News and Prophecy Staff

“Israel on Saturday froze NIS 500 million ($127 million) in Palestinian tax revenues collected on Ramallah’s behalf, in response to the Palestinian Authority [PA] filing a request to join the International Criminal Court earlier this week”—a move intended to allow the PA to prosecute Israel for war crimes (Times of Israel, January 3, 2015).

“A widening rift between Moscow and Washington over cruise missiles and increasingly daring patrols by nuclear-capable Russian submarines threatens to end an era of arms control and bring back a dangerous rivalry between the world’s two dominant nuclear arsenals. Tensions have been taken to a new level by US threats of retaliatory action for Russian development of a new cruise missile” (The Guardian, January 4, 2015). The U.S.

On Wednesday, two gunmen entered the offices of France’s most popular satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and killed twelve people including two police officers. President Hollande called this a “terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it” (The Guardian, January 7, 2015).

“For more than a year, secret talks had taken place between U.S. and Cuban officials both in Canada and at the Vatican. The Pope wrote letters to both Obama and Castro inviting them to resolve their situation through humanitarian efforts” (CNBC, December 17, 2014). “In their first-ever meeting at the Vatican in March, President  Barack Obama  and  Pope Francis  devoted a significant portion of their hour together to discussing a country thousands of miles away—Cuba—a fact that wasn’t disclosed until Wednesday.

A recent study reports, “Less than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage. This is a marked change from 1960, when 73% of children fit this description, and 1980, when 61% did” (Pew Research, December 22, 2014). “At the same time, the share of children born outside of marriage now stands at 41%, up from just 5% in 1960” (ibid.).