NORTH KOREA – North Korea has cut food rations to their lowest level ever for this time of year and may be forced to further slash them without international aid, a United Nations report warned Friday. About 10.1 million North Koreans — 40 percent of the population — suffer from severe food shortages following the worst harvest in a decade, according to an assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme. The WFP-FAO team found that the government food distribution system — on which a large portion of the population relies — had been forced to cut rations to 300 grams per person per day since January, down from 380 grams during the same period in 2018. Many families eat very little protein, surviving on a diet of rice and kimchi cabbage most of the year.

USA - Americans are one step closer to seeing genetically modified salmon at their grocery stores. The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it is lifting an import alert that stopped genetically engineered salmon from entering the US. The salmon, called “Frankenfish” by some, won FDA approval in 2015 — the first approval of a genetically engineered animal intended for food. The FDA, after years of review, had deemed food from the AquaAdvantage Salmon safe to eat in 2015 and said there is no biological difference between these salmon and nongenetically engineered salmon. The FDA will now allow AquaAdvantage Salmon eggs, produced by AquaBounty, to be imported to the company’s land-based facility in Indiana and raised into salmon for food.

USA - Americans are more depressed than almost anyone in the world – and we may have the media to thank. Here’s a conundrum for you. Would it be possible for citizens of the strongest, wealthiest, and freest country in the world to have stress levels higher than those of the most brutally oppressive nations in existence? The next question would be: “How could this be?” After all, America’s capitalist society has produced many benefits for its residents and the rest of the world. What could possibly have Americans so worried? There are many likely culprits, but one of the key contributing factors is the country’s media establishment, which has peddled in fear and outrage since its inception. So, is the media driving Americans insane?

USA - Donald Trump has escalated the trade war with China by announcing plans to hike the tariff imposed on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10% to 25% on Friday. The US president also threatened to impose tariffs on all Chinese trade with America, a move that could further destabilise relations between the two economic powers. The move is a blow to hopes that Washington and Beijing could be nearing a deal to end the trade dispute that began last year. Currently, almost half of China’s sales to America are affected by tariffs and Trump is now aiming for the remaining $325 billion. Such a move could cause further pain and disruption to the Chinese economy, and probably trigger retaliatory action by Beijing.

UNITED NATIONS - Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon is now claiming the bible as proof to Israel’s fundamental right to all of Palestine. During his speech at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Danon held up a bible at for all the ambassadors present to see and said, “This is our deed to our land.” Danon is claiming ownership to all of Palestine, which he calls “Eretz Yisrael” at a time when the international community is worried about Netanyahu realizing his recent election promise to annex the occupied West Bank. Such a religious, literally biblical claim, coming from a supposedly secular representative of a supposedly secular democratic state, put forth to a serious political world assembly, may seem bizarre, to say the least. But it is actually not new, nor isolated to the Israeli political right, which Danon belongs to (Likud).

USA - An ounce of gold will cost $10,000 as soon as global currencies crash and central banks have to appeal to a gold-backed monetary system, according to Byron King, editor of Jim Rickards’ Gold Speculator. “If you take the global money supply, back it with 40 percent gold, you need $10,000 gold to make the math work, and that’s just using a 40 percent backing,” he said in an interview with Kitco News on the sidelines of the annual event set by Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC). “And it has to do with the eventual demise of modern currencies.”

USA - With all of the hysteria and fear-mongering about measles that’s sweeping mainstream media headlines these days, one might assume that children everywhere are dropping dead from this chickenpox-like infection. But according to official data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not a single person has died while being infected with measles in more than 15 years. On the other hand, it’s an undeniable fact that at least 100 people have died as a consequence of receiving the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella, which we’ve all been told by government health authorities, is supposed to protect against measles.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of CONGO - The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has surpassed 1,000, raising concerns the outbreak is escalating and could yet spiral out of control. It is already the second worst Ebola outbreak in history, although some way behind the 2014 West Africa epidemic which killed 11,000 people. According to the DRC Ministry of Health, 1,008 people have died from the deadly virus, including 942 confirmed deaths and 66 probable. There have been 1,529 cases since the outbreak began last August - less than a third of those infected have survived. This is the tenth Ebola epidemic in the DRC, where the virus was first identified in 1976. 

