News and Prophecy Staff

The trilateral defense pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States was created to strengthen the defense situation in the South Pacific in response to the growing Chinese threat. The name of the defense pact, AUKUS—reflecting the three nations who created the agreement—communicates a sense that the organization is closed to outsiders. Not so. Antony Blinken, U.S.

The war in Ukraine is shaking up politics and military planning throughout Europe—and it is worrying nations on Russia’s periphery. In late June, Germany announced it would send 4,000 troops to Lithuania (Politico, July 4, 2023).

It has been over a decade since the meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor. Since then, water used to cool the hot nuclear reactor has been stored in massive storage ponds. Now, The Guardian reports that Japan is preparing to release over 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water into the environment—a plan already approved by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (July 23, 2023).

“It’s my life and I can do with it what I want to” is a common mantra in Western society. Yet, in recent years that mantra has taken on a grave twist. With the legalization of euthanasia—what some have called “mercy killing”—people are increasingly allowed to commit legal suicide with the help of their doctor. And in some countries, the reasons legally allowed to justify this seem increasingly trivial.

According to a high-ranking Church of England official, Jesus’ sample prayer—commonly called the “Lord’s Prayer”—is dangerously biased toward patriarchy. The Guardian quoted the Archbishop of York when it reported that the “opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, recited by Christians all over the world for 2,000 years, may be ‘problematic’ because of their patriarchal association” (July 7, 2023).