Lee Ardis

Zelensky Made ‘Fatal Mistake’ by Visiting U.S., Russia Warns

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a “fatal mistake” in visiting the United States this week, Russia warned on Thursday.

Dmitry Belik, a member of the Russian State Duma International Affairs Committee, made the remarks in response to the Ukrainian president’s stop in Washington on Wednesday, Zelensky’s first known trip outside his country since Russia launched a full-scale invasion on February 24.

Zelensky gave a historic address to U.S. lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol and met President Joe Biden at the White House for a bilateral meeting. Earlier, Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled a $1.85 billion military package for Kyiv that included a Patriot missile system.

The Ukrainian leader for months had requested the U.S. for stronger weapons to shoot down Russian missiles.

Biden Makes Stunning Admission About Iran In Leaked Video

A leaked video has shown President Joe Biden making a stunning admission about the Iran nuclear deal. Not only did he claim the deal was “dead” but he appeared to say that Iran has a nuclear weapon.

“Biden was meeting with supporters and Iranian activists during a campaign rally with Democratic Rep. Mike Levin in Oceanside, California on November 4,” The Daily Mail reported.

“President Biden, can you please announce that JCPOA is dead? Can you just announce that?” one woman asked the president before he answered that he could not and she asked, “why?”

“A lot of reasons. It is dead, but we’re not gonna announce it,” he said.

“We just don’t want any deals with the Mullahs. They don’t represent us,” the woman said to the president.

“I know they don’t represent you. But they have a nuclear weapon they’ll represent,” the president said, apparently confirming that the Iranians have a nuclear weapon.

Church Erases Jesus & Nativity in Christmas Carol, Replaces Them With “Queer” People

“Very important for the new religion to try to wear the skin of the old.”

A church in England has erased references to the nativity and Jesus in a Christmas carol and replaced them with a celebration of “queer” people.

Yes, really.

All Saints with Holy Trinity Church in Loughborough held a Mayor’s Community Carol Service on Monday.

In a Twitter post, trainee priest Rachael Brind-Surch lauded how the church had changed the lyrics to the classic carol “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” sung by attendees at the event.

Praying Woman Arrested For Breaking Public Space Order Outside U.K. Abortion Clinic

United Kingdom authorities arrested a pro-life woman praying outside an abortion clinic for allegedly breaking a temporary Public Space Protection Order on four separate occasions earlier this month.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a 45-year-old charity volunteer, was arrested and charged on four counts after she told police she “might” be silently praying near the U.K.’s leading provider of NHS-funded abortion services BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham, according to local media.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) published footage earlier this week showing authorities approaching Vaughan-Spruce outside the clinic. During the interaction, authorities questioned why Vaughn Spruce was standing outside the abortion facility “of all places.”

“Are you standing here as part of a protest?” asked the officer.

“No, I’m not protesting,” Vaughan-Spruce said.

Euphrates River drying up: Fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophecy?

“A drought against its waters, that they be dried up! For it is a land of idols; They are besotted by their dread images. JEREMIAH 50:38 (THE ISRAEL BIBLE)

The region once known as the Fertile Crescent is on the verge of a food crisis as the main sources of water disappear. Officials struggle to cope as a prophetic scenario appears to materialize.

Iraqi officials are reporting that for three consecutive years, the rainy season has begun later and ended sooner than the historic norm. This has been coupled with less water flowing through its two main rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The region has also been plagued by ongoing conflict.

“Desertification now threatens almost 40% of the area of our country – a country that was once one of the most fertile and productive in the region,” Iraq’s President Abdul Latif Rashid told the climate summit in Egypt last week.

Nadhir Al-Ansari, professor at Sweden’s Lulea University of Technology, told Reuters that rainfall in Iraq had declined by 30% over the past three decades, with the lowest precipitation coming in the last two years.

“What was once known as the Fertile Crescent started to die about 35 years ago,” he said.

Officials accuse Turkey of cutting the river’s flow upstream over the last two years to half the level it committed to in a 1987 accord, a claim the Turkish government denies. In the year to September, rainfall in southeast Turkey where the rivers originate was 29% below the average of the previous three decades, according to Turkey’s meteorological agency. Dams and drought have reduced the waters of the two rivers to about 20% of previous levels.

‘One Christian Killed Every 2 Hrs’: Biden State Dept. Refuses To Place Nigeria On Persecution Watchlist, Despite Genocide Of Christians

The Biden State Department once again has refused to designate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), despite Christians being killed by militant Muslim groups almost daily with no effective intervention by the Nigerian government.

Over the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and pleas from religious freedom advocates, the Biden administration, for the second year, left Nigeria off of a list of 12 other nations designated as CPCs in an announcement on Dec. 2. The Trump State Department had designated Nigeria as a CPC, but the Biden administration dropped that label in 2021.

The CPC designations are announced annually by the State Department to spotlight the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

Since 2011, the terrorist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have murdered more than 40,000 Christians in Nigeria, in addition to thousands more killed by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, Genocide Watch reports. In 2021 alone, according to the persecution watchdog group Open Doors, some 4,650 Nigerian Christians were murdered by these groups—equal to one Christian killed every two hours.

