News and Prophecy Staff

In a recent speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Secretary-General António Guterres gave the following somber warning: “We have started 2023 staring down the barrel of a confluence of challenges unlike any in our lifetimes” (The Guardian, February 6, 2023).

That is how much fentanyl was intercepted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 2022, according to a BBC article. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid designed for use as a pain killer. It is highly addictive and roughly 50 times more powerful than heroin. The DEA has called fentanyl the “deadliest drug threat facing the US.” Just two milligrams of the drug—about enough to cover the tip of a pencil—are enough to kill a person.

In 2011, while she was Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel phased out military conscription. At that time, there was no perceived need to maintain a large military force. Now, German military chiefs are calling for a return to conscription, and the current defense minister, Boris Pistorius, has called the Merkel-era phase-out “a mistake” (The Guardian, February 9, 2023).

The European Union’s long-planned alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative is about to move ahead (Politico, January 23, 2023). A planning document for the Global Gateway Project proposes 70 different international projects, some of which are set to begin in 2023. “The EU has several projects planned in China’s backyard, such as an energy transition partnership with Indonesia and a digital connectivity project in the Philippines.

The recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Syria and Turkey and subsequent aftershocks have claimed nearly 50,000 lives and wreaked vast devastation, including destroying over a quarter of a million apartments in Turkey (The Tribune, February 18, 2023). As time runs out for saving the lives of more people buried in the rubble, the death toll is expected to soar to even greater levels.