The Faithful Watchman

Conflict with China a ‘high likelihood’, says top Australian general

Nick McKenzie and Anthony Galloway – May 4, 2021

One of the nation’s top military commanders told his troops that Beijing is already engaged in “grey zone” warfare against Australia and they must plan for the high likelihood this may spill over into actual conflict in the future.

The candid and confidential briefing by Major-General Adam Findlay to Australia’s special forces soldiers last year gives the most detailed insight yet made public into how the nation’s top military planners view the threat of China.

The then-special forces commander, who has since stepped down but who still advises the Australian Defence Force, highlighted the steps Australia’s military was taking to prevent war but also described a “high likelihood” that actual conflict could break out due to the unpredictable nature of foreign affairs.

“Who do you reckon the main [regional] threat is?” General Findlay asked his troops and officers before answering: “China”.

“OK, so if China is a threat, how many special forces brigades in China? You should know there are 26,000 Chinese SOF [Special Operations Forces] personnel.”

Details of the April 2020 briefing have been obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald from multiple sources who have requested to remain anonymous because they are not authorised to speak publicly. They say General Findlay told his troops that, if the threat of conflict was realised, the ADF needed to rely not only on traditional air, land and sea capabilities but also on Australia’s ability to use cyber and space warfare.

https://www.smh.com.au

Anger boils in Northern Ireland despite attempts to end riots

Luke Butterly – April 12, 2021

Belfast, Northern Ireland – On Saturday, the 23rd anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the decades of conflict that claimed over 3,000 lives, David Devlin was on the streets trying to keep the peace.

“Anything could happen, but we are hoping for peace, hoping tonight remains calm,” they told Al Jazeera.

Video footage of young people throwing petrol bombs at one of the gates that separate these areas – on which the words “There was never a good war or a bad peace” are painted – has been watched with horror across the world.

“Things this evening appear to be quite calm, there does not appear to be any other gatherings on either side of the interface,” Devlin said as they began their shift.

“Over the past few nights, we have been out on the ground trying to talk to young people, dissuade them from any risk-taking behavior, trying to get them go, stay safe, and not engage in anything that is going to put their safety at risk.”

Northern Ireland has been rocked by sporadic rioting in loyalist working-class areas, amounting to the worst violence seen in years.Loyalists back a Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, as opposed to a united Ireland.

https://www.aljazeera.com

Dust storms and valley fever in the American West

Lia Potee – May 07, 2021

Valley fever is a dangerous threat to human health – and cases are on the rise in the arid southwestern United States, as wind from increasing dust storms can transport the fungal spores that cause the disease. Valley fever is caused by the Coccidioides fungus, which grows in dirt and fields and can cause fever, rash and coughing. Using NASA research and satellite data, the World Meteorological Organization is refining its Sand and Dust Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System to help forecast where dust risk is greatest.

George Mason University’s Daniel Tong, one of the first scientists to discover the link between dust storms and Valley fever, leads a NASA-funded team to track the airborne spread of Valley fever across the United States for the first time.

There are about 15 thousand cases of Valley fever in the U.S. each year, and approximately 200 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Funded by NASA’s Earth Science Division, Tong’s team is helping track disease risk for epidemiologists, health care providers and public health decision makers.

“Our paper was the first one to reveal the positive relationship between dust storms and Valley fever,” said Tong. “So now we’re asking the question: How can we detect that dust in the air?”

https://www.terradaily.com

Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

Jessica Murphy – May 5, 2021

Doctors in Canada have been coming across patients showing symptoms similar to that of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare fatal condition that attacks the brain. But when they took a closer look, what they found left them stumped.

Almost two years ago, Roger Ellis collapsed at home with a seizure on his 40th wedding anniversary.

In his early 60s, Mr Ellis, who was born and raised around New Brunswick’s bucolic Acadian peninsula, had been healthy until that June, and was enjoying his retirement after decades working as an industrial mechanic.

His son, Steve Ellis, says after that fateful day his father’s health rapidly declined.

“He had delusions, hallucinations, weight loss, aggression, repetitive speech,” he says.

“At one point he couldn’t even walk. So in the span of three months we were being brought to a hospital to tell us they believed he was dying – but no one knew why.”

Roger Ellis’ doctors first suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [CJD]. CJD is a human prion disease, a fatal and rare degenerative brain disorder that sees patients present with symptoms like failing memory, behavioural changes and difficulties with co-ordination.

