USA - Donald Trump has announced that the US will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition. Previous US administrations have treated Golan Heights as occupied Syrian territory, in line with UN security council resolutions. Trump declared his break with that policy, in a tweet on Thursday.

USA - Now even the Federal Reserve is publicly admitting that the US economy is slowing down.  And that is quite remarkable, because usually the Federal Reserve is extremely hesitant to say that an economic slowdown is taking place.  As I pointed out the other day, in 2008 former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke kept insisting that a recession was not coming, but we found out later that a recession had already begun when he was making those statements.  Normally the Federal Reserve tries very hard to paint a rosy picture of our economic future, and one of the big reasons for that is because they want us to believe that they are doing a good job and that they have everything under control.  So it was quite stunning to hear Fed Chair Jerome Powell use the term “slowdown” to describe what is coming for the US economy on Wednesday…

USA - From kitchen tables worldwide you can hear a chorus of parents chastising their children with the same refrain: “Stop playing with your food.” Children aside, this rebuke needs to be loudly directed at the profiteers of industrial agriculture. They keep toying with the very nature of food, not to benefit consumers, family farmers, workers or the environment — but to fatten the profits of Silicon Valley tech giants, food monopolists and Wall Street financiers.

EUROPE - While Europeans view Germany as in the ascendancy, French and British power is viewed as "in decline," a new survey has revealed. Many worry about long-term prospects and fear Brussels is "out of touch" with citizens. In a survey published late Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of all respondents in 10 EU member states said Germany plays a more important role in the world that it did a decade ago. "There is a sense in Europe that while German power is on the rise, French and British power is stagnant or in decline," the center said.

PHILIPPINES - Darrell Blatchley received a call from the Philippines' Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources early Friday morning reporting that it had a young Cuvier's beaked whale that was weak and vomiting blood. Within a few hours it was dead. Blatchley, a marine biologist and environmentalist based in the Philippine city of Davao, gathered his team to drive two hours to where the whale had washed up. "It was full of plastic — nothing but nonstop plastic," he said. "It was compact to the point that its stomach was literally as hard as a baseball." "That means that this animal has been suffering not for days or weeks but for months or even a year or more," Blatchley added. He noted that among the 88 pounds of plastic were 16 rice sacks — similar to potato sacks — and plastic bags from local Philippine grocery chains… The Philippines has been deemed one of the world's leading plastic polluters.

USA - With virtually every day that has passed since the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which killed a hundred and fifty-seven people, more disturbing news has emerged. On Sunday, a spokesperson for Ethiopia’s ministry of transport said that the black box that was recovered from the wreckage of Flight 302 indicated that “clear similarities were noted between Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610,” which crashed last October, killing a hundred and eighty-nine people...

USA - The annual Templeton Prize, which recognizes outstanding contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension," was awarded Tuesday to Brazilian Marcelo Gleiser - a theoretical physicist dedicated to demonstrating science and religion are not enemies. An agnostic, he doesn't believe in God - but refuses to write off the possibility of God's existence completely. "Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method," Gleiser told AFP. "Atheism is a belief in non-belief. So you categorically deny something you have no evidence against." "Science can give answers to certain questions, up to a point," Gleiser pointed out. "This has been known for a very long time in philosophy, it's called the problem of the first cause: we get stuck," the physicist, a father of five, said. "We should have the humility to accept that there's mystery around us."

USA - In the wake of last week's terror attacks at two New Zealand mosques which left 50 dead, several websites which either reported on the incident, hosted footage of the attacks, or have simply allowed people to engage in uncensored discussion such as Dissenter or Zero Hedge, have been partially or completely blocked in both New Zealand and Australia for the sake of "protecting consumers," according to the CEOs of three New Zealand telcos.   So while the telcos have defended their decision to censor a wide swath of material in order to shield people from dangerous information - and have encouraged social media platforms to commit to European-style information control, Kiwis and Australians will only get to know what the technocracy approves in order to 'protect consumers.' Unless they set aside 15 seconds and use a VPN.

