TURKEY - Turkey has urged Islamic countries to review their ties with Israel after dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on the Gaza border. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told his ruling party in parliament that Ankara would call an extraordinary summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). "Islamic countries should without fail review their relations with Israel," Premier Yildirim said, adding, “The Islamic world should move as one, with one voice, against this massacre." Yildirim said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the body, called the OIC summit on Friday.

EUROPE - The European Union is planning to switch payments to the euro for its oil purchases from Iran, eliminating US dollar transactions, a diplomatic source told RIA Novosti. Brussels has been at odds with Washington over the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which was reached during the administration of Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has pledged to re-impose sanctions against the Islamic Republic. “I’m privy to the information that the EU is going to shift from dollar to euro to pay for crude from Iran,” the source told the agency. Earlier this week, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Germany, and Iran had agreed to work out practical solutions in response to Washington’s move in the next few weeks. The bloc is reportedly planning to maintain and deepen economic ties with Iran, including in the area of oil and gas supplies.

USA - The pharmaceutical industry has been heavily scrutinized in the past for trying to buy and influence the favor of medical professionals like doctors. But now that flat-out bribery has gotten harder to pull off, the industry has found more insidious means of keeping their fingers in the pot: Funding medical research at the university level. Why spend all that time and effort trying to persuade an established healthcare provider, when they can just win the favor of young professionals to-be?

UK - Meghan Markle - whose mother is African-American and father Dutch-Irish - has spoken of leaving her identity box blank when she was in school. Her father suggested that she should draw her own box. As Britain is becoming increasingly diverse, we need to give spaces to the stories of people who represent the changing face of the nation. The fast-growing mixed-race population is no longer just mixed black and white - it's broader than that, it's also the people who are officially defined as “mixed other” on a document.

UK - A photograph tweeted by a Scottish professor and his Ghanian wife has sparked an online celebration of interracial marriage. On December 26 Professor John Struthers, the Honorary Consul for Ethiopia in Scotland, shared an image with his wife Justina, alongside a post about celebrating diversity. He wrote, "I thought I would share. We've had disapproving looks, 'We are full', 'Is that your wife?' and many more actions questioning our relationship over the last 40-plus years. We haven't wavered! The best way of fighting racism is living your life, standing tall and educating. #Diversity"

USA - The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, became a national news story, and for good reason. Political leaders in the state were finally forced to take steps to stop the poisoning of Flint's drinking water with lead and other toxins, foisted on the community as part of a short-sighted cost-cutting measure. The grim reality, however, is that the problems with American drinking water are diverse and widespread, even if most aren't quite as severe as what happened in Flint. Agricultural waste in particular is poisoning water, especially in rural areas, creating a myriad of health risks.

EUROPE - A chemical found in the world’s most widely used weedkiller can have disrupting effects on sexual development, genes and beneficial gut bacteria in doses considered safe, according to a wide-ranging pilot study in rats. Glyphosate is the core ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and levels found in the human bloodstream have spiked by more than a 1,000% in the last two decades. The substance was recently relicensed for a shortened five-year lease by the EU. But scientists involved in the new glyphosate study say their results show that it poses “a significant public health concern”. One of the report’s authors, Daniele Mandrioli, at the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, Italy, said significant and potentially detrimental effects from glyphosate had been detected in the gut bacteria of rat pups born to mothers, who appeared to have been unaffected themselves.

GERMANY - Germans have never liked US President Donald Trump, and the backlash against his actions is stronger than ever after he pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal last week. But there’s a growing gap between the German establishment and German voters: The former may be anti-Trump, but the latter are increasingly anti-American.

USA - Comedian Lee Camp on his show Redacted Tonight recalls the first-ever audit of the Pentagon, which is taking 2,400 auditors to do the job, trying to understand where $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments went. In his show, Camp recalled that a couple of years ago professor Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, say that the Department of Defense Inspector General had found $6.5 trillion worth of unaccounted for spending by the Army in 2015.

GIBRALTAR - Negotiations over the post-Brexit future of Gibraltar are deadlocked on the issue of security at the territory’s airport, raising fears of a deepening stand-off between Britain and Spain on the contentious issue of The Rock. Sources on the UK and Gibraltar side of the negotiations said that Spain had touched a “red line” with its demands to have police stationed at the airport which is partially situated on a disputed isthmus that links the territory with mainland Spain. “The Spanish crossed a red line,” said a source with knowledge of the talks which started this year in a bid to avoid a last-minute stand-off over Gibraltar. “They want to get their Guardia Civil and police into Gibraltar…"

USA - US National Security Advisor John Bolton has said the US could sanction European companies that continue to trade with Iran following the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal. Bolton made the remarks during an appearance on CNN's State of the Union Sunday. Asked if Trump would hit the EU with sanctions for continuing to deal with Iran, Bolton said: ”It's possible. It depends on the conduct of other governments.” “The rationale for getting out of the deal is it was contrary to American national security interests when we got into it and it hadn't gotten any better with age.” Bolton suggested that US sanctions could put pressure on the EU to pull out of the agreement as well. "I think the Europeans will see that it's in their interest ultimately to come along with us... I think that will sink in, and we'll see what happens then,” he said.

USA - China was transformed into a technocracy at the hands of the Trilateral Commission elite starting in the 1970s. In short, American was purposely plundered. The next wave of destruction will come from robots displacing jobs. ⁃ TN Editor

UK - It's probably happened to you in a supermarket aisle, or maybe at home while making a favourite family recipe. You'll notice something odd – a can of tomato soup seems to hold less than it did, or the tuna used to be enough for three sandwiches, not two. It might dawn on you in the bathroom, where last month the household went through twelve rolls of toilet paper, up from the usual 9 or 10. You aren't imagining things. If you look closely at the fine print on the packaging, you may see it has changed ever so slightly, the numbers ticked down by a few ounces, the sheets on those rolls have grown shorter. And there have probably been many, many times that you just haven't noticed. All around you, all the time, many consumer products are growing lighter, thinner, less substantial – all while maintaining the same price.

MIDDLE EAST - While predictions of doom in Israeli-Palestinian relations tend to come easy, the worst doesn’t always come to pass. But thanks to a pair of major upcoming anniversaries, the vagaries of the Jewish and Muslim calendars, and the whimsy of President Donald Trump, the coming week could be different. The confluence of numerous events set to take place over a few days in May has felt, as it approaches, like a perfect storm gathering.

ISRAEL - Israel has launched airstrikes targeting Hamas in Gaza as over 50 protesters have been killed at the border by the IDF. It said it was responding to terrorist activity and killed at least three terrorists. The Israeli Defence Forces tweeted on Monday that one of its Air Force fighter jets struck 5 Hamas terror organization targets in a military training facility in northern Gaza. It explained that the strike was carried out in response to the violent acts carried out by Hamas over the last few hours along the security fence. Israel has insisted that the protests were a cover for Hamas to attack Israel since before they began.