ISRAEL - Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett announced on Thursday evening that his party will leave the coalition if Israel agrees to release Israeli-Arab terrorists as part of a framework agreement to extend peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA). "Israel has been facing a new situation in recent days with the Palestinian appeal to the UN which flagrantly violated all the agreements with them since the Oslo Accords until today,” said Bennett.

ISRAEL - Economics Minister and Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett has continued his calls to annex parts of Judea and Samaria, in response to the repeated failure of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. Following a letter yesterday to Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which he urged the PM to implement his "Plan B" alternative to a "two-state solution" with the PA, Bennett took his message to the international media last night, in an interview with CNN.

BRAZIL - In this Brazilian farm town where legions of people have suffered from dengue fever, a campaign is fighting back, releasing swarms of mosquitoes engineered to wipe out their own species. As workers open plastic containers allowing millions of newly hatched Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to spread their wings and flutter into the sky, it seems counterintuitive. After all, this is the same pesky bug that transmits the dengue virus through a human-to-mosquito-to-human cycle that's surprisingly difficult to break.

USA - Since 2007, when the financial crisis touched down across the world, the proportion of people going hungry in Europe has soared, according to the OECD. As Bloomberg’s Niraj Shah notes, the number has doubled in Greece alone from 8.9% in 2007 to almost 18% currently unable to afford food. Across the European Union, the proportion of people going hungry ranges from 4.6% in Germany to over 30% in (ironically) Hungary. However, before one gloats at the weakness in Europe and the cleanest dirty shirt the US pretends to be, at 21.1% of Americans unable to afford food, only Hungary and Estonia are in worse shape…

RUSSIA/CHINA - Several weeks ago we reported that in response to ongoing alienation of Russia by the west Putin was aggressively setting the stage for Russia's eastward expansion, set to culminate with a "holy grail" gas deal with China. We said that "while Europe is furiously scrambling to find alternative sources of energy should Gazprom pull the plug on natgas exports to Germany and Europe (the imminent surge in Ukraine gas prices by 40% is probably the best indication of what the outcome would be), Russia is preparing the announcement of the 'Holy Grail' energy deal with none other than China, a move which would send geopolitical shockwaves around the world and bind the two nations in a commodity-backed axis."

ISRAEL - Israel has proposed a deal to rescue the peace talks, offering to release 26 prisoners if the Palestinian leadership “cancels” its bid for greater international recognition. Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister, told The Daily Telegraph that this exchange could be a way of continuing the negotiations brokered by John Kerry, the US Secretary of State.

USA - In an attempt to recover after US Secretary of State John Kerry blamed Israel for peace talk failures on Tuesday, US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki quickly stated Kerry did not intend to point the finger at the Jewish state. "Secretary Kerry was clear when he said that both sides took unhelpful steps, and at no point did he take part in the blame game," claimed Psaki.

USA - The caribou have vanished on Wall Street and the wolves are in a feeding frenzy against each other. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Goldman Sachs is considering shuttering its Sigma X dark pool, a business that brought in $7.17 billion from equity trading in 2013, before accounting charges. There are only three reasons that a Wall Street mega bank shutters a $7 billion business instead of selling it: it’s crazy; its regulators told it to shutter it; there’s more bad news ahead about this business and the firm is trying to get out in front of the fallout.

USA - Mini-storms of tumbleweed have invaded the drought-stricken prairie of southern Colorado, blocking rural roads and irrigation canals, and briefly barricading homes and an elementary school. Firefighters even had to cut a path through them to get to a pregnant woman who feared she'd be trapped in her home if she went into labor. The invasion of the tumbleweed, an iconic symbol of both the West's rugged terrain and the rugged cowboys who helped settle it, has conjured images of the Dust Bowl of 80 years ago, when severe drought unleashed them onto the landscape. Irrigation ditches that crisscross the region have snagged tons of tumbleweed. All of it will have to be cleared so that farmers and cattle ranchers can water their fields and pastures.

ISRAEL - Israel has threatened to take "unilateral" action over a Palestinian bid to join 15 UN agencies, including the Geneva Conventions. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made the announcement, which prompted scorn from US and Israeli officials, last week. "The Palestinians' threats to appeal to the UN will not affect us," stated Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "The Palestinians have much to lose by this unilateral move. They will achieve a state only by direct negotiations, not by empty statements and not by unilateral moves. These will only push a peace agreement farther away and unilateral steps on their part will be met with unilateral steps on our part," the Israeli leader stated. Critics pointed to such moves as showing the farce of the so-called peace talks.

USA - As we have discussed numerous times, nothing lasts forever - especially reserve currencies - no matter how much one hopes that the status-quo remains so, in the end the exuberant privilege is extorted just one too many times. Headline after headline shows nations declaring 'interest' or direct discussions in diversifying away from the US dollar... and as SCMP reports, Standard Chartered notes that at least 40 central banks have invested in the Yuan and several more are preparing to do so. The trend is occurring across both emerging markets and developed nation central banks diversifiying into 'other currencies' and "a great number of central banks are in the process of adding yuan to their portfolios." Perhaps most ominously, for king dollar, is the former-IMF manager's warning that "The Yuan may become a de facto reserve currency before it is fully convertible."

UK - Proposed new powers that will allow HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to dip into individuals' bank accounts to reclaim money owed to the Exchequer have faced fresh criticism. The Treasury select committee heard that the new powers, contained in the detail of last month's Budget, were "excessive" and potentially illegal. In a written submission to MPs, Frank Haskew, head of the tax faculty at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW), said the plans were "of considerable concern to many taxpayers and accountants". He said it was "a fundamental tenet of our English law and our democratic society" that money "cannot be grabbed from somebody’s account without a judge agreeing to the move".

UK - Hundreds of millions of pounds may have been wasted on a drug for flu that works no better than paracetamol, a landmark analysis has said. The UK has spent £473 million on Tamiflu, which is stockpiled by governments globally to prepare for flu pandemics. The Cochrane Collaboration claimed the drug did not prevent the spread of flu or reduce dangerous complications, and only slightly helped symptoms. It concluded that the drug reduced the persistence of flu symptoms from seven days to 6.3 days in adults and to 5.8 days in children. But the report's authors said drugs such as paracetamol could have a similar impact.

USA - Another horrific stock market crash is coming, and the next bust will be “unlike any other” we have seen. That’s the message from Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist of GMO, a Boston-based firm with $117 billion in assets under management.

USA - The Lone Star State can't seem to stay out of the heat. In a new drought report by the Texas Water Development Board, the state saw worsening conditions that now affect two thirds of Texas. About 25 percent of the state is suffering under "extreme" or "worse" drought conditions and two-thirds of Texas suffers from "moderate" or "worse" drought conditions. Just four months ago, 46 percent of the state was dry enough to qualify as undergoing at least a "moderate" drought. The percent has risen to 67 percent today. The northern and northeastern portions of the state are getting hit the hardest, and much of the state has seen less than 50 percent of normal rainfall. The drought is slowly taking a toll on the state's reservoirs. By the end of March, storage levels were 472,740 acre-feet less than the same month last year.