Netanyahu rival Gantz chosen to form new Israeli government

JOSEF FEDERMAN – March 15, 2020

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz will be given the first opportunity to form a new government after an inconclusive national election this month, the country’s president said Sunday, raising questions about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future.

The decision by President Reuven Rivlin was announced by his office after he consulted with leaders of all of the parties elected to parliament. He will formally designate Gantz with the task on Monday and give him a month to cobble together a governing coalition.

The political wrangling comes at a sensitive time. Netanyahu has been leading the country as it confronts a growing coronavirus threat, with over 200 cases diagnosed and the number quickly rising. Netanyahu also faces serious legal troubles as he prepares to go on trial to face corruption charges.

Netanyahu’s Likud emerged as the largest party in the March 2 election, Israel’s third in under a year. But with his smaller religious and nationalist allies, he received the support of only 58 lawmakers during Sunday’s consultations, leaving his right-wing bloc three seats short of the required majority in parliament.

Gantz’s Blue and White received the support of parties representing 61 seats, a slim majority. However, those parties are also divided, and it is not clear whether Gantz will succeed in putting together a coalition. One lawmaker refused to endorse either side.

Given the likelihood of continued deadlock, Rivlin late Sunday summoned both Netanyahu and Gantz to an emergency meeting, where the men pledged to explore a unity government.

https://apnews.com

Pope Francis Says His Words ‘Overrule The Bible’

Truth Unsealed – March 18, 2020

Pope Francis has responded to claims that many of his teachings “contradict Bible teachings” by saying that his words “overrule” anything written in the Bible.

The pope has further angered traditional Christians in recent weeks by developing the habit of hiding the crucifix that is worn around his neck when speaking in public, causing many Christians to believe the pontiff is ashamed to display the powerful Christian symbol.

Jorgé Bergoglio, whose job title is Pope Francis, has been re-writing major Christian doctrine, completely ignoring Biblical teachings.

As reported by NBC News, the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews issued a major new document pronouncing that God had never annulled his covenant with the Jewish people, and so Catholics should not try to convert Jews: “The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelization to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views.”

God never annulled his covenant with the Jewish people.

https://truthunsealed.com

Canadian Bill Would Jail Christian Parents Who Attempt to Discourage Their Child’s Same-Sex Attraction

Michael Foust – March 19, 2020

A new Canadian bill backed by the prime minister would jail parents who attempt to discourage and change their child’s unwanted same-sex attractions or gender identity.

Bill C-8, supported by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, would make it a crime punishable up to five years in prison to “knowingly” cause “a person who is under the age of 18 years to undergo conversion therapy.” The bill applies not just to therapists but “everyone.”

The bill defines conversion therapy as a “practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour.”

The Campaign Life Coalition, a Toronto-based organization, says the bill is an affront to parental rights and religious freedom.

“If you’re a parent with a gender-confused child, you will not be permitted to help that child conform to his/her biological gender,” David Cooke of the Campaign Life Coalition wrote in an analysis of the bill. “… If you’re a pastor or church leader who publicly proclaims the power of Christ to transform homosexuals and transgenders, you may be arrested for ‘advertising conversion therapy.’”

The Trudeau government, he asserted, is “pushing to eradicate the Christian view of sexuality and gender from the public square.”

“They are working to suppress and deny the testimony of countless ex-gays and ex-trans who expose the lies of the LGBT narrative,” Cooke wrote.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn

LOCUST-SWARM-SKY

Gaurdian – March 20, 2020

The locust crisis that has now reached 10 countries could carry on to endanger millions more people, forecasters have said.

Climate change created unprecedented conditions for the locusts to breed in the usually barren desert of the Arabian gulf, according to experts, and the insects were then able to spread through Yemen, where civil war has devastated the ability to control locust populations.

It was Cyclone Mekunu, which struck in 2018, that allowed several generations of desert locusts the moist sand and vegetation to thrive in the desert between Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman known as the Empty Quarter, breeding and forming into crop-devouring swarms, said Keith Cressman, locust forecasting expert for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“That’s fine, that’s quite good in itself, but just about when those conditions are drying out and the breeding is coming to an end, a second cyclone came to the area,” he said.

“That allowed the conditions to continue to be favourable and another generation of breeding, so instead of increasing 400-fold, they increased 8,000-fold.

“Usually a cyclone brings favourable conditions for about six months and then the habitat dries out, and so it’s not favourable for reproduction and they die and migrate.”

