MIDDLE EAST - Turkish Prime Minister Saadeddine Al-Othmani joined a number of world leaders in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza. "According to Palestinian Ministry of Health, 14 were martyred and more than 1400 were injured in clashes with the Zionist Israel. We eagerly wait for the day when Palestinians will achieve their freedom and independent state,” Al-Othmani said on Twitter, Anadolu reported. He also offered condolences for those killed in the attacks and wished a recovery for the injured. Kuwait also condemned the attacks on Palestinian demonstrators, an official source at that country’s foreign ministry said Friday.

GERMANY - The Good Friday ban on Muslim circumcision parties in Germany raises larger religious questions. Germany's Good Friday laws on noise and festivities are controversial. The law's reach into Muslim circumcision parties raises questions about separation of church and state that could end up in Germany's top court. Good Friday is a so-called "silent holiday" protected under Germany's Basic Law. It means that a "Tanzverbot" (dancing ban) has to be observed, but regulations differ across Germany's 16 states according to regional laws. The ban is only in place there from 4am to 9pm on Good Friday. Penalties vary, but violators risk fines of up to €1,500 ($1,860).

SOLOMON ISLANDS - A Earthquake has rocked the Solomon Islands and put the Pacific Ring of Fire on alert. The quake struck around 13 miles from the town of Honiara, which is home to 56,000 people. The volatility on the Pacific Ring of Fire over the past month or so has increased fears for the Big One: a major earthquake in a highly-populated area on the US west coast or in Japan. And countries across the bloc stretching from Chile in South America to New Zealand are preparing for more chaos and possible aftershocks and tremors after weeks of eruptions and quakes.

JAPAN - Tokyo has been hit by an earthquake as buildings shook in the Japanese capital and promoted a slew of residents to express their worries on social media, it has emerged. Early reports are stating the ground shaking quake was of a 5.3 magnitude. The USGS confirmed the earthquake and downgraded it to a 5.0 magnitude. One resident declared that they saw buildings shake in the city while others expressed relief that “everyone is okay”.

GERMANY - Deutsche Bank is in big trouble as they continue to fail! Josh Sigurdson talks with author and economic analyst John Sneisen about the most recent news regarding Deutsche Bank as the massive global bank based in Frankfurt, Germany reaches its epic end.

VATICAN - So ran the riveting headline on the Drudge Report of Holy Thursday. Drudge quoted this exchange, published in La Repubblica, between Pope Francis and his atheist friend, journalist Eugenio Scalfari. Scalfari: “What about bad souls? Where are they punished?”

USA - Fake news may have already influenced politics in the US, but it’s going to get a lot worse, warns an AI consultant to the CIA.

Sean Gourley, founder and CEO of Primer, a company that uses software to mine data sources and automatically generate reports for the CIA and other clients, told a conference in San Francisco that the next generation of fake news would be far more sophisticated thanks to AI. “The automation of the generation of fake news is going to make it very effective,” Gourley told the audience at EmTech Digital, organized by MIT Technology Review. In recent interviews, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, suggested that the company would use AI to spot fake news. According to Gourley, AI could be used in the service of the opposite goal as well.

UK - It’s an annual row that seems to start earlier and earlier – the great Easter egg debate. Social media becomes awash with companies forced to defend their Easter products from an army of people claiming that they do not feature the religious aspects of the festival prominently enough, or have been made halal. The debate has become increasingly politicised, with many rightwing groups amplifying the message. “It’s amazing that in such a politically correct society we can’t call Easter eggs Easter eggs anymore”, the official Ukip Twitter account said on Monday.

UNITED NATIONS - Imagine an International Court of Justice for Water, where ‘water justice’ rulings are made to control and allocate water to sustain life. The United Nations has fully set its sights on controlling all the water of the world. Further, it has tightly integrated water policy into the Sustainable Development Goals.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA - A huge 6.9 magnitude earthquake has rocked Papua New Guinea, putting the Ring of Fire on alert this evening. Papua New Guinea's New Britain island was hit by an earthquake at 10.25pm BST. Downgraded from an initial magnitude of 7.2, the 6.9 earthquake struck 96 miles from the town of Kokopo which is home to 20,000 people. In its latest update, the body said: Hazardous tsunami waves are forecast for some coasts. It is the third earthquake to have hit the region in 24 hours, each one increasing in strength.

CHINA - In a massive move against the global dominance of the US dollar, China’s highly anticipated Petro-Yuan has been launched in Shanghai. With China being the world’s largest consumer of oil, this new currency is an international game-changer that was a predicted move by China to directly compete — and subsequently devalue — the US dollar.

USA - Planned Parenthood is taking a rule out of the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) handbook and is looking to turn a Disney princess into an indoctrination tool to advance an agenda. In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood listed demands for Disney, one of which is to create a character who has had an abortion. The rest is a laundry list of left-wing bullet points. 

SYRIA - A Syrian Ambassador has directly threatened the Zionist entity known as Israel by saying his country will liberate the occupied Golan Heights. “We reject any terrorist or aggressive presence on our soil in any form and we will liberate all of our lands, including Golan, Afrin, Idlib and Raqqa,” Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations stated yesterday. The Golans, close to Damascus, has been occupied by Israel since the end of the Six Day War in 1967. The area is home to a large Druze population who are slowly being supplanted by Israeli colonialists despite the region being internationally recognized as a sovereign part of Syria.

ISRAEL - Jerusalem must prepare for the possibility that Iran will deploy Hezbollah against Israel in case there is a US-Iran military confrontation, Construction Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday. Gallant, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet and a former OC Southern Command, said he believed US President Donald Trump would “behave differently” than his predecessors if the Iranians acted – as they have in the past – against US interests. Gallant’s comments came amid some speculation that a US-Iranian military confrontation could be triggered by a US withdrawal in May from the Iranian nuclear agreement, or by heightened tension between the Saudis and Iranians in the Persian Gulf as witnessed this week when Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen fired missiles at Riyadh.

ISRAEL - Beginning Friday, Hamas hopes it can mobilize large crowds to set up tent camps near the border. It plans a series of demonstrations culminating with a march to the border fence on May 15, the anniversary of Israel’s establishment, known to Palestinians as “the Nakba,” or catastrophe. While the organizers of the march receive relatively extensive media coverage in Gaza and even larger media coverage in Israel, they do not seem to be generating much support for the march in the strip. For example, the official Facebook page of the march has less than 7,000 followers, most of whom are not residents of the strip. This is a negligible number compared to the coverage the march receives.