CHINA - Twelve-hour days, six-day weeks, and all for $450 per month - these were the conditions faced by an NYU student as he went undercover in an iPhone factory. Dejian Zeng, a second year masters student, spent six weeks living and working at the Pegatron iPhone Factory, outside Shanghai, in order to see what life was like.
ISRAEL - More than a thousand marchers participated Tuesday night in the monthly tradition of going round the gates of the Temple Mount in honor of the new Hebrew month of Iyar.
GERMANY - Germany could return to authoritarianism if the economic conditions were to seriously worsen in the country, the son of Hans Frank the governor general of Nazi occupied Poland during World War Two, has told BBC Hardtalk. "As long as our economy is great, and as long as we make money everything is very democratic," said Niklas Frank, but "if we have five to 10 years heavy economic problems the swamp is a lake, and is a sea and will swallow again, everything," he added. Niklas Frank said he "despises" his father for the crimes he committed while he was governor-general of Poland from 1939 to 1945, and tours Germany giving speeches about his father and the legacy of the Nazi era. Hans Frank was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and executed in 1946.
ISRAEL - Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that preparations for Trump’s visit were at the advanced stage, although it has not yet been finalized, and told Army Radio, “There’s a feeling that we have a real friend in the White House.” The visit will be Trump’s first ever trip to Israel. Channel 2 said he is expected to stay for one night only, and that it is not yet clear whether he will visit the Palestinian areas. The president hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in February and is set to host Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on May 3. The advance delegation will hold talks at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, and visit possible sites for the president’s itinerary.
FRANCE - National renewal is what both the rival French presidential candidates are promising, but they offer very different paths to get there. Sample of views:
ITALY: Only 2.65%, of the recorded 181,436 migrants that crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Italy during 2016 were recognized as genuine refugees and awarded asylum from war. The rest were males (no women or children) primarily from West Africa who were seeking economic benefits. Half of them never even requested asylum but simply stayed on as illegal immigrants, disappearing into the underground, criminal culture. Italians have had their property seized by the government and turned into migrant camps. The illegal migration has been organized by NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and leftist groups.
UK - British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon recently confirmed that his Prime Minister Theresa May is prepared to use nuclear weapons in a first strike attack in "the most extreme circumstances." Commenting on the remark, Russian parliamentarian Frants Klintsevich warned of the devastating consequences of such an action.
CHINA - China expressed its willingness to participate alongside Russia in reaching the political settlements in various “hot spots” worldwide, in particularly Syria and North Korea. "We are ready to contribute to the strengthening of strategic cooperation with Russia and to make efforts, aimed at bringing international stability and political settlements in the conflict areas”, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during the meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. He then pointed out that China cooperates with Russia in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and did so yesterday too.
MIDDLE EAST - Palestine's ambassador to Britain, Manuel Hassassian, said that the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might soon go to the International Court to file a lawsuit against Britain, should the latter not apologize for the Balfour Declaration.
UNITED NATIONS - In Saudi Arabia, every adult woman must have a male guardian’s permission to travel, receive a higher education, or get married. Women are not allowed to drive cars. Their testimony in court is worth half of a man’s testimony. Yet, Saudi Arabia was elected to a UN commission, called The Status of Women, which supposedly promotes gender equality around the world. Can you spell the word hypocrisy?
USA - Mike Pompeo, in his first speech as director of the CIA, chose to declare war on free speech rather than on the United States’ actual adversaries. He went after WikiLeaks, where I [Julian Assange] serve as editor, as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
UNITED NATIONS - The head of the United Nations’ cultural body UNESCO defended Jewish links to holy sites in Jerusalem on Monday, criticizing her own agency’s governing board for passing a series of resolutions that downplay or deny any Jewish connection to its most sacred spaces.
ISRAEL - In an interview with Fox News, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed peace prospects with the Palestinians, saying, “I think the first test of peace is to say to them, ‘Hey, you want peace? Prove it. Confront terrorism, stop rewarding terrorism, stop paying terrorists’.” The interview with Netanyahu was conducted by host Sean Hannity, who accompanied US Secretary of Defense James Mattis on his visit to Israel. Netanyahu made his comments a week before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is set to travel to Washington to meet President Trump.
GAZA - “It is so bad here that all we can do is laugh about it. We have four hours of electricity and then there’s none for half a day. Then we get another four hours, and then 12 more hours without it. Do you understand? But then, this is Gaza, where anything is possible — including stealing residents’ money by imposing new taxes on top of old taxes, and manufacturing a humanitarian crisis in order to blame it on the Palestinian Authority and on Israel.”
JAPAN - Japan warns citizens they might have only 10 minutes to prepare for a North Korean missile. North Korea might be talking about building missiles that can reach the United States, but Kim Jong Un’s regime already has lots of missiles that can reach Japan. So the Japanese government is preparing its citizens in case a missile comes their way — possibly with less than 10 minutes warning.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.