ISRAEL - Over the past few years, more and more “things” are being connected. Smartphones are connected to the newly-minted smart home via light bulbs and appliances. Factories are adding internet connected parts and machinery. Cars are increasingly run by software. The COVID pandemic is accelerating the trend as people work at home and gain access to physical assets (and not just files) from factories that until recently were “air-gapped” (not connected to networks).

USA - CNN’s Michael Smerconish says that people who don’t take the vaccine should be socially ostracized and shunned by their friends and family. During a segment on his show, Smerconish discussed a suggestion made by prosecutor Michael Stern in a USA Today opinion piece about vaccination uptake. “We’ve gotta shun folks, we’ve gotta shun people into getting vaccinated,” said Smerconish, agreeing that businesses should make getting the vaccine mandatory as a condition of employment. However, he also asserted that family members and friends should socially ostracize those who choose not to take the vaccine. Smerconish then proudly revealed the results of a poll on his website which found that 73% of respondents thought it was “time to shun.”

USA - Every dollar that the federal government borrows and spends puts us even closer to a day of reckoning. Many Americans (especially those on the left) seem to think that we can endlessly spend trillions upon trillions of dollars without ever suffering any consequences. If that was true, why hasn’t any other society in all of human history ever been able to do such a thing? Unfortunately, the truth is that the United States is not immune to the laws of economics.

FINLAND - A Finnish Christian Democrat MP has been charged with incitement over LGBT-critical comments made on social media, including quoting a passage from the Bible. The Finnish Prosecutor General announced the charges against Christian Democrat MP Päivi Räsänen, who served as interior minister from 2012 to 2015, over posts made on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook in June 2019. In the social media posts, Räsänen questioned why her church is co-sponsoring the 2019 Helsinki Pride parade, saying: “The church of which I am a member has announced that it is an official partner of SETA Helsinki Pride 2019. How does the Church’s doctrine, the Bible, fit in with the idea that shame and sin are raised as a matter of pride?” The message was posted on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, with the latter two posts also containing a picture of a Bible of the passage Romans Chapter one, verses 24-27. “If committed civil servants like Päivi Räsänen are criminally charged for voicing their deeply held beliefs, it creates a chilling effect for everyone’s right to speak freely,” he said.

USA - President Biden has issued a National Day of Prayer proclamation in which the word "God" does not appear once. "I invite the citizens of our Nation to give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I join all people of faith in prayers for spiritual guidance, mercy, and protection," Biden says in the proclamation. The lone use of the word "Lord" appears only once at the conclusion of the declaration as it pertains to the date: The word appears within the boilerplate phrase "in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one." In contrast, former President Donald Trump mentioned God about a dozen times in his final National Prayer Day proclamation last year. David Brody, host of The Water Cooler inquired, "How do you release a proclamation about prayer and not mention God at all?"

USA - James Madara, CEO of the American Medical Association (AMA), issued an open letter to the National Governors Association calling all legislative efforts to stop the transgender mutilation of children “a dangerous government intrusion into the practice of medicine.” According to Madara, permanently altering a child’s hormones with pharmaceutical chemicals and surgically altering their private parts “are normal variations of human identity and expression” that should not be interfered with by government officials. Madara’s letter comes as 16 states and counting have taken action to prohibit doctors from performing transgender surgeries and procedures on minors. Arkansas became the first state to ban the surgeries after the state’s legislature voted to override Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s vet of the “Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act.” The SAFE Act bars doctors from cutting off or otherwise mutilating children’s private parts, as well as bans them from administering puberty blockers or “top” and “bottom” surgeries on children.

USA - Disney, the former go-to company celebrating the wonder and innocence of childhood, is now peddling toys and clothing for kids awash in rainbow colors as well as pro-homosexual and pro-transgender messaging. “The countdown to Pride Month is on with a colorful array of Pride products available now!” announced Disney on Twitter. “Plus, The Walt Disney Company is giving funds as part of our ongoing commitment to organizations around the world that support LGBTQ+ communities.” Among the organizations promoting homosexual and gender dysphoria that Disney is financing are GLSEN and the ‘It Gets Better Project,’ which affirm youth that consider themselves to be homosexual or to have a gender identity that is different from biological reality. Disney promises that its commitment to promoting homosexuality and transgenderism will extend beyond PRIDE month to the entire year.

