News and Prophecy Staff

The Islamic militant group ISIS that recently took over cities in northern Iraq has “declared an Islamic ‘caliphate’ [state] in an area straddling Iraq and Syria” (The Guardian, June 30, 2014). One jihadist commented in a high tech video made to promote ISIS, “This is not the first border we will break, we will break other borders” (ibid.). “Later the fighter pledges that jihadists will free Palestine. ‘We are not here to replace an Arab cahoot with a western cahoot.

“The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa is ‘totally out of control,’ according to a senior official for Doctors Without Borders, who says the medical group is stretched to the limit in responding” (Associated Press, June 20, 2014). Ebola, which causes its victims to bleed to death internally, is spread from person to person and has no cure or vaccine.

“It’s not a good sign when the leader of a G7 nation feels the need to state his country still matters. That is precisely what French President Francois Hollande did at a meeting of European Union leaders last month after his Socialist party’s humiliating defeat by the hard right National Front in European Parliament elections” (Reuters, June 13, 2014). According to one former European affairs minister, “Hollande is a devalued currency.

This Friday EU leaders will meet to appoint Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission (Telegraph, June 22, 2014). Some Europeans are strongly supportive of Mr. Juncker, while some British see him as Anglophobic because of comments he made in a 2005 speech to the European Parliament (ibid.). 

This summer is being called the “summer of destruction” by movie critics (CNN, June 10, 2014). A plethora of summer blockbuster movies boast abundant blood and violence—referred to as “destruction porn” by film critic Lewis Beale. In a recent editorial Mr. Beale chided the U.S.