USA - Seismographs have picked up a swarm of earthquakes in the northwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park, including dozens early Tuesday. The University of Utah Seismograph Station reported five small earthquakes including those with magnitudes of 3.4, 2.7 and 3.2 in a 20-minute period starting at 3:33am in an area 16 to 18 miles south of Gardiner. Earthquake information specialist Paul Roberson said there were another 20 to 30 small quakes Tuesday morning that hadn't yet been posted on the university's website. Seismographs recorded 31 quakes in the same area south of Gardiner on Saturday, while another 23 were reported last Wednesday and Thursday in an area between 18 and 19 miles east-southeast of West Yellowstone.

ALASKA, USA - An Alaska volcano that has been spewing ash and lava for years began erupting with new intensity this week, pushing a plume of smoke and ash as high as 24,000 feet (7,315 meters) and prompting scientists to issue their highest volcanic alert in five years, authorities said on Tuesday. The eruption was intense enough for Alaska Volcano Observatory scientists to issue their first red alert warning since 2009, when the state's Mount Redoubt had a series of eruptions that spewed ash 50,000 feet (15,240 meters). "This means it can erupt for weeks or even months," observatory research geologist Michelle Coombs said of the warning. "I don't think we will be at red for that long, but we are expecting it to go for a while based on its past." Coombs said affected areas are uninhabited except for some hunting destinations.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Finally! After seven weeks of counting, and intense, soulful preparations, the nation of Israel is poised to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai on the glorious festival of Shavuot. But what does it really mean, to "receive the Torah?"

THE FESTIVAL OF SHAVUOT: Intimately connected to the land of Israel, Shavuot is the festival of the bringing of the first-fruits to the Holy Temple. Shavuot is also the anniversary of the Sinai revelation and the receiving of Torah by Israel, and since the destruction of the Holy Temple the emphasis of Shavuot has been Torah study. Ultimately, Torah study and the bringing of the first-fruits are both expressions of the centrality of Torah in our lives. When we build the Holy Temple we best exemplify the fulfillment of Torah in this world by the bringing of the first-fruits.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - The Temple Mount became Jewish again, at least for one day, on Tuesday. Temple organizations reported that about 400 Jews had ascended to the Mount in the morning hours, and that police allowed them in without undue delays. Most of the gates to the Mount were closed, and Muslim worshippers, who often harass Jews on the Mount, are not being allowed in. This is happening because police and the Israel Security Agency (ISA, or Shin Bet) have received intelligence about “malicious intentions” and Islamist incitement calling on Arabs to riot and prevent the Jews from entering.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - The Women in Green (WIG) movement has asked for the Israeli police's response to its request to hold a rally on the night of Tisha B'Av, the traditional Jewish day of mourning for the First and Second Temples and other Jewish tragedies, in which prayers are to be said and the Book of Lamentations to be read on the Temple Mount.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - On Wednesday May 28, 2014, Jerusalem Day was celebrated in Israel and in Jewish communities throughout the free world. Bible believing Christians also commemorate the day. The date is marked by the Hebrew lunar calendar, and celebrates the day when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) liberated the Old City of Jerusalem (June 7, 1967), and its holiest shrines, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the only remnant of the Holy Temple.

ISRAEL - It is hard to reconcile what has been happening at the Temple Mount over the last several months. My common sense is having difficulty tolerating the reality that has become a permanent fixture: Muslims inciting and rioting, Jews forcibly kept outside, and the police, thrust in the middle, showing manifest weakness. The Muslims must understand that the gates to the Temple Mount can be closed to them as well. The Waqf must understand that its powers of authority can be taken away, and the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which has clear ties to Hamas, must stay away altogether. The movement for a Jewish Temple Mount, however, must also realize that insisting on exercising the right to pray there now, at this juncture, is not only unattainable, but also a hindrance to the far more humble and basic goal of restoring the freedom of access and movement for all Jews on the Temple Mount.

LOS ANGELES, USA - No, it's not your imagination: The Los Angeles area is feeling more earthquakes this year. After a relatively quiet period of seismic activity in the Los Angeles area, the last five months have been marked by five earthquakes larger than 4.0. That hasn't occurred since 1994, the year of the destructive Northridge earthquake that produced 53 such temblors.

