USA - A new anti-Facebook blog, giving small and mid-sized publishers a place to vent their frustrations over the tech giant's censorship policies and algorithms hiding their content, has gone live despite legal threats. FacebookZoo, hosted on niche publishing platform Maven, went live on Tuesday. It aims to give disgruntled publishers an avenue to criticize the company's censorship policy, as well as outline how its "ever-changing algorithms" have drastically affected their livelihoods in favor of shareholder profit.

USA - A right-wing pundit’s YouTube page is on the verge of a total ban after he racked up two “strikes” for violating community standards, likely the result of leftist targeting. “Almost immediately after returning from a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand, and after getting my final all-clear cancer checkup, the YouTube strikes against Freedomain Radio – the world’s most popular philosophy show – began,” he wrote. “Apparently, I had “violated community standards” by publishing a short video last year entitled “The Death of White Males,” which discussed the decline in life expectancy for white males, in part due to the opioid crisis,” he continued. He received another strike for a video he did with British right-wing firebrand Katie Hopkins. Molyneux is the latest victim of a series of social media attacks by leftists against anyone who is politically right of Stalin.

USA - There are many broken things about the US health care system. But one of the biggest and most overlooked problems is that patients still find it too hard to share their medical information between doctors, especially those working in different hospitals.

It’s a huge problem for many reasons: It makes it harder for consumers to access the highest-quality care, and new patients who walk into a hospital are like strangers — care-givers won’t know if they have an allergy or a chronic disease.

CHINA - Shunning all false modesty, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls his idea the “project of the century”. The country’s fawning media hail it as a gift of “Chinese wisdom” to the world’s development. As for the real meaning of the clumsy metaphor to describe it — the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — debate rages.

EUROPE - The “ice age” against Moscow must be ended, the chairperson of Germany's Die Linke (Left Party) has stated, adding that sanctions against Russia hurt European companies. Speaking to Germany's Osnabrucker Zeitung newspaper on Saturday, Sahra Wagenknecht said the ice age in relation to Russia has to be ended. “It is in Europe's interest to come together and talk about how we can achieve security and disarmament," she said, noting that European sanctions against Moscow “primarily harm European and German companies.”

TURKEY - "The European establishment is looking the other way, while the Turks are slowly increasing their foothold in Europe. The EU prefers to mock Putin rather than confront Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP. Meanwhile the Turkish state and especially its ministry of religious affairs uses the Turkish diaspora in Europe to acquire political power on the continent. There is no separation between state and religion in Turkey. The religious organization Diyanet that operates under the Turkish ministry of religious affairs has about 2000 outposts in Europe. The Gefira team located about 1300 of them, mostly mosques. There is no other political or religious organization in Europe with leaders from outside it that has such a widespread network across the European Union, and whose ideology is alien to the native Europeans."

ISRAEL - More than 200 Orthodox rabbis publish a letter describing members of the LGBTQ community as “perverts” engaged in “aggressive terrorism.” Close to 100 Orthodox rabbis respond with a letter calling their “LGBTQ brothers and sisters” a “precious group of people” deserving of love and respect.

GERMANY - When a little-known online payments firm from a small German town called Aschheim overtakes Deutsche Bank in stock market value, people tend to take notice. What makes Wirecard tick? It's as valuable as it is inconspicuous. This week, a little-known Bavarian payment processing company called Wirecard overtook Deutsche Bank to become Germany's most valuable financial services firm on the stock market. While traditional money houses like Deutsche battle to stay relevant in the smartphone age, Wirecard has already established itself as a serious player. The company provides software for online payments, contactless payments and fraud prevention systems and the German fintech success story is close to knocking Commerzbank out of the DAX index.

USA - Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill passed by the state legislature in March that would require all Florida public schools to include a display with the motto “In God We Trust” in visible places on school property. The legislation is set to go into effect this week, the New York Post reported. The law states that “each district school board” is required to display the motto in every school building and school board office in the district. “This motto is inscribed on the halls of this great capitol and inked on our currency, and it should be displayed so that our children will be exposed and educated on this great motto, which is a part of this country’s foundation,” Florida State Representative Kimberly Daniels (Democrat for Jacksonville) said as she pushed for the bill on the House Floor this year. “Something so great should not be hidden.”

USA - A hearty bowl of oatmeal is a healthy way to start your day, but according to a new study, that bowl of oatmeal can contain dangerous levels of glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical linked to cancer. The study, carried out by the non-profit Environmental Working Group, found that 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals tested in three locations in the US contained traces of glyphosate. 31 of these contained dangerously high levels of the chemical. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, a weedkiller manufactured by Monsanto. Roundup is the most popular weedkiller in the US, and last week a court in California ordered the company to pay $39 million in compensation and $250 million in punitive damages to a school groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of using Roundup at work.

USA - WUSA9.com ran this headline on June 1: “Candidate for Congress wants to legalize incest.” Yes, “Nathan Larson, an accountant who lives in Fauquier County [Virginia], thinks it’s okay for adults to have sex with children. A survivor of child sex abuse says Larson is a predator who should be locked up — not elected to high office.” To make things even worse, he also “bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife.” Yet this man is running for public office? He’s not ashamed of his attractions and proclivities? My counsel to each of you is simple. Stay outraged. Stay revulsed. Stay shocked.

USA - Vermont Democrats made history Tuesday by nominating Christine Hallquist as the first transgender individual to be a major party candidate for governor. "I'm going to tell you why we're going to win in November," said Hallquist, holding a clipboard as she addressed a cheering crowd of supporters at the Skinny Pancake restaurant in Burlington. "Because nothing is impossible when you're on the side of justice." Her historic campaign has attracted nationwide attention and support, but Hallquist still faces a challenging path as she seeks to defeat a sitting Vermont governor for the first time in more than half a century.

USA - We haven’t seen emerging market currencies crash like this in over a decade, and analysts are warning that if this continues we could witness a devastating global debt crisis.  Over the past decade, there has been an insatiable appetite for cheap loans in emerging market economies, and a very substantial percentage of those loans were denominated in US dollars. 

GERMANY - Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office says she plans weekend talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany on issues including the development of a contentious Baltic Sea natural gas pipeline. Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday the two leaders will meet Saturday at the German government’s guest house outside Berlin. The Nord Stream 2 project will add to an existing direct Russian-German pipeline, increasing the amount of natural gas Russia can send to central Europe skirting transit countries to Germany’s east. Several eastern European countries object to the plan, which the United States also opposes. Seibert says Germany’s position is it’s “important Ukraine retains a role as a transit country” for Russian gas. The leaders will also discuss ending the Syrian conflict, the situation in eastern Ukraine and bilateral topics.

MIDDLE EAST - The chances that the Trump administration will win Palestinian support for its much-awaited peace proposal should not be dismissed, the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner, Dovid Efune, said during a recent appearance on i24 News. In an interview on the “Stateside” program, Efune said that the administration’s approach — led by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser — was based on “the massacre of sacred cows.” “One of those is the idea that peace runs through the [Palestinian] leadership,” Efune observed, going on to argue that many Palestinians — frustrated from decades of unresolved conflict under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas – might now embrace an alternative leadership focused on education, development and trade instead.