Important Takeaways:
- Roughly 100 pro-Israel vigilantes stormed the “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, sparking battles with activists.
- The raid occurred after nearly a week in which UCLA not only allowed the encampment to occupy the main plaza on campus, but also allowed pro-Palestinian activists to run their own security, barring access to students and the public.
- The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, reported the clashes:
- Fireworks, tear gas and fights broke out just after 10:50 p.m. Tuesday night and continued early Wednesday morning as around 100 pro-Israel counter-protesters attempted to seize the barricade around and storm the ongoing Palestine solidarity encampment in Dickson Plaza.
- After the barricades came down, counter-protesters and protesters inside the encampment began to fight. Counter-protesters shot fireworks into the encampment just after 11 p.m., and irritant gasses were released from both sides. A Daily Bruin reporter was indirectly sprayed in the face.
- In another statement released at 3:30 a.m., protesters inside the encampment said the university has not done enough to protect students, and they repeated earlier calls for the university to meet their demands.
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Important Takeaways:
- As the war enters its 778th day, these are the main developments.
- Russian missiles and drones destroyed a large electricity plant near Kyiv and hit power facilities in several regions of Ukraine.
- In Ukraine, parliament passed a controversial new law on mobilization as it seeks to replenish the military’s ranks.
- International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said that drone attacks on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine must stop because of the risk of opening “a new and gravely dangerous” stage in the war.
- Ukraine needs military aid and air defense systems in the face of Russia’s intensifying attacks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as he criticized his country’s allies for engaging in “lengthy discussions” and “turning a blind eye”.
- The president travelled to Lithuania to participate in a regional security summit, saying that “Russian evil is a threat not only to Ukraine but to every nation bordering Russia and to everyone who values international law”.
- Ukraine risks collapsing under Russia’s onslaught without US support, a disaster that could embolden China and prompt a new crisis in East Asia, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told US lawmakers during a state visit to Washington, DC, urging them to overcome “self-doubt” about the country’s role on the world stage.
- Ukraine and Latvia signed a 10-year security agreement envisaging annual Latvian military support for Ukraine at 0.25 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), Zelenskyy said. “Latvia also made a 10-year commitment to assist Ukraine with cyber defense, demining, and unmanned technologies, as well as support for Ukraine’s EU and NATO accession,” he wrote on X.
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Important Takeaways:
- Putin, speaking just days before a March 15-17 election which is certain to give him another six years in power, said the nuclear war scenario was not “rushing” up and he saw no need for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
- “From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready,” Putin, 71, told Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA in response to a question whether the country was really ready for a nuclear war.
- Putin said the U.S. understood that if it deployed American troops on Russian territory – or to Ukraine – Russia would treat the move as an intervention.
- “(In the U.S.) there are enough specialists in the field of Russian-American relations and in the field of strategic restraint,” said Putin, the ultimate decision maker in the world’s biggest nuclear power.
- “Therefore, I don’t think that here everything is rushing to it (nuclear confrontation), but we are ready for this.”
- “Weapons exist in order to use them,” Putin said. “We have our own principles.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Biden announces 500 sanctions against Russia as payback for war, Navalny
- Biden said the sanctions are payback for Mr. Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison and designed to coincide with the second anniversary of Mr. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
- “These sanctions will target individuals connected to Navalny’s imprisonment as well as Russia’s financial sector, defense industrial base, procurement networks and sanctions evaders across multiple continents,” Mr. Biden said. “They will ensure Putin pays an even steeper price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.”
- Biden also said he is imposing 100 export restrictions on entities that are providing “backdoor” support for Russia’s war effort.
- The U.S. and Western nations have imposed crippling sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine, only to see Moscow find end-runs around the restrictions or new global partners to keep its economy afloat.
- The president scolded the Republican-led House for failing to take up a Senate-passed supplemental bill that includes $60 billion in aid for Ukraine.
- The U.S. has provided more than $75 billion already. Some lawmakers say there is no clear plan for a Ukrainian victory so it doesn’t make sense to throw more American treasure at the effort or to help more Ukrainian soldiers to die in what is a never-ending stalemate.
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Important Takeaways:
- UN Report: Global hunger numbers rose to as many as 828 million in 2021
- According to a United Nations report that provides fresh evidence that the world is moving further away from its goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.
- The numbers paint a grim picture:
- As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021 – 46 million people more from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.
- Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3%) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic. Nearly 924 million people (11.7% of the global population) faced food insecurity at severe levels, an increase of 207 million in two years.
- Looking forward, projections are that nearly 670 million people (8% of the world population) will still be facing hunger in 2030 – even if a global economic recovery is taken into consideration
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Important Takeaways:
- Nuclear Threat: Russia Will Drop ‘Entire Arsenal’ on London, Washington if it Doesn’t Win Ukraine War
- Deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who was also formerly the Prime Minister and President of Russia in service to Vladimir Putin, has threatened Western capitals with the “entire strategic arsenal” of Russian nuclear weapons. Medvedev, for whom absolutely no slight is too small to necessitate a nuclear response, was speaking of Ukraine’s hope to retake its U.N.-recognized national territory which in some cases have been occupied by Russia for very close to ten years.
- Russia has amended its constitution and now considers those areas — Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia — to be full parts of the Russian Republic. Attempting to push the borders back to where they were before will invite a massive retaliation, Medvedev said in his latest threat on Sunday, making clear he sees the Western states aiding Ukraine with arms as legitimate targets.
- He said: “Attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To a global war with Western countries using the entire strategic arsenal of our state. In Kiev, Berlin, London, Washington.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Pastor Jack Hibbs lists 5 things Christians will go to war over in 2024
- In part one of the series, preached last month, Hibbs explained that his message was centered on “the war of 2024,” emphasizing that Christians “are on a mission and we are in a war.”
