The Faithful Watchman

Texas Sees Massive Drop in Abortions as New Stats Show Abortion Ban Saving Thousands of Babies

Micaiah Bilger – October 29, 2021

Texas abortion facilities reported a huge drop in abortion numbers during the first 30 days when the state heartbeat law was in effect, according to new research from the University of Texas at Austin.

Though some women are getting abortions earlier and others are traveling out of state, researchers acknowledged that the law is preventing abortions. And that means babies’ lives are being saved.

The New York Times reports the University of Texas at Austin researchers found a 50-percent drop in abortions in September, compared to the same month in 2020.

Abortion facilities reported 2,164 abortions in September 2021, down from 4,313 in September 2020, according to the new research. That equates to 2,149 babies’ lives

“The last two months have been a phenomenal success for the pro-life movement,” John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right to Life, told the Times in reaction to the research. “We are the first state to be able to enforce a heartbeat bill, and lives are being saved every day because of this work.”

The heartbeat law went into effect Sept. 1, prohibiting abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable. Unique from other state pro-life laws, the Texas law allows private citizens to enforce the abortion ban by suing abortionists who violate it.

Thus far, the courts have allowed Texas to enforce the law. Twice, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to temporarily block it; however, the justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in the Biden administration’s challenge on Monday.

https://www.lifenews.com

Florida School Board Member Accompanies Elementary School Children on Field Trip to Gay Bar

Nick Gilbertson – October 28, 2021

A Florida school board member reportedly accompanied elementary school students on a field trip to a gay bar.

“I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone Wilton Manors Elementary’s field trip to the incredible Rosie’s!” Broward County School Board member Sarah Leonardi wrote in a Facebook post, reported by Fox News. “The students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community! A huge thank you to Rosie’s Bar and Grill for hosting this special field trip every year!”

Photographs included in the Facebook post show the elementary school students at Rosie’s Bar and Grill, a gay bar in Wilton Manors, Florida.

The post has ignited outrage on social media outlets.

“Leave out everything else – why in God’s name are they bringing elementary school kids to establishments that aren’t supposed to admit anyone under 21?” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted. “Also, homeschool your kids!”

https://www.breitbart.com

Israel’s $1.5bn shopping list for a potential offensive on Iran’s nuclear program

Debkafiles – October 21,2021

Israel is said to have earmarked some 5 billion shekels ($1.5bn) towards the IDF’s price tag for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Military sources report that this sum would be spent on the acquisition of different types of aircraft, intelligence gathering, drones and dedicated armaments for enabling attacks on Iran’s fortified underground facilities.

IN other words, Israel is short at present of a full set of tools for going past a limited operation and conducting a comprehensive offensive for disabling Iran’s nuclear weapons program, say DEBKAfile’s military sources.

This shortfall is prominent in five main areas:

1. Assuming that a single raid would not finish the job, to conduct multiple waves, the Israeli Air Force would require to supplement its current force with dozens of additional F-35 and F-15 aircraft. This would also call for the recruitment of more flight crews.
2. Once the Israeli offensive is launched, Tehran may be counted on to activate allies from four fronts closer to Israel’s borders: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. To forestall this potential proxy assault, the IAF has reorganized its assets by moving F-16 short range aircraft to the Ramat David base in the north. However, these aircraft are also in short supply and would have to be substantially augmented.
3. An urgent request has been put in for the advanced Boeing-built KC-46 tankers (see photo) to refuel aircraft in flight across the 2,000km distance to Iran and back to base. The Re’em Boeing 707 in-flight fuel craft used hitherto are 60 years old and not up to the new task.
  Interim landings in Saudi Arabia or a US Gulf airbase would solve the refueling problem. But this option has to be counted out in light of the contacts the Saudis and Emiratis are developing with Iran. Washington has indeed promised Israel eight advanced in-flight refueling tankers, but it will take years before they are available.
4. Israel is also asking for American MOAB GBU-43 bunker busters, that were designed specifically for targeting Iran’s fortified underground nuclear sites and tested once in the Afghanistan war. Israel has a small number of bunker busters. According to Western military observers, they were used against the Hamas’ underground “Metro” network last May in a mission dubbed “Lightning Bolt.” This was to have been a rehearsal for raids on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. It turned out, however, that the Hamas bunker system had to be bombed multiple times to be effective and even then, sections of the Metro remained.
5. In a war situation, Israel’s satellite coverage could not be stretched to cover Iran’s vastness (1.650 sq.km) and the additional areas commanded by its four main allies. American satellites would be called on for backup. Consent would have to be authorized by President Joe Biden as US commander on chief.

