USA - The ground has come alive in a pocket of western Nevada. A magnitude-6.5 earthquake rocked a remote region 35 miles west of Tonopah on May 15 and hundreds of aftershocks have followed — an event this corner of the county hasn't seen in over half a century.

“Wikipedia’s neutral point of view policy is dead.” Larry Sanger, the founder of Wikipedia says that the project has abandoned neutrality and is now “badly biased.” Sanger is no longer involved with Wikipedia, and his co-founder, Jimmy Wales, is a far-left activist. In a blog post on Thursday, Sanger wrote a scathing critique of the bias at his former website.

“Wikipedia’s ‘NPOV’ is dead,” Sanger began, referring to the site’s neutral point of view policy. Sanger explains that articles on religious topics show a similar pattern of bias and used the entry on Jesus as a particularly egregious example. “It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (ie, neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one,” Sanger stated.

AFRICA - Swarms of locusts have devoured fields of crops in Africa, Asia and the Arabian Peninsula in a single day, eating stock that would have fed more than 35,000 people. According to a report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), droves of insects have been sweeping across the regions since October. The deadly coronavirus outbreak threatens to make the situation worse.

As the world continues to battle the unseen threat, the deadly virus is disrupting supply chains, making it harder for nations to fight off the locusts. The virus has hindered the distribution of equipment, pesticides, protective gear, as well as movement of personnel to fight the pests, WRI researcher Tina Huang said. According to Cyril Ferrand, a team leader for the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the supply of pesticides is the “biggest challenge we are facing at the moment”.

GERMANY - In a striking reversal, Merkel joins with France in recommending a euro fund that could be a timid first step toward greater integration.

• What exactly are the French and the Germans proposing?
• Why is this such a big deal?
• Why is Germany doing this, if it just shot down the idea of eurobonds?
• So what are the real prospects for this big proposal?

Figuring out just what strings to attach to the next big recovery fund will be a big part of the upcoming tussle between member states.

EUROPE - France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday that EU states which are skeptical about a Franco-German proposal for a €500 billion (US$546 billion) coronavirus recovery fund should back it or risk making it even harder to get out of the crisis. “It’s in the interest of all European countries to sign up for this initiative… if there isn’t this momentum, nobody will be able to get out of it,” Le Drian told television channel LCI.

The plan proposed by Berlin and Paris on Monday would offer non-repayable grants to EU regions and sectors hit hardest by the pandemic, with the cash borrowed by the bloc as a whole rather than by individual member states, Reuters reported. The government in Vienna insists that the EU’s emergency aid for coronavirus-hit member states should be based on repayable loans not grants, Austrian daily Die Presse said on Tuesday, citing the Chancellery.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel is gearing up for one last, desperate battle to make her mark on the EU in the shadow of coronavirus, which poses a threat to the bloc's very existence, Germany's ambassador to Brussels, Michael Clauss, has warned in a leaked memo. Germany is due to take over the Presidency of the European Council in July for the first time in 13 years - but the pandemic has dramatically changed the landscape, and piled the pressure on Mrs Merkel, 65, who is scheduled to step down as Chancellor next year.

The rotating Presidency - currently held by Croatia - will switch to Germany on July 1, with a total of 17 ministerial meetings planned between July and October involving leaders from across the bloc, as well as the EU-China summit which had been planned for Leipzig in September. For Mrs Merkel, it represents an opportunity at a crucial time, with the UK due to complete the process of Brexit on December 31.

ISRAEL - From the alchemy of the yeasty starter to the wonders of a crusty, scored loaf, professional and home chefs share their secrets. It took a global pandemic for home bakers to latch on to the magical alchemy of baking sourdough bread, that crusty, scored bread with a soft crumb and slightly tangy flavor created from a bubbling brew of yeast. A run on yeast in US stores helped foment what has become a COVID-19 baking craze.

USA - International Bee Day highlights plight of pollinators. Ninety percent of world’s wild flowering plant species depend, entirely, or at least partly, on animal pollination, along with over 75% of world’s food crops, 35% of agricultural land. Bees have gotten a bad press — the truth is that they rarely sting.

What they do do is sustainably pollinate a third of the plants needed for a stable, healthy, human diet. There is no alternative to bees and no logic to seeking an alternative. In the US, beekeepers lost an estimated 40.7% of their managed honey bee colonies between April 2018 and April 2019, according to the most recent loss and management report issued by the Bee Informed Partnership.