- “I’m not talking about bombs, guns and missiles,” he clarified. “I’m talking about an all-out war on everything, from the spiritual realm, which is invisible, but certainly to the physical world, in which things manifest.”
- “And this year of 2024 will be unlike any other year previously lived in your lifetime.”
- Hibbs believes that, first of all, the war “will be against the truth,”… “When you tell somebody the actual truth, they don’t believe it,” he said. “It’s not that they’re being mean about it; it’s that ‘why should I believe that because I’ve just heard 10 other things.’”
- The second thing that the war of 2024 will be centered on, according to Hibbs, will be a war “against the facts,” with the pastor defining facts as “the reporting of what is observed.”
- “you are going to see deception fly like you’ve never seen it fly before. It’s going to be supersonic.”
- The third thing that the war of 2024 will include is a war “against the faith,”… against the Christian faith specifically.
- The fourth aspect of the war of 2024, according to Hibbs, is the war “against the Church,” noting that “the war has always been against the Church” and that “God loves His Church, we love each other, but the world is against us.”
- The fifth and final aspect of the war of 2024 that Hibbs spoke about was that it would be “a war against marriage,”… the cheapening of marriage in modern society
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘Approaching Hoofbeats’: The Signs We Saw Decades Ago Pale In Comparison To What We See Today
- I purchased Billy Graham’s book, Approaching Hoofbeats, not long after its publication in 1983.
- As I recently skimmed its chapters, the stark differences between then and now leaped off the pages. Some of the signs that four decades ago seemed so indicative of the nearing Rapture pale by comparison to all that we see today.
- The Antichrist Rides
- By 1983, I had heard of a group called the “trilateralists” who were pushing for a one-world government at the time. Today, however, the emerging framework for the type of world domination that we read about in the book of Revelation is front and center for everyone to see, yet so few are paying attention to the nearness of the time when the white horse will ride across the earth.
- The Threat of Nuclear War
- In Approaching Hoofbeats, Evangelist Billy Graham wrote about the threat of a devastating nuclear war, which was a major concern at the time. Today, however, this danger has reached the point where most analysts believe it’s likely to occur in the next few years.
- Below is a quote from their latest press release under a section titled “The Many Dimensions of Nuclear Threat”:
- A durable end to Russia’s war in Ukraine seems distant, and the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in that conflict remains a serious possibility. In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to “suspend” the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). In March, he announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. In June, Sergei Karaganov, an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged Moscow to consider launching limited nuclear strikes on Western Europe as a way to bring the war in Ukraine to a favorable conclusion.
- Economic Peril
- In 1983, the debt reached $1.377 trillion.
- In January of this year, the national debt level of the United States reached $34 trillion, and by the end of the month, it stood at an astounding 34.1 trillion. With the announcement came the prediction that by March, this number would exceed $35 trillion.
- The current debt level in America will surely bring economic catastrophe.
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Important Takeaways:
- Countdown to conflict with Putin: Norway’s defense chief becomes latest military figure to warn Europe has three years to prepare for war with Russia
- Norway’s defense chief has become the latest senior military figure to warn that Europe has a matter of years to prepare for war against Russia.
- In his dire warning, Eirik Kristoffersen said NATO countries have ‘two, maybe three’ years to get ready for an assault by Vladimir Putin’s forces.
- Last week, the NATO defense chiefs met in Brussels where several emphasized the importance of countries in Europe increasing their readiness for an attack.
- This came as secret plans were leaked revealing that Germany is preparing for Putin’s forces to attack NATO as early as 2025, and after a senior NATO general said the alliance was preparing for such a scenario to happen within 20 years.
- Speaking to NTB, Norway’s press agency, Kristoffersen pointed out that Moscow has built up its military stockpiles far quicker than expected.
- With his invasion in Ukraine at a stalemate, Putin has also switched his economy on to a war footing, meaning weapons factories are producing arms around the clock.
- What’s more, Putin’s allies in Iran and North Korea are also propping his forces up with arms, meaning Russia can build up its defense’s faster than previously thought.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.K. Govt Warns: Be Ready for War with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in Five Years
- Speaking at Lancaster House on Monday, British Minister of Defense Grant Shapps said the West is facing a “much more troubled world” and could no longer consider itself post-war, with considerable new investment in military spending needed. He said:
- …now is the time for all allies and democratic nations across the world to… make sure their defense spending is growing too. Because as discussed, the era of the peace dividend is over. In five years time we could be looking at multiple theatres including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
- …we find ourselves at the dawn of this new era. [The] Berlin Wall a distant memory but we have come full circle, moving from a post-war to a pre-war world. An age of idealism has been replaced by a period of hard-headed realism.
- Illustrating actions taken by Britain to prepare itself for this multifaceted conflict the British government apparently believes is coming, Shapps cited the UK’s support to Ukraine, the country leading the largest NATO deployment since the end of the Cold War this year, the signing of a new UK-Japan-Italy fighter coalition, and the creation of the Australia-UK-U.S. submarine coalition. He said the government was moving to putting 2.5 per cent of GDP into defense spending as soon as it could afford to.
- Estonia, one of Ukraine’s most enthusiastic allies and a state which has a land border with Russia said through their Prime Minister on Monday that their intelligence states NATO has “three to five years” to prepare for a Russian attack on NATO itself.
- Sweden warned its citizens last week to be prepared for war.
- Germany is reportedly of the same mind, with the best-selling newspaper in Europe Bild splashing this week on leaked war plans anticipating Russian invasions of European states by the summer of 2025.
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