By age 14, Rosario ‘Chayo’ Perez was stealing pickup trucks from Tucson and bringing them across the border, where mafiosos paid him $1,000 each. When Chayo was 16, his best friend was murdered at his house on Christmas Day. ‘Life was such a haze,’ he recalls. He reached a point where he was living like an animal – just partying, drinking, using drugs and fighting. Then his older brother got saved at a church that street-preached and started to witness to him but he asked to be left alone. Then one day his brother said, ‘OK, I’ll leave you alone, but first let me pray for you. If nothing happens, I’ll leave you alone.’ Chao said, ‘I put my beer down. He prayed for me, and the Holy Ghost came down. I started weeping. My friends were freaking out because I was weeping. It was something supernatural. Even to this day, I can’t explain it.’
Teen idol Justin Bieber has made headlines for his hard-partying lifestyle and run-ins with the law in several countries, including a January 2014 arrest for allegedly racing a Lamborghini through Miami. He announced in January on his Facebook page that he wanted to leave behind his ‘arrogant and conceited’ behaviour. Bieber arrived in Sydney on Monday to attend a week-long gathering at a Hillsong pentecostal church, in an attempt to discard his hard-partying image. ‘Justin is here, like tens of thousands of others, as a delegate who is seeking to build stronger foundations into his life,’ Hillsong Church said in a statement. Music is central to Hillsong's form of worship but the Canadian singer is unlikely to perform any of Hillsong's faith-based songs, according to the church. Last year, Hillsong's conference in Sydney attracted around 20,000 followers from more than 60 countries.
The illegal dumping of domestic and sometimes even hazardous industrial waste by the mafia has long been a problem in Italy. Now it has emerged that the trafficking of rubbish has spread across Europe, with garbage transported from Italy to countries including Germany and Sweden. It is a dirty business, but a hugely profitable one for the crime gangs. The price may be even higher for some, as the clandestine disposal of dangerous substances is being linked with rising cancer rates and birth defects in the areas affected. People are asking what is being done to deal with this toxic time bomb. Why are investigators and prosecutors not bringing the guilty to justice? How are the gangs’ activities spreading across Europe and what more could politicians at a national and European level be doing? These issues were discussed with a panel of experts from Eurojust, the European Union’s prosecutorial agency this week.
A 24-year-old Belgian woman has been told she qualifies for euthanasia because she suffers from ‘suicidal thoughts’. The anonymous woman says that she has wanted to die since her childhood and spoke about her decision in an interview with a Belgian newspaper. She has been a patient in a psychiatric institution since she was 21 but feels that the treatment did not help, saying, ‘Death does not feel to me as a choice. If I had a choice, I would choose a bearable life, but I have done everything and that did not work.’ Last year, a Dutch academic who supported legalising euthanasia in the Netherlands, warned of rising numbers of patients with psychiatric illnesses or dementia being euthanised. He said, ‘Cases have been reported in which a large part of the suffering of those given euthanasia were aged, lonely or bereaved. These patients could have lived for years or decades’. At Westminster, Labour MP Rob Marris is set to introduce an assisted suicide bill in the coming weeks (see article 2 in British Isles section).
Prime Minister David Cameron is in uncharted territory as he lays out UK demands. The United Kingdom is staging a plebiscite on whether to stay in. If you do not give me what I need, Cameron implicitly states, then the EU’s third biggest country may quit. Many in the EU elite are bemused that the question of Europe played no role at all in the UK general election campaign, but became the number one issue on 8 May. Leaders and officials said repeatedly, with some relief, that once Cameron had won his second term they would learn the details of Britain’s aims and hopes. In vain. Cameron is being advised to remain vague’ The months ahead will be dominated by ‘technical’ and legal discussions between the lawyers, eurocrats and Downing Street aides. Senior sources in Brussels reported, ‘during the recent round of bilaterals, Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, told an EU colleague that the City question was the most important in the negotiations. He demanded a British veto over Eurozone and European Central Bank decisions and regulations that affect the City’.
Ukraine: Franklin Graham preaching in Ukraine
01 Jul 2015
Ukraine has been in the spotlight for political tension and unrest, but 1,200 churches from six regions came together to share hope with their country on the 20th and 21st June in a football stadium in the city of Lviv. ‘We have a lot of prayer going on in that city,’ said Russian-born Viktor Hamm, vice president of Crusades for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). Hamm has visited Ukraine several times in past months to prepare for the ‘Festival of Hope with Franklin Graham’. For months now, people across Ukraine have been praying for this Festival every day at 10 p.m. Prayer time ramped up the weekend before the event with churches praying around the clock for the whole week prior to the Festival. And with 1,200 churches involved, that's a lot of people. This isn't just a one-time deal that happens before people start packing up and going about business as usual. Locals, along with teams from Samaritan's Purse, have worked hard for months to serve the community.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has taken a swipe at Switzerland for providing only limited information about wealthy tax evaders from cash-strapped Greece who are believed to have stashed billions of euros in Swiss banks. ‘Sometimes we know that someone has taken money away from Greece,’ he said ‘But we do not know in what city or which bank it is located in Switzerland.’ The finance minister, a key player in the Greek government as it struggles to reach an agreement with the European Union to finance its debt, said it was impossible to obtain such information from Swiss authorities. ‘We know too little to be able to locate the black money.’ But Varoufakis said the Greek government is working on a plan to allow tax evaders to voluntarily disclose their situation and invest their assets in Greece while paying a penalty of around 22 percent.
Princess Madeleine of Sweden has given birth to a baby boy just two days after the wedding of her brother Prince Carl Philip and Sofia Hellqvist. The Swedish Royal Court announced the birth in a press release, saying that the new prince was born at Stockholm’s Danderyd Hospital at 13:45 on Monday 15 June 2015. Spokesperson Svante Lindqvist added that both the princess and her son were doing well. Head midwife Anna Stahl said later that the delivery was without complications but, although it was a normal birth, it felt special. The baby boy is now sixth in line to the Scandinavian country’s throne and Madeleine and US financier husband Chris O’Neill’s second child after the birth of Princess Leonore in New York last year. It was a busy few days for the Swedish royals, with Prince Carl Philip and Sofia Hellqvist tying the knot in a plush ceremony on Saturday.