War on Christianity > Heating up in Godless Ukraine

 

Ukraine takes new step towards banning

its largest Christian church

The government in Kiev has been increasingly cracking down on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

© Sputnik / Konstantin Mikhelchevsky

Kiev has taken another step toward banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by officially declaring it linked to Russia. The ruling paves the way for a full ban on the country’s largest religious institution through the courts.

Vladimir Zelensky’s government has been increasingly taking aim at the UOC in recent years, a policy that has hardened in light of the conflict with Russia. Several of its churches have been seized, and criminal cases have been opened against clerics.

This week, Ukraine’s State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience posted a statement on its website saying that the UOC had been found to be associated with “a foreign religious organization whose activities are banned in Ukraine.” 

A law enacted last year allows religious organizations affiliated with governments Kiev deems “aggressors” to be banned. Zelensky has defended the measures as necessary to protect the country’s “spiritual independence.” 

The UOC has been de facto independent from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) since the 1990s, but maintained the canonical connection.

The UOC, which says it is being persecuted by the government, rejects the decision, a church representative told local media, adding that it has appealed it in court.

READ MORE: Kiev strips citizenship from head of largest Christian church – SBU

UOC Metropolitan Onufry, whose Ukrainian citizenship was revoked last month by Zelensky, has refused to comply with the government’s order to “correct violations,” the state agency claimed.

The ROC has maintained that banning the UOC would be a violation of religious rights. The UN and international human rights organizations have also accused Kiev of overreach and interference with the freedom of religion.

The Ukrainian government officially supports the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was founded in 2018 but which the Russian Patriarchate considers schismatic.

The proposal Russia made to Ukraine this past June to settle the conflict included a clause calling for restrictions on the UOC to be lifted.

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European Economics > Unemployment hits ten-year high in Germany; France consigning next generation to a lifetime of debt

 

German unemployment hits ten-year high

The country’s economy is facing a third consecutive year without growth

© Getty Images / skynesher

Unemployment in Germany has risen to its highest level in a decade, official figures released on Friday show. The labor report comes as the country’s faltering economy risks contracting for a third consecutive year.

The figures show the number of unemployed individuals topping 3 million in August for the first time since 2015. The month-on-month increase came in at 46,000 to put the tally at 3.02 million in seasonally unadjusted terms, or 6.4% of the population.

Federal Employment Agency chief Andrea Nahles blamed the labor market struggles on Germany’s weak economy. The EU’s largest economy shrank by 0.2% in 2024 after contracting by 0.3% in 2023. This year, following a 0.3% expansion in the first quarter, output fell by 0.3% in Q2 as uncertainty grew over new US tariffs. The International Monetary Fund recently warned that Germany could face a third consecutive year without growth.

Germany’s economic downturn has coincided with Berlin’s decision to halt imports of low-cost Russian energy, which was vital for its industry. European gas prices rose sharply after Russian pipeline deliveries largely stopped and the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged later that year. Before the sanctions, Germany sourced 55% of its gas from Russia, but has since shifted to pricier liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from the US and Qatar.

READ MORE: EU sanctions against Russia don’t work – Bild

Moscow has denounced the Western sanctions as illegal and ineffective, arguing they have instead backfired on the countries that imposed them.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated last week that Germany is facing a “structural crisis” rather than temporary “weakness,” and said steering the economy toward growth has proven more difficult than expected. Key industries such as the automotive segment are “no longer truly competitive,” he added.

The country’s automotive sector has shed more than 51,000 jobs just in the past year alone, according to recent data.

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French PM admits debt will devastate next generation

Paris has spiraled into uncontrolled borrowing for the comfort of “boomers,” Francois Bayrou has said

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou in Paris, France, August 28, 2025. © Getty Images / Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto

France has saddled the younger generations with debts they’ll be paying off their entire lives, French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has said. Paris continuously borrows in the interest of “boomers” and “certain political parties,” he added.

On Monday, Bayrou said he urged President Emmanuel Macron to reconvene parliament by September 8 for a confidence vote to gauge support for his €43.8 billion ($50.9 billion) austerity measures plan. The prime minister has long sounded the alarm over the country’s spiraling budget deficit, which hit 5.8% of GDP last year – almost double the EU 3% ceiling.