USA - War Is a Racket is a speech and a 1935 short book, by Smedley D Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his career military experience, Butler frankly discusses how business interests commercially benefit, such as war profiteering from warfare.

It contains this summary: “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

MEXICO - A lot of us have been watching Mount Popocatepetl for a very long time.  Could it be possible that we are now on the verge of the most destructive volcanic eruption in the modern history of North America?  On Monday night at precisely 9:38 pm, a massive explosion at Mount Popocatepetl sent a column of volcanic ash nearly a mile into the sky.  A “yellow alert warning” has been issued by the authorities, and they are ordering everyone to stay at least 12 kilometers away from the crater.  They are stressing that the threat has not passed... an evacuation plan is in place in case an even larger eruption follows.  And if a much larger eruption does follow, the devastation could be off the charts.  Mexico City is only 43 miles away from Mount Popocatepetl, and approximately 25 million people live within a 60 mile radius of the crater.

USA - Many of the most powerful left-wing economic "experts" are calling for a Debt Jubilee by name… London School of Economics Professor David Graeber says: "we are long overdue for some kind of Biblical-style Jubilee... it would relieve so much genuine human suffering." The national affairs correspondent for The Nation says we should: "Think Jubilee, American Style... because it combines a sense of social justice with old-fashioned common sense." Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kaufman Foundation (a liberal think tank), says: "we need a fresh start, and we need it now... we need... a Jubilee." Around the world today, the idea of a Jubilee has become the de facto solution for extreme financial problems... when debts can't be repaid. After studying hundreds of years of financial history, I believe America's upcoming Jubilee will strongly resemble the one that took place in our country way back in 1841... But of course, this time around, the Jubilee won't be tens of thousands of people like it was in 1841... it will instead be tens of millions of people, and trillions of dollars.

AFRICA - Cyclone Idai has ravaged parts of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in what the UN says could be the worst weather-related disaster ever to hit the southern hemisphere. Millions of people were in the direct path of the cyclone, with the port city of Beira in Mozambique bearing the brunt. The death toll in Mozambique is currently 200 but President Filipe Nyusi fears it could be far higher. Some 100,000 people need to be rescued from the port city of Beira, according to Mozambique's government. A UN World Food Programme worker said of the damage in Beira: "There is no power. There is no telecommunications. The streets are littered with fallen electricity lines." The road between Beira and Chimoio has been damaged, leaving aid agencies cut off, unable to deliver supplies.

GERMANY - Germany has demanded Theresa May stop playing games and present “clear and precise proposals” before EU leaders offer her a Brexit delay. Michael Roth, the German European affairs minister, bemoaned the Prime Minister’s Brexit strategy ahead of a crunch summit on Thursday, during which she is expected to request an Article 50 extension. Mr Roth insisted the “clock is ticking and time is running out” for the British Government to table proposals as the country heads towards a no-deal Brexit in just 10 days.

GERMANY - Berlin seems to be losing patience with the US ambassador who didn’t mince his words over German defense spending. A high-ranking MP demanded that the envoy be sent home because he acts “like an occupation commissioner.” Wolfgang Kubicki, vice speaker of the German parliament, called for Richard Grenell to be declared persona non grata immediately, local media reported. The emotive remark wasn’t limited to what Berlin should do in relation to the American ambassador.

GERMANY - Brexit is a disaster for Germany which could be forced to exit the euro to save itself from becoming a “cash cow” to the EU, an investment expert has claimed. As the EU’s strongest economy, Germany would become the “cash cow” to the Union, he warned. Writing for DASInvestment, Mr Schmitz said: “The structural deficits of the confederation of states are becoming increasingly apparent and can not be remedied. In addition, there is no political will in the southern European countries for urgently needed economic reforms. The current economic policy debate almost completely overlooks the impact of Brexit on the EU's majorities. Because of it, the former hard currency countries, which include Britain, Germany, the Nordic countries and the Benelux countries, lose their previous blocking minority in the Council of Ministers.”