AFGHANISTAN - At least 80 people -including a BBC driver - are dead and 350 more are injured after a massive bomb concealed in a water tanker ripped through Kabul's diplomatic quarter this morning. Bodies littered the street and a towering plume of smoke could be seen over the Afghan capital after the truck attack blew out the windows in a number of foreign missions and residences nearby. Officials said most of the casualties this morning were civilians and 'many women and children' were among the victims. This morning, it emerged that BBC Afghan driver Mohammed Nazir had been killed in the explosion and that four BBC journalists have been wounded. Their injuries are not thought to be life threatening.
UK - A new teaching aid telling primary school children that terrorists kill people because they believe they are treated “unfairly” has been slammed by education campaigners. Published just weeks before a suicide bomber attacked a concert in Manchester, killing 22 people including seven children, Talking About Terrorism recommends teachers “invite children to write a letter to a terrorist”.
USA - US President Donald Trump responded to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent speech in which she called the United States and United Kingdom uncertain allies after contentious G7 and NATO meetings. "We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for US. This will change," Trump tweeted early Tuesday from his personal account.
UK - Paddy Ashdown has said he sees horrifying parallels between 1930s Germany and what is happening in the post-referendum UK. The former Liberal Democrats leader told the Hay festival in Wales on Tuesday that he feared for his country, with a huge number of people left “voiceless” as Labour moved further left and the Conservatives further right. “My next book is about the German resistance to Hitler, so I’m knee-deep into research of the 1930s and I am horrified by the parallels. I’m horrified,” he said.
ISRAEL - The Jerusalem municipality’s eastern Jerusalem experts have revealed in recent days that Turkey has been competing with Jordan over influence among Arab residents as well as over control of the Temple Mount, Hashiloach — an Israeli journal for thought and policy, created by the Tikvah Fund — reported last week.
ISRAEL - A decision by Donald Trump on 1 June could prove fateful for the immediate future of Jerusalem, the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the region. He must decide whether to renew a presidential waiver, signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, that expires on that day. The six-month waiver delays implementing a law passed by Congress in 1995 that requires the US to recognise occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate its embassy there from Tel Aviv.
ISRAEL - Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid said Monday that the entire Israeli security establishment is deeply concerned by US President Donald Trump’s massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed Israel’s national security because he neither prevented nor tried to minimize the damage of the accord.
USA - When we think about terrorism we most often think about the horrors of a Manchester-like attack, where a radicalized suicide bomber went into a concert hall and killed dozens of innocent civilians. It was an inexcusable act of savagery and it certainly did terrorize the population.
RUSSIA - Russia has condemned North Korea’s latest missile test and called for Kim Jong-un to hold back from sabre-rattling which has left nearby nations fearing World War 3. The reclusive communist country fired a short-range ballistic missile towards Japan from the eastern region of Wonsan overnight.
USA - People who don’t know much about the hydrologic cycle automatically think that droughts are caused by “global warming” or “climate change.” After all, this is the junk science nonsense that’s repeated in schools by science teachers who often don’t know much about science in the first place.
ISRAEL - On the surface, US President Donald Trump’s relations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have been surprisingly warm, but that belies a furious critique leveled by Trump at Abbas in their meeting in Bethlehem last week, an Israeli TV report said.
USA - Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Sunday US intelligence officials betrayed the country if they were behind the leak of information about the bomb used in last week’s attack in Manchester. “If it came from the United States, it’s totally unacceptable. And I don’t know why people do these kind of things, but it’s borderline, if not over the line, of treason,” Kelly told NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on Sunday. Kelly said he called British Home Minister Amber Rudd following the Monday evening bombing at an Ariana Grande concert. Rudd brought up the New York Times report, which featured images of the bomb used in that attack. The homeland security chief said his English counterpart “did” have a point to complain about the leak. President Trump reassured British Prime Minister Theresa May that the leaks would stop.
ISRAEL - Day after reports of Trump shouting at Abbas about incitement, former top official dismisses PA claims that it is making ‘social welfare’ payments, saying they are presented as ‘salaries’ in Palestinian budget documents.
SAUDI ARABIA - A leading Arabic newspaper this week published a damning column by a Saudi journalist claiming that Palestinians have missed too many opportunities for peace with Israelis and have always blamed others for their problems, even long before settlements existed, and further added that it was time for Hamas to end its violence against Israel as well as their futile dream of a “Palestine from the river to the sea.”
USA - A stock market crash is coming, and the Democrats and the mainstream media are going to blame Donald Trump for it even though it won’t be his fault. The truth is that we were headed for a major financial crisis no matter who won the election. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up a staggering 230 percent since the lows of 2009, and no stock market rally in our history has ever reached the 10 year mark without at least a 20 percent downturn.