UK - A key figure implicated in the Islamic “Trojan Horse” plot to take over secular state schools in Birmingham is a registered Ofsted inspector, it has emerged. Tahir Alam, chairman of governors at Park View School in the city, has been registered as an education inspector since 2010, it was revealed. He was appointed to the role three years after publishing a detailed blueprint that appeared to advocate the introduction of Islamic practices in schools, including covering up girls, gender segregation in some activities and the end of multicultural worship. Mr Alam has previously branded the alleged Trojan Horse revelations as a “witch-hunt”. The disclosure is the latest twist in the ongoing investigation over a Muslim plot to infiltrate a series of schools in Birmingham.

UK - London's vast foreign exchange market faces Government regulation for the first time under plans due to be unveiled by the Treasury within the next two weeks. Treasury officials are working with the international Financial Stability Board (FSB) to draw up a set of regulations designed to “clean up” the £3 trillion-a-day global market, which is already subject to regulatory investigations following allegations of manipulation. Despite being one of the biggest financial markets in the world, used daily by companies to move money between jurisdictions and currencies, the foreign exchange market has largely escaped official regulation. Prices for transactions are usually set by traders involved in the deals.

UK - UK policymakers must act to cool rapid house price growth in London and prevent Britons from taking on sky-high debts that they may not be able to afford once interest rates rise, the European Commission has warned. Record low interest rates combined with a lack of housing supply had pushed up property prices across London and the South East, it said on Monday. This had led Britons to take on bigger mortgages, pushing up overall household indebtedness. “The United Kingdom continues to experience macroeconomic imbalances, which require monitoring and policy action,” the EC warned in its annual review of the UK. “The risks in the housing sector relate to a continuing structural undersupply of housing; intrinsic supply constraints, particularly in London, and the relatively slow response of supply to increases in demand continues to drive house prices higher.”

USA – Google plans to spend more than $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions of the globe, people familiar with the project said, hoping to overcome financial and technical problems that thwarted previous efforts. Details remain in flux, the people said, but the project will start with 180 small, high-capacity satellites orbiting the earth at lower altitudes than traditional satellites, and then could expand. "Google and Facebook are trying to figure out ways of reaching populations that thus far have been unreachable," said Susan Irwin, president of Irwin Communications Inc, a satellite-communications research firm. "Wired connectivity only goes so far and wireless cellular networks reach small areas. Satellites can gain much broader access."

UK - Destroy the market's ability to price assets, risk and credit, and you take away the essential information participants need to make rational, informed decisions. A correspondent recently summarized why unintended consequences eventually destroy all politically expedient strategies that temporarily prop up a systemically unsustainable Status Quo: "Unintended consequences almost always equal or exceed the benefits of whatever your temporary gains were in a complex system. We see this over and over again, in all sorts of different complex systems." In other words, all the "kick the can down the road" strategies being deployed across the globe by central states and banks will inevitably backfire because central planning fixes always trigger systemic consequences that were unintended by the planners, who are fixated on minimizing the political pain of powerful constituencies, not understanding or repairing the real problems.

ISRAEL - The Israeli education system has joined the majority of the Western world in introducing the theory of evolution to middle-school pupils beginning in the next academic year, it was announced on Sunday. The professional committee in the Education Ministry made the decision to introduce the theory of evolution to seventh grade through ninth grade pupils across the education system – in secular state schools, state-religious schools and Arab schools. “For years, since the 1980s, evolution was only touched upon in some middle schools, depending on if the teacher felt comfortable tackling such a heavy subject,” committee chairwoman Professor Nava Ben-Zvi told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. Regarding any opposition by ultra-Orthodox or religious factions, Ben-Zvi said she did not see “any need for resistance” from these sectors. “We are not fighting the links,” she said “but science is science and the time has come to incorporate the study into the curriculum,” she said.

UK - David Cameron will meet Vladimir Putin for face to face talks on the Ukraine crisis on Friday, as world leaders scramble to defuse the internal conflict raging in the former Soviet republic. The meeting in France will come a day after a G7 meeting in Brussels from which Mr Putin has been excluded, Downing Street said. The G7 meeting will be dominated by Ukraine, with leaders discussing how to defuse the crisis and free themselves from energy dependence on Russia. A host of world leaders, including the Russian president, will gather in France on Friday to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. But commemoration of the shared endeavour against the Nazis will be tainted by the Ukrainian crisis, with Western leaders including Mr Cameron, Barack Obama, and Francois Hollande, the French president, expected to take issue with the Russian leader.