One widely known category is Variant CJD, which is linked to eating contaminated meat infected with mad cow disease. CJD also belongs to a wider category of brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS, in which protein in the nervous system become misfolded and aggregated.

But Mr Ellis’ CJD test came back negative, as did the barrage of other tests his doctors put him through as they tried to pinpoint the cause of his illness.

His son says the medical team did their best to alleviate his father’s varying symptoms but were still left with a mystery: what was behind Mr Ellis’s decline?

In March of this year, the younger Mr Ellis came across a possible – if partial – answer.

Radio-Canada, the public broadcaster, obtained a copy of a public health memo that had been sent to the province’s medical professionals warning of a cluster of patients exhibiting an unknown degenerative brain disease.

“The first thing I said was: ‘This is my dad,'” he recalls.

Roger Ellis is now believed to be one of those afflicted with the illness and is under the care of Dr Alier Marrero.

https://www.bbc.com

China Removes Bible Apps from App Store, Shuts Down Popular Christian Websites

Michael Foust – May 4, 2021

China’s government in recent days continued its clampdown on Christianity within cyberspace by banning various Bible apps and shutting down WeChat Christian public accounts, according to a new report.

International Christian Concern reported May 1 that Christian accounts on WeChat – a Chinese social media platform – are no longer available. When Chinese citizens attempt to access WeChat Christian pages such as “Gospel League” and “Life Quarterly,” they receive a message reading, “[We] received [a] report that [this account] violates the ‘Internet User Public Account Information Services Management Provisions’ and its account has been blocked and suspended.”

Father Francis Liu of the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness posted screenshots of the blocked pages on his Twitter page, according to International Christian Concern.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has removed Bible apps from the Chinese app store, according to ICC.

“Those who want to download Bible Apps have to use [a] VPN to circumvent the Firewall,” ICC said in its report.

This is not the first time China has targeted Bible apps. In 2019, China’s government removed a 6-year-old Chinese Bible app called WeDevote after it had been downloaded 10 million times, World reported. Popular American Bible apps such as YouVersion are not available in the Chinese app store.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Biden Becomes 1st President to Omit ‘God’ from National Day of Prayer Proclamation

Michael Foust – May 6, 2021

President Biden on Wednesday issued a National Day of Prayer proclamation that touted the “power of prayer” and invited Americans to “give thanks,” although the proclamation’s absence of the word “God” sparked criticism and marked the first time that’s happened in modern history.

By a 1952 law, every U.S. president must issue a proclamation designating a National Day of Prayer. This year the day fell on May 6.

“Today, we remember and celebrate the role that the healing balm of prayer can play in our lives and in the life of our Nation,” the proclamation reads. “As we continue to confront the crises and challenges of our time – from a deadly pandemic, to the loss of lives and livelihoods in its wake, to a reckoning on racial justice, to the existential threat of climate change – Americans of faith can call upon the power of prayer to provide hope and uplift us for the work ahead.”

On the National Day of Prayer, “we unite with purpose and resolve, and recommit ourselves to the core freedoms that helped define and guide our Nation from its earliest days,” it reads.

“We celebrate our incredible good fortune that, as Americans, we can exercise our convictions freely – no matter our faith or beliefs,” it reads. “Let us find in our prayers, however they are delivered, the determination to overcome adversity, rise above our differences, and come together as one Nation to meet this moment in history.”

The proclamation, though, omits the word “God,” making Biden the first president not to include “God” in his proclamation in the modern history of National Day of Prayer proclamations. The omission is ironic, because secular groups in recent months have criticized Biden for discussing religion too much.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Dem. governor halts Kansas effort to protect female sports

AP- May 3, 2021

TOPEKA, Kan. (May 3, 2021) — Conservative Republican legislators in Kansas failed Monday to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a proposed ban on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s school sports.

The Senate’s vote to override Kelly was 26-14, leaving backers of the measure one short of the necessary two-thirds majority and blocking an attempt in the House. The outcome was in doubt until the only Democrat to waver on voting against the override, Sen. David Haley, of Kansas City, cast his no vote.

More than 20 states have considered such proposals this year, as Republican lawmakers have pressed the issue. Idaho enacted such a law last year, and bans were enacted this year in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia. Florida lawmakers passed a bill, and South Dakota’s governor issued an executive order.

