IRAN - The deputy commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Iranian forces will close the strategic Strait of Hormuz to the United States and its allies if they "threaten" the Islamic Republic, Iranian state media reported Wednesday. The comments by General Hossein Salami, carried on state television, follow a long history of both rhetoric and confrontation between Iran and the US over the narrow strait, through which nearly a third of all oil traded by sea passes. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday criticized US activities in the Persian Gulf. It's unclear whether that signals any new Iranian concern over the strait or possible confrontation with the US following Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.
EUROPE - The EU army is going ahead. The last time Europe had an army it was the Nazi army, and that didn’t end so well. The Nazis incorporated many different European nations into their army, much like Jean Claude Juncker and his friend Roderich Kiesewetter want to do with today’s proposed EU army. Juncker’s wife, Christiane, also shares an interesting paternal link with the Nazis. Her father, Louis Mathias Frising, was one of Hitler’s Propaganda Commissars, and was among those responsible for the Germanification of Juncker’s home country of Luxembourg. He also helped enforce the Nuremburg Laws that stripped Jews of their rights, and were a precursor to the Holocaust.
USA - President Obama is poised to declare the first-ever national monument recognizing the struggle for gay rights, singling out a sliver of green space and part of the surrounding Greenwich Village neighborhood as the birthplace of America’s modern gay liberation movement. While most national monuments have highlighted iconic wild landscapes or historic sites from centuries ago, this reflects the country’s diversity of terrain and peoples in a different vein: It would be the first national monument anchored by a dive bar and surrounded by a warren of narrow streets that long has been regarded the historic center of gay cultural life in New York City.
ISRAEL - When the first holiday marking the beginning of Passover ended a week and a half ago on Saturday night, a group of Jews went out to a field near Sderot in the south of Israel and harvested a small quantity of barley for a purely Biblical purpose rarely fulfilled these days: to offer up the omer, or the wave offering, to God. Though this offering of grain technically requires the Temple and its altar, some rabbis choose to harvest the omer today because of an esoteric teaching that connects this particular mitzvah, or Biblical commandment, to the Third Temple descending, completely formed, from heaven.
UK - If you have a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo email account, you may want to update your password. A new report has found that Russia's criminal underworld is trading hundreds of millions of stolen usernames and passwords belonging to these accounts.This is according to a Reuters investigation, which spoke to Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Wisconsin-based Hold Security. Holden, who last year uncovered the largest data breach to date, claims that the details of 272.3 million stolen accounts are now being traded. It is one of the biggest stashes of stolen credentials to be uncovered since cyber attacks hit major US banks and retailers two years ago.
USA - Southern California’s section of the San Andreas fault is “locked, loaded and ready to roll,” a leading earthquake scientist said Wednesday at the National Earthquake Conference in Long Beach. The San Andreas fault is one of California’s most dangerous, and is the state’s longest fault. Yet for Southern California, the last big earthquake to strike the southern San Andreas was in 1857, when a magnitude 7.9 earthquake ruptured an astonishing 185 miles between Monterey County and the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles. It has been quiet since then — too quiet, said Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center. “The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight. And the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go,” Jordan said in the opening keynote talk.
USA - Last month, a “secret meeting” that involved more than 100 executives from some of the biggest financial institutions in the United States was held in New York City. During this “secret meeting”, a company known as “Chain” unveiled a technology that transforms US dollars into “pure digital assets”.
UK - Leaving the EU would mean "difficult and lengthy negotiations" that could take years to complete, peers say. The Lords EU Committee said determining the rights of two million UK nationals living in the EU would be a "complex and daunting" part of exit talks.
GERMANY - The US wants to strengthen its presence in Eastern Europe with soldiers, tanks and heavy military equipment. The federal government is silent officially, but many government politicians are openly standing behind Washington. "CDU, SPD and Greens go along with brainless compliance," criticizes Dr Alexander Neu, who represents the Left Party Defense Committee.
EUROPE - The European Commission will impose fines of hundreds of millions of pounds on countries that do not take in refugees. Jean-Claude Junker is tomorrow expected to unveil plans to impose a penalty of around €250,000 euros per rejected refugee, in a bid to salvage his botched migration quota scheme.
UK - British Brexit campaigners have been boosted with news from Berlin that Germany is once more pushing for an EU army encompassing all 28 member states with a joint HQ and shared military planning. Along with judicial, tax and immigration issues, a Euro army has long been one of the main irritants of anti-EU campaigners.
USA - In the six months that have passed since then-retiring House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cut a budget deal with President Barack Obama that suspended the legal limit on the federal debt until March 15, 2017, the federal debt has increased by more than $1 trillion.
USA - TN Note: “In case you thought the article on lab grown meat was a joke, think again. The United Nations is squarely positioned to decimate the beef industry in much the same way that the coal industry has been destroyed. This is Technocracy at its worst, seeking to micromanage society for maximum efficiency, but only according to their own flawed economic and scientific models.”
USA - Scientists and businesses working full steam to produce lab-created meat claim it will be healthier than conventional meat and more environmentally friendly. But how much can they improve on old-school pork or beef? In August 2013, a team of Dutch scientists showed off their lab-grown burger (cost: $330,000) and even provided a taste test. Two months ago, the American company Memphis Meats fried the first-ever lab meatball (cost: $18,000 per pound). Those who have tasted these items say they barely differ from the real deal. The Dutch and the Americans claim that within a few years lab-produced meats will start appearing in supermarkets and restaurants. And these are not the only teams working on cultured meat (as they prefer to call it). Another company, Modern Meadow, promises that lab-grown “steak chips” — something between a potato chip and beef jerky — will hit the stores in the near future, too.
USA - All life on Earth exists thanks to a universal genetic code. This biological rulebook tells our cells how DNA should be translated into life-supporting proteins, without which we couldn’t survive. Even though the genetic code commands a seemingly immeasurable number of organisms, it also binds us all together as descendents of a shared ancestor — a lingua franca for life.