ISRAEL - Israel plans to name a train station after President Donald Trump next week, a second namesake for Trump in the country. “Here, in the Old City of Jerusalem, we will build the Western Wall & Temple Mount train station. It will be named after Donald Trump, who made history and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The official announcement will take place on Israel’s Independence Day,” Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz tweeted Tuesday.

GERMANY - Stung by Trump’s Criticisms of Russian Gas Deal, Germany Makes Its Own Threats. Germany pushed back against pressure from President Trump over its planned Russian gas pipeline after Berlin warned it could reconsider its commitment to begin importing American gas if the US makes good on a threat to block the project. The warning, in a letter by the German ambassador to several US senators last month, came as Congress is weighing a bipartisan move to enact sanctions against the controversial German-Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which the US has long opposed.

GERMANY - Germany has come under fire for its decision to drop the F-35 stealth fighter as part of the upgrade of its airforce. The decision was seen as a big setback for Lockheed, the top US arms maker, which had hoped to add to recent F-35 sales to other European countries, including Belgium. Its European vice-president Jonathan Hoyle said Berlin’s failure to opt for the F-35 had raised concerns among allies and prompted the question: “What does it mean for NATO?” Germany will pick either the Eurofighter or Boeing’s F/A-18 fighter jet to replace its ageing fleet of Tornado warplanes. 

GERMANY - The latest edition of ECFR’s EU Coalition Explorer confirms that most EU member states retain their high expectations of German leadership in the European Union. Indeed, Germany’s importance can be seen in the fact that it ranks higher than any other country across several categories the survey covers. Member states name Germany as their preferred partner in most EU policy areas, including immigration and asylum, foreign and security policy, the completion of the single market, and various aspects of economic and eurozone governance. As a result, Germany is also the country member states contact most – and that is most responsive to this outreach. So far, so good...

IRAN - Iran is teetering on the edge of collapse after the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump saw the Islamic republic plummet into a deep recession with inflation surging towards 40 percent. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast Iran’s economy will slump by six per cent this year, attributing the US President’s sanctions as drag on a regional growth, along with a slowdown in Saudi Arabia and conflict in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The latest forecasted slump in Iran’s economy is a significant increase from the 3.6 fall predicted by the IMF in October. If gross domestic product (GDP) was to fall by the forecasted six percent this year, it would be the country’s worst economic performance since 2012.

UK - Theresa May must present her final Brexit deal to the Commons by the 10th of May, or miss her June 30th deadline for leaving the EU, it has been claimed. The Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the law that will set into motion the departure from the EU, will need roughly six weeks to pass both the Houses of Commons and Lords. The likelihood remains the UK will have to take part in the European elections on May 23. Theresa May has decided to instead focus on getting a deal passed that will allow for an exit on June 30. June 30 is the last possible date before the newly elected MEPs are due to take up their places. The latest extension agreed by Brussels allows Britain to leave on June 30, otherwise departure will be delayed until October 31.

MIDDLE EAST - Five of Iran’s top leaders have threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic. Why is President Donald Trump unfazed in his resolve to tighten sanctions on the Islamic Republic? On Sunday, April 28, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff General Mohammed Bagheri said: “We are not after closing the Strait of Hormuz. If our oil does not go through the strait, other countries’ oil will certainly not cross the strait too.” Unfazed by this threat, the Trump administration has not backed off from its decision to cancel the oil embargo exemptions granted to eight of Iran’s biggest oil importers, including China, India and South Korea. In fact, a new set of penalties are in store. Even the partial closure of the two energy choke points for exported Gulf oil – at the Strait of Hormuz or the Bb al-Mandeb entrance to the Red Sea – is liable to send oil prices shooting up.

SAUDI ARABIA - Najran, Saudi Arabia, played host to an invasion of nightmarish proportions when millions of swarming locusts descended over the weekend. Video footage shot by locals shows the massive plague of insects darkening the skies as they make their way to their next destination of destruction. Several videos shared online since Sunday shows the scale of the infestation which has taken over countries on either side of the Red Sea. Locust swarms contain up to 80 million insects per square mile and they can extend for hundreds of square miles. A ‘very small’ swarm of locusts, weighing about one ton, can eat the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people. A plague can consume all crops, fruit and vegetation in their path, meaning devastating consequences for farmers and locals.

GERMANY - German ultra-nationalists believe a civil war and an eventual demise of the state will come about, and are preparing for it by training to use firearms and explosives, a local security service has warned. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, sounded the alarm over the rise of the underground far-right, according to Die Welt. An intelligence report seen by the paper calls for increased surveillance of so-called “preppers” – a loose network of ultra-nationalists who prepare for apocalyptic scenarios.

CHINA – Chinese military personnel are being trained to use Russia’s deadly S-400 Triumf missile system in another example of cooperation between the two superpowers which is likely to set alarm bells ringing in Washington. Chinese personnel will learn how to operate the state-of-the-art weaponry, according to Russian state news agency TASS. A military-diplomatic source said: "About 100 military servicemen from the People’s Liberation Army of China will undergo instruction at a Russian training centre in the operation and combat uses of the second regimental set of the S-400 system, to be provided to China in the second half of the year.” Russia’s federal service for military-technical cooperation declined to comment.  

USA - Steve Bannon pointedly reveals that the rise of China to be an existential threat to America is thanks to Wall Street and Western mega-corporations, which I have been saying for years. This is a continuation of a long trend that the West is being destroyed from within its own ranks. (TN editor)

USA - Many Americans regard paying taxes as a necessary evil. If they want to worship Satan, now the IRS has officially given them a tax-exempt place to do so. The Internal Revenue Service has granted the same non-profit status given to churches, synagogues and mosques to The Satanic Temple, an organization in Salem, Massachusetts, that calls itself America’s first devil-worshiping church. It is now protected by federal laws governing churches that operate as charities.

USA - A humbling cautionary tale lurks in complicated systems: Our very attempts to stave off disaster by introducing safety systems ultimately increase the overall complexity of the systems, ensuring that some unpredictable outcome will rear its ugly head no matter what. Complicated human-machine systems might surprise us with outcomes more favorable than we have any reason to expect. They also might shock us with catastrophe. The increasing complexity of modern human-machine systems means that, depressingly, unforeseen failures are typically large-scale and catastrophic.

USA - The Trump administration peace plan is an effort to “think out of the box and capture the imagination and hopes of both sides for a better life,” US Ambassador David Friedman told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, explaining why Washington is pressing ahead with the plan even as neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis seem overly enthusiastic.  “I don’t think there is a lack of interest; I think there is exhaustion and frustration from so many previous failed efforts,” Friedman said.

ISRAEL - Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg plans to submit a bill to cancel the law against selling leavened bread on Passover immediately after the inauguration of the 21st Knesset on April 30, she said Tuesday. “Israel is not a state run by Jewish law,” Zandberg said. “The Hametz Law has no justification in a democratic country.” The law nicknamed the Hametz Law states that businesses may not sell leavened bread products on Passover, when it is prohibited to eat or own such foods. The law elaborates that this includes “bread, rolls, pita or any other product of hametz flour.” The penalty for violating the law is a fine. Zandberg argued that, because the law was passed in 1986, it is not part of what is known as the “status quo” between religion and state in Israel.