The primary victims of the government debt will be the “youngest French people,” Bayrou said in an interview with French broadcaster TF1 on Wednesday.

“They’re the victims; they’re the ones who will have to pay the debt for the rest of their lives,” he said, adding that Paris is trying to convince them that more borrowing is needed.

READ MORE: French debt ballooning by €5,000 a second – PM

“All this for the comfort of certain political parties and for the comfort of the so-called boomers.”

His proposals to battle France’s $3.98 billion government debt have included scrapping public holidays, slashing public sector jobs, as well as welfare and pensions cuts. The program has been criticized by left-wing parties, who have accused Paris of prioritizing military spending over social welfare.

Macron has promised to increase France’s military budget to €64 billion by 2027, citing external threats. Paris has warned of a potential war scenario within the next five years, naming Russia as one of the principal threats – claims which Moscow has dismissed.

READ MORE: Macron wants ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine

Bayrou’s proposed budget has not been well received by the French public, polls suggest. While most French people agree with the prime minister’s alarmism about the national debt, 76% believe his budget will not help, and 82% see it as socially unfair, according to an Elabe survey from Tuesday.

Around 81% want a new prime minister to be elected, and 67% called for Macron’s resignation, according to Elabe’s poll. Nearly three-quarters say they want Bayrou to fail in the vote on September 8, which is to be his ninth no-confidence motion.

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ChatGPT contributing to the ever-increasing madness in the world

 

Man kills mother after ChatGPT influence – media

Former tech executive reportedly spoke with chatbot before killing his 83-year-old mother and taking his own life

© Getty Images / MTStock Studio

A former Yahoo executive who killed his elderly mother and then himself was reportedly influenced by ChatGPT, which fueled his conspiracy theories, the WSJ reported earlier this week.

Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, and his 83-year-old mother, Suzanne Eberson Adams, were found dead in Adams’ house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, on August 5.

“Erik, you’re not crazy,” the chatbot reportedly said after Soelberg claimed his mother and her friend tried to poison him by putting psychedelic drugs in his car’s air vents. Adding that “if it was done by your mother and her friend, that elevates the complexity and betrayal.”

The New York Post reported that Soelberg posted videos of his ChatGPT conversations on Instagram and YouTube in the months before the murder.

The outlet also noted that Soelberg went through a tumultuous 2018 divorce marked by alcoholism, public meltdowns, and suicide attempts. His ex-wife obtained a restraining order banning him from drinking before visiting their children.

READ MORE: ChatGPT a danger to teens – watchdog

“We will be together in another life and another place, and we’ll find a way to realign, because you’re gonna be my best friend again forever,” Soelberg reportedly said in one of his final messages to the chatbot, which he named “Bobby”.

“With you to the last breath and beyond,” ChatGPT replied.

An OpenAI spokeswoman told the WSJ that the company was “deeply saddened” by the tragedy and had contacted Greenwich police. OpenAI also pledged new safeguards to keep distressed users grounded in reality, including updates to reduce overly agreeable responses, or “sycophancy,” and improve how ChatGPT handles sensitive conversations.

Soelberg’s case is not an isolated incident of people turning to AI for emotional support. Earlier this week, a California couple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over the death of their teenage son, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged the 16-year-old to commit suicide.

Murdered Ukrainian MP directly ordered the shelling of Donbass Civilians in 2014

 

Assassinated Ukrainian MP ‘directly ordered’ 

shelling of Donbass civilians – ex-diplomat 

Andrey Parubiy helped stoke the “civil war” that eventually led to the Ukraine conflict, Andrey Telizhenko has told RT

©  RT

Andrey Parubiy, a far-right Ukrainian politician who was shot dead in Lviv on Saturday, directly ordered attacks on Donbass and provoked a “civil war” with eastern Ukraine after the Maidan coup, ex-Ukrainian diplomat Andrey Telizhenko has told RT.

Parubiy, an MP and former speaker of the Ukrainian Rada, played an active role in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, as well as in the nationalist government it brought to power. He had deep and long-running ties to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi movement, co-founding the far-right Social-National Party of Ukraine.

