USA - The Tesla and SpaceX CEO's hopes of buying out Twitter entirely look increasingly unlikely as one big business has swooped in and taken his title of largest shareholder. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's chances of becoming the sole owner of Twitter seem increasingly steep, after a big investment company took his title of largest shareholder. After offering to buy Twitter outright for $41 billion (£31 billion), Musk looked set to take over the social media giant completely. However, investment company The Vanguard Group has upped its stake in Twitter to 10.3%, overtaking Musk's 9.1% share. The asset firm is now Twitter's largest shareholder, although Musk is still the largest individual stakeholder. Musk believes Twitter needs to place more importance on 'free speech'.

USA - Leftists are pushing to promote queerness to minors in schools, projecting adult insecurities and undermining traditional values. Left-wing pedagogical efforts to introduce gender ideology into the classroom have by and large slipped under the notice of parents, who are only now becoming aware of its impact on children. Some call it ‘ideological capture’, others call it ‘grooming’. Kids are being exposed to drag shows, Pride parades organized by local school boards, transgenderism, and LGBT-based curricula. Children are instructed to question their gender and sexuality. It’s all being done for the sake of affirming the choices of adults who often struggle with their own identities.

USA - Planned Parenthood is the ring-leader in abortions and the sale of baby body parts. Now the entity is making dough in the transgender industry. There is probably no entity looked at in the US like Planned Parenthood. The businesses it deals in are some of the most controversial industries in America. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is one of 134 member associations of the gigantic International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which works in 142 nations on every continent. We also know that this global entity is involved in the sale of baby body parts. This was uncovered in some heroic reporting by the Center for Medical Progress. By getting into transgender work, Planned Parenthood can claim less of its work is for abortions on a percentage of revenues while profitting from this new industry. Planned Parenthood could not be more evil to Christian conservatives if it tried.

UNITED NATIONS - Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears to have set off a "perfect storm," sparking multiple crises across the globe in the areas of food, energy, and debt, with devastating impacts for developing countries, the United Nations warned in a report Wednesday. "The war in Ukraine, in all its dimensions, is producing alarming cascading effects to a world economy already battered by COVID-19 and climate change, with particularly dramatic impacts on developing countries," the report warns. "Recent projections by UNCTAD [the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development] estimate that the world economy will be a full percentage point of GDP growth lower than expected due to the war, which is severely disrupting already tight food, energy, and financial markets." The report describes this disruption as a "perfect storm," coming "on the brink of a global debt crisis."

UK - Why are the Left's woke warriors so desperate to destroy Winston Churchill? Because if the West's greatest hero can be made to fall, they can force anything on us, writes Douglas Murray. Those unthinking critics of Western civilisation who claim that everything about it is reprehensible and nothing good has ever come out of it have developed a pattern with the extraordinary claims they make. Their technique is to zoom in on Western behaviour, remove it from the context of the time, set aside any non-Western parallels and then exaggerate what the West actually did. The result has been a stampede inside the West to rid itself of its own history.

ITALY - Blood, oil and good business. Italian troops wage war in Niger, Libya, the Gulf of Guinea, the Hormuz straits, Iraq, the Mediterranean and many other places besides. Enjoying the silence and indifference of the many, our parliament has approved the refinancing of various neo-colonial ventures currently being undertaken by the Italian armed forces. The focus is on Africa, where, as of 2021, 17 missions were operating under the red, white and green of the Italian flag (out of a total of 40 worldwide), two more than the previous year. These foreign operations cost a total of €1.2 billion, and involve 9,449 military personnel, an increase compared to last year’s already record-breaking numbers. Minister of War Lorenzo Guerini and other “industry insiders” have put aside the old rhetoric of humanitarian missions and today speak explicitly of “defending Italian interests abroad”. Italian imperialism no longer conceals itself, again asserting itself as a competitor in a multipolar world of shifting allegiances.

GERMANY - Berlin might lose €220 billion in GDP in two years and have the highest inflation in its modern history, top economic institutes warn. Germany could lose hundreds of billions of euros in gross domestic product (GDP) and face the highest inflation rates in its modern history over the next two years should it stop Russia’s energy supplies immediately. The warning comes from five of the nation’s top economic research centers in a joint forecast published on Wednesday. Europe’s top economy is still recovering from the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Russia’s military action in Ukraine – as well as Berlin’s reaction to it - might further greatly slow down its ability to bounce back, the report warns. German GDP is expected to increase by 2.7% in 2022, down from 4.8% that was forecast in 2021. And that’s only if “no further economic escalations” take place, the report adds. Earlier this week, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder warned it would mean “mass unemployment” and “social decline”.

