News and Prophecy Staff

Returning from his World Youth Day visit to Brazil, where he was treated like a rock star (The Telegraph, July 27, 2013), Pope Francis held a press conference where he “reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not” (BBC, July 29, 2013).

Tensions are escalating between Gibraltar, Spain and the U.K. over the future of this key piece of real estate. The U.K. has controlled Gibraltar for 300 years under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht (Daily Mail, July 29, 2013), and as recently as 2002, Gibraltar residents rejected a return to Spanish rule (ibid.).

According to British statistics, by 2016, most babies born in the U.K. will be born “out of wedlock”—typically to homes without fathers (Telegraph, July 10, 2013). This number grew from 11 percent in 1979 to 47.5 percent in 2012.

A year after British Prime Minister Cameron promised to legalize homosexual marriage by 2015, he touted Britain as “the best place to be gay, lesbian or transgender anywhere in Europe” (Telegraph, July 24, 2013).

The European Commission recently decided to refuse funding for Israeli projects in settlements beyond its 1967 borders and to place labels on settlement-made products to enable Europeans to boycott these items (EU Observer, July 16, 2013). However, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu sees the EU mandates as a threat to national sovereignty: “I will not let anybody harm Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, the Golan and Jerusalem… We will not accept any external dictates regarding borders” (ibid.).