https://www.debka.com

Germany, 4 EU states launch military reaction force initiative — report

DW – October 21, 2021

Germany and four members of the European Union have launched an initiative to establish a bloc-wide rapid reaction force for future military crises, the German news agency dpa reported on Thursday.

The initiative, which also draws in Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia, aims to expand the existing EU battle groups, which are multinational military units of 1,500 personnel each on standby to respond to crises.

The new force is expected to include space and cyber capabilities, along with special forces and air transport.

The five countries said recent events in Afghanistan have shown that the EU must be able to act swiftly, according to a document cited by dpa.

To this end, the availability, readiness, deployability and competence of the forces had to be improved, the document added.

In order to provide greater flexibility, the five states also proposed using Article 44 of the EU Treaty, which has never been activated before.

The article allows coalitions of willing member states to carry out security activities with the permission of other non-participating countries.

The plan also calls on EU member states to utilize more regional cooperation arrangements. It does not, however, make any specific proposals on the size of the force in terms of personnel.

https://www.dw.com

California experiences driest water year in 100 years of record keeping

Ricky Scaparo – October 19, 2021

In a year of both extreme heat and extreme drought, California has reported its driest water year in terms of precipitation in a century, and experts fear the coming 12 months could be even worse.

According to KTAL5 News, The Western Regional Climate Center added average precipitation that had been reported at each of its stations and calculated that a total of 11.87 inches of rain and snow fell in California in the 2021 water year.

That’s half of what experts deem average during a water year in California: about 23.58 inches. The climate center tallies rainfall by averaging all of the measured precipitation in the state at the end of a water year, which runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

LA Times reported that the climate center tallies rainfall by averaging all of the measured precipitation in the state at the end of a water year, which runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

Based on the diminished levels of both precipitation and runoff, the last water year was the second driest on record, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The last time the state reported so little rain and snowfall was in 1924.

Climatologists have compared the drought conditions that spanned 2020 and 2021 to the 1976-77 drought, which included California’s lowest level of statewide runoff in a single water year. The average rainfall in 1976-77 was 28.7 inches; in 2020-21, it was 28.2 inches.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

Report: Iranian VP threatens to hold Iran’s 10,000 Jews hostage

Gary Willig – October 13, 2021

Iranian Vice President for Economic Affairs Mohsen Rezaee warned that the country’s 10,000 Jews were hostage against Israel, Iranian opposition groups and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported.

The “Iranian Regime Countdown” organization wrote a post on its Telegram account on Monday that Rezaee said in a speech that “he Israeli government knows very well that if it makes a mistake, the regime will treat the 10,000 Jews living in Iran differently.”

Rezaee, a former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, made the remarks in an address to the members of the Tharollah Tehran organization.

According to Iranian Regime Countdown, this is the first time Iran has threatened the country’s Jewish community instead of threatening Israel directly.

Rezaee has made similar threats to take large numbers of hostages in the past. In June, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-born journalist living in the US, reported that Rezaee had threatened to take 1,000 Americans hostage in order to blackmail the US into providing relief for Iran’s struggling economy. Rezaee stated at the time that he would demand $1 billion for each hostage.

