USA - Latest figure is statistically similar to previous high of 70% in 2021. Weekly churchgoers remain the primary opponents. When Gallup first polled about same-sex marriage in 1996, barely a quarter of the public (27%) supported legalizing such unions. It would take another 15 years, until 2011, for support to reach the majority level. Then in 2015, just one month before the US Supreme Court's Obergefell v Hodges decision, public support for legalizing gay marriage cracked the 60% level, and last year it reached the 70% mark for the first time. Rising national support for legal same-sex marriage reflects steady increases among most subgroups of the population, even those who have traditionally been the most resistant to gay marriage. Americans who report that they attend church weekly remain the primary demographic holdout against gay marriage, with 40% in favor and 58% opposed. Analyzing Gallup's trends since 2004, Americans who seldom or never attend church have always been mostly supportive of same-sex couples getting legally married.

UK - The UK will collapse into a year-long recession by the end of 2022 - its longest since the 2008 financial crisis and as deep as the one in the 1990s - with inflation peaking at more than 13% stoked by the soaring price of gas and fuel this winter, the Bank of England revealed in a doomsday warning. Britain's big squeeze also got even worse after the Bank raised interest rates by 0.5 per cent to 1.75 per cent - the highest single rise since 1997 - adding £1,000-a-year or more to the average non-fixed mortgage in a new 'world of pain' for homeowners. Food, fuel, gas and numerous other items are rocketing in price following the pandemic and the war in Ukraine - hitting record levels - but some economists have claimed that the BofE has been too slow to act as Britain careers towards recession. Officials on the monetary policy committee (MPC) raised the base interest rate from 1.25 per cent to 1.75 per cent as experts warned inflation could be heading for 15 per cent. The Bank predicts it will be 13 per cent.

CHINA - The eruption of war between China and Taiwan would be a global catastrophe on a scale far greater than the Ukraine crisis. Yet again Chinese military jets invaded Taiwanese airspace this week, this time following American politician Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to the sovereign island off the Communist mainland. Beijing staged live-fire exercises close to Taiwan, effectively blocking those regions to traffic. Meanwhile, the secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, warned that the world was ‘just one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation’. No one is more aware of the dangers of that miscalculation than the Chinese leadership. President Xi Jinping knows that if he takes a gamble and loses, the repercussions could destroy China’s economy or might even bring down the Communist Party that has ruled since 1949. We would see a worldwide recession, on a scale not seen in our lifetime. But the epicentre would be China. And with a social security network hopelessly ill-equipped to support its 1.4 billion people, if the Chinese economy collapses, untold millions would face unemployment, poverty and worse.

CHINA - Beijing has canceled an upcoming meeting between the Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers, over a statement on Taiwan made by the G7 group, the Chinese foreign ministry announced on Thursday. The talks between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi, which were planned to be held on the sidelines of the ongoing ASEAN events in Cambodia, won’t be taking place, the ministry’s spokeswoman Hua Chunying said during a briefing. According to Ha, Beijing has been “strongly displeased” by the joint statement of the G7 group, which includes Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US, on the events around the visit of US House speaker Nancy Pelosi to the self-governed island of Taiwan. Tokyo has no right to make “irresponsible remarks” on the Taiwan issue, the spokeswoman insisted. Pelosi, who is third in line to the US presidency, landed in Taipei late on Tuesday and left the next day, becoming the highest-ranking American official to come to the island since 1997.

JAPAN - Five Chinese ballistic missiles have landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi claimed on Thursday. China had earlier scrapped a high-level diplomatic meeting with Japan, and fired a salvo of missiles into waters near Taiwan. Kishi told Kyodo News that the incident marks the first time that a Chinese ballistic missile touched down in Japanese waters. “This is a grave issue that concerns our country’s national security and the safety of the people,” Kishi said, adding that Tokyo had lodged a formal diplomatic protest with the Chinese government. Japan has not remained neutral in the showdown. Along with the rest of the G7 group, Tokyo signed a declaration on Wednesday condemning Beijing’s flexing of its military muscle.

ICELAND - A volcano in Iceland erupted on Wednesday after a series of earthquakes hit the island, the Icelandic Met Office (IMO) reported on Wednesday. Iceland recorded a 4.6 earthquake on Wednesday morning on the eastern side of the Fagradalsfjall volcano, raising concerns about volcanic action. An hour later, the volcano began erupting. Ein­ar Hjör­leifs­son, a specialist in Natural hazards with IMO, confirmed that there had been a volcanic eruption in a 100m crack down Merardalir by Fagranesfjall. IMO warned people not to go close to the volcano, which is about 20 miles south of Iceland's capital and nearby the Keflavik airport.

GERMANY - In a demonstration of the failure of Germany’s pursuit of so-called “green energy” and its policy of relying on Russian gas in the meantime, a coal-fired power plant will be reconnected to the nation’s electricity grid. While the economic powerhouse of Europe — so called — scrambles to secure energy sources before the winter months, the previously shuttered Mehrum coal power plant in Lower Saxony will become the first to once again be connected to Germany’s grid. On Monday, the manager of the Czech-owned EGH operating company, Kathrin Voelkner said: “We have declared the return to the electricity market. We assume that we will return to the grid in the short term,” according to the Frankfurter Neue Presse newspaper. Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a leading member of the German Greens, has described the decision to turn back on coal plants as “bitter” but a necessary evil.