“During the cabinet of ministers meetings, [at] which I was present, Parubiy directly ordered the mass shellings of the people of Donbass,” Telizhenko told RT on Saturday.

“He said, ‘We do not care who those people are. Russians, they’re Moscali [a Ukrainian slur for Russians], we should kill them,’” the former diplomat, who was an adviser to Ukraine’s prosecutor general at the time, said.

That’s a direct citation from Parubiy during the cabinet of ministers meeting, in which he pushed to provoke the civil war in eastern Ukraine, which has now led to a big massive conflict.

Parubiy and his team were “working directly with the Jamestown Foundation, a former CIA central think tank in Washington, DC,” Telizhenko claimed.

This is not just a collaborator with the West. He’s a Nazi. He was directly supporting the Nazi movement in Ukraine.

According to Telizhenko, Parubiy directly coordinated the shootings during the Maidan coup.

READ MORE: Staunch neo-Nazi and Maidan kingpin assassinated: Who was prominent Ukrainian MP Andrey Parubiy?

“He was coordinating the radicals on Maidan, when to shoot, who to shoot and how to shoot, even who to shoot [among] their own” and “provoking insurgents within the coup itself,” he said. “His team was responsible for blocking the anti-sniper unit [from] coming to Maidan.”

Parubiy “also covered up the shootings” in the subsequent investigation, as well as blocking the probe into the 2014 Odessa massacre, Telizhenko said.

“He was responsible for closing down the case and destroying the evidence [of] his involvement in the coordination of that terrorist attack,” he said.

The far-right MP was reportedly responsible for organizing, arming, and transporting the militants which burned 42 anti-Maidan activists to death in the Odessa Trade Unions House.

Climate Change > Gulf Stream could begin to collapse by 2060 - The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute

 

Dutch meteorological office also predicts

early Gulf Stream collapse

The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) has joined Dutch climate researchers in warning that the Gulf Stream, a system of ocean currents crucial to global climate, could reach a tipping point and collapse much earlier than previously thought. The collapse would disrupt heat transport to the North Atlantic, producing hotter, drier summers and extremely cold winters in northwest Europe.

Previously, scientists believed the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), of which the Gulf Stream is a key component, would not fully weaken until after 2100.

KNMI’s latest research shows that in many climate models, the current already loses strength this century and could eventually stop. The risk is highest if CO2 emissions continue rising, but even with strong reductions in line with the Paris Agreement, the chance of collapse remains around 25 percent.

KNMI researcher Sybren Drijfhout said, “Recent observations in the regions where water sinks deep in the North Atlantic already show a decline over the past five to ten years. It may be a temporary dip, but it comes in line with model predictions.”

The AMOC transports warm, salty surface water from the tropics northward. In winter, this water cools near Greenland, sinks, and returns southward at depth. This “ocean conveyor belt” moderates Europe’s climate and affects global weather patterns.

Rising temperatures and increased rainfall reduce surface salinity in the North Atlantic, making water lighter and less likely to sink. “Once in motion, this process reinforces itself: the weaker the AMOC, the less salty water is transported north, the lighter the surface water, the less it sinks, and the weaker the AMOC becomes,” the study notes.

The Dutch study shows vertical water mixing in the North Atlantic could stop by mid-century — the tipping point that triggers full collapse. Once past this point, heat transport by the AMOC would drop dramatically, potentially to less than 20 percent of current levels, and in some models nearly to zero. Complete collapse could take 50 to 100 years.

Earlier research by Utrecht University similarly concluded that the Gulf Stream could reach a tipping point around 2060, much sooner than previously expected. René van Westen of Utrecht University told NOS, “What this study makes concrete is that we have a year for the start of the Gulf Stream collapse, around 2060. That is alarmingly closer than previously thought, possibly even within our lifetime.”

Van Westen emphasized that collapse is not inevitable. “Our study also shows that if you limit warming, the risk of the Gulf Stream collapsing becomes increasingly smaller. And you can even prevent it entirely, but then action must be taken.”

It would be interesting to see the effects of a weak or non-existent Gulf Stream on the Labrador Current. Would it still curve around Newfoundland and affect Nova Scotia and New England with fog and cooler temperatures? Without the Labrador Current, would hurricanes hit these coasts much harder?  Would they even hit these coasts?

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