ISRAEL - Amid US pressure, Israel taps local firm over China for $1.5 billion desalination plant. Officials cite huge expected savings in water costs and significantly better tender bid as reason IDE Technologies was awarded Sorek B project, largest of its kind worldwide. The Finance Ministry on Tuesday named a local company as the winning bidder for a $1.5 billion desalination plant contract, beating out Chinese competition amid reports of pressure from Washington. IDE Technologies will build the Sorek 2 plant south of Tel Aviv, which by 2023 should be able to produce 200 million cubic meters a year of desalinated water from the Mediterranean, a statement from the finance and energy ministries said.

ISRAEL - The attacks attempted and failed to damage the vaccine development process, but did not attempt to steal information. As a cyberattack shut down hundreds of Israeli websites last week, research centers working on a vaccine for the novel coronavirus were also targeted by a cyberattack, Channel 12 reported on Monday. Amos Yadlin, executive director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies and former head of IDF Military Intelligence, told 103FM on Thursday that “We’ve all known for a decade already that cyber is the new dimension of war in the 21st century.”

USA - The US is planning a "massive testing effort" that will involve more than 100,000 volunteers and six of the most promising COVID-19 vaccines, sources told Reuters on Friday afternoon. The scientist in charge said the effort would hopefully narrow down vaccine candidates to one by the end of the year. The push to fast-track a vaccine is condensing at least "10 years of vaccine development and testing into a matter of months," Reuters said. The scientist said vaccine makers have "agreed to share data and lend the use of their clinical trial networks to competitors should their own candidate fail." Each vaccine that demonstrates promising preliminary data will be tested among 20,000 to 30,000 subjects starting in July.

USA - If there is a silver lining to the flawed US response to the coronavirus pandemic, it is this: The relatively high number of new cases being diagnosed daily — upward of 20,000 — will make it easier to test new vaccines. To determine whether a vaccine prevents disease, the study’s subjects need to be exposed to the pathogen as it circulates in the population. Reopening the economy will likely result in the faster spread of the coronavirus and therefore more opportunities to test a vaccine’s efficacy in trial subjects.

CHINA - China is reportedly set to deploy its two new aircraft carriers off the coast of Taiwan as it warns the US of a “new cold war”. The huge carriers, the Liaoning and Shandong, are currently engaged in combat readiness training in the tightly controlled Bohai Bay, in the Yellow Sea before sailing to join an invasion war game near Pratas Island. This will be the first time China's new aircraft carriers deploy together for the first time and the move has sparked fears in Taiwan of a possible invasion of its Pratas islands - which could then be used as a staging point for an attack on the mainland. It comes after Beijing threatened to "reunify" Taiwan in response to Donald Trump saying he could "cut off the whole relationship" with China.

VENEZUELA - The first of five Iranian oil tankers has entered Venezuela's waters carrying more than a million barrels of fuel. The Iranian tankers are being escorted by the Venezuelan navy and air force. The US, which has has imposed sanctions on both countries, says it is monitoring the convoy. Both Venezuela and Iran have warned Washington not to interfere with the delivery. Venezuela is suffering a shortage of refined fuel, despite having the world's largest oil reserves. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro thanked Iran for its support, describing the two countries as "two revolutionary peoples who will never kneel down before North American imperialism". "Venezuela and Iran both want peace," he said in a televised state address. "We have the right to trade freely."

GERMANY - For all its populist hues, Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland began in 2012 as a “party of professors” insisting on ordoliberal dogmas. Today, the conservative business elites who fed its rise are again in the headlines, now for pushing German judges to block aid to Europe’s hardest-hit economies. The decision by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court on May 5 hit the Eurozone institutions like a bomb. The European Central Bank (ECB) had just started to ramp up its purchase of sovereign debts to fight the coming COVID-19 economic crisis when Germany’s highest court questioned the legality of the ECB’s main asset purchase program — the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) that started in 2015.

USA - Sometimes we need something to shake us in order to wake us from the fantasy that we have been living in. Hopefully, this COVID-19 pandemic will serve as a wake up call for people all over the globe, because it has given us a very clear preview of what we can expect during the years ahead. This pandemic has shown us that our economic and financial systems are not nearly as stable as most people thought, many of our politicians have been quite eager to embrace socialism and tyranny during this pandemic, and acute shortages of basic essentials started to happen very rapidly once fear of COVID-19 began to sweep across the nation. If things degenerated this much during a relatively minor crisis like this COVID-19 pandemic, what in the world is our society going to look like once a major crisis hits us?