The amount of cyclones in the area seem to be increasing, said Cressman, making it likely that locust swarms will also become more common.

The FAO has warned that the food security of 25 million people could be endangered by the locusts, which according to the agency’s locust monitoring service have been spotted in at least 10 countries over recent months. One swarm recently reported in Kenya covered an area the size of Luxembourg.

https://www.theguardian.com

Trump Declares Sunday as National Day of Prayer in Midst of COVID-19 Outbreak

–

WASHINGTON — President Trump has declared Sunday a National Day of Prayer in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, which has been characterized as a pandemic in its affliction of nations worldwide.

“It is my great honor to declare Sunday, March 15th as a National Day of Prayer,” Trump tweeted on Friday. “We are a country that, throughout our history, has looked to God for protection and strength in times like these.”

“No matter where you may be, I encourage you to turn towards prayer in an act of faith,” he added. “Together, we will easily prevail!”

According to the latest statistics as of press time, 3,377 Americans had been diagnosed with COVID-19, with 63 deaths nationwide. Next to China — as the virus is believed to have originated from animal-to-human transmission in Wuhan, the nation of Italy has been the hardest hit, with 24,747 cases and 1,800 deaths.

Trump stated during a press conference in the White House rose garden on Friday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to have over a million coronavirus test kits available this week for medical facilities nationwide and approximately five million by the end of the month.

Some churches chose not to hold services on Sunday or to instead broadcast online, while others continued on as usual but encouraged those with any symptoms to stay home.

Trump said that he would be watching a church service online, specifically Jentezen Franklin’s Free Chapel service, which was streamed to its members this week.

https://christiannews.net

‘Assisted suicide an NHS moneysaver’, ‘disturbing’ report says

Christian Insitute – March 18, 2020

Academics in Scotland have been criticised for suggesting that legalising assisted suicide would financially benefit the NHS.

Ethicist Dr David Shaw and healthcare economist Professor Alec Morton say it would be “irresponsible not to consider” the economic costs of denying assisted suicide.

Dr Gordon Macdonald, Chief Executive of Care Not Killing, called the report “highly disturbing”.

Dr Macdonald said: “Very quickly the argument moves from that of personal autonomy to doctors and nurses making value judgments about the quality of other people’s lives while seeking to save money and tackle so-called ‘bed blocking’ in health services.”

He cited the situation in the US states of Oregon and Washington, where “a majority of those ending their lives cite fear of being a burden on their families and finances.

“We have also seen cancer patients denied life-saving and life-extending treatments due to their cost but offered the drugs to end their lives”.

The study claimed legalization would be positive, as helping some patients to kill themselves would free up resources for other patients.

The researchers also said the controversial practice should be legalized because where patients die naturally, their organs deteriorate and are less likely to be viable for transplant.

In the Netherlands and Belgium it is already possible for organs to be donated following an assisted suicide.

https://www.christian.org.uk

US conducts airstrikes against multiple Iranian-backed militia sites in Iraq

Ryan Browne, Barbara Starr and Zachary Cohen – March 13, 2020

(CNN)The US carried out airstrikes on Thursday against multiple Iranian-backed militia sites in Iraq, according to the US Defense Department.

The strikes come one day after the US assessed an Iranian-backed group was responsible for a rocket attack on a base where coalition forces are located, killing two American service members and one British service member.

The Defense Department on Friday identified the two US service members killed in the attack as Army Specialist Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubias, 27, of Hanford, California and Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts, 28, of Owasso, Oklahoma. The UK Ministry of Defense had earlier identified the slain UK service member as Lance Corporal Brodie Gillon.

The UK government expressed support for the US airstrikes, with the UK’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace saying “We support the right of the United States to defend themselves, as they have done tonight.”

Fox News was first to report on the strike.

A US defense official told CNN that the strikes were carried out by manned fighter aircraft and targeted five weapons storage facilities.

In a written statement, the Defense Department stated the strike was aimed at harming the ability of Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-sponsored Shia militia group, to conduct future strikes against American troops. The weapons storage facilities included areas where weapons used to attack American and coalition troops were stored.

https://www.cnn.com

Europe Under Siege

Bruce Bawer – March 10, 2020

In 1683 a massive army of the Ottoman Empire laid siege to the Christian city of Vienna. After two months, an allied force that consisted of men from all over the Holy Roman Empire and from other central European states, including Hungary, and that was led by John III Sobieski, the King of Poland and Lithuania, turned the Ottoman soldiers back, preventing the potential Islamization of the continent.

