USA - On Monday, US News & World Report (USNWR) became the latest corporate media outlet to run a seasonal story saying climate change is making life harder for allergy sufferers. This is likely true, but the story lacks balance and context. The USNWR’s story ignores the more important point that the allergy season is longer because the planet is greening. Earlier springs and expanded areas of more verdant plant growth is good for the Earth’s human, animal, and insect populations.

GERMANY - The German Bundeswehr will send fighter planes to combat exercises in the Asian-Pacific realm. This was confirmed by the Air Force on the occasion of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Japan. According to the statement, six German Eurofighters will be dispatched to Australia to participate in a maneuver and from there make a short visit in Japan. Scholz’s visit serves the purpose of expanding German-Japanese cooperation, in view of the intensification of the West’s power struggle with China. On the one hand, the German government seeks to expand German-Japanese business relations, to relativize the significance of the People's Republic of China for German industry, given the fact that Japan is considered an integral part of the western alliance and “conflict-proof” – unlike the case of China, western sanctions against Japan are out of the question. On the other hand, Berlin is seeking closer cooperation in foreign and military policy. For this purpose, in November 2021, the German frigate Bayern made a stopover in Yokohama at the entrance of Tokyo Bay. Germany’s military presence in Japan is beginning to normalize.

FRANCE - “Is the Muslim vote decisive?”, the Algerian writer Kamel Daoud asked himself in the French weekly Le Point. Yes, judging by Macron's victory (85 per cent of Muslims voted for him) and seeing what had happened the week before the second round vote. Speaking with The New York Times, Éric Coquerel, an MP from Mélenchon's party who won 69 percent of the Islamic vote in the first round, said Muslim voters would benefit Macron. For Julien Talpin, sociologist at the National Center for Scientific Research, the mobilization of Muslims is "something completely new". On Friday, the Grand Mosque of Paris organized a dinner after Ramadan, the iftar, for Macron's re-election. “How can a president who never wishes a Merry Christmas to the French people, in this country of Christian origins, go to the great mosque in Paris for the end of the Ramadan fast?”, some users wondered. No bishop could have said to the faithful about him "vote for him", it would have been considered an "interference". But the Islamic vote now dominates France.

USA - Joe and Jill Biden on Wednesday hosted the Council of Chief State School Officers’ 2022 National and State Teachers of the Year in the East Room of the White House. Then Biden told the room of teachers that the children they are teaching are “not somebody else’s children.” Biden just blurted it out and said the quiet part out loud. “They’re not somebody else’s children. They’re yours when you’re in the classroom,” Biden said.

[Reader comment] “Joe Biden says to teachers about their students ‘they are not somebody else's children. They're yours when you're in the classroom.’ No, Joe, they are not ‘somebody else's children.’ They are OUR children.”

RUSSIA - 2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine. The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored. Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government. The shelling of the Donbass, which claimed 14,000 lives, has continued for 8 years despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine - backed by the US - refused to implement. On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.

USA - It’s beginning to look like some bad actors are deliberately taking steps to guarantee a coming global food crisis. Every measure that the Biden Administration strategists have been making to “control energy inflation” is damaging the supply or inflating the price of natural gas, oil and coal to the global economy. This is having a huge impact on fertilizer prices and food production. That began well before Ukraine. Now reports are circulating that Biden’s people have intervened to block the freight rail shipping of fertilizer at the most critical time for spring planting. By this autumn the effects will be explosive. These deliberate Washington actions are taking place at a time a global series of food disasters create the worst food supply situation in decades, perhaps since the World War II end.

USA - “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” This famous quote by Henry Kissinger is ringing more and more true by the week. The globalists already control the majority of the money, are moving ever so swiftly to convert the energy system over into systems they are all invested in, and have been taking drastic measures to control the food industry while running much of it under the radar.

CANADA - The Toronto Zoo absurdly claimed that animals under its care are “voluntarily” getting injected with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine, implying that zoo animals are granting informed consent to be injected with experimental injections that come with the risk of serious side effects or death. Toronto Zoo CEO Dolf DeJong told Canadian news outlet CP24: “These are voluntary inoculations. The animals choose to come over and interact with the animal care staff, and then are delivered the vaccine. Some days, they participate; some days, they don’t.” He added that the zoo will keep working until all its 120 animals are vaccinated. While animals in the Toronto Zoo can choose to walk away from vaccination, human workers in the capital of Canada’s Ontario province are not afforded the same privilege. The Toronto Sun reported in January that 461 city workers were fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate.

