VATICAN - Pope Benedict has been accused of "doing his absolute best to sabotage Francis" after his shocking comments linking gay marriage to the Antichrist were exposed in a bombshell new book. The former pope, who stood down in a controversial move in 2013, claimed that people who oppose homosexual unions in today’s world are “excommunicated from society”.

USA - California's San Joaquin Valley is an agricultural powerhouse in the US, producing more than $17 billion a year in crops on some 7 million acres of fields. The region is also home to CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) animals, including cattle. At the valley's largest feedlot, Harris Ranch, 100,000 cattle are packed in over a stretch of 800 acres.

USA - When the COVID-19 pandemic is over and systems are in place for any reoccurrences, the world will still not be out of the woods. Experts are predicting that food disruptions and even a famine could follow. COVID-19 was said to be an "equalizer," affecting poor and rich countries alike. Certainly, the infection did not spare high-profile figures like UK's Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, even as it affected the poor and members of minorities.

USA - Just a few days ago we marveled as wholesale beef prices had soared over 60% from their February lows to a record $331 per 100 pounds. Well, that was then, because today alone, the wholesale price soared by 8.6% or $32.60 to a new all time high of $410.05, almost doubling in less than a month. The reason: an unprecedented collapse of the nation's food supply chain as over a dozen meat processing plants have been shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic. Beef prices are soaring even after Trump issued an executive order to address meat shortages, however with food workers scared and unwilling to return to work, Trump's attempt to normalize prices has backfired, because all it has achieved was a frantic scramble by consumers to hoard beef resulting in even bigger shortages and higher prices.

USA - A Sioux Falls meatpacking plant was forced to close when it became the epicenter of COVID-19 in South Dakota. Three weeks after executives from its Chinese owner, WH Group, visited the plant, a month after President Trump's ban on travel from China, nearly 600 of Smithfield Foods' 3,700 employees tested positive for the virus, as have 135 additional people in close contact with employees.

USA - Could it be possible that the stage is being set for horrific famines that the Bible has been warning us about for nearly 2,000 years? A few years ago, any talk of “coming famines” would have seemed absolutely ludicrous to most people in the western world, but the events of the last several months have changed everything.

NORTH KOREA - Kim Jong-un deliberately faked his own death to expose traitors in his circle and who had hopes of taking power from the leader's "death", it has been claimed. Sky News Australia has said that Kim, 36, may have deliberately pretended to be dead so that he could figure out if there were leaks in his inner circle in North Korea. Over the past week stories circulated that Kim had died following heart surgery or that he was gravely unwell. Those rumours were squashed after the leader was seen at an event last weekend, as he attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the inauguration of a fertiliser plant. It is now possible that the leader will use the responses from his long period of absence to begin “purging” those he believes colluded to take over.

USA - United States Senate candidate Jeff Sessions says there is no shortage of American labor, calling out lawmakers and their “corporate friends” for supporting a continued flow of foreign workers to the US to take jobs in the midst of mass unemployment. In an exclusive interview with Alexander Marlow on SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Sessions said it is critical that lawmakers defend the interests of unemployed Americans who have been laid off due to forced business closures spurred by the Chinese coronavirus crisis. “We have 30 million unemployed … We don’t have jobs in the United States,” Sessions said. “There are no jobs now. We’ll lay off more people this week than we did last week. Why would we bring in foreign workers to take jobs when we don’t have jobs for the American people?” Sessions asked.

USA - UK-US trade talks due to begin today could be crippled before they even begin after it emerged the White House is investigating whether American spy planes and intelligence officials should be pulled out of Britain in response to its dealings with Huawei. The US and Britain will launch trade negotiations by videoconference today following the UK's exit from the EU, as both allies struggle with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and aim to shore up domestic supply chains.

ITALY - Italian nationalists have warned European Union chiefs of a growing resentment against the bloc about the way it has handled the financial crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. Brussels bosses have already apologised to Italy for not responding quickly enough when the country found itself at the epicentre of outbreak in Europe. But many Italians still feel the country has been abandoned by its neighbours. A recent survey found 67 percent of Italians believed being part of the union was now a disadvantage for their country, up from 47 percent in November 2018. And nationalist party Brothers of Italy said the EU - and particularly France and Germany - should now consider its future without Italy as a member. Mr Calenda, who leads the recently formed liberal Action party, said: “This is an existential threat, I am not sure if we are going to make it. You have to consider my party is one of the most pro-European parties in Italy and I now have members writing to me saying: ‘Why do we want to stay in the EU? It is useless’.”

ISRAEL - The recently established US Embassy in Jerusalem (moved from Tel Aviv last year as part of Trump's plan) has confirmed that the world will soon see the most controversial element of Trump's peace plan put into effect: Israeli annexation over broad swathes of the West Bank, particularly the Jordan Valley. “As we have made consistently clear, we are prepared to recognize Israeli actions to extend Israeli sovereignty and the application of Israeli law to areas of the West Bank that the [Trump peace plan] foresees as being part of the State of Israel,” a top US Embassy official told the Times of Israel on Friday. The statement made clear that "Israeli actions" will be validated with or without recognition of a Palestinian state, something which on paper at least Trump's 'deal of the century' offered.

Cases: 3,581,884

Deaths: 248,558

USA - Covid-19 has created an enormous amount of fear, and that fear is doing far more damage to the economy than the actual virus is. In an environment of fear, financial institutions become a lot tighter with their money, and that inevitably causes economic activity to slow down. For example, just consider what happened in 2008. Mortgage lending standards suddenly became much more strict, and that greatly contributed to the horrific housing price crash which left millions upon millions of Americans underwater on their mortgages.

USA - In his decades of beekeeping, Ted McFall had never seen anything like it. As he pulled his truck up to check on a group of hives near Custer, Washington, in November, he could spot from the window a mess of bee carcasses on the ground. As he looked closer, he saw a pile of dead members of the colony in front of a hive and more carnage inside — thousands and thousands of bees with their heads torn from their bodies and no sign of a culprit.

VATICAN - The Vatican-sponsored Higher Committee of Human Fraternity has called for a common day of prayer and fasting, asserting that the world is “facing a great danger that threatens the lives of millions of people around the world due to the growing spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While we reaffirm the role of medicine and scientific research in fighting this pandemic, we should not forget to seek refuge in God, the All-Creator, as we face such severe crisis [sic],” the message states.

“Therefore, we call on all peoples around the world to do good deeds, observe fast, pray, and make devout supplications to God Almighty to end this pandemic,” the statement reads. The Higher Committee of Human Fraternity grew out of the Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, during the pope’s trip to the United Arab Emirates in February 2019.