This Week: Five Events You Need to Know (June 11)
British Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election to strengthen her political position. That call backfired on June 8. On Monday, several Sunni Arab states cut off relations with Qatar and sharpened an important dividing line in the Middle East.
Here are the five most important news stories this week, as well as relevant links to the full articles and videos here on theTrumpet.com.
UK election chaos: What next?
On April 18, British Prime Minister Theresa May called for snap elections to increase her mandate to negotiate Brexit and boost Conservatives’ control of the government.
She failed to do that on election day, June 8; May’s party remains the largest in the British Parliament, but it lost its effective majority and will now have to form an unstable, minority government with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party.
Brexit negotiations, which were already tough, will now become torturous.
Where does Britain go from here?
Sunni states cut off relations with Qatar
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt severed relations with Qatar on June 5 and threatened to fracture a 36-year Gulf state union.
Qatar’s alleged transgression is funding terror and sidling up to the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism: Iran .
Germany to station troops in Jordan
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced June 5 that the German government plans to relocate its troops at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base to a base in Jordan.
The planned move has been necessitated by an increasingly deteriorating diplomatic row between Germany and Turkey. It will not require an additional mandate from the German parliament, and it is scheduled to be completed within three months.
Six German Tornado jets, a refueling plane and 270 military personnel currently at Incirlik may soon relocate to the heart of the Middle East and provide the Germans with tremendous strategic advantage.
Shanghai security bloc now covers nearly half of humanity
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sco)—a Beijing-dominated security alliance of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—formally accepted India and Pakistan into its ranks during its summit on June 8 and 9. It now includes nearly half of humanity’s total population.
The sco is part of the many blocs positioned as alternatives to America’s dominance.
The insidious $400 trillion threat to the world economy
In May, the World Economic Forum released a report that looked at government-provided retirement plans, public employee pensions, private employee pensions, and individual savings from eight countries with the largest established pension systems or populations and added up the shortfalls for 2015.
The report’s estimated retirement savings gap was $70 trillion. Projected toward 2050, the estimated gap came to $400 trillion, a nearly half-quadrillion-dollar shortfall that reveals a dangerous governmental addiction to debt .
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