RUSSIA - A nuclear world war is now a "real" danger as British and NATO weapons are already "legitimate" targets in Ukraine, Russia's foreign minister has warned. In a chilling message, Sergei Lavrov said the risk of World War 3 is now "considerable" - saying the West is essentially fighting a proxy war against Moscow via its support for Kyiv. Lavrov accused NATO forces of "pouring oil on the fire" by "pumping weapons into Ukraine". In an interview with Russian news agencies, he said: "This is our key position on which we base everything." The risks now are considerable. But it is feared doing anything more could spark open war with Moscow - something which could easily spiral into a nuclear exchange. And with this danger hanging over the region, the world is sitting on the edge - with international tensions at highest point since the Cold War.

USA - What we have witnessed so far is just the beginning of the story. The global response to the COVID pandemic during 2020 and 2021 created the most epic supply chain crisis in modern times, and now “black swan events” such as the war in Ukraine and the bird flu pandemic are making that supply chain crisis even worse. Unfortunately, more global difficulties are coming. There will be more war, there will be more pestilences, there will be more natural disasters, and even the United Nations is admitting that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War II. So if you think that global supply chain problems are severe now, just wait until you see what is coming next.

FINLAND/SWEDEN - Finland and Sweden are expected to jointly apply for NATO membership in mid-May, according to reports published yesterday in both countries. Thus, both Helsinki and Stockholm are definitively giving up what is left of their formal neutrality. The Finnish-Swedish rapprochement to NATO – including their participation in NATO wars – had already begun back in the 1990s. Both countries have been so closely linked to the alliance that experts recently remarked that their joining NATO is almost nothing more than a “matter of formalization.” This “formalization” will now take place. It will create a new strategic imbalance in northeastern Europe. Sweden’s island, Gotland, which will soon become part of NATO, can control the sea routes, for example, to St Petersburg and to Kaliningrad. The approximately 1,340 km long Finnish-Russian border will become NATO’s external border. Moscow has announced it will counter this with arms buildup measures in the High North and possibly deploying nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.

ISRAEL - Israel has no plans to divide the Temple Mount holy site in Jerusalem between Jews and Muslims, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said on Sunday, urging Muslim leaders to step up the fight against “fake news.” Temple Mount is the holiest place in Judaism and is known in the Islamic world as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest site for Muslims. Amid the recent violent clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli police, as well as wide-spread criticism of the authorities’ handling of the situation, rumors spread on social media that Israel was allegedly trying to split the holy site into two parts. However, during a press conference on Sunday, and later on Twitter, Lapid was forced to reaffirm Israel’s commitment to maintain the status quo at Temple Mount and to prevent provocations from both Palestinians and Jews.

USA - When President Biden and other advocates of wind and solar generation speak, they appear to believe that the challenge posed is just a matter of currently having too much fossil fuel generation and not enough wind and solar; and therefore, accomplishing the transition to "net zero" will be a simple matter of building sufficient wind and solar facilities and having those facilities replace the current ones that use the fossil fuels. They are completely wrong about that. The proposed transition to "net zero" via wind and solar power is not only not easy, but is a total fantasy. It likely cannot occur at all without dramatically undermining our economy, lifestyle and security, and it certainly cannot occur at anything remotely approaching reasonable cost. At some point, the ongoing forced transition... will crash and burn. It doesn't matter whether you build a million wind turbines and solar panels, or a billion, or a trillion. On a calm night, they will still produce nothing, and will require full back-up from some other source. No sane, let alone competent, government would ever be headed down this path.

GERMANY - Five weeks after the Russian intervention in Ukraine, western powers still fail to globally isolate Russia. During a visit to India yesterday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign policy adviser Jens Plötner tried to persuade New Delhi to abandon its cooperation with Moscow. Other representatives of western states had already previously traveled to the Indian capital, pursuing the same objective – to no avail. India is increasing its purchase of Russian oil and is continuing to develop a payment system independent of the US dollar and SWIFT. Still only 48 countries are participating in the western sanctions against Russia. Three-quarters of all UN member states are refusing to comply, despite the considerable pressure being exerted on them.

USA - The West is in the grips of a climate change-fueled megadrought, and Lake Mead - the largest manmade reservoir in the country and a source of water for millions of people - has fallen to an unprecedented low. The lake's plummeting water level has exposed one of the reservoir's original water intake valves for the first time, officials say. The valve had been in service since 1971 but can no longer draw water, according to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which is responsible for managing water resources for 2.2 million people in Southern Nevada, including Las Vegas. Across the West, extreme drought is already taking a toll this year and summertime heat hasn't even arrived yet. Drought conditions worsened in the Southwest over the past week, the US Drought Monitor reported Thursday. Extreme and exceptional drought, the two worst designations, expanded across New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado - all states that are part of the Colorado River basin. New Mexico's drought has been steadily intensifying since the beginning of the year, and extreme or exceptional drought now covers 68% of the state.