USA - Sometimes it feels like America is going crazy. Arbitrary and confusing public health restrictions, political polarization, lurid media, and escalating culture war create a pervasive sense of disorientation verging on madness. The riot at the Capitol on January 6 was only the most vivid example of our collective freakout. Not just the horrified viewers on television but the participants themselves seemed unable to believe what was happening. Several causes of this condition are contingent — not least the pandemic that put many aspects of normal life on hold. But there are deeper sources of our present freakout. In his 1981 study American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that American history is characterized by nervous breakdowns that recur approximately every 60 years. If our last bout was in the 1960s, we're right on schedule for another outbreak.

ISRAEL - Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of the Israeli opposition, was asked on Wednesday to try to form a coalition government after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to do so by a Tuesday deadline. Mr Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister and if Mr Lapid cannot cobble together a government, the country could face another election this summer, its fifth general election in a little more than two years. Mr Lapid has 28 days to persuade a majority of the 120-seat Parliament to support him after the president, Reuven Rivlin, gave him the mandate to begin coalition negotiations. Right-wing parties hold a majority in Parliament, but have been unable to form a functional government over the past two years because they are divided between those who support Mr Netanyahu, and those who believe he should resign to focus on his corruption trial. That split has redrawn the Israeli political map — as political ideology has become defined more by perceptions of Mr Netanyahu than by economic policy or approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

ISRAEL - A number of flashpoint events and the cancellation of Palestinian elections may lead to even more violence in the West Bank in the coming weeks. With tensions boiling in the West Bank, the IDF has beefed up its forces following a terrorist attack and in anticipation of a month in which several flashpoint events are set to take place.

VATICAN - Pope Francis warned of the dangers of unregulated markets Tuesday, calling for “rigid regulation” of financial speculation. In a video message, the pope made known his prayer intention for the month of May: “We pray that financial managers will collaborate with governments to regulate financial markets and protect citizens from their dangers. Finance, if it is not regulated, becomes pure speculation animated by monetary politics,” the pope said in Tuesday’s message. “This situation is untenable. It’s dangerous. How far away is the world of big finance from the lives of most people! In order to prevent the poor from once again paying the consequences, financial speculation must be rigidly regulated,” Francis insisted. “Let finance be an instrument of service, a tool to serve people and to take care of the common home!” he said. “We still have time to start a process of global change to put into practice a different, fairer, more inclusive, sustainable economy that leaves no one behind,” he declared.

UK - The professor of environmental medicine explains how chemicals in plastics are causing our fertility to decline – and what we can do about it. Q - “You’ve spent more than 20 years examining the effects of hormone disrupting chemicals on reproductive health. Are you now sounding the alarm?” A - “I am directly speaking to this hidden problem people don’t like to talk about, which is their sub-fertility or reproductive problems, and how that is tied to the environment. People are recognising we have a reproductive health crisis, but they say it’s because of delayed childbearing, choice or lifestyle – it can’t be chemical. I want people to recognise it can. I am not saying other factors aren’t involved. But I am saying chemicals play a major causal role.”

AFGHANISTAN - Afghan security forces fought back a huge Taliban offensive just two days after United States forces handed control of a local base back to the country's army. The Taliban launched a massive offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand province on Monday while fighting continued the next day, officials and residents claimed on Tuesday. Afghan security forces fought back against the offensive just two days after a handover ceremony, which saw US forces give control of Antonik camp in Helmand to the Afghan National Army (ANA). The offensive comes after militants launched assaults around the country following a missed US deadline to withdraw troops from the country, as agreed in talks with the Taliban last year.

CHINA - Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally directed the country’s communist regime to focus its efforts to control the global internet, displacing the influential role of the United States, according to internal government documents recently obtained by The Epoch Times. In a January 2017 speech, Xi said the “power to control the internet” had become the “new focal point of [China’s] national strategic contest,” and singled out the United States as a “rival force” standing in the way of the regime’s ambitions. The ultimate goal was for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control all content on the global internet so that the regime could wield what Xi described as “discourse power” over communications and discussions on the world stage.

USA - The world’s over-population propaganda is pure Technocrat fiction. Aging populations are soaring throughout the world along with infertility that has resulted in dramatically fewer births. The United States is now below replacement rate. ⁃ TN Editor