USA - President Barack Obama is looking for new ways to act “administratively, unilaterally using his executive authority” to enact new gun control legislation, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said during a press conference Tuesday. The official was responding to a journalist’s questions about the President’s reaction to news of a shooting that occurred at an Oregon high school. Two people were killed, including the shooter. While the President is looking for ways to implement his gun control agenda unilaterally, Earnest stressed that the Administration would also like to see legislative action to increase gun control. “The President’s goal is to look for opportunities to act administratively, unilaterally using his executive authority to try to make our communities safer,” Earnest said.

ISRAEL - On June 4th, 2014 the holiday of Shavuot, Jews were forbidden by police from ascending the Temple Mount. Muslims on the Temple Mount had threatened violence should Jews ascend the Mount. On June 5th, Jews were permitted to return to the Temple Mount. Instead of throwing stones, Muslims were playing soccer on the sacred ground of the Temple Mount. Playing soccer on the Temple Mount is strictly forbidden by law… yet the police don't enforce the law. Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is guaranteed by Israeli law... yet the police don't allow it.

Time to stop playing games.

Time to ensure the right to pray.

Time to enforce the law on the Temple Mount.

ISRAEL - If the Jewish Temple is ever to be rebuilt in Jerusalem, the massive curtain – 66 feet high by 33 feet wide and 2 inches thick – that once hung in the Second Temple and was consumed by fire in AD 70, will need to be recreated. That task is already underway in the Jewish community of Shiloh, located in biblical Samaria about 40 minutes north of Jerusalem, reports Israel Today. For more than two years women from the community have been working to assemble the materials and learn the techniques needed to weave the veil that will hang between, and separate, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. The veil project mirrors another that has been underway for four years, recreating the priestly garments needed for Temple worship. Some Jews who claim priestly lineage have already purchased the special clothing. The weavers of the veil see their work as a “holy activity” that hastens the time of Israel’s redemption.

USA - The sun has had three major solar flares on its surface in the past two days that have affected communications on Earth and could send a shockwave through Earth this Friday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The “solar events” caused brief blackouts in high frequency communications when they struck, twice on Tuesday morning and once this morning, all between the hours of 7 am and 9 am EDT. Solar flares are bursts of radiation on the sun’s surface. The disturbance to Earth’s atmosphere can disrupt GPS and communications signals, according to NASA. One of the flares created a “coronal mass ejection” that actually could come into contact with Earth on Friday, according to NOAA. The ejection is essentially a huge cloud of plasma that could hit the Earth and cause a shock wave, affecting communications systems.

USA - The extinct influenza virus that caused the worst flu pandemic in history has been recreated from fragments of avian flu found in wild ducks in a controversial experiment to show how easy it would be for the deadly flu strain to re-emerge today. Scientists said the study involved infecting laboratory ferrets with close copies of the 1918 virus – which was responsible for the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people – to see how easy it can be transmitted in the best animal model of the human disease. But other researchers have denounced the research as foolhardy and dangerous. Critics said that any benefits of the attempts to recreate 1918-like flu viruses from existing avian flu strains do not justify the catastrophic risks if such a genetically engineered virus were to escape either deliberately or accidentally from the laboratory and cause a deadly influenza pandemic.

IRAQ - As many as 500,000 people have been forced to flee Iraq's second city of Mosul after Islamist militants effectively took control of it. Troops were among those fleeing as hundreds of jihadists from the ISIS group overran the city and much of the surrounding province of Nineveh. Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki responded by asking parliament to declare a state of emergency to grant him greater powers.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has warned David Cameron not to "threaten" her over the appointment of an arch-federalist as President of the European Commission. Mr Cameron has warned that the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker could make Britain more likely to leave the European Union in a referendum in 2017. Mrs Merkel said that "threats" went against the "European spirit" and she gave her public support for Mr Juncker, the former President of Luxembourg. Mr Cameron said that if Europe fails to heed his calls to reform it will be "unhelpful" ahead of his pledged referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union in 2017. He believes that the appointment of Mr Juncker, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, will damage his attempts to convince the British public that Europe should stay in the EU.

EUROPE - Euro-federalists have long dreamed of a united Europe. The Second World War provided them with the rhetorical justification: without continental federalism, racist totalitarianism and war are inevitable. They wish to transform the old continent into the United States of Europe, and the fact that this is an exclusively elite, top-down project without any basis in Europe’s millennia-old history is irrelevant. Indeed while most of Europe’s political establishment and intelligentsia is federalist, no one dares to tell their electorates to forego their respective national symbols.

