News Articles for Episode 166 - Subsplash.com

News Articles for Episode 166

The US has reported at least 45 mass
shootings in the last month
#bibleprophecy, #violence, #guns, #massshootings

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/us/mass-shootings-45-one-month/index.html

Apr 18, 2021
(CNN)When eight people died in a mass shooting at an Indianapolis FedEx facility
Thursday night, the news was compounded by a string of similar incidents that
preceded it.
Starting on March 16, when eight people were killed at three Atlanta-area spas, the US
has had at least 45 mass shootings, according to CNN reporting and an analysis of data
from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), local media, and police reports.
Analysis: A return to normal in America means a return to violence
The US has seen at least 147 mass shootings in 2021, according to data from the GVA, a
non-profit based in Washington.
CNN considers an incident to be a mass shooting if four or more people are shot,
wounded, or killed, excluding the gunman; so does the GVA.

Nearly a third of gay youths have attempted
suicide, study finds
#bibleprophecy, #lbgtq, #suicide, #youth
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/nearly-third-gay-youths-
attempted-suicide-study-finds-rcna724
Apr 20, 2021
Suicide rates among young people have been on the rise in recent years, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but gay and bisexual youths are
almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide as their straight peers.
And, despite advances in the fight for LGBTQ equality, a new report finds that young
gay people today are even more likely to have attempted suicide than in previous
generations.
Researchers at the Williams Institute, a sexual orientation and gender identity think
tank at UCLA School of Law, found that 30 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual
respondents ages 18 to 25 reported at least one suicide attempt, compared to 24
percent of those 34-41 and 21 percent of those 52-59.
The study, published last month in the journal PLOS One, also revealed that these
young adults are experiencing higher levels of victimization, psychological distress and
internalized homophobia than older generations.
"We had really expected it would be better for the younger group," said lead author Ilan
H. Meyer, a distinguished senior scholar of public policy at the institute. "But at the
same time, we knew data from other studies has shown LGB youth do a lot worse than
straight youth — and not much better now than in earlier times."
Meyer and his colleagues surveyed 1,518 respondents who identified as lesbian, gay or
bisexual (trans people were included in a separate study). Participants were divided
into three cohorts: the "Pride" generation, those born from 1956 to 1963; the
"Visibility" generation, born from 1974 to 1981; and the "Equality" generation, born
from 1990 to 1997.
Using the Kessler Scale, a clinical measure of psychological distress, they found that
members of the Equality generation reported almost twice as many symptoms of
anxiety and depression as the Pride generation. Many factors influenced the data,
Meyer said, including the fact that people are coming out younger than ever.
"That can be a positive, of course," he said. "But it can also backfire and expose you to a
lot of harassment and victimization. You might not be prepared for the consequences."

Members of the Equality generation reported coming out to a family member at age 16
on average, compared to 22 for the Visibility generation and 26 for the Pride
generation.
That can put them at risk of rejection at a time when they rely most on family for
emotional and financial support, said Amy Green, vice president of research for The
Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth crisis intervention and suicide prevention
organization.
According to a survey by the organization last year, 40 percent of LGBTQ youths ages
13 to 24 had seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous 12 months.
"It's not that the world isn't making progress for LGBTQ people, it's that recent
progress has resulted in an amazing community of young people who understand who
they are but still live in a world where others may be unkind to them, reject them, bully
them or discriminate against them," Green said in an email. "And we know these
experiences of victimization can compound and produce negative mental health
outcomes."
The advent of social media and the internet has also greatly affected the Equality
generation's sense of identity.
"When we asked them about other people in the community, the younger group's
answers were always — always — about social media, not about real-life encounters,"
Meyer said. "People are very cruel online, whether it's Twitter or Grindr."
Meyer said that before he examined interviews accompanying the survey, he expected
to hear people in their teens and 20s present "a different way of being gay."
"But one of the first narratives I listened to was from an 18-year-old Latino from San
Francisco, and his narrative was the same as we've heard for generations —
homophobia, exclusion, shame. The evolution [in LGBTQ rights] hadn't impacted his
life as much as you'd expect."
Members of the Equality generation reported more anti-LGBTQ victimization than
their older counterparts, Meyer said. Nearly 3 out of 4 (72 percent) said they had been
verbally insulted about their identity, and almost half (46 percent) said they had been
threatened with violence. More than a third (37 percent) reported having been
physically attacked or sexually assaulted.
"I believe in the power of institutions and social structures changing. I really do,"
Meyer said. "But I think real progress takes longer than we think. Just because we're
seeing change doesn't mean every gay kid's parents are accepting or that their friends
are embracing them."
There were some silver linings: Of the three groups, members of the Equality
generation most reported feeling connected to the LGBTQ community.