GERMANY - Our civilization is built upon fossil fuels and the powers that be are turning them off. Winter is coming. And Germany is set to be very cold. The German economy is based on highly innovative production which requires a great deal of energy that they no longer produce. And so running out of fuel will quickly collapse the German economy. Which will cause a tsunami of economic destruction throughout the EU. And the German government is letting it happen. They could leave some nuclear plants online and begin the process of turning more on. But they still plan on shutting it all down by the end of this year. To stay green. This new green deal is a complete lie. It’s just another part of the creepy elite’s Great Reset. These elite bloodlines want a new cashless society. But more like the Middle Ages. Which for these spoiled inbreds is the good old days. And if they succeed it looks like Germany will get there first. And in the midst of all this chaos the German government is focused on allowing children age 14 and older to change their gender and first names, without parental permission, once a year, for as often as they want.

USA - The science fiction of today is the scientific fact of tomorrow. A good example is Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, predicting today’s nuclear-powered submarines. Another would be H G Wells sci-fi/horror piece, The Island of Dr Moreau which examines a world filled with human-animal hybrids. So when we discuss the future of transhumanism, you need to keep this in mind. For though it may seem far-fetched today, it is where we are headed. Transhumanism is the “revision” of humanity and the fundamental transformation of the human race into something else. It’s the transformation of humanity into a “thing” that cannot be readily identified. The transhumanist proponents want to cure disease, end hunger, and enable human beings to reach their maximum potential – physically and mentally – evolving into a “new” being by augmenting their bodies mechanically or biologically. It can also mean placing their consciousnesses into artificial, robotic bodies with the goal of potential immortality.

USA - We previously reported at The Gateway Pundit about the lawsuit filed in May by the states of Missouri and Louisiana against all of the major government players in Big Tech Censorship, including Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the NIH, the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and many others. The lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration conspired with – and at times outright coerced – Facebook, Twitter, Google, and every other major tech monopoly, to enforce speech and thought conformity on the internet. We later wrote about a whistleblower who dumped a cache of internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security into the lap of Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. The documents confirm that DHS has maintained an ongoing “disinformation” censorship program, targeting anyone with COVID vaccine concerns and 2020 election fraud concerns – and anyone else thinking Wrongthink.

USA - According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, children as young as three years old can identify themselves as transgender, and the department recognizes the pronouns “ne, ve, ze/zie, and xe” as valid options for use. As stated on the Department of Education’s website in the section titled “Creating Gender-Inclusive Schools and Classrooms,” teachers are urged to inquire as to their students’ preferred pronouns to prevent making inaccurate assumptions about their gender identities. “In addition to the traditional pronouns (he/him, she/her, they), some people prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns, such as ne, ve, ze/zie and xe,” according to the website. “If you don’t know a student’s preferred personal pronoun, it’s always best to ask.” The website also provides a definition of “binary gender” as the “faulty concept that there are only two genders: male and female.”

USA - Hollywood is coming for your preschoolers, with the aim to hook them for life on a never-ending stream of superhero franchise characters. Major studios are aggressively targeting kids ages two to five in unprecedented ways in the hopes of turning them into lifelong consumers of their content, according to a report in The Wrap. Studios engaged in the long game include The Walt Disney Co and Warner Bros Discovery, the latter of which recently launched the preschool-focused Cartoonito block of programming on the Cartoon Network. One of the studios’ main strategies is introducing toddler-friendly versions of adult superheros, like Batman. As kids and teens gravitate increasingly toward smartphones, preschoolers are still TV-centric when it comes to media consumption. “Television still remains the media of choice among young children, with kids younger than 8-years-old spending 45 minutes watching TV each day,” a recent Statista report found.

LEBANON - A Syrian-flagged ship named the Laodicea that docked in the Lebanese port of Tripoli was detained last Saturday, preventing desperately needed flour and barley from reaching people in the Middle East. The move came after Western threats against Beirut and unsubstantiated claims from Kiev that the cargo was stolen from Ukraine. The ship, which has been on a US blacklist since 2015 for allegedly carrying shipments from sanctioned Crimea, is now under investigation. The country is currently suffering its worst ever economic collapse, enduring shortages in food, medicine, electricity and essential goods. According to some UN estimates, some 78% of the Lebanese population now live in poverty. The food shortage has led to long queues at bakeries, sometimes resulting in gunfire and brawls between people fighting over the limited supply of bread.

HUNGARY - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban lashed out at the European Union on Monday evening in a Facebook post, reminding his followers that Brussels doesn’t dictate European affairs. “The European Union is not in Brussels. The European Union is in Vienna, Budapest and Warsaw, Berlin and Madrid,” the prime minister said. “Brussels is not our boss. We are an independent, sovereign Hungarian nation. We make decisions together. If they’re not good for us, we’ll tell them. If they are not good and we can prevent them, the common decision will not be made.” Orban has made international headlines in recent weeks for his blunt statements criticizing the West’s policies.

USA - Water levels in wells across Texas are running low because of the extreme drought, groundwater experts say. Drought conditions in the state are getting worse by the week. As of July 28, 97% of Texas was in a drought, affecting 24.1 million Texans, per the US Drought Monitor. “A lot of public supply wells and a lot of even domestic wells have started going dry,” Natalie Ballew, director of the groundwater division at the Texas Water Development Board, told the Star-Telegram. Many communities, specifically in Central Texas, are experiencing significant water supply issues and they’re having to truck water in from other places, Ballew said. That includes areas like Concan and Utopia in Uvalde County, and Leakey in Real County. That’s causing a myriad of issues for those residents, with ranchers going as far as selling off their cattle because they don’t have water for them.