EUROPE - The president of the European parliament is under fire for downplaying the crimes of Benito Mussolini, after he said Italy’s fascist dictator had done positive things for the country. Antonio Tajani, a close ally of the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, told Italian radio that Mussolini had a good track record on developing infrastructure: “I’m not a fascist, I have never been a fascist and I don’t share [Mussolini’s] political thought, but if we must be honest, he built roads, bridges, buildings,” he said. “He reclaimed many parts of our Italy.”

SWITZERLAND - The Swiss Government must decide whether to approve the new framework on a future relationship with the EU, or risk being cut off from European markets. Switzerland has been warned that its stock exchanges will be cut off from EU traders unless Bern approves a new framework for a future relationship. After 10 years of negotiating, patience appears to be wearing thin in Brussels.

MIDDLE EAST - All of Israel is within range of Hezbollah’s missiles, Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said in an interview with Iranian media on Sunday. “The current status quo and the current capabilities of the Resistance Front of the Islamic Revolution are all the unique accomplishments of the Islamic Revolution which cannot be verbally described and they rather should be sensed,” he said in an interview with the Persian-language Soroush Magazine. “While they once dreamed of their territorial expansion from the Nile River to the Euphrates River, and they were after realizing this wish in the past 50 years, today you can see that they have been unable to expand their land even for an inch; they even have lost some of the territories they had already occupied and are under full siege from all around their borders,” he continued.

USA - In a stunning revelation from a 2009 UN document titled “Rethinking the Economic Recovery: A Global Green New Deal”, it is discovered that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ (AOC) Green New Deal is not a new movement of the people, but rather a crafty (and plagiarized) creation of a small group of global elite working through the United Nations. This 144-page report was headed by Edward B Barbier, a professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Wyoming at the time, but specifically prepared for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

USA - As several states were making moves earlier this year to add elective classes on the historical impact of the Bible — and the president endorsed the move — the left pitched a fit. “State legislators should not be fooled that these bills are anything more than part of a scheme to impose Christian beliefs on public schoolchildren,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said back in January.

UK - According to a survey from the headteachers’ union, the Association of School and College Leaders, schools have become “an unofficial fourth emergency service” for the families worst affected by austerity across England and Wales. A majority of the 400 school leaders surveyed said schools were increasingly forced to help pupils, despite less help from councils, and have had to cut budgets. Schools are helping with food parcels, equipment, shoes and hygiene – nine out of 10 give out clothes, while nearly half do laundry for them. Some are running impromptu food banks or sourcing beds. Schools have become 'fourth emergency service' for poorest families. How could it not be a source of national shame that there are food banks in any schools in England and Wales? When did it become normal for schools to wash pupils’ clothes?

USA - Last week, when a deranged lunatic gunned down dozens of Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand it suddenly became the biggest news story in the world, and rightly so. It was a major news event, and it needed to be reported. But shouldn’t mass killings of Christians be given the same sort of media coverage? Sadly, we all know that doesn’t happen. Whenever there is a mass killing of Christians, it is usually entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this is happening. Those that control the mainstream media consider Christians to be one of the main obstacles to “progress” in this country, and so any story that would put Christians in a positive or sympathetic light simply does not fit any of the narratives that they are pushing. As a result of the lack of media coverage, the vast majority of Americans do not know that “4,136 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons” last year. That number breaks down to an average of 11 per day.

USA - The $1.1 billion spent to repair Oroville Dam is failing as water is seeping through the rebuilt spillway threatens new mass evacuations over the risk of the dam collapsing. According to national dam expert Scott Cahill of Watershed Services of Ohio, Oroville Dam is on the same failure track as in 2017, with visible water seepage trickling from the foot of the dam and dozens of points along the dam's principal spillway.

UK - 'In a 2016 poll, one in 10 Britons claimed to have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three remain convinced that they have a guardian angel. These are huge numbers and mean that, on some counts, angels are doing better than God.' In the secular, sceptical, post-Christian world of the West, continuing faith in angels is both anomaly and comfort. But what exactly are angels, and why have so many in different times and contexts around the globe believed in them? What is their history and role in the great faiths and beyond their walls? Are angels something real, a manifestation of divine concern? Or part of the poetry of religion? And can they continue to illuminate a deeper truth about human existence and the cosmos?

GERMANY - When German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers her commencement speech in May at Harvard University, a child of an Auschwitz survivor, Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, will sit right behind her. Yet Germany's leader will also give her speech in a country in which four out of 10 people do not even know what Auschwitz is, or what happened there, according to a 2018 study. The figure for millennials is more shocking still.

GERMANY - Political representatives in Germany’s Bundestag overwhelmingly rejected a resolution by the Free Democratic Party to urge Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to reverse its anti-Israel voting record at the United Nations. Merkel, who said in Israel in 2008 that its security is “non-negotiable” for her administration, voted with authoritarian regimes, like the Islamic Republic of Iran, 16 times in 2018 to condemn the Jewish state. The vote in the Bundestag was from a total of 626 MPs participating. An eye-popping 408 voted to reject the pro-Israel resolution while 155 urged its acceptance. A total of 63 MPs abstained. The depth of anti-Israelism in the Bundestag sparked criticism from a tiny number of German politicians and journalists.

USA - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocks God: “What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe”. 49 people were just ruthlessly gunned down at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is using it as an opportunity to mock God.  As you will see below, in response to the mass shootings she posed this question on Twitter: “What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe?”  Conservatives were obviously her intended target, but her statement implies that either God won’t listen to our prayers and stop these terror attacks or that He simply can’t do it because He lacks the power to do so.  Either way, her statement is a direct attack on God and believers all across America are deeply, deeply offended by her statement. What just happened in New Zealand is yet another example that demonstrates that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is rapidly disappearing. 

USA - Some well-informed Americans may be aware of China’s horrifying “Social Credit System” that was recently unveiled as a method of eradicating any dissent in the totalitarian state. Essentially freezing out anyone who does not conform to the state’s version of the ideal citizen, the SCS is perhaps the most frightening control system being rolled out today. That is, until you consider what is coming next.

USA - In a Scientific American article, titled “The Internet Knows You Better Than Your Spouse Does,” author Frank Luerweg revealed that an online test, which tracks users’ digital footprints to provide a detailed personality analysis, knew many of those tested better than their spouses. Three researchers, Luerweg continued, from the University of Cambridge and Stanford University “trained their algorithm using data from more than 70,000 Facebook users.”

NIGERIA - The recent death toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria, the Christian Post reported. The Fulani jihadists, who have become a greater threat to Nigerian Christians than the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, stormed the villages of Inkirimi, Dogonnoma, and Ungwan Gora in the Kajuru Local Government Area last Monday, destroying 143 homes, killing 52 people, and wounding dozens more. The assailants reportedly split into three groups, the first of which fired upon the people, the second set fire to buildings, and the third chased down people fleeing from the scene. Victims of the assault included women and children.