News

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.

“The number of birds in Germany and Europe has dropped significantly over the past 30 years… In Germany, one-third of all bird species have seen ‘significant population declines’ since the end of the 1990s… Birds in agricultural areas are particularly threatened, with 300 million pairs of breeding birds living around farmland across the European Union disappearing between 1980 and 2010. That’s a decrease of 57 percent” (Deutsche Welle, May 4, 2017).

Over 6.5 million asylum-seekers from the Middle East intend to enter Europe, according to a confidential German report (The Telegraph, May 25). Half of these people are waiting in Turkey. “Up to one million potential migrants were living in Egypt and in Libya and up to 720,000 in Jordan, the paper said.