USA - Sometimes we need something to shake us in order to wake us from the fantasy that we have been living in. Hopefully, this COVID-19 pandemic will serve as a wake up call for people all over the globe, because it has given us a very clear preview of what we can expect during the years ahead. This pandemic has shown us that our economic and financial systems are not nearly as stable as most people thought, many of our politicians have been quite eager to embrace socialism and tyranny during this pandemic, and acute shortages of basic essentials started to happen very rapidly once fear of COVID-19 began to sweep across the nation. If things degenerated this much during a relatively minor crisis like this COVID-19 pandemic, what in the world is our society going to look like once a major crisis hits us?

USA - The 2008 financial crisis led the public to discover the limits of economics. The Covid-19 pandemic risks having the same effect on scientists and medical doctors. Since the start of the outbreak, citizens have struggled to get clear answers to some basic questions. Consider masks, for example: The World Health Organization said early on that there was no point in encouraging healthy people to use them, but now most doctors agree that widespread mask-wearing is a good idea. There was also confusion around lockdowns: In the UK, scientists argued for weeks over the merits of closing businesses and keeping people at home — a quarrel that may have cost the country lives. And now that the outbreak is fading in Italy, there is growing debate between the country’s public health experts and doctors over whether the virus has lost strength or remains just as deadly.

INDIA - India has pleaded with its neighbour Pakistan to agree to a joint effort to tackle the swarms of locusts which have descended on both countries and are wreaking havoc on crops. New Delhi sent a request to Islamabad asking for their cooperation in the plan to address the growing problem, as it also sought the help of the Iranians. The plea comes as Pakistan and India remain locked in almost daily clashes in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

According to The Hindu, an official source said that India had proposed a trilateral response to the locusts. Farmers are having to deal with the added stress of desperately trying to save their crops from being devoured by locusts. Tehran has also had to deal with the devastating effects locusts are having on Iranian farmers’ livelihoods. Farmers in these areas have been offered pesticide by the Indians. Iran has already responded positively to India’s offer of help. Officials in the Islamic country said that a layer of dead locusts piled up 6 inches high after they sprayed afflicted areas with pesticides.

USA - Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker said Thursday that the push for reopening society from lockdowns comes from Christianity’s “malignant delusion” of belief in an afterlife. Atheists who believe in this life alone are more concerned with health and safety, Professor Pinker suggested in a Tweet, while Christians tend to devalue “actual lives” and live a riskier existence.

Pinker was responding to an article this week in the Washington Post, which examined findings that Democrats take the virus “more seriously” than Republicans and are more willing to support restrictive government edicts in response to the pandemic. In that article, contributing columnist Gary Abernathy declares that a “literal belief in eternal salvation — eternal life — helps explain the different reactions to life-threatening events like a coronavirus outbreak.”

ECUADOR - Scientists are warning that the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador is showing early signs of impending catastrophic collapse, after satellite data showed substantial internal damage from ongoing magma activity. Tungurahua has been persistently active since 1999 so wear and tear was inevitable, especially given that the 'Throat of fire,' or 'Black giant' as the Quechua indigenous people named it, has already collapsed twice before thousands of years ago.

NEW ZEALAND - A magnitude 5.8 earthquake has struck around 90 kilometers northwest of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. The tremor was felt by Kiwis all across the country’s North Island. The quake struck shortly before 8am on Monday, local time. Occurring off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island, the shaking was felt by more than 35,000 people in Wellington and beyond, according to government seismic monitor Geonet. The earthquake was followed by a number of aftershocks, none reaching more than 3.7 in magnitude. A 5.8 quake is classed as “moderate,” but such tremors are still capable of causing structural damage in populated areas.

EUROPE - Berlin should pile pressure on Moscow instead of criticizing America’s withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty, a US envoy told the German foreign minister, as the two NATO allies clashed over Washington’s move to ditch the accord. The US announced its intention to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty (OST) earlier this week, unnerving its NATO allies in Europe.

Among those calling for the preservation of the 2002 multilateral deal, which allows for surveillance flights over the territories of its signatories, was German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. Germany is not the only country to have voiced its objections to the US move. In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of 10 EU countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands, called the pact “a crucial element of the confidence-building framework.”

UK - Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly reconsidered allowing Chinese tech giant Huawei access to the British 5G network, amidst increasing tensions with China over the coronavirus pandemic and the Chinese Communist Party’s infringement of freedoms in Hong Kong. The Prime Minister has instructed his government to begin making plans that would see the Chinese tech firms’ involvement in the nation’s 5G infrastructure decrease to zero by the year 2023.

