EUROPE - The “ice age” against Moscow must be ended, the chairperson of Germany's Die Linke (Left Party) has stated, adding that sanctions against Russia hurt European companies. Speaking to Germany's Osnabrucker Zeitung newspaper on Saturday, Sahra Wagenknecht said the ice age in relation to Russia has to be ended. “It is in Europe's interest to come together and talk about how we can achieve security and disarmament," she said, noting that European sanctions against Moscow “primarily harm European and German companies.”

TURKEY - "The European establishment is looking the other way, while the Turks are slowly increasing their foothold in Europe. The EU prefers to mock Putin rather than confront Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP. Meanwhile the Turkish state and especially its ministry of religious affairs uses the Turkish diaspora in Europe to acquire political power on the continent. There is no separation between state and religion in Turkey. The religious organization Diyanet that operates under the Turkish ministry of religious affairs has about 2000 outposts in Europe. The Gefira team located about 1300 of them, mostly mosques. There is no other political or religious organization in Europe with leaders from outside it that has such a widespread network across the European Union, and whose ideology is alien to the native Europeans."

ISRAEL - More than 200 Orthodox rabbis publish a letter describing members of the LGBTQ community as “perverts” engaged in “aggressive terrorism.” Close to 100 Orthodox rabbis respond with a letter calling their “LGBTQ brothers and sisters” a “precious group of people” deserving of love and respect.

GERMANY - When a little-known online payments firm from a small German town called Aschheim overtakes Deutsche Bank in stock market value, people tend to take notice. What makes Wirecard tick? It's as valuable as it is inconspicuous. This week, a little-known Bavarian payment processing company called Wirecard overtook Deutsche Bank to become Germany's most valuable financial services firm on the stock market. While traditional money houses like Deutsche battle to stay relevant in the smartphone age, Wirecard has already established itself as a serious player. The company provides software for online payments, contactless payments and fraud prevention systems and the German fintech success story is close to knocking Commerzbank out of the DAX index.

USA - Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill passed by the state legislature in March that would require all Florida public schools to include a display with the motto “In God We Trust” in visible places on school property. The legislation is set to go into effect this week, the New York Post reported. The law states that “each district school board” is required to display the motto in every school building and school board office in the district. “This motto is inscribed on the halls of this great capitol and inked on our currency, and it should be displayed so that our children will be exposed and educated on this great motto, which is a part of this country’s foundation,” Florida State Representative Kimberly Daniels (Democrat for Jacksonville) said as she pushed for the bill on the House Floor this year. “Something so great should not be hidden.”

USA - A hearty bowl of oatmeal is a healthy way to start your day, but according to a new study, that bowl of oatmeal can contain dangerous levels of glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical linked to cancer. The study, carried out by the non-profit Environmental Working Group, found that 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals tested in three locations in the US contained traces of glyphosate. 31 of these contained dangerously high levels of the chemical. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, a weedkiller manufactured by Monsanto. Roundup is the most popular weedkiller in the US, and last week a court in California ordered the company to pay $39 million in compensation and $250 million in punitive damages to a school groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of using Roundup at work.

USA - WUSA9.com ran this headline on June 1: “Candidate for Congress wants to legalize incest.” Yes, “Nathan Larson, an accountant who lives in Fauquier County [Virginia], thinks it’s okay for adults to have sex with children. A survivor of child sex abuse says Larson is a predator who should be locked up — not elected to high office.” To make things even worse, he also “bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife.” Yet this man is running for public office? He’s not ashamed of his attractions and proclivities? My counsel to each of you is simple. Stay outraged. Stay revulsed. Stay shocked.

USA - Vermont Democrats made history Tuesday by nominating Christine Hallquist as the first transgender individual to be a major party candidate for governor. "I'm going to tell you why we're going to win in November," said Hallquist, holding a clipboard as she addressed a cheering crowd of supporters at the Skinny Pancake restaurant in Burlington. "Because nothing is impossible when you're on the side of justice." Her historic campaign has attracted nationwide attention and support, but Hallquist still faces a challenging path as she seeks to defeat a sitting Vermont governor for the first time in more than half a century.

USA - We haven’t seen emerging market currencies crash like this in over a decade, and analysts are warning that if this continues we could witness a devastating global debt crisis.  Over the past decade, there has been an insatiable appetite for cheap loans in emerging market economies, and a very substantial percentage of those loans were denominated in US dollars. 

GERMANY - Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office says she plans weekend talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany on issues including the development of a contentious Baltic Sea natural gas pipeline. Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday the two leaders will meet Saturday at the German government’s guest house outside Berlin. The Nord Stream 2 project will add to an existing direct Russian-German pipeline, increasing the amount of natural gas Russia can send to central Europe skirting transit countries to Germany’s east. Several eastern European countries object to the plan, which the United States also opposes. Seibert says Germany’s position is it’s “important Ukraine retains a role as a transit country” for Russian gas. The leaders will also discuss ending the Syrian conflict, the situation in eastern Ukraine and bilateral topics.

MIDDLE EAST - The chances that the Trump administration will win Palestinian support for its much-awaited peace proposal should not be dismissed, the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner, Dovid Efune, said during a recent appearance on i24 News. In an interview on the “Stateside” program, Efune said that the administration’s approach — led by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser — was based on “the massacre of sacred cows.” “One of those is the idea that peace runs through the [Palestinian] leadership,” Efune observed, going on to argue that many Palestinians — frustrated from decades of unresolved conflict under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas – might now embrace an alternative leadership focused on education, development and trade instead.

SWEDEN - Migrant Gangs Unleash Coordinated Fire-Bomb Rampage Across Multiple Cities. Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when US President Donald Trump linked immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

ISRAEL - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned Hamas that Israel will continue to do whatever it needs to combat the terrorism coming from the Gaza Strip and will accept nothing less than a blanket ceasefire, at the same time as the results of an attempt by Egypt and the UN to strike a truce deal remain unclear. “We are in the midst of a campaign against terror in Gaza. It entails an exchange of blows; it will not end in one strike. Our demand is clear — a complete ceasefire. We will not suffice with less than this,” Netanyahu said at Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting. “As of now, we have destroyed hundreds of Hamas military targets, and in each round the IDF exacts an additional heavy price. Our objective is to restore the quiet to residents of the south and the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip. This goal will be achieved in full.”

IRAN - Iran’s increasing economic problems are as much a result of internal mismanagement as US external trade pressure, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei conceded Monday. “Economic experts and many officials believe the cause of this issue is not foreign, it’s internal,” he said in a speech in Tehran, according to tweets released on his official account and reported by AFP. “Not that sanctions don’t have an impact, but the main factor is how we handle them.” Khamenei referred specifically to the collapse in the currency, which has seen half its value wiped since early April. “If our performance is better, more prudent, timely and effective, sanctions will not have that much effect and can be resisted,” he added.

USA - With the arrival of the IoT and billions of new Internet-connected machines, appliances, sensors, “things,” robots, and devices, wirelessly trafficking data to and from the Cloud where it is stored, cybersecurity has become a near impossibility, and the threat of devastating attacks is on the rise. In fact, according to The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2018, cyber security is the third greatest global risk of 2018 topped only by natural disasters and extreme weather conditions. ZDNet reports, “The economic costs of a large cyber-attack could be as large as the impact of a major natural disaster. An Economic Times article titled, All of us are sitting on a ticking time bomb called the internet explains: The more connected the world gets, the more vulnerable it becomes.”