News and Prophecy Staff

The U.S.-China trade war continues. As China’s largest trading partner, the United States hopes to pressure China into coming to the negotiating table by powerfully impacting its export market, and subsequently its entire economy. Chinese experts and even Chinese president Xi Jinping are clear that this trade war will begin to hurt China’s economy and make things difficult for the Chinese people—at least in the near term (Foreign Affairs, June 19, 2019).

The United Nation’s goal to end world hunger by 2030 is not likely to be met (Deutsche Welle, July 15, 2019). Its recent report estimated that 820 million people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger. Nearly 150 million of these hungry people are children whose growth is stunted by poor nutrition. A recent U.N.

The year-long Ebola outbreak in the Congo is getting worse, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (WHO, July 17, 2019). The WHO labeled the outbreak a “level 3” emergency—its most serious designation. According to Dr.

Can global trade occur without the blessing of the United States? A newly signed trade deal seems to support this idea (Deutsche Welle, June 29, 2019). At the recent G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, the European Union signed a “milestone trade agreement” with four South American nations—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The EU continues to work on trade deals and has already completed more than 70.

According to a study by the chemistry department at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, fish caught by commercial fishermen off the Cape “are contaminated by antibiotics, pain killers, antiretrovirals, disinfectants, and industrial chemicals” (Times Live, June 26, 2019).