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All eyes are on the heart of Europe as the streets of major cities run red with the blood of mass shooting and suicide bombing victims in crowded public places. Islamic extremists bent on bringing down their host countries as they strive to expand the Caliphate, their idea of a world ruling government, have wrought death and terrible injuries. Police and civil authorities swarm the sites of these atrocities looking for clues, while medical facilities are strained to the limit dealing with the horrible injuries caused by shrapnel-loaded bombs.

In a recent article in the EU Observer, Professor Michael Smith commented on  European finger-pointing in the wake of the Brussels bombings: “The inevitable result of this confusion of naming and shaming, wishful thinking, and piecemeal intergovernmental cooperation is the Europe we have today, where all the major recent crises—the eurozone, refugees, and now terrorism—stem from the same problem: profound disagreement among EU member states, particularly the ‘big three,’ about the future of Europe

A recent study led by Professor Jean M. Twenge, author of Generation Me, looked at the changes in religious beliefs and practices of nearly 60,000 people between 1972 and 2014. “The results of the new study are striking, concluding that five times more Americans prayed in the early 1980s than in 2014 while nearly twice as many Americans believed in God in the 1980s than... do now” (Meta Science News, March 21, 2016).

Elizabethkingia, “the mysterious infection that might be behind 17 deaths in Wisconsin has spread to a second state… The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) confirmed Thursday that an older adult from the western part of the state has died after contracting the obscure blood infection, which has sickened more than 50 in Wisconsin.

A former Russian foreign minister recently warned, “The East-West standoff over the Ukraine crisis has brought the threat of nuclear war in Europe closer than at any time since the 1980s” (Reuters, March 19, 2016). “Igor Ivanov, Russia’s foreign minister from 1998 to 2004 and now head of a Moscow-based think-tank founded by the Russian government” also stated, “We have less nuclear warheads, but the risk of them being used is growing’” (ibid.).