appear to be a continuation of multiple efforts by Nobelium to target government agencies involved in foreign policy as part of intelligence gathering efforts," Tom Burt, Microsoft vice president of customer security and trust, wrote in a blog post.

USA - Voice actress E G Daily, who voiced Tommy Pickles in Nickelodeon’s hit cartoon Rugrats, said the series cast always sensed the character Betty DeVille was a lesbian, in wake of the upcoming Paramount+ reboot declaring Deville is openly gay. “Betty is a member of the LGBTQ community, which is super awesome, because our characters on Rugrats are starting to get more specific, although, we all kind of had feelings or ideas about them,” Daily told TMZ in a recent interview. “Now, because of the times we’re in, it’s really beautiful that people get to be who they are, and we’re embracing everybody’s freedom, and everybody’s desire to be authentic,” Daily continued. “So Betty is, yes, she’s a member of the LGBTQ community.”

USA - The most recent conflict between Hamas and Israel has exposed a serious sore in the body of the American Jewish community. A significant number of American Jews on the left find that they no longer feel sympathetic for Israel, and are critical of Israel’s response to Hamas terrorism and rocket fire. Some are American Jews who conflate their feelings for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with their feelings for Israel and the Israeli people. There are American Jews who so despise the Netanyahu government — and a number of religious and social domestic Israeli policies — that they refuse to join in pro-Israel community rallies meant simply to express solidarity with the Israeli people who are forced to endure terrorism and death from Gaza. Is there any other context in which American Jews would argue that a skirmish with police or a real-estate disagreement would justify firing 4,000 rockets into another country?

USA - President Joe Biden’s massive $6 trillion budget proposal for the 2022 fiscal year includes hundreds of millions of dollars in restored aid to the Palestinians, some of which President Donald Trump had suspended over concerns about Palestinian support for terror.

USA - Laura Ingraham lauded Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow’s Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption Thursday as a “fabulous” book exposing, among other things, the Chinese government’s influence over American news media outlets. In an interview with Marlow on her eponymous podcast, Ingraham noted how conflicts of interest revealed in Breaking the News help explain news media mendacity related to the coronavirus. “Alex, you have been all over this — the conflicts of interest,” Ingraham remarked,” [and] about how China has completely infiltrated American media with dollars, research money, advertising dollars, threats of travel restrictions and so forth … and you uncover this as it relates to the billionaires in this country and their connection.”

USA - I have to wonder who is in charge when I see patriotic Americans purged from law enforcement and military service. Former Space Force Commander Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier was fired for speaking out against Marxism and the racism that is critical race theory (CRT). In an interview with Sean Hannity, Lohmeier stated that the secretary of the Department of Defense (DOD) called for an “extremism down day” and sent a guidance memorandum to all military service members in February. “There were videos being sent out to every base, service member, that we were asked to watch in preparation for our extremism down days and discussions on race in which we were taught that the country was evil, that it was founded in 1619 and not 1776, and that whites are inherently evil,” Lohmeier explained to Hannity. These videos were sent from the very top of the Biden administration. Lohmeier was soon fired for speaking out against the CRT being propagated by the DOD as well as Marxism. Isn’t Marxism a reason we HAVE a military?

UK - Chinese weapon scientist has been working at the heart of Cambridge University's crucial research into new battlefield material. A Chinese military scientist has been conducting research with a team at Cambridge University on a revolutionary substance discovered in Britain. Dr Junzong Feng, 38, has been working as a ‘visiting fellow’ with Cambridge’s NanoEngineering Group on graphene, a material two hundred times stronger than steel, more stretchy than rubber and which conducts electricity better than copper. The revelation about Dr Feng’s work at the Cambridge Graphene Centre will heighten concerns within the security services about the involvement of Chinese scientists in sensitive areas of British research. While there is no suggestion of any impropriety by Dr Feng, his links to the Chinese military come as specialists at the Foreign Office, Special Branch and HMRC are compiling a list of academics suspected of passing sensitive information, including pioneering British technology, to Beijing.

USA - The left has changed “Sex Ed” to mean “Sexuality Ed,” which is an important distinction that many Americans are not paying attention to. Just as the left sees great success in making biological gender about sexual preferences, they are moving in for bigger taboos to set public policy for the young children and force their sexuality agenda upon families at Taxpayer expense. A long-time tactic of the left is to use Non-Government Organizations (NGO) or non-profits to go around the pressure of voters and to influence - and in this case, to write public policy. It is a perfect plan that transforms American society, and voters are helpless to do anything to stop it.

ISRAEL - With his party’s support, Bennett says he’s heading into government with Lapid. All Yamina MKs but one say they will back leader in joining bloc of parties seeking to oust Netanyahu; unapologetic Bennett insists coalition won’t be leftist. Likud says: Bennett Wants To Be Prime Minister 'At Any Price'. Yamina leader Naftali Bennett told his party’s lawmakers Sunday that he intends to join with Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid in forming a coalition. A move that, if completed in the next few days, would end more than 12 consecutive years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

USA - I’ve been writing about the US supply chain for months and pointing out how the American food supply chain has been disrupted by COVID restrictions, natural disasters, and mismanagement. Eventually, a significant food shortage here inside the country will occur. For those who choose to ignore these warnings and fail to prepare accordingly, times will get very hard very quickly.

AUSTRALIA - Following now completed joint war games held by the US, Japan, France and Australia in the East China Sea off the southwest coast of Japan earlier this month, China has lashed out particularly at its large regional neighbor Australia, calling its military "weak" and "insignificant" at a moment the two are locked in a severe trade and diplomatic tit-for-tat dispute.