The number of people trying to enter Europe without authorization has risen significantly this year to surpass migrant border crossing figures from 2019, before restrictions imposed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic severely limited travel, the European Union’s border and coast guard said Tuesday.

Frontex said in a statement that 160,000 illegal border crossings were recorded in the first 10 months of this year, up 70 percent compared to the same period in 2020 and 45 percent more than in 2019. The biggest rise was at the EU’s eastern borders, in the Balkans region and via central Mediterranean Sea crossings.

Almost 8,000 people—most of them Iraqis, Afghans and Syrians—entered through the EU’s eastern frontier; a 15-fold increase over 2020, the agency said. Crossings from Belarus hit a peak of more than 3,200 in July, but had dropped to over 600 by October.

Two waves of Japanese warplanes armed with up to 1,760-pound bombs and torpedoes. Two hours on the Sunday morning of December 7, 1941.

Much of the national news is devoted to the rollercoaster ride of the “leading economic indicators”—and whether they are moving up or down. Unemployment, inflation, recession, interest rates, bull or bear markets, stocks, housing starts, auto sales, layoffs, hires, available energy, and fuel prices are all household words dominating the news.

Five people were killed and more than 40 injured when an SUV sped through a Christmas parade in the small town of Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Sunday, plowing into dozens of people including young children.

Waukesha Police Chief Dan Thompson told reporters that one person was in custody and a vehicle had been recovered after the incident in the town of around 72,000 people, 20 miles west of Milwaukee.

Police said the number of dead and injured could change.

“You will have to sit in the back seat. Keep your head down until I tell you not to.”

With that command from our driver, I had to forfeit my position in the front seat—not easy to do when you are six feet, three inches tall. Having to crouch and keep my head down in the back of our small, cramped car did not make it any easier.

But it was a small price to pay to remain on the safe side given the area through which we were traveling. As a white man from Canada, I did everything I could to make myself less conspicuous and less of a target for theft—a difficult task given that crowds peered into the car every time we stopped amid chaotic, lane-free traffic.

It has happened! Evolutionary scientists rejoice!

An estimated 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in one year, a never-before-seen milestone that health officials say is tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and a more dangerous drug supply.

Overdose deaths have been rising for more than two decades, accelerated in the past two years and, according to new data posted Wednesday, jumped nearly 30 percent in the latest year.

President Joe Biden called it “a tragic milestone” in a statement, as administration officials pressed Congress to devote billions of dollars more to address the problem.

What if someone told you hell does not exist? Think of how it would make you feel. How you would react.

If you grew up in one of the many denominations of modern Christendom, your response would likely be, “If you don’t believe it, you’re bound to go there!” Or you would kindly agree to disagree, but one word would be at the forefront of your mind: heretic.

Eternal punishment for the wicked is a bedrock doctrine for most churches. It has been for centuries. This would be the first reason to believe in a place called hell—it has stood the test of time. It not existing can seem utterly absurd, and not even worth giving another thought.

Emergency crews were still trying to reach 18,000 people stranded on Thursday after floods and mudslides destroyed roads, houses and bridges in British Columbia in what could be the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.

Receding floodwaters helped rescue efforts, but the downpour blocked off entire towns in the Pacific Coast province and cut access to the country’s largest port in Vancouver, disrupting already strained global supply chains.

Premier John Horgan declared a state of emergency and said the death toll would rise from the one confirmed fatality. Police say four more people are missing.

“An explosion of diversity.” This is how the non-profit Council on Contemporary Families described the morphing landscape of American families. Today, unmarried parents, same-sex couples with adopted children, and homes composed of serial divorcees are increasingly as common as the traditional nuclear family of a married father and mother with kids.

These changes have truly been explosive. A report from the council stated: “At the end of the 1950s, if you chose 100 children under age 15 to represent all children, 65 would have been living in a family with married parents, with the father employed and the mother out of the labor force. Only 18 would have had married parents who were both employed. As for other types of family arrangements, you would find only one child in every 350 living with a never-married mother!”

Fifty-plus years later, the world is a markedly different place.

Reuters – More than a year and a half after the COVID-19 pandemic ruptured the U.S. job market in historic fashion, huge gaps in employment and the labor force remain despite unprecedented demand for workers and a record number of vacant jobs.

Policymakers are struggling to understand just what is keeping so many people from returning to work—or even looking for a job. Friday’s monthly payrolls report showed strong hiring in October but the labor force participation rate tracking the share of people either working or searching for jobs did not budge.

“There’s room for a whole lot of humility here as we try to think about what maximum employment would be,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said last week after the central bank’s latest policy meeting.

COVID-19 vaccines court much controversy. Yet some have an even greater worry—that coronavirus vaccines are the infamous mark of the beast mentioned in the book of Revelation: “And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads” (Rev. 13:16).

The idea here can seem to jive with coronavirus. Notice what the “mark” does: “that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark” (vs. 17). Vaccine mandates! Cannot shop without proof of inoculation! No jab, no job!

However, does this prophetic theory hold water?

Last month, the family of Mawlavi Ezzatullah, a member of Afghanistan’s Hizb-e Islami party, received a WhatsApp message from his phone: “We have slaughtered your Mawlavi Ezzat, come and collect his body.”

Ezzatullah’s killing, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, was one of a steady stream of assassinations and bombings that have undermined Taliban claims that they have brought greater security to Afghanistan after 40 years of war.

Victims have ranged from former security officials from the ousted government to journalists, civil society activists, mullahs, Taliban fighters and apparently random targets like Ezzatullah, whose family said he had no enemies they knew of.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will leave office in the coming months with her popularity intact among voters and widely admired beyond Germany as a chancellor who deftly steered her country—and Europe—through numerous crises.

Whoever replaces her will help lead the continent into a new era. Often dubbed the “Queen of Europe,” Ms. Merkel was seen abroad not just as the leader of Germany but in many ways of Europe, helping guide the European Union through a series of financial and political concerns and ensuring her country maintained a high profile on the international stage. It remains to be seen whether the next chancellor will match her global standing.

Difficulty forming a coalition after the September 2021 German federal elections means Ms. Merkel could easily surpass her former mentor, Helmut Kohl, as the longest-serving post-war chancellor.