Here are five of the most important news stories this week, as well as relevant links to the full articles and videos here on theTrumpet.com.

Santa Fe School Shooting: 133rd Mass Shooting of 2018

Armed with a shotgun and a pistol owned by his father and wearing a T-shirt that read “Born to Kill,” 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis opened fire at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 18, killing 10 people and wounding 13. It was the fourth-deadliest mass shooting ever in an American public school and the 133rd mass shooting in the U.S. in 2018.

One member of the Santa Fe community, Robert Ross, told the New York Times that the reason why these things happen is “Satan’s right there.” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry expounded more on the reasons for these attacks in his article “Why School Violence.”

Political Violence Is Rising

“If there’s one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it’s that the nation’s politicians are in more danger of political violence these days,” reported Rasmussen last year. The report estimates that 76 percent of possible U.S. voters believe political violence is growing worse.

Violent crime across the nation rose in 2016 for the second consecutive year, according to the latest figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While it is hard to measure how much of this crime was politically motivated, at least 30 Republican Party congressmen were attacked or threatened last year. This year is proving to be just as bad, if not worse.

Middle East Leaders Call for International Peacekeeping Force

Almost seven weeks of Hamas-orchestrated relentless rioting at the Israeli-Gaza border culminated on May 14, the deadliest day Gaza has seen since the 2014 Gaza War. Arab leaders are now calling on the United Nations Security Council to install an international peacekeeping force on the border—not to defend Israel from Hamas, but to protect Hamas from Israel.

Kuwait, which currently holds the office of the rotating Arab representative to the United Nations Security Council, presented a draft resolution to the council on May 17 to provide “international protection to the Palestinian people.”

Though the resolution is unlikely to pass, the call for an international peacekeeping force to monitor the borders between Israelis and Palestinians does have prophetic significance. The Bible prophesies that in the future, Israelis will actually welcome a certain peacekeeping force to maintain peace between themselves and the Palestinians.

America’s Defense Spending: Not as Great as It Looks

According to numbers crunched by Breaking Defense, America’s military budget is far less impressive than it appears: If the numbers exclude what the U.S. pays its military personnel, they reveal that some of America’s enemies actually spend more than the U.S. on weapons systems, research and development, modernization and training.

Remarkably, the Bible prophesied such a troubling state of affairs: A nation that looks good and secure on the surface but is decrepit and vulnerable when you look deeper.

China’s High-tech Arsenal

The People’s Liberation Army of China is developing high-tech weapons designed to defeat the United States in a future conflict, according to a congressional commission report released on May 12. Antisatellite missiles, attack drones, high-speed rail guns, hypersonic missiles, killer satellites, lasers and other advanced arms are being developed in this bid for military dominance.

While space warfare is currently China’s highest priority, many weapons are also being designed to give it military control over the world’s oceans. And while it may not seem like these weapons pose much of a threat to the U.S. homeland, they do give the Chinese Navy tremendous power over shipping lanes and maritime choke points in the Indo-Pacific Region. They are weapons for a prophesied trade war.

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