"That was actually surprising, because we hear so much about people feeling like they
don't belong," Meyer said. "But this suggests there is still pride, despite the difficulties
and negativity, sometimes even from within our own community."
Coming out younger has also given them more resiliency, he added.
"Coming out earlier gives you a great start on life, even if you face hardships," he said.
"This generation is already out when they get to college. They have a better sense of
who they are. Older generations had to wait longer to live their authentic lives."

‘Britcoin’ not bitcoin? UK considers new
digital currency
#bibleprophecy, #currency, #bitcoin, #money
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/uk-launches-taskforce-potential-bank-
england-digital-currency-sunak-2021-04-19/
Apr 19, 2021
British finance minister Rishi Sunak told the Bank of England on Monday to look at the
case for a new “Britcoin”, or central bank-backed digital currency, aimed at tackling
some of the challenges posed by cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
A BoE-backed digital version of sterling would potentially allow businesses and
consumers to hold accounts directly with the bank and to sidestep others when making
payments, upending the lenders' role in the financial system.
"We're launching a new taskforce between the Treasury and the Bank of England to
coordinate exploratory work on a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC),"
Sunak told a financial industry conference.
Soon after, Sunak tweeted the single word "Britcoin" in reply to the finance ministry's
announcement of the taskforce.
Other central banks are also looking at whether to set up digital versions of their own
currencies, essentially widening access to central bank funds which only commercial
banks can use at present. This could speed up domestic and foreign payments and
reduce financial stability risks.
China is a front-runner to launch a CBDC. Last week the European Central Bank said it
was studying an electronic form of cash to complement banknotes and coins but any
launch was still several years away.
The BoE said a digital version of sterling would not replace either physical cash or
existing bank accounts.
"The Government and the Bank of England have not yet made a decision on whether to
introduce a CBDC in the UK, and will engage widely with stakeholders on the benefits,
risks and practicalities of doing so," the BoE said.
BoE Governor Andrew Bailey has previously said bitcoin, the best known
cryptocurrency, fails to act as a stable store of value or an efficient way to make
transactions, making it ill-suited to serve as a currency and a risky bet for investors.
Central banks also took a dim view of efforts by Facebook to set up its own digital
currency.

Even so, cryptocurrencies have received growing interest from mainstream financial
institutions, and bitcoin hit a record high of nearly $65,000 on April 14, up tenfold in
the space of a year.
DARK TRADING
Sunak, launching the UK FinTech Week conference, also announced other measures
aimed at maintaining the post-Brexit competitiveness of London, which vies with New
York to be the world's largest financial centre.
Since Britain's departure from the European Union's orbit on Dec. 31, the financial
sector has faced restrictions on serving EU customers.
Sunak proposed removing restrictions inherited from the EU, including on who can
trade shares in London and the double volume cap.
This would help Britain attract more "dark" or anonymous trading by big investors
after Amsterdam toppled London as Europe's top share trading centre in January.
"The consultation process aims to deliver a rulebook that is fair, outcomes-based and
supports competitiveness, whilst ensuring the UK maintains the highest regulatory
standards," Sunak said.
Britain would also propose changes to companies' share prospectuses to ensure the
rules are "not overly burdensome", Sunak said.