Earlier this month, Breitbart London reported that the US was reviewing the status of all military and intelligence assets in Britain to see if they should be removed from the country as a result of the Huawei deal. The United States has also hinted that intelligence sharing in the Five Eyes security alliance, which also includes Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, could be in jeopardy if Huawei were allowed access to the British network.

VENEZUELA - The first of five Iranian tankers filled with gasoline made it to Venezuelan waters late on Saturday. The oil tanker Fortune was welcomed by Venezuelan officials who celebrated the growing relationship with Iran spurred by Trump administration sanctions to both countries. 'Iran and Venezuela have always supported each other in times of difficulty,' Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeted. 'Today, the first ship with gasoline arrives for our people.' Russ Dallen, head of Caracas Capital Markets, confirmed the ship's location using tracing technology. The Clavel, the last of the five ships, is roughly 3.5 days away, he explained to ABC News.

IRAN - Iran has vowed to retaliate if the US tries to block tankers delivering its oil to Venezuela. A fleet of five tankers carrying Iranian fuel to the crisis-torn South America country is approaching the Caribbean and the first is expected to cross into Venezuelan waters tomorrow. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani warned of retaliatory measures against the US if Washington caused problems for the tankers.

He said: "If our tankers in the Caribbean or anywhere in the world face trouble caused by the Americans, the US will also be in trouble. "Iran will never initiate a conflict. We have always the legitimate right to defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity and to serve our national interests, and we hope that the Americans will not commit an error." Iran is supplying about 1.53 million barrels of gasoline and alkylate to Venezuela. The shipments have caused a diplomatic standoff between Iran, Venezuela and Washington as both nations are under US sanctions.

VENEZUELA - Iranian oil tankers heading to Venezuela are facing an imminent threat of a US armed attack in what Caracas labels a “crime of aggression and extermination,” the country’s envoy to the United Nations has warned. The South American country has previously deployed the military to shield the friendly vessels from such attacks. Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, sounded the alarm over what he described as Washington’s hostile intentions earlier on Saturday, asking the Security Council to put an end to US “warmongering and criminal policies.” Iranian tankers ferrying gasoline to Venezuela’s ports are facing “the threat of imminent use of military force by the United States,” he later told his Twitter followers, adding that this would amount to “an act of war” against his country.

USA - Post-coronavirus pandemic, nobody really knows what the real estate market will look like. Will people travel less? Will we work from home more often? Will commercial and residential real estate be able to keep their respective bids once current leases run out?

We've found at least one investor who doesn't want to stick around and find out. One "mystery investor" blew out more than 10.5 million shares of an S&P 500 Real Estate fund last week, representing a $333 million sale. This amounts to about 7.4% of outstanding shares in the Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund, a macro indicator of the industry’s largest companies, according to The Real Deal. One anonymous investor commented: “That is obscene. It would be like Warren Buffett selling Delta all at once. A very large institution is expecting widespread weakness across the real estate market, more so than is already perceived. It looks like somebody’s dumping everything in my opinion. There’s something very big going on.”

TAIWAN - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang left out the word “peaceful” on Friday in referring to Beijing’s desire to “reunify” with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, an apparent policy shift that comes as ties with Taipei continue on a downward spiral. Taiwan has complained of increased Chinese military harassment since the coronavirus pandemic began, with fighter jets and naval vessels regularly approaching the island on drills China has described as routine.

China says Taiwan is its most sensitive and important territorial issue, and has never renounced the use of force to bring what it views as a Chinese province under its control, making the Taiwan Strait a potential military flashpoint. On Friday, China proposed new legislation for Hong Kong requiring it to quickly enact national security regulations, a move some see as contradicting the “one country, two systems” concept, and swiftly condemned by Taiwan.

UNITED NATIONS - As millions of married couples around the world are feeling the strain of being holed up together due to the pandemic, the United Nations decided it's a great time to remove the words “husband” and “wife” from our vernacular. In case anyone thought that the social justice warriors would take a much-needed hiatus from their crusading against wrong-think, especially at the height of a pandemic, think again.

This week, UN bureaucrats found clever new ways to divide and alienate the global population at a time when social-distancing rules have already turned people into strangers. On Monday afternoon, the agency’s crack social media team tweeted out: “Help create a more equal world by using gender-neutral language if you're unsure about someone's gender or are referring to a group.”

GREECE - The earthquake struck in the central area of the Mediterranean Sea, near the Greek regions of Methoni and Kalamata. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the maritime region of the central Mediterranean Sea on Thursday, according to the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC).

The epicentre of the earthquake was located near the region of Methoni in Greece, some 439 kilometres from Athens. EMSC also cites reports of the earthquake felt in the regions of Albania. Greece is located at a complex tectonic boundary zone in the eastern Mediterranean region, between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The latest earthquake in the country took place in early May 2020, with a magnitude of 6.0.