USA - The 2008 financial crisis led the public to discover the limits of economics. The Covid-19 pandemic risks having the same effect on scientists and medical doctors. Since the start of the outbreak, citizens have struggled to get clear answers to some basic questions. Consider masks, for example: The World Health Organization said early on that there was no point in encouraging healthy people to use them, but now most doctors agree that widespread mask-wearing is a good idea. There was also confusion around lockdowns: In the UK, scientists argued for weeks over the merits of closing businesses and keeping people at home — a quarrel that may have cost the country lives. And now that the outbreak is fading in Italy, there is growing debate between the country’s public health experts and doctors over whether the virus has lost strength or remains just as deadly.

INDIA - India has pleaded with its neighbour Pakistan to agree to a joint effort to tackle the swarms of locusts which have descended on both countries and are wreaking havoc on crops. New Delhi sent a request to Islamabad asking for their cooperation in the plan to address the growing problem, as it also sought the help of the Iranians. The plea comes as Pakistan and India remain locked in almost daily clashes in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

According to The Hindu, an official source said that India had proposed a trilateral response to the locusts. Farmers are having to deal with the added stress of desperately trying to save their crops from being devoured by locusts. Tehran has also had to deal with the devastating effects locusts are having on Iranian farmers’ livelihoods. Farmers in these areas have been offered pesticide by the Indians. Iran has already responded positively to India’s offer of help. Officials in the Islamic country said that a layer of dead locusts piled up 6 inches high after they sprayed afflicted areas with pesticides.

USA - Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker said Thursday that the push for reopening society from lockdowns comes from Christianity’s “malignant delusion” of belief in an afterlife. Atheists who believe in this life alone are more concerned with health and safety, Professor Pinker suggested in a Tweet, while Christians tend to devalue “actual lives” and live a riskier existence.

Pinker was responding to an article this week in the Washington Post, which examined findings that Democrats take the virus “more seriously” than Republicans and are more willing to support restrictive government edicts in response to the pandemic. In that article, contributing columnist Gary Abernathy declares that a “literal belief in eternal salvation — eternal life — helps explain the different reactions to life-threatening events like a coronavirus outbreak.”

ECUADOR - Scientists are warning that the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador is showing early signs of impending catastrophic collapse, after satellite data showed substantial internal damage from ongoing magma activity. Tungurahua has been persistently active since 1999 so wear and tear was inevitable, especially given that the 'Throat of fire,' or 'Black giant' as the Quechua indigenous people named it, has already collapsed twice before thousands of years ago.

NEW ZEALAND - A magnitude 5.8 earthquake has struck around 90 kilometers northwest of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. The tremor was felt by Kiwis all across the country’s North Island. The quake struck shortly before 8am on Monday, local time. Occurring off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island, the shaking was felt by more than 35,000 people in Wellington and beyond, according to government seismic monitor Geonet. The earthquake was followed by a number of aftershocks, none reaching more than 3.7 in magnitude. A 5.8 quake is classed as “moderate,” but such tremors are still capable of causing structural damage in populated areas.

EUROPE - Berlin should pile pressure on Moscow instead of criticizing America’s withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty, a US envoy told the German foreign minister, as the two NATO allies clashed over Washington’s move to ditch the accord. The US announced its intention to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty (OST) earlier this week, unnerving its NATO allies in Europe.

Among those calling for the preservation of the 2002 multilateral deal, which allows for surveillance flights over the territories of its signatories, was German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. Germany is not the only country to have voiced its objections to the US move. In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of 10 EU countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands, called the pact “a crucial element of the confidence-building framework.”

UK - Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly reconsidered allowing Chinese tech giant Huawei access to the British 5G network, amidst increasing tensions with China over the coronavirus pandemic and the Chinese Communist Party’s infringement of freedoms in Hong Kong. The Prime Minister has instructed his government to begin making plans that would see the Chinese tech firms’ involvement in the nation’s 5G infrastructure decrease to zero by the year 2023.

Earlier this month, Breitbart London reported that the US was reviewing the status of all military and intelligence assets in Britain to see if they should be removed from the country as a result of the Huawei deal. The United States has also hinted that intelligence sharing in the Five Eyes security alliance, which also includes Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, could be in jeopardy if Huawei were allowed access to the British network.