Report: 5.2 Billion People Face ‘Very Severe
Violations of Religious Freedom’
#bibleprophecy, #persecution, #christian, #religion
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/04/20/report-5-2-billion-people-
face-very-severe-violations-religious-freedom/
Apr 20, 2021
Nearly one third of the world’s countries, where two thirds of the world’s population
live, violate religious freedom, the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN)
reported Tuesday.
Christians are the most persecuted group in the world, according to ACN’s Religious
Freedom in the World Report 2021, an 818-word compendium of the state of religious
freedom and persecution in the world today.
Persecution on the grounds of religious belief is a growing global phenomenon, the
biennial report declares, and religious freedom violations have accelerated and
expanded to the point where “systematic and egregious attacks are coming from
governments, lynching mobs, as well as international terror groups,” such as Boko
Haram or the Islamic State.
The report found the populations of 62 countries out of a total of 196 face “very severe
violations of religious freedom,” adding that the number of people living in these
countries “is close to 5.2 billion, as the worst offenders include some of the most
populous nations in the world (China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria).”
Moreover, during the past two years since the publication of ACN’s last report, “there
has been a significant increase in the severity of religiously motivated persecution and
oppression which is the principal category of concern,” the report noted.
Much of this religiously motivated persecution has come from “transnational jihadist
networks spreading across the Equator,” the document reveals, and “Islamic State and
Al-Qaeda, with ideological and material patronage from the Middle East, affiliate with,
and further radicalise, local armed militias to establish ‘caliphate provinces’ along the
Equator.”
This activity has resulted in “a crescent of jihadist violence [that] stretches from Mali to
Mozambique in Sub-Saharan Africa, to the Comoros in the Indian Ocean, and to the
Philippines in the South China Sea.”
Additionally, an expanding “cyber-caliphate” is now “an established tool of online
recruitment and radicalisation in the West,” the report declared. “Islamist terrorists
employ sophisticated digital technologies to recruit, radicalise, and attack.”

Another driver of religious persecution is growing religious nationalism, or “ethno-
religious supremacy in Hindu-majority and Buddhist-majority countries in Asia,” the
report reveals. “These movements have further oppressed religious minorities,
reducing them to the status of de facto second-class citizens.”
Totalitarian atheist regimes such as those of China and North Korea are a further
source of intense religious persecution, the report declared, and over 30 million
Muslims in China and Myanmar (including Uyghur and Rohingya Muslims) face severe
persecution, with little resistance thus far from the international community.
The Chinese Communist Party now employs repressive surveillance technologies that
increasingly target faith groups, with “626 million AI-enhanced surveillance cameras
and smart-phone scanners at key pedestrian check-points, producing data which is
cross-referenced by analytical platforms and coupled with an integrated social credit
system,” the report stated.
A new category in this year’s report is the notion of “polite persecution,” a term used to
describe the rise of new “rights” or cultural norms that conflict with and often
supersede the right to religious freedom, seeking to consign religions to “the enclosed
precincts of churches, synagogues or mosques.”
“These new cultural norms, enshrined in law, result in an individual’s rights to freedom
of conscience and religion coming into a profound conflict with the legal obligation to
comply with these laws,” the report stated.
The ACN report distinguishes between intolerance, discrimination, persecution, and
genocide. Persecution “might be an active programme or campaign to exterminate,
drive away, or subjugate people based on membership of a religious group” or may be
“perpetrated by single individuals,” it stated.
Acts of persecution need not be “systematic” nor occur following a strategy, the report
asserted.

