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Highlights:
Fatherlessness and its connection with crime
As American’s celebrate Father’s Day, statistics on fatherlessness leave people with less and less to celebrate.“If it were classified as a disease,” assessed Fathers.com, “fatherlessness would be an epidemic worthy of attention as a national emergency.”The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 24.7 million children in the United States live without their biological father. That number is staggering and terrifying because, as columnist Phyllis Schlafly wrote June 15, 2005, “Most of our social problems are caused by kids who grow up in homes without their own fathers: drug abuse, illicit sexual activity, unwed pregnancies, youth suicide, high school dropouts, runaways and crime.”China intensifies its soft-power push
Spending billions in order to fund Mandarin lessons and promote its local culture abroad is not new to China. What is, is doing so to promote its brazen territorial claims at sea.“Beijing’s bid to burnish its image as a global power is finding a receptive audience among cash-strapped Western media—even if they do not always realize the nature of the deal being struck,” Financial Times reported on June 9. Its public relations campaign spends $10 billion every year—15 times more than what the U.S. spends.The fruits from the campaign may take time to mature, but as China’s most famous philosopher, Confucius, said, “It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.”Eritrea’s fight with Ethiopia
Recent cross-border skirmishes between Ethiopia and Eritrea became the “worst clashes since the end of a 1998–2000 border war,” according to Agence France-Presse.Here’s the significance: Despite its poverty-stricken state, Eritrea holds something so valuable that it can affect global trade: a 672-mile stretch of prime Red Sea coastline. And Iran wants to control it to increase its dominance of the Middle East.Syria and Hezbollah: Drifting apart?
One of the Syrian government’s biggest helpers during its five-year civil war has been Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah. But things might be changing.
Jerusalem Post reported on skirmishes between the President Bashar Assad’s regime and Hezbollah regarding war strategies against the Islamic State.Assad’s loss of Hezbollah (and Iran, by extension) could speedily spell his demise—a demise Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry forecast in his article “How the Syrian Crisis Will End.”Russia’s hypersonic weapon
Russia is developing long-range, hypersonic, ultra-maneuverable, untrackable gliders that will penetrate and survive a wide range of missile defense systems.If Russia can deliver nuclear warheads through American missile defenses, it would represent a significant game change in the global balance of power.Other news:
In its effort to uphold President Assad’s government in Syria, Iran is stepping up its recruitment of mercenaries from Afghanistan and from among Afghan refugees in Iran.Liberal U.S. gun-control advocates focused on the lethal nature of the gun used in last weekend’s Orlando massacre, but noticeably refrained from focusing on the lethal nature of shooter Omar Mir Seddique Mateen’s ideology: radical Islam.Get more details on these stories and more by subscribing to the Trumpet Weekly!