Kelly called the Kansas measure “regressive,” said it would send a message that Kansas was not a welcoming place and predicted it would hurt the state’s attempts to recruit businesses.

The bill’s supporters said they were trying to protect fair competition in women’s sports and preserve hard-won opportunities for female athletes, such as college scholarships.

https://onenewsnow.com

Al-Qaeda Threatens to Wage War Against US ‘on All Fronts’ in Rare Interview With Mainstream Media

Ilya Tsukanov – April 30, 2021

The US holds Al-Qaeda responsible for the deadliest act of terror ever and the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans on 11 September 2001. The terror group’s influence declined significantly after 2014 and the rise of Daesh (ISIS), with fighters pledging allegiance to the competing jihadist entities often battling it out in Syria.

Al-Qaeda will continue its war against the United States after Washington’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, two operatives said to be belong to the terrorist organization have told CNN.

Speaking to the network via an intermediary ahead of the ten-year anniversary of the 2011 SEAL team operation to kill Osama bin Laden, and following Joe Biden’s announcement that he would pull troops out of Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war, the terrorist group said that their “war against the US will be continuing on all other fronts unless they are expelled from the rest of the Islamic world.”

One of the spokesmen praised the Taliban for fighting the US over the past 19+ years, and suggested that “thanks to Afghans for the protection of comrades-in-arms, many such jihadi fronts have been successfully operating in different parts of the Islamic world for a long time.”

Sputnik has been unable to independently verify CNN’s claims that it spoke to the terror group, which almost never gives interviews to mainstream Western media and instead typically issues pronouncements via its own guerrilla networks or taped audio or video releases.

CNN took the operatives’ comments to mean that there are continued ties between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, despite the latter’s commitment under the 2020 US-Taliban peace deal to prevent al-Qaeda and other terrorists from using Afghan soil “to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”

https://sputniknews.com

Higher Prices at the Grocery Store as Ag Futures Surge the Most in 8 Years

Mish – April 26, 2021

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index surged the most in nearly nine years, driven by a rally in crop futures.

Expect Grocery Shock

With futures surging, Grocery Price Shock Is Coming to a Store Near You.

With global food prices already at the highest since mid-2014, this latest jump is being closely watched because staple crops are a ubiquitous influence on grocery shelves — from bread and pizza dough to meat and even soda.

“The relentless rise in prices acts as a misery multiplier, driving millions deeper into hunger and desperation,” Chris Nikoi, the World Food Programme’s regional director for West Africa, said earlier this month. It’s “pushing a basic meal beyond the reach of millions of poor families who were already struggling to get by.”

And commodities aren’t the only component in driving up the price of food. Higher freight costs and other supply-chain headaches as well as packaging can all add up. Food and beverage giants are already signaling they’re watching margins. Coca-Cola Co. has flagged higher costs in plastic and aluminum, as well as coffee and high-fructose corn syrup, the key ingredient in soda. Nestle SA, the world’s biggest food company, warned it won’t be able to hedge all of its commodity costs and it’s raising prices where appropriate.

https://mishtalk.com

Damages from hailstorms in Texas, Oklahoma estimated to total $3.5B

Brian Lada – April 29, 2021

Major hailstorms pelted three big cities across the south-central United States on Wednesday night, shattering windows, denting vehicles and leaving behind headaches for homeowners. The hail hit such a widespread and populated area that damage estimates are expected to total upwards of $3 billion, according to AccuWeather forecasters.

Communities around Norman, Oklahoma, and San Antonio and Fort Worth, Texas, were hit the hardest by the storms, forcing residents to take shelter inside as the massive hail bombarded the areas.

In Hondo, Texas, located west of San Antonio, hailstones rivaled the size of grapefruits, reaching roughly 4 inches in diameter. In Norman, hail ranged from the size of golf balls to baseballs.

The hail was flying with such ferocity that windows of homes were shattered and, in some cases, caused damage inside.

A window was shattered and a blind severely damaged after hail pelted a home in Norman, Oklahoma. (Twitter/ @marekcornett)

One resident in Haslet, Texas, located near Fort Worth, recorded a video of hail creating waves in the backyard swimming pool while the sound of glass shattering could be heard in the background as chunks of ice knocked out windows.

The aftermath was evident all across the three cities in the wake of the storms, especially at parking lots and car dealerships where vehicles were left out in the elements.

https://www.accuweather.com