Globe Trot: Christian districts in Aleppo bear brunt of latest shelling

SYRIA: Barnabas Fund, with contacts among churches in Syria, particularly Aleppo, reports Christian districts in the city bearing the brunt of a week’s bombardment. At least 60 are reported dead and more than 124 injured in those areas, along with 10 apartment blocks and more than 30 houses totally destroyed.

UNITED STATES: A mostly full room awaited Donald Trump at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., today, as he gave what’s billed as his first speech on foreign policy. He began in a measured tone, although 35 minutes late, but touted a new foreign policy that “replaces randomness with purpose … and chaos with peace,” while putting U.S. interests first.

Whatever tone he strikes, however much he quotes Ronald Reagan, it remains hard to take seriously a candidate who this week also called his nearest rival “a pain in the ass.”

IRAN is threatening to take the United States to the International Criminal Court over a U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring almost $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets be turned over to U.S. families of those killed in terror attacks blamed on Tehran. Suddenly enamored of global governance, the ayatollahs are running into old-fashioned state sovereignty.

PHILANTHROPY: A businessman’s way of thinking about giving may be a good thing, but it has little to do with the Christian tradition of charity, and less with the theology of almsgiving.