FINLAND - With the launch of its first direct cargo train link to China last week, Finland became the first Nordic country to establish itself as a node in China’s emerging New Silk Road trade network. The new rail link, connecting the southeastern Finnish city of Kouvola with Xi’an and Zhengzhou in central China, is the fastest among the many similar connections opened between China and Europe in recent years. It only takes ten days for trains from Kouvola to travel the 8,000km route through Russia and Kazakhstan to Xi’an. The direct transportation route to China’s fast-developing central regions is expected to offer new business opportunities for companies in Finland, as well as other Nordic and European countries.

USA - A string of powerful earthquakes have rocked the west and central US with several of them hitting near to the dreaded RING OF FIRE. Some eight earthquakes have rocked the United States in quick succession, all of which have taken place on April 9. The strongest of the earthquakes, and also the most recent, came in Perry, Oklahoma, when a 4.3 magnitude tremor hit the central US state. Since midnight, there have also been earthquakes in Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and three in California. Both California and Alaska sit on the deadly Ring of Fire – the largest and most active fault line in the world, stretching from New Zealand, all around the east coast of Asia, over to Canada and the USA and all the way down to the southern tip of South America – which causes more than 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes.

USA - The Marxist authoritarians who run Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, and every other major social media can claim all they want that their platforms are free, open, fair, and accessible to all, but they continue to prove almost on a daily basis what horrible liars they are. And I’ll take that one step further: If you’re a conservative and you are in the public square — as a publisher, an entertainer, a writer, or part of the academic commentariat — you’re going to be banned at some point from all of your social media accounts. That’s because at some point you’re going to drop a massive truth bomb that the Marxist snowflakes don’t like and they’re just going to ban you out of spite, hatred, disgust, etc. The Left doesn’t really believe in freedom and liberty for everybody.

RUSSIA - Thirty years ago Wall Street slid into the abyss, suffering the biggest one-day market fall of over 22 percent. Since then the Dow Jones has risen from 1,738 points to an all-time high of over 23,000, raising fears another historic crash is on the cards. RT talked to Keiser Report host Max Keiser about the root causes of the 1987 crash and the possibilities of another market meltdown.

USA - This week’s dramatic stock market sell-off has raised concerns of an impending bear market, which, according to legendary investor Jim Rogers, will be more catastrophic than any other market downturn that he has lived through. “When we have a bear market again, and we are going to have a bear market again, it will be the worst in our lifetime,” Rogers told Bloomberg.

GERMANY - Berlin is using a bland name to obscure a dramatic shift in its approach to defense: integrating brigades from smaller countries into the Bundeswehr. In a very few years, the idea of an EU army finds its way back into the news, causing a kerfuffle. The concept is both fantasy and bogeyman: For every federalist in Brussels who thinks a common defense force is what Europe needs to boost its standing in the world, there are those in London and elsewhere who recoil at the notion of a potential NATO rival.

USA - A new survey has found that a third of young millennials in the US aren’t convinced the Earth is actually round. The national poll reveals that 18 to 24-year-olds are the largest group in the country who refuse to accept the scientific facts of the world’s shape. YouGov, a British market research firm, polled 8,215 adults in the United States to find out if they ever believed in the “flat Earth” movement. Only 66 percent of young millennials answered that they “always believe the world is round.” Science teachers across the US will be shaking their heads after learning that nine percent of young adults answered that they have “always believed” the planet was flat.

CHINA - It took China just 11 hours to retaliate against the United States for proposing tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese products, but Chinese officials are holding back on taking aim at their largest American import: government debt.

USA - President Donald Trump has denied that the US and China are engaged in a trade war, despite Beijing announcing it would slap import tariffs on American goods in a tit-for-tat move. “We are not in a trade war with China,” Trump tweeted. “That war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!” Many of the imported goods are from American manufacturers, which send raw materials to China due to cheap labor. When the goods are shipped back to the US, they are considered imports in the trade balance.

RUSSIA - The West is becoming an Orwellian version of itself in its desperate attempts to cling to power, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief said. If this continues, the West may face a similar fate to that of Biblical figure Goliath. Sergey Naryskin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), delivered the strongly-worded message at an international security conference in Moscow on Wednesday. He accused the West and the United States in particular of failing to acknowledge that they can no longer dictate their will to the rest of the world. Western nations “cannot and will not face the truth and acknowledge that their own influence, which used to be unchallenged, is now diminishing.”

USA - We’ve known for years now that the media industry in America has become highly consolidated by mega corporations, giving a very small group of people incredible influence over what the nation thinks. “The conglomerates are: General Electric, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS.  All are corporations that have their own shady histories, dealings and suspicious actors. Disney being widely regarded as an occult enterprise aimed at warping the minds of children with disturbing subliminal imagery. One of these companies is also the 12th largest US military defense contractor, so it’s no surprise that so much of our entertainment centers around the glorification of war and violence.

PHILIPPINES - Temblor hits at a depth of 61 km (38 miles), about 128 km (80 miles) east of the island’s key city of Davao. An earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck off the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on Thursday, the US Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the quake, which hit at a depth of 61 km (38 miles), about 128 km (80 miles) east of the island’s key city of Davao.

EUROPE - The Croatian president thanks Argentina for taking in notorious pro-Nazi war criminals after World War II. In Bulgaria, a top politician calls the country's Roma minority "ferocious humanoids." And Hungary's prime minister declares the "color" of Europeans should not mix with that of Africans or Arabs. Ever since WWII, such views were taboo in Europe, confined to the far-right fringes. Today they are openly expressed by mainstream political leaders in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, part of a populist surge in the face of globalization and mass migration. "There is something broader going on in the region which has produced a patriotic, nativist, conservative discourse through which far-right ideas managed to become mainstream," said Tom Junes, a historian with the Human and Social Studies Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria.

ITALY - Italy’s Lega Nord leader Matteo Salvini has declared that he would put an end to the “absurd” EU sanctions against Russia if he were to be appointed as prime minister of the country. Mr Salvini responded on Twitter: “I hope, from the government, to soon meet the appeal of the president of Confindustria Russia: stopping these absurd sanctions that are causing incalculable damage to the Italian economy! No more servants of this European Union! Italians first.”

USA - American stocks saw the worst start in April since the Great Depression, as Chinese retaliatory tariffs spooked investors in the world’s largest economy. The S&P 500 index fell 2.2 percent after the first trading session in the second quarter. This was only ever worse 89 years ago, when it fell by 2.5 percent. Back then, it was a selloff that triggered the Great Depression – the worst economic crisis in US history. On Monday, China introduced additional tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 US products including frozen pork, wine and certain fruits and nuts, in response to Washington’s duties on imports of Chinese aluminum and steel. Beijing has also pledged to introduce a “proportional” response in case the White House decides to impose a new round of tariff hikes against Chinese goods.