News and Prophecy Staff

Burmese pythons were introduced into the Florida Everglades in the 1980s.  They escaped from captivity and pet owners also dump them when they become too large to keep.  The pythons are prolific and can grow to more than 15 feet long (5 meters) and weigh 150 pounds (75 kg).

A new Davidson College study reveals rapidly declining populations of indigenous Everglade mammals (e.g., raccoons, deer, opossum, and others), by more than 90% since the late 1990s.  Researchers believe the skyrocketing python population is to blame.  

“The portrait of a nation increasingly relaxed about ‘low-level dishonesty’ emerges in a major study” conducted by the University of Essex.  The report “suggests that the ‘integrity problem’ is likely to get worse because young people are more tolerant of dishonest behaviour than the older generation.”

“The net result of human rights developments in Europe causes great concern… Without concerted government action, the next generation of Europeans may see human rights as an optional extra rather than a core value,” wrote a reporter for the EU Observer.

Last week, a judge ordered the removal of a 49-year-old banner in a gymnasium at Cranston West High School in Rhode Island.

Recently, when a U.S. aircraft carrier passed through the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian top commander “stated that Iran’s submarines are able to ambush and hit enemy vessels specially US Aircraft carriers from the seabed throughout the Persian Gulf.”  This could be done using its Russian-made, sonar-evading, diesel-electric submarines.  A Major General followed up by threatening, “We are not in the habit of repeating the warning and we warn only once” (TheBlaze.com, January 18, 2012).  Now with oil sanctions imposed on Iran, a U.S.