AUSTRALIA - Australia’s Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo issued a warning to department staff on Tuesday that “the drums of war beat” over tensions in the Asia-Pacific region and South China Sea. Pezullo’s comments came as the country celebrated Anzac Day, a day of remembrance for Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in military service for their nations. “In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat – sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer,” the Home Affairs Secretary said in his statement to staff. “Let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war.”

USA - Millions of people stuck at home for more than a year are expected to hit the road for much-needed post-pandemic vacations this summer. Good luck finding gas. Not that there's a looming shortage of crude oil or gasoline. Rather, it's the tanker truck drivers needed to deliver the gas to stations who are in short supply. According to the National Tank Truck Carriers, the industry's trade group, somewhere between 20% to 25% of tank trucks in the fleet are parked heading into this summer due to a paucity of qualified drivers. At this point in 2019, only 10% of trucks were sitting idle for that reason. "We've been dealing with a driver shortage for a while, but the pandemic took that issue and metastasized it," said Ryan Streblow, the executive vice president of the NTTC. "It certainly has grown exponentially."

CHINA - An array of new high-tech military devices, including a super-sensitive portable radar set that can track stealth aircraft and even tiny drones, has been demonstrated at the World Radar Expo in Nanjing. In a clear warning to the Pentagon, China has unveiled a range of previously secret military hardware designed to deter American operations in the South China Sea region. Among the exhibits on show at the three day Ninth World Radar Expo in Nanjing is a device that’s already dubbed by defence experts the “terminator of drones”. The YLC-48 radar is a portable radar tracker that its developer – the No 14 Research Institute of China’s state-owned Electronics Technology Group Corporation [CETC] – says is sensitive enough to spot even the most advanced stealth aircraft as well as small ground-hugging drones. According to CETC, their new tech makes state-of-the-art stealth aircraft such as the USA’s Lockheed Martin F-22 stealth fighter virtually obsolete. The radar’s light weight and simple one-button operation means it can be deployed virtually anywhere at a moment’s notice.

NIGERIA - Members of the Islamist terror group Boko Haram have forcibly seized at least 50 villages near the Nigerian national capital of Abuja over the past three weeks, the governor of Nigeria’s Niger State said Monday. “In a brazen attack, 100 kilometers [62 miles] from Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja, Boko Haram terrorists sacked 50 communities in Niger State and hoisted their flag in Kaure village,” Nigeria’s Leadership newspaper reported on April 26. Abuja is part of Nigeria’s federal capital territory, which is located in the center of the country a short distance east of Niger State. The governor of Niger State, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello, confirmed Boko Haram’s recent insurgency near Abuja on Monday... “I am confirming that there are Boko Haram elements around Kaure in [the] Shiroro local government [region] of Niger State,” Bello said. Shiroro is located 40 miles north of Minna.

USA - "It's about to get much worse": Supply chains implode as "price doesn’t even matter anymore". The number of container ships stuck at anchor off Los Angeles and Long Beach is down to around 20 per day, from 30 a few months ago. Does this mean the capacity crunch in the trans-Pacific market is finally easing? Absolutely not, warned Nerijus Poskus, vice president of global ocean at freight forwarder Flexport. “It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse,” he told American Shipper in an interview on Monday. “What I’m seeing is unprecedented. We are seeing a tsunami of freight,” he reported. “For the month of May, everything on the trans-Pacific is basically sold out. We had one client who needed something loaded in May that was extremely urgent and who was ready to pay $15,000 per container. I couldn’t get it loaded — and we are a growing company that ships a lot of TEUs [twenty-foot equivalent units]. Price doesn’t always even matter anymore."

USA - A so-called independent fact-checker website FactCheck.org is exposed to be funded by the same $1.9 billion vaccine lobby group that it is supposed to check. The site is a Facebook partner whose articles are used to censor critical voices on the social media platform. It is headed by the former CDC director, which is again a conflict of interest. US Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted Saturday, “NOTHING TO SEE HERE… Former director of CDC is now CEO of the foundation that funds FACTCHECK.org’s vaccine fact checking program. Roughly 15% of said foundation’s assets are J&J stock.” “Bless your heart if you think factcheck.org is an unbiased source of vaccine information,” he continued.

