GERMANY - Almost every second German favors the withdrawal of US forces based there, according to a poll taken prior to the NATO summit, at which Donald Trump accused Berlin of relying on Washington’s protection and not contributing enough. Some 42 percent of Germans are ready to see 35,000 US troops return home, a new YouGov poll, conducted on behalf of the German Press Agency, revealed. Only 37 percent wanted to see US troops stay in Germany in some capacity. The remaining 21 percent did not decide.
UK - Global investors have been rattled after a threat by the Trump administration to impose 10% duties on $200 billion (£151 billion) of imports prompted protests from Beijing and brought an all-out trade war a step closer. Stock markets headed lower in the US, Asia and Europe on Wednesday as the US warned that it would press ahead with further tariffs and China promised to “fight back as usual” with “firm and forceful measures” if they were enacted.
UK - Theresa May has ordered her ministers to step up preparations for a "no deal" Brexit in a warning to the EU that Britain's patience is running out. At the first gathering of her Cabinet since her forced reshuffle, the Prime Minister today told her team every Whitehall department must be ready in case negotiations with Brussels collapse.
UK - President Trump has poured petrol onto the flames of UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit crisis by coming out for her chief opponent Boris Johnson. “Boris Johnson’s a friend of mine. He’s been very, very nice to me, very supportive. And I maybe well speak to him when I get over there. I like Boris Johnson, I’ve always liked him.” This is what diplomats would call a “gaffe.” May, after all, is the leader of the nation to which Trump will shortly be making his first official visit. Johnson, meanwhile, is May’s new public enemy number one. Having just resigned as her Foreign Secretary (in protest at her watered down Brexit plans), he no longer has any status within her government. Yet here is President Trump publicly proposing to humiliate her by promising face time to a nobody she considers persona non grata.
NATO - Donald Trump has unleashed fire and fury at today’s NATO summit - as he prepares to demand state members of the European Union pay more in defence spending commitments. The US president has already lamented on Twitter his concerns over the EU countries failing to pay into the NATO defence budget the two percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On Tuesday he tweeted: “NATO countries must pay MORE, the United States must pay LESS. Very Unfair!”
EUROPE - European Council President Donald Tusk called on Donald Trump to be more respectful towards America’s allies ahead of a NATO summit, arguing that they are now in short supply. “Dear America, appreciate your allies, after all you don't have that many,” Tusk said after signing a statement on cooperation between the EU and NATO. The declaration was signed ahead of a two-day meeting of NATO members in Brussels starting Wednesday, in which Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, will represent the European Union.
GERMANY - German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, waging a battle within Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition for tighter immigration controls, noted with satisfaction on Tuesday that 69 Afghans had been deported on his 69th birthday. Seehofer was launching his "Migration Masterplan", hoping to set his stamp on a tougher border- and migration-control policy for Germany - one at odds with the open-doors policy Merkel announced at the height of the 2015 refugee crisis. By staking out a hard line, Seehofer is trying to bolster his Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) in October's regional elections, where it faces a stiff challenge from the far right. Seehofer is fighting to hang on to the CSU party chairmanship as the CSU sinks in the polls, 10 years after he became leader. Bavarian Premier Markus Soeder is his main rival.
CHINA - China said it is "shocked" after the US announced plans for fresh tariffs, escalating a trade war between the two countries. The US listed $200 billion (£150 billion) worth of additional products it intends to place tariffs on as soon as September. The move comes just days after the two countries imposed tit-for-tat tariffs of $34 billion on each other's goods. Beijing described Washington's latest threat as "totally unacceptable," saying it would harm the world.
USA - The violence plaguing Chicago made international headlines Wednesday, after a bloody Fourth of July weekend. Of the 102 people shot since Friday night, 15 have died. Police said most of the shootings happened Monday night on the South and West sides of the city. “You just destroyed somebody’s family,” one of the victim’s relatives, John Davis, said. His uncle, 56-year-old Tyrone Burdine, was fatally shot Tuesday evening in front of his home, with children narrowly escaping the gunfire. “Here comes this car speeding through the alley, shooting. My mom could have got killed, my auntie’s kids could have got killed. They don’t care,” Davis said.
USA - If Americans really understood how much their standard of living was about to change, the streets of our major cities would be packed with protesters by tomorrow morning. For the past several decades, China and other low cost exporters have been flooding our shores with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cheap goods. This is the only reason why you can go to Wal-Mart and buy a shirt for three bucks. But since we buy far more stuff from the rest of the world than they buy from us, we ultimately have to go back to those other nations and beg them to lend our money back to us so that we can pay our bills.
UK - Jacob Rees-Mogg issued an “encouraging” rallying cry to Brexit voters as he simply pointed out that the law setting out the departure from the EU “is in place”. Mr Rees-Mogg reiterated that the UK will leave the EU on March 29 next year without a deal “if nothing else happens”. He said: “There is some encouraging news and that is that the law setting out our departure from the EU is in place. So the Article 50 Act was passed before the General Election and the Withdrawal Act came into force about two weeks ago. That means that with nothing else happening we would leave the EU on March 29 next year without a deal”.
UK - Ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has absolutely excoriated Theresa May and her Brexit strategy in his resignation letter… “It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of their democracy,” he began.
UK - Brexit is dead – strangled at the weekend by Prime Minister Theresa May and her cabal of Remainer cronies. It was a brilliant coup, masterfully conducted with a sadist’s attention to detail. All the ministers in the Cabinet were hauled up to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence, where their phones were confiscated, as though they were naughty children. Then the stubbornly pro-Brexit ones who were rightly disgusted by the shaming sell-out deal May had cobbled together with her virulently Remainer civil servants were given the same choice Rommel was in 1944: cyanide pill or slow career death.
USA - We are witnessing a religious shift that is unprecedented in size and scope in American history. With each passing year, the percentage of Americans that claim no religious affiliation is growing, and this trend is especially pronounced among our young people. If things continue to steadily move in this direction, that is going to have enormous implications for the future of our society. The United States was founded by people that were extremely committed to their faith, and now we are rapidly becoming a nation where people are choosing no religion at all.
USA - Down the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, one of Donald Trump’s most consistent talking points was a claim that America’s changing demographics and culture had brought the country to a precipice. He repeatedly cast himself as the last chance for Republicans and conservative white Christians to step back from the cliff, to preserve their power and way of life.
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“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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