GERMANY - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday urged European leaders to protect the EU's external borders or risk a "return to nationalism". Border defence represents a "challenge for the future of Europe" from "the Mediterranean to the North Pole", Merkel told a joint press conference in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

USA - The US dollar has plunged to a 16-month low in the latest wild move for the global financial system, tightening the currency noose on the eurozone and Japan as they struggle to break out of a debt-deflation trap. The closely-watched dollar index fell below 92 for the first time since January 2015, catapulting gold through $1300 an ounce in early trading and setting off steep falls on stock markets in Asia and Europe. The latest data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission shows that speculative traders have switched to a net "short" position on the dollar. This is a massive shift in sentiment since the end of last year when investors were betting heavily that the US Federal Reserve was on track for a series of rate rises, which would draw a flood of capital into dollar assets.

USA - Though the outcome of America’s presidential election is still up in the air, Black Lives Matter has made it clear that one outcome is certain. If Donald Trump is the victor, violence will erupt in the streets. This according to rapper and activist Tef Poe when he took to Twitter to say, “Dear white people if Trump wins young n****s such as myself are fully hell bent on inciting riots everywhere we go. Just so you know.”

USA - Despite an improved economy and lower national jobless rate since the recession, every single county in America is facing hunger, according to a new report. "There is not a single county in the United States, where food insecurity doesn't exist" said Lisa Davis, senior vice president of government relations at Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization. And in a double whammy of bad economic news, Americans living in the most remote and rural areas suffer many of the highest rates of food insecurity — and also pay more for groceries, according to the research. The national average cost per meal ranges from a low of $2.02 in Willacy and Maverick counties in Texas, to a high of $5.61 in Crook County, Oregon.

UNITED NATIONS - Pro-Israel Christian groups head to UN to condemn UNESCO's resolution denying Jewish connection to Temple Mount. In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, leading pro-Israeli Christian groups are heading to the UN to condemn UNESCO's effort to deny the Jewish nature of the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

USA - The US has granted a biotech company permission to regenerate the brains of dead people, in a groundbreaking new trial set to begin this year. Bioquark Inc are looking for 20 patients who have been declared clinically dead from a traumatic brain injury, in order to test whether they can successfully regenerate parts of their central nervous system – thus bringing them back to life.

ISRAEL - An Israeli man has petitioned the Haifa Magistrate’s Court for a restraining order against God, claiming the Almighty has been particularly unkind to him. A protocol of the hearing noted that God did not turn up for the session, although it did not specify how the court determined the Omnipresent was not in fact there, as opposed to merely exercising the right to remain silent. He argued that over a three-year period God, had exhibited a seriously negative attitude toward him, although details of just what divine mischief he had borne the brunt of were not mentioned in the report. Presiding Judge Ahsan Canaan denied the request, which he said was ludicrous, asserting the applicant needed help not from the court but rather from other sources.

UK - UKIP Defence Spokesman, Mike Hookem MEP has blasted EU plans revealed in the Financial Times to push ahead with the “ultimate plan” for an EU army saying, “to lose control of our army to the EU would be the end of sovereignty in the UK.”

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”.