FRANCE - Macron can’t ignore furious generals’ warning that terror attacks and ‘Islamist hordes’ are pushing France towards civil war. A warning from 20 retired army generals that the ‘Islamist hordes of the banlieue’ are causing France to disintegrate has been dismissed by the government. But as the terrorist atrocities continue, many citizens share their fears. Although France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, the simmering tensions over Islam’s place in the secular republic are only ever a news cycle away from boiling over. In the space of just a week, there has been controversy over a court decision to free a killer without charge, the murder of a police worker on the steps of her station and a call to arms from a group of retired generals who warn the actions of Islamist “hordes in the banlieue” risk the disintegration of the country and civil war. “It is no longer time to procrastinate, otherwise tomorrow the civil war will put an end to this growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will bear the responsibility, will number in the thousands.” Strong language, for sure, but maybe they are right.

USA - If things are so wonderful, then why do so many people feel a deep sense of unease about what is ahead? I think that the reason why our society is so obsessed with apocalyptic movies and television shows is because most of us realize on some level that we are living in an apocalyptic generation. As I have been documenting in my articles over the last several months, the clock is ticking for humanity. If we continue to do things the way we have been doing them, our society will inevitably collapse. Even now, virtually all of our systems are exhibiting signs of failure, and yet most of us continue to live our lives as if the party will never end. But it will end, and deep inside most of us know this. Have we really reached the point of no return? People have been sounding the alarm for decades, but up to now we have always been given more time to turn things around. Unfortunately, at some point we will completely run out of time, and many believe that day is fast approaching.

USA - James Dobson, the founder of the James Dobson Family Institute and the host of the "Family Talk" radio program, several times has warned of the threat to America from the presidency of Joe Biden. That would be because of the plans made clear by Biden's Democrat party for a rollback in religious rights, promotion of abortion and a requirement that taxpayers fund it and other "radical" campaign points. Since Biden has taken office the nation has been divided on topics including race, sexual orientation, politics, spending, socialism, rioting, police and even what is a crime. Dobson previously described the current administration's plans as "lunacy" and warned of the "moral depravity" that they would bring.

CANADA - How sincere was Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s crocodile tear apology for the Covid clampdown that sees Canada’s most populous province tottering on bankruptcy when just three days later, his henchmen are back ticketing in-person church goers at Kitchener’s Trinity Bible Chapel?

USA - [William Rnadolph Hearst] built a chain of nearly 30 newspapers across America, then expanded into magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world. He said: “News is what people don't want you to print. Everything thing else is advertising.” American historian and journalist Frank Luther Mott described this type of journalism as having little or no legitimate well researched news and instead using eye-catching headlines and sensationalised stories to sell more newspapers. Which sometimes also deceives the audience it is intended for.

RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin’s multi-year push to reduce Russia’s exposure to the dollar hit a major milestone as the share of exports sold in the US currency fell below 50% for the first time. Most of the slump in dollar use came from Russia’s trade with China, more than three-quarters of which is now conducted in euros, according to central bank data published late Monday. The common currency’s share in total exports jumped more than 10 percentage points to 36%, the data for the fourth quarter show. Multiple rounds of sanctions and the constant threat of more to come have pushed Russia to find ways to isolate its economy from US interference. The central bank has also stripped back its holdings of Treasuries in its international reserves, loading up on gold and euros instead.

VATICAN - Persecution of faith groups has drastically increased in more than 95 percent of the world’s worst-offending countries, according to the latest Religious Freedom in the World report. The report, by international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, shows how the latest technologies are being used to crush religious freedom. Over the past two years, oppression against vulnerable faith communities has increased in all but one of the 26 countries listed in the survey’s worst or “red” category.

USA - President Biden announced last week that he planned to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan by September, which he says will mark the end of what is now a twenty-year war in the central Asian country. A week earlier, the US and Iraq reaffirmed a deal to withdraw “any remaining combat forces” from Iraq, and to further wind down the US involvement there, which dates back to the 2003 invasion.

ISRAEL - Residents of Eilat and the Arava have woken up in recent days to the sight of huge swarms of locusts spreading over their gardens and public areas. The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that the swarm of yellow locusts had spread over all the fields and crops. In Moshav Hatzeva residents managed to capture some of the locusts in net traps before the pests could raid the fields and crops. Kibbutz Samar and Kibbutz Elifaz in the southern Arava are also worried about the future of the crop. In Eilat, the locusts settled in the area of ​​a field school close to the sea, and parts of the swarm were seen all over the city and in private gardens. According to Amir Balaban, director of urban nature at the Society for the Protection of Nature, the locusts are an important food source for local wildlife. "Hundreds of bee-eater birds were seen in the Kibbutz Lotan area, making their way from Africa to Europe. They climb over the fences of the settlement and hunt the migratory locust that lands in the area. For the desert wildlife, too, it's a crazy protein festival, and like them, a lot of other migratory birds feed on locusts as they migrate north during this season."