News

The astonishing outcome of the United Kingdom’s June 8 General Election was the one least expected or desired: a “hung” parliament, in which no clear winner emerged. The pound slumped against the dollar and euro to its lowest levels in seven months. Several newspaper headlines proclaimed “May’s Gamble Backfires.”

Cutting-edge British research published in the prestigious journal Archives of Toxicology reveals that maternal cigarette smoking damages the livers of unborn fetuses. “Scientists found that the cocktail of chemicals in cigarettes is particularly harmful to developing liver cells… Smoking cigarettes, which contain around 7,000 chemicals, can damage foetal organs and may do lasting harm” (BBC, May 29, 2017).

Two years of fighting between warring Muslim factions has decimated this nation on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula—leading the United Nations humanitarian chief to assert that Yemen is facing a “total social, economic and institutional collapse” (BBC, May 31, 2017). Since April, a re-occurring cholera epidemic has infected 60,000 people and killed 500.

Following Donald Trump’s recent visit to Europe and his choice not to re-commit to NATO Article 5 (which states that if one member of NATO is attacked, the others will come to its support), German Chancellor Angela Merkel observed, “The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days” (EU Observer, May 29, 2017).

When tragedy strikes, sometimes it is said that you cannot fully understand the suffering “until it happens to you”—whatever “it” happens to be. On May 22, the suicide bombing of a popular concert in Manchester, England brought home that statement to the families of 23 victims killed, as well as 116 survivors and their families—tragedy has “happened to them.” Only time will tell how they will cope.