ISRAEL - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s latest threat to renounce all agreements with Israel mainly aims to send a warning to the new Israeli government and the international community, Palestinian officials said Wednesday. Noting that Abbas has stopped short of canceling the agreements, the officials said they were skeptical that the threat will stop Israel from proceeding with its intention to extend Israeli law to parts of the West Bank. Abbas does not hold powerful cards that allow him to threaten Israel and the US, they said.

Abbas’s previous threats had failed to stop Washington from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the officials said. The threats also have failed to change Israel’s policies and measures in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, they added. The Palestinian leadership would not make any real decisions regarding the agreements with Israel in the immediate future, a PLO official said Wednesday.

ISRAEL - Six facilities were hit in an Iranian cyberattack last month on the country’s water infrastructure that succeeded in impacting some systems but did not cause any disruption in the water supply or waste management, the Ynet news site reported on Tuesday. At one of the Israel Water Authority facilities, an “irregularity due to an unplanned change in data” was recorded, the report said. At another station, a pump went into continuous operation, prompting operators to shut off its automatic mode.

Hackers also succeeded in taking over the operating system at one of the sites, while at another changes were made to operating systems. At one of the facilities, operators detected the cyberattack and immediately disconnected the site’s systems, reset parameters and changed all the passwords. Quoting unnamed senior officials, Channel 13 news said on May 9 that the attack in late April was viewed as a significant escalation by Iran and a crossing of a red line because it targeted civilian infrastructure.

IRAN - The cyber attack on Israeli water facilities using American servers at the height of the coronavirus crisis wrought a swift and heavy response, paralyzing Iran's state-of-the-art port, and its blatant leak to the Washington Post was designed to inform Tehran and the world of the price of such attacks. The Washington Post report of an Israeli and American cyber attack against Iran seems reliable and accurate.

JORDAN - Following warnings to Israel by King Abdullah of Jordan of a “massive conflict” if Israel proceeds with plans to apply Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria, some political and media commentators and sources are referring to a possibility that Jordan might revoke its Treaty of Peace with Israel.

A peace treaty, by its very nature, is not limited by any specific time limit, and is not given to cancellation or revocation, unless by declaration of war or by an act of aggression by one of the parties to the treaty, constituting a revocation of the very basis of the peace relationship which includes mutual acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of the other party.

It is highly unlikely that Jordan would want to take such a step, especially in light of the fact that a unilateral act by Israel of applying law or sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria, even if not favored by Jordan, would not constitute an act of aggression against Jordan’s sovereignty or territorial integrity and as such would not be grounds for revoking the treaty.

MIDDLE EAST - Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of committing “treachery” and “betrayal” after its Etihad Airways cargo plane flew direct to Israel to deliver coronavirus aid to Palestinians. The flight delivered 14 tons of urgent medical supplies for coping with the coronavirus pandemic that the UAE government sent to the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip. Khamenei wrote on Twitter that the act "betrayed Palestine by supporting Israel."

"Etihad Airways operated a dedicated humanitarian cargo flight from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv on 19 May to provide medical supplies to the Palestinians," an Etihad spokesperson said. "The flight had no passengers on board." The official UAE news agency WAM said "The aid includes personal protective equipment, PPE, and medical equipment. Most notably, it includes 10 ventilators that are acutely needed." "Etihad Airways continues to operate many humanitarian flights providing much needed aid to nations within its network and beyond."

USA - In troubled times, people have been known to hoard currency at home — a financial security blanket against deep uncertainty. But in this crisis, things are different. This time cash itself, passed from hand to hand across neighborhoods, cities and societies just like the coronavirus, is a source of suspicion rather than reassurance. No longer a thing to be shoved mindlessly into a pocket, tucked into a worn wallet or thrown casually on a kitchen counter, money’s status has changed during the virus era — perhaps irrevocably. The pandemic has also reawakened debate about the continued viability of what has been the physical lifeblood of global economies: paper money and coins.

USA - Johnson & Johnson will halt all sales of its talc-based baby powder in North America, after years of lawsuits claiming the product causes cancer – but, undeterred, the firm says it won’t stop selling it to the rest of the world.