IRAQ - The insurgent fighters who routed the Iraqi army out of Mosul on Tuesday did not just capture much of Iraq’s second-largest city. They also gained a windfall of arms, munitions and equipment abandoned by the soldiers as they fled — arms that were supplied by the United States and intended to give the troops an edge over the insurgents. The problem is not a new one, but it looms larger now that the United States is shifting its counterterrorism strategy away from using American armed forces directly, and toward relying on allied or indigenous troops and security forces supplied and trained by the United States. President Obama proposed last week that a $5 billion fund be set up to finance such efforts. The militants who swept into control of Mosul on Tuesday are believed to be connected to the main Islamist militant group fighting in Syria.

UK - Proposals to extend the use of Statin drugs should be scrapped, a group of leading doctors and academics says. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published draft guidance in February calling for their use to be extended to save more lives. It could mean another five million people in England and Wales using them on top of seven million who already do. But in a letter to NICE and ministers, the experts expressed concern about the medicalisation of healthy people. The letter said the draft advice was overly reliant on industry-sponsored trials, which "grossly underestimate adverse effects". The NHS currently spends about £450 million a year on Statins.

USA – Driven by surging obesity, an aging population and doubly high risks among blacks and Latinos, the American epidemic of diabetes has leaped to historic heights in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Diabetes mellitus now afflicts 29 million Americans - 9.3% of the nation's population. And 1 in 4 don't know they have the disease, which is thought to increase the risk of heart attack or stroke as much as fourfold. Releasing a welter of new statistics on the disease, the agency said an additional 86 million American adults - nearly 1 in 3 - has prediabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are abnormally elevated but below the criteria for diagnosing diabetes.

USA - A US Border Patrol agent stationed in South Texas has reached out to Infowars in a desperate plea for help, stating more than half of immigrants crossing the border end up doing so successfully and that many of those are the most criminal types. “As a Border Patrol Agent, I can tell you as an eye witness that we are currently losing more than we are catching,” the agent claims, whose name has been withheld to protect him from retaliation. Labeling efforts to secure the border an “ongoing crisis,” the agent points to numerous issues further adding to the fruitless task, including a lack of staffing, a lack of support from the American people and the Obama administration’s refusal to acknowledge the crisis. Patrolling the Rio Grande Valley sector, the United States’ southernmost border with Mexico and its most porous, the agent says immigrants who evade capture are typically the most violent.

ISRAEL - Israel’s parliament has elected Reuven Rivlin, an ardent Jewish nationalist with a reputation as a staunch democrat, as the country’s next president, replacing Shimon Peres, the internationally respected statesman who in recent years provided a dovish foil to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Rivlin, 74, is seen as being independent of Mr Netanyahu. They have a long-standing feud and the Prime Minister sought to thwart his candidacy until he realised he was too popular to stop. While Mr Netanyahu pays lip service to a two-state compromise with the Palestinians, Mr Rivlin unabashedly opposes it. Like Mr Netanyahu he is a firm backer of the illegal Israeli settlement drive in the occupied West Bank.

USA - Thousands of federal government employees are armed with handguns and even semiautomatic and automatic weapons as part of their jobs for agencies that are not traditional law enforcement operations. These gun-toting civil servants include those performing missions that involve Social Security, delivering the mail, predicting the weather, and overseeing railroad pensions. Others authorized to carry firearms conduct audits for the US Department of Agriculture. The Social Security Administration has sought to purchase 174,000 rounds of hollow-point bullets, while at least nine agencies have their own SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Labor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

VENEZUELA - 2013 was a good year for Goldman Sachs investments in Emerging Markets, most notably Venezuelan bonds (as they bet on socialism and won). A year later and Goldman's EM debt portfolio is still loaded with Venezuelan bonds… and the arrears are mounting. As Bloomberg reports, at a time when Venezuela’s record $25 billion in arrears to importers has its citizens waiting hours in line to buy drinking water and crossing borders in search of medicine, President Nicolas Maduro is using the nation’s dwindling supply of dollars to enrich bondholders. Of course, it's not just the government debt but state-owned entities that need the USD and are getting priority over the thirsty population…