In January 2020, Rezaee threatened to “turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust” if the US attacked Iran.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com

First case of new Delta mutation AY4.2 diagnosed in Israel

TOI staff and AFP – October 19, 2021

A subvariant of the Delta coronavirus mutation raising alarm bells in the United Kingdom has been found in a child who entered Israel from Moldova, health officials said Tuesday.

The AY4.2 is being closely monitored by officials in the UK, and others have called for urgent research into the subvariant, though health officials say there is no evidence yet that it is driving an uptick in coronavirus cases in some places.

According to reports in Hebrew media, the subvariant was found for the first time in Israel in an 11-year-old boy who entered the country from Moldova. He was flagged at the airport and sent into isolation, Channel 12 news reported.

Health Ministry officials plan to hold a meeting on the worrying new strain, Walla news reported, amid fears that a new strain of the virus in Israel could reverse fading infection numbers after months of being pummeled by the fast-spreading Delta variant.

There were 1,486 new infections on Monday, the Health Ministry said, with another 701 Tuesday as of late afternoon. There were 354 people hospitalized in serious condition and the death toll reached 8,021, a day after crossing 8,000 deaths.

https://www.timesofisrael.com

Pig-to-Human Transplants a Step Closer With New Test

Newsmax – October 19, 2021

Scientists temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants.

Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but among the hurdles: A sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack.

Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient so they could observe it for two days. The kidney did what it was supposed to do — filter waste and produce urine — and did not trigger rejection.

“It had absolutely normal function,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team last month at NYU Langone Health. “It didn’t have this immediate rejection that we have worried about.”

This research is “a significant step,” said Dr. Andrew Adams of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who was not part of the work. It will reassure patients, researchers and regulators “that we’re moving in the right direction.”

The dream of animal-to-human transplants — or xenotransplantation — goes back to the 17th century with stumbling attempts to use animal blood for transfusions. By the 20th century, surgeons were attempting transplants of organs from baboons into humans, notably Baby Fae, a dying infant, who lived 21 days with a baboon heart.

With no lasting success and much public uproar, scientists turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes to bridge the species gap.

https://www.newsmax.com

Schoolkids now pay for lunch by having their faces scanned

Ailan Evans – October 18, 2021

Nine schools in Scotland are using facial recognition technology to charge students for their cafeteria lunches.

The initiative, which debuted Monday in schools in the North Ayrshire area, was developed as a way of processing school lunch transactions faster and more efficiently, as well as eliminating close contact between individuals who may spread COVID-19, the Financial Times reported.

The technology scans the faces of students after they select their meal, identifying them and automatically charging their account, according to a pamphlet distributed by the North Ayrshire school system.

“It’s the fastest way of recognizing someone at the till — it’s faster than card, it’s faster than fingerprint,” David Swanston, managing director of CRB Cunninghams, the company that installed the technology, told the FT. “In a secondary school you have around about a 25 minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils. So we need fast throughput at the point of sale.”

Facial recognition is a controversial technology, with U.S. states including Maine, Washington and New York banning or severely curbing its use. However, the North Ayrshire council said 97% of children or parents consented to the new system.

https://www.wnd.com

Russia and China Hold Joint Naval Drills in Sea of Japan

Newsmax – October 15, 2021

Russia and China held joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan on Friday and practiced how to operate together and destroy floating enemy mines with artillery fire, the Russian defense ministry said in a statement.

The war games are part of naval cooperation drills between the two countries which run from Oct. 14-17 and involve warships and support vessels from Russia’s Pacific Fleet, including mine-sweepers and a submarine.

Moscow and Beijing have cultivated closer military and diplomatic ties in recent years at a time when their relations with the West have soured.

Two Chinese destroyers, a submarine and two corvettes were among the vessels Beijing had sent to take part in the drills, the Russian defense ministry said, saying they had dropped anchor in the Russian far east the previous day.

The combined force would practice shooting at targets designed to imitate enemy surface ships and hold air-defense drills involving Russian SU-30SM multi-functional fighter jets and helicopters, the ministry said.

https://www.newsmax.com