USA - NASA has started preparing for the arrival of an asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower, which will pass Earth close enough to see with the naked eye. The asteroid, named 99942 Apophis after the ancient Egyptian God of Chaos, will make its close approach to Earth on 13 April 2029. It will shoot past at about 19,000 miles (31,000 km) above the Earth's surface - within the ring of some of our planet's orbiting spacecraft. Apophis will appear as a speck of light streaking across the sky, getting brighter and faster as it goes. Although Apophis's close approach is still a decade away, the international asteroid research community is already planning observations and science opportunities for the celestial event.

GERMANY - Not since the demise of Nazi Germany have fears — and ambitions — of a so-called “Fourth Reich” reached their current level of intensity, according to the author of a new book. In “The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present,” historian Gavriel D Rosenfeld brings his counterfactual “what if” approach to the idea of a new empire based on Nazi ideals. It’s a dystopian future founded on a decades-old phenomenon. “The case of postwar Germany makes it clear that western fears about a Nazi return to power were far from unfounded and that the concerns about a Fourth Reich served a useful function in making people vigilant about defending against such a possibility,” said Rosenfeld in an exchange with The Times of Israel…

GERMANY - It has never happened to a chief executive of a company in the dax index of Germany’s 30 largest listed firms. On April 26th 56% of shareholders in Bayer, a chemicals conglomerate, censured Werner Baumann and his management team. Most German bosses can count on nine in ten shareholders to back them in non-binding confidence votes. In 2015 a rebellion by a minority, of 39%, of Deutsche Bank’s owners, who censured Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, led both co-chief executives to announce their resignation.

USA - Poynter Institute claims on its “About” page that “it champions freedom of expression.” And yet, on another page, Poynter published a list of 515 media sites, including Breitbart News, that it wants blacklisted and shut down. Poynter calls this list an “index of unreliable news sites” and is openly calling for advertisers to stop sponsoring these sites, to pull their sponsorship, to put these sites out of business. If that’s not a blacklist, tell me what is!

USA - The healthcare system in the United States is deeply broken, and it is causing massive financial pain for millions of American families.  Previously, I have published articles where I talked about how medical bills are the primary factor in two-thirds of all personal bankruptcies in the United States, and that Americans had to borrow a whopping 88 billion dollars last year to cover medical costs.  This is happening even though more than 90 percent of all Americans have some form of health coverage. 

CHINA - African Swine Fever is the greatest threat to global food production that we have seen since World War II ended. The disease has now spread “to every province in mainland China”, and it has now infected “an estimated 150-200 million pigs”.  To put that number in perspective, that is more pigs than the entire US pork industry produces in an entire year.  In other words, the equivalent of the entire US pork industry has just been wiped out.  On top of that, African Swine Fever has also spread to Cambodia, Tibet, Romania, South Africa and Vietnam.  The losses are staggering, and this crisis continues to get worse with each passing week. When I use the term “plague”, I am not using it lightly. I have never heard of a single disease wiping out this many farm animals before. Have you? We are potentially talking about an absolutely crippling blow to the global food supply.

USA - The southern US state of Alabama is set to enact a law that would mean jail for doctors performing abortions, even in cases of rape and incest - part of a push by conservatives countrywide to curb family planning services. Those backing the move say they hope it is challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, forcing a review of the landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. The measure, approved by the Alabama House of Representatives, sets prison terms of between 10 and 99 years for doctors who perform abortions. While the Alabama measure is seen as particularly draconian, at least 28 US states have introduced more than 300 measures since the start of the year limiting abortion rights, according to activists.