In recent days, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of the Ottoman Empire’s successor state, Turkey, has unleashed thousands of Muslims, mostly young males of military age, upon the European Union, today’s not-so-holy but increasingly imperial reincarnation of the Holy Roman Empire. More specifically, Erdogan, in violation of an agreement with the EU that netted him billions, has allowed – and encouraged – these people, who have been routinely described in the Western media as “refugees” and “migrants,” to storm the border separating his country from the EU’s southeasternmost satrapy, Greece. Indeed, he’s lent them active support, providing many of them with free transport to the border, which they’ve attacked with rocks, “makeshift battering rams,” and tear-gas canisters (supplied by Ergodan) while setting fires and shouting “Allahu akbar!” Photos taken at the border underscore just how perverse it is to call these thugs “refugees” or “migrants.”

Seems like old times. What’s different this time around is that whereas seventeenth-century Europeans understood that they were confronting, in the Islamic invaders of their day, an existential threat to their way of life, many of their descendants don’t seem to have a clue about what they’re dealing with. On Tuesday of last week, and again on Saturday, thousands of Germans, rallying in Berlin and other cities, demanded that the “migrants” on the Greek borders be allowed to pour into the continent and to find their way to Germany, if they wish, so that they can help form “a solidarity society” in which there will be “no more suffering.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Fukushima: How the ocean became a dumping ground for radioactive waste

DW – March 11, 2020

The nuclear disaster at Fukushima sent an unprecedented amount of radiation into the Pacific. But, before then, atomic bomb tests and radioactive waste were contaminating the sea — the effects are still being felt today.

Almost 1.2 million liters (320,000 gallons) of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is to be released into the ocean. That’s on the recommendation of the government’s advisory panel some nine years after the nuclear disaster on Japan’s east coast. The contaminated water has since been used to cool the destroyed reactor blocks to prevent further nuclear meltdowns. It is currently being stored in large tanks, but those are expected to be full by 2022.

Exactly how the water should be dealt with has become highly controversial in Japan, not least because the nuclear disaster caused extreme contamination off the coast of Fukushima. At the time, radioactive water flowed “directly into the sea, in quantities we have never seen before in the marine world,” Sabine Charmasson from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) tells DW.

Radiation levels in the sea off Fukushima were millions of times higher than the government’s limit of 100 becquerels. And still today, radioactive substances can be detected off the coast of Japan and in other parts of the Pacific. They’ve even been measured in very small quantities off the US west coast in concentrations “well below the harmful levels set by the World Health Organization,” according to Vincent Rossi, an oceanographer at France’s Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO).

But that doesn’t mean there’s no risk, says Horst Hamm of the Nuclear Free Future Foundation. “A single becquerel that gets into our body is enough to damage a cell that will eventually become a cancer cell,” he says.

A study from the European Parliament reached a similar conclusion. The research found that “even the smallest possible dose, a photon passing through a cell nucleus, carries a cancer risk. Although this risk is extremely small, it is still a risk.”

And that risk is growing. Radioactive pollution in the ocean has been increasing globally — and not just since the disaster at Fukushima.

https://www.dw.com

Trump Announces National Emergency, More Tests, More Nimble Pandemic Response

Newsmax – March 13, 2020

President Donald Trump declared a coronavirus national emergency in a speech from the Rose Garden on Friday afternoon, invoking the Stafford Act for disaster relief and emergency assistance. The step will mean billions of dollars in additional federal cash for testing, resources and the shoring up of the flailing national economy.

In no uncertain terms, Trump also addressed the lack of sufficient testing capabilities, an issue that has inflamed critics who’ve deemed the administration’s pandemic response haphazard. He said that going forward, there would be a partnership with the private sector “to vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus” — including providing drive-through sites that will be able administer the tests and a way to self-screen online.

Trump assured the nation, “We will get through this together.”

In recent days, the Trump administration has been under intense fire for conflicting messages, a sluggish national response and insufficient testing for the COVID-19 virus, which began in China and has since afflicted tens of thousands of people around the world. (Vice President Mike Pence said the virus has now been detected in 46 states.)

In his speech, Trump touted Americans’ response thus far, compared to that seen in other parts of the world. But then he somberly declared, “I am officially declaring a national emergency,” saying that doing so would open up access to $50 billion.

He also urged every state to set up emergency operations, and hospitals to invoke their emergency preparedness plans.

https://www.newsmax.com