Open Doors estimates that Nigerians made up nearly 80% of the world’s Christian martyrs in 2021.

The State Department’s announcement revealed a sharp disagreement over Nigeria between the Biden administration and the members of the USCIRF, which is an appointed commission mandated by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.

Putin says one missile will trigger ‘hundreds’ of warheads in stark message on nuclear deterrence

Russia expert counters Putin suggestion that he will change Moscow’s nuclear doctrine

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday once again drew international attention when he warned that if even one missile enters Russian territory, “hundreds” of warheads will respond.

“I assure you, after the early warning system receives a signal of a missile attack, hundreds of our missiles are in the air,” Putin said from a summit in Kyrgyzstan, Russian news outlet RIA reported. “It is impossible to stop them.”

“There will be nothing left of the enemy, because it is impossible to intercept a hundred missiles. This, of course, is a deterrent — a serious deterrent,” he added.

Putin made headlines after he appeared to suggest that he may make changes to Russia’s nuclear deterrence doctrine by employing a first-strike policy, which he referred to as a “disarming strike” — a strategy he said is motivated by the current U.S. deterrence policy.

Russia already has this strategy embedded in its nuclear doctrine.

Washington does have a policy that allows it to use a nuclear weapon, not only in retaliation to a nuclear attack but also in response to non-nuclear threats — and so does Moscow, explained Rebekah Koffler, a Russia expert and former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer for Russian Doctrine & Strategy.

“What this was, from the intelligence standpoint, is ‘strategic messaging,'” she said, adding that Putin’s comments signaled that “Russia may use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if the US/NATO continue to provide weapons to Ukraine — especially those that Ukraine can use to strike deep into Russia proper.”

Airborne microplastics: Equivalent of 3 million plastic bottles per year found in Auckland’s atmosphere

Seventy-four metric tonnes of microplastics have been found in Auckland’s atmosphere, the equivalent of three million plastic bottles per year, researchers say.

The University of Auckland research, published in Environmental Science & Technology, found the microplastics were of such small sizes that there was concern they could be inhaled and accumulate in the human body.

Nanoplastics, the smallest particles, can potentially enter cells, cross the blood-brain barrier, and may build up in organs such as the testicles, liver and brain. Plastics have also been detected in the placenta.

“Microplastics have also been detected in human lungs and in the lung tissue of cancer patients, indicating that the inhalation of atmospheric microplastics is an exposure risk to humans,” the paper noted.

The levels of microplastics in Auckland’s air were much higher than those recorded in London, Paris and Hamburg in recent years, with the study utilising a method which could detect particles as small as 0.01 of a millimetre, researchers said.

Lead author Dr Joel Rindelaub said “The smaller the size ranges we looked at, the more microplastics we saw”.

“This is notable because the smallest sizes are the most toxicologically relevant.”

US Set To Send Ukraine Patriot Missiles In Major Escalation

CNN’s chief Pentagon correspondent is reporting the breaking news based on multiple anonymous US defense officials – including a senor Biden administration official – that the White House is currently finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defense systems to Ukraine.

“The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine that could be announced as soon as this week, according to two US officials and a senior administration official,” CNN writes. “The three officials told CNN that approval is expected.”

If approved, this could be a tipping point in the conflict leading to direct confrontation between nuclear-armed powers given transfer of Patriots would mark the longest-range missiles sent to Ukraine thus far.

Washington has so far been reluctant, despite Kiev officials since nearly the start of the invasion making repeat pleas for the US to help “close the sky” – as President Zelensky many months ago urged Congress.

As The Guardian reviewed of the dangers involved in sending the Patriot:

“Long sought by the Ukrainians, the missiles have a range of up to 300km, but so far the US and its allies, including the UK, have declined to supply them because they could be used to hit targets inside Russia. Supplying them would help “bring the war to an end as soon as possible”, Johnson said.

Salt Lake City Faces Toxic Dust Storms Amid Declining Water Levels

Salt Lake City, Utah, was already in trouble. Between vast open-pit mining operations in the surrounding areas, oil refineries, and a unique mountain range that traps pollution in a winter ‘inversion layer,’ the cities surrounding the Great Salt Lake have grappled with air quality issues for years.

“We have 2.5 million residents along the edges of the lake,” said Kevin Perry, a University of Utah atmospheric scientist researching the Great Salt Lake dust. “These dust plumes come off and make the air unhealthy regardless of what’s in it.”

Now, as NBC News reports, declining water levels in the Great Salt Lake have created new challenges as dust laden with toxic metals threaten the region.

Since Mormon pioneers settled the valley in the mid-1800s, the lake’s volume is down 67% – thanks to a combination of irrigation projects, which account for roughly 75% of the loss, and the ongoing megadrought, which accounts for the remainder of the drop, according to research from Utah State University.

This isn’t an issue caused by climate change, according to the report. Residents are simply consuming too much water for agriculture, residential use and industry, from overtaxed rivers that feed the terminal lake. Humans diverting water has reduced the Great Salt Lake by around 11 feet – while increased evaporation has added to the problem by around half-a-foot.