USA - We recently discussed the gathering of Democratic politicians and media figures at the University of Chicago to discuss how to better shape news, combat “disinformation,” and reeducate those with conservative views. The political and media elite shared ideas on how to expand censorship and control what people read or viewed in the news. The same figures are now alarmed that Elon Musk could gain greater influence over Twitter and, perish the thought, restore free speech protections to the site. The latest is former labor secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich, who wrote a perfectly Orwellian column in the Guardian titled “Elon Musk’s vision for the internet is dangerous nonsense.”

NORTH KOREA - North Korea has test-fired a new type of tactical guided weapon designed to boost its nuclear fighting capability, state media reported Sunday, a day before its chief rivals the United States and South Korea begin annual drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal. The 13th weapons test this year came amid concerns that North Korea may soon conduct an even larger provocation. That may include a nuclear test in an effort to expand the country’s arsenal and increase pressure on Washington and Seoul while denuclearization talks remain stalled. The official Korean Central News Agency [KCNA] said leader Kim Jong Un observed what it called the weapon’s successful launch. KCNA didn’t elaborate, but its use of the words “tactical nukes” suggested the weapon is likely capable of carrying a nuclear warhead that could hit strategic targets in South Korea, including US military installations. The KCNA dispatch didn’t say when and where the launch occurred.

USA - The New York Times published an op-ed urging the public to abandon their belief in God ahead of Easter, one of the holiest weekends of the year. God is to blame for “war and violence” and “oppression and suffering,” warns the article titled “In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God.” The God of monotheistic religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims is vindicative and “hateful,” Shalom Auslander writes in the op-ed published on Good Friday, a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death. “God, it seems, paints with a wide brush. He paints with a roller. In Egypt, said our rabbi, he even killed firstborn cattle. He killed cows. If he were mortal, the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims would be dragged to the Hague. And yet we praise him. We emulate. We implore our children to be like him. Perhaps now, as missiles rain down and the dead are discovered in mass graves, is a good time to stop emulating this hateful God. Perhaps we can stop extolling his brutality. Perhaps now is a good time to teach our children to pass over God — to be as unlike him as possible,” he continues.

USA - “What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said: Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.

UK - Patrick Paumen causes a stir whenever he pays for something in a shop or restaurant. This is because the 37-year-old doesn't need to use a bank card or his mobile phone to pay. Instead, he simply places his left hand near the contactless card reader, and the payment goes through. "The reactions I get from cashiers are priceless!" says Mr Paumen, a security guard from the Netherlands. He is able to pay using his hand because back in 2019 he had a contactless payment microchip injected under his skin.

UK - Why don't the Left care that Karl Marx was a vicious racist when they love to cancel other dead white male philosophers? The answer is his writings are a key weapon in trying to tear down the West – as Douglas Murray reveals in a new book. A strange pattern reappears here – a willingness to celebrate and sanctify anything so long as it is not part of the Western tradition, and to venerate anything else in the world, so long as it is not part of your own heritage.

ISRAEL - At Easter the Little Petra guesthouse in the heart of Jerusalem’s Christian quarter should be bustling with pilgrims. Instead, the only ‘guests’ are a group of Jewish settlers who, judging by the charred double doors leading to what was the hotel’s souvenir shop, look like they checked in with cutting equipment. But this is not just an unholy squabble over expensive real estate between Christian and Jewish communities in the old city. It’s part of what Jerusalem’s church leaders believe is an existential threat to all Christians in the cradle of the faith. Within a generation they fear, Christian Jerusalem will be no more than a theme park for tourists, its residents and shopkeepers gone, its churches reduced to museums.

VATICAN - Pope Francis accused the West of racism Friday, insisting migrants are “subdivided” by skin color and country of origin. “Refugees are subdivided,” the pontiff declared during a lengthy Good Friday interview on Italian television. “There’s first class, second class, skin color, [whether] they come from a developed country [or] one that is not developed.” “We are racists, we are racists. And this is bad,” the pope stated. As he has done on other occasions, Francis compared the current problem of migrants and refugees to the flight into Egypt of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus when King Herod was seeking to kill him. “The problem of the refugees is a problem that Jesus suffered too, because he was a migrant and a refugee in Egypt when he was a child, to escape death,” he said. “How many of them are suffering to escape death!”