China hit with 3 blinding dust storms in
one month
#bibleprophecy, #polution, #duststorm, #china
https://www.israel365news.com/189510/china-hit-with-3-blinding-dust-storms-in-
one-month-a-biblical-sign-of-gods-displeasure-watch/
Apr 19, 2021
The skies over Beijing turned yellow and air pollution soared to severe levels as China
suffered its worst dust storms in over a decade. The capital, Beijing, was entirely
engulfed in clouds three times in the last five weeks with the visibility dropping to
about half a mile. A giant cloud of sand and dust particles rolled into the city, propelled
by strong winds from the north of China. The current storm, the worst in the series, is
expected to continue in the coming days, affecting central and eastern China. The
extreme conditions are believed to be the combination of air pollution and dust from
Mongolia, which is suffering from a hot and dry spell of weather, being driven by
unusually strong winds.
The dust storms reduced visibility, leading to transport disruptions. Hazardous driving
conditions resulted in traffic congestion and an increase in accidents. Hundreds of
flights were delayed at regional airports.
The air quality index in Beijing hit a “hazardous” 999 leading officials to order children,
the elderly, and the sick to stay indoors and suggested all others to stop nonessential
outdoor activities. The storms were not sandstorms but were, in fact, dust storms
carrying much smaller particles that travel much further, remain suspended longer,
and are more harmful to humans. The concentrations of harmful PM2.5 particles,
particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter which is small enough to
penetrate human lungs and enter the bloodstream, reached extremes as well. Frequent
exposure to PM2.5 and “coarse” PM10, which is 10 micrometers wide and enters deep
into the lungs, is tied to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and lung cancer.
China has tried creating a “great green wall” of trees to block their movement and
various other environmental efforts. Li Shuo, Greenpeace China’s policy director,
posted a tweet, decrying the dire situation.
China is one of the countries most severely jeopardized by dust-sand storms and
desertification with about one million square miles of desertified land equalling about
27.9% of the country’s landmass. Studies point to the cause as deforestation and soil
erosion that are indirect effects of the nation’s booming population.
The orange-tinted dust storm and desertification are described in the Bible as signs of
Divine displeasure.

The skies above your head shall be copper and the earth under you iron. Hashem will
make the rain of your land dust, and sand shall drop on you from the sky until you are
wiped out. Deuteronomy 28:23-24

Golfer Stewart Cink Points to Jesus after
PGA Win: 'I Don't Seek Peace and Joy out
of Golf'
#bibleprophecy, #golf, #peace, #joy
https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/golfer-stewart-cink-
points-to-jesus-after-pga-win-i-dont-seek-peace-and-joy-out-of-golf.html
Apr 19, 2021
On Sunday, Professional golfer Stewart Cink won his second PGA Tour event of 2021 to
climb into the FedEx Top 5 and then pointed to Christ during a post-tournament press
conference.
Cink won the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C., with a four-round total of 19-under
par, four strokes ahead of second-place Harold Varner III.
For the 47-year-old Cink, it was his second tour win of the year and propelled him from
No. 26 to No. 3 in the FedEx Cup standings.
Afterward, Cink told reporters that peace in life – and on the golf course – comes from
his faith.
"The thing about me and my family with the peace and joy we experience, it's not
something that we wait for the circumstances to line up like the planets or some signs
or tea leaves or something. We install our own peace and joy because of our faith in
Jesus Christ, and that is the number one tenant of my life," Cink said. "And it enables
me to feel peaceful and joyful even when the golf ball is not agreeing with my clubface
and not going in the hole. I don't seek peace and joy out of golf, because I know I can
never depend on it to fully sustain that kind of peace and joy that I'm looking for, and
it's too low of a target."
Cink now has eight career PGA Tour victories. The two wins for 2021 match his
previous best year (2004), when he also had two victories.
"The joy and peace I feel on the golf course – it's something that stems from something
far different than golf, and golf happens to benefit from it," he said. "But golf is not the
end goal for me. I love playing and winning. And having a week like this is just
amazing, but the peace and joy that we experience and – it's available to everybody – is
something that you don't have to wait for the circumstances – the worm to turn, so to
speak – it's there and that's what we choose to go for."

Amazon to let Whole Foods shoppers pay
with a swipe of their palm
#bibleprophecy, #money, #biometrics, #payments
https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-let-whole-foods-shoppers-pay-with-
swipe-their-palm-2021-04-21/
Apr 21, 2021
Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) said it is rolling out biometric technology at its Whole
Foods stores around Seattle starting on Wednesday, letting shoppers pay for items with
a scan of their palm.
The move shows how Amazon is bringing some of the technology already in use at its
namesake brick-and-mortar Go and Books stores to the grocery chain it acquired in
2017.
The system, called Amazon One, lets customers associate a credit card with their palm
print. It offers a contact-less alternative to cash and card payments, Amazon said.
The deployment stops short of introducing Amazon's cashier-less technology at Whole
Foods, which critics have said would result in job cuts. Amazon One still requires
scanning items at checkout, and the company said it will not impact jobs at Whole
Foods.
Amazon said its biometric technology will be live at a Whole Foods near its
headquarters in Seattle on Wednesday and will expand to seven more stores in the
metro area in coming months.