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.

VENEZUELA - The first of five Iranian tankers filled with gasoline made it to Venezuelan waters late on Saturday. The oil tanker Fortune was welcomed by Venezuelan officials who celebrated the growing relationship with Iran spurred by Trump administration sanctions to both countries. 'Iran and Venezuela have always supported each other in times of difficulty,' Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeted. 'Today, the first ship with gasoline arrives for our people.' Russ Dallen, head of Caracas Capital Markets, confirmed the ship's location using tracing technology. The Clavel, the last of the five ships, is roughly 3.5 days away, he explained to ABC News.

IRAN - Iran has vowed to retaliate if the US tries to block tankers delivering its oil to Venezuela. A fleet of five tankers carrying Iranian fuel to the crisis-torn South America country is approaching the Caribbean and the first is expected to cross into Venezuelan waters tomorrow. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani warned of retaliatory measures against the US if Washington caused problems for the tankers.

He said: "If our tankers in the Caribbean or anywhere in the world face trouble caused by the Americans, the US will also be in trouble. "Iran will never initiate a conflict. We have always the legitimate right to defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity and to serve our national interests, and we hope that the Americans will not commit an error." Iran is supplying about 1.53 million barrels of gasoline and alkylate to Venezuela. The shipments have caused a diplomatic standoff between Iran, Venezuela and Washington as both nations are under US sanctions.

VENEZUELA - Iranian oil tankers heading to Venezuela are facing an imminent threat of a US armed attack in what Caracas labels a “crime of aggression and extermination,” the country’s envoy to the United Nations has warned. The South American country has previously deployed the military to shield the friendly vessels from such attacks. Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, sounded the alarm over what he described as Washington’s hostile intentions earlier on Saturday, asking the Security Council to put an end to US “warmongering and criminal policies.” Iranian tankers ferrying gasoline to Venezuela’s ports are facing “the threat of imminent use of military force by the United States,” he later told his Twitter followers, adding that this would amount to “an act of war” against his country.

USA - Post-coronavirus pandemic, nobody really knows what the real estate market will look like. Will people travel less? Will we work from home more often? Will commercial and residential real estate be able to keep their respective bids once current leases run out?

We've found at least one investor who doesn't want to stick around and find out. One "mystery investor" blew out more than 10.5 million shares of an S&P 500 Real Estate fund last week, representing a $333 million sale. This amounts to about 7.4% of outstanding shares in the Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund, a macro indicator of the industry’s largest companies, according to The Real Deal. One anonymous investor commented: “That is obscene. It would be like Warren Buffett selling Delta all at once. A very large institution is expecting widespread weakness across the real estate market, more so than is already perceived. It looks like somebody’s dumping everything in my opinion. There’s something very big going on.”

TAIWAN - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang left out the word “peaceful” on Friday in referring to Beijing’s desire to “reunify” with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, an apparent policy shift that comes as ties with Taipei continue on a downward spiral. Taiwan has complained of increased Chinese military harassment since the coronavirus pandemic began, with fighter jets and naval vessels regularly approaching the island on drills China has described as routine.

China says Taiwan is its most sensitive and important territorial issue, and has never renounced the use of force to bring what it views as a Chinese province under its control, making the Taiwan Strait a potential military flashpoint. On Friday, China proposed new legislation for Hong Kong requiring it to quickly enact national security regulations, a move some see as contradicting the “one country, two systems” concept, and swiftly condemned by Taiwan.

UNITED NATIONS - As millions of married couples around the world are feeling the strain of being holed up together due to the pandemic, the United Nations decided it's a great time to remove the words “husband” and “wife” from our vernacular. In case anyone thought that the social justice warriors would take a much-needed hiatus from their crusading against wrong-think, especially at the height of a pandemic, think again.

This week, UN bureaucrats found clever new ways to divide and alienate the global population at a time when social-distancing rules have already turned people into strangers. On Monday afternoon, the agency’s crack social media team tweeted out: “Help create a more equal world by using gender-neutral language if you're unsure about someone's gender or are referring to a group.”

GREECE - The earthquake struck in the central area of the Mediterranean Sea, near the Greek regions of Methoni and Kalamata. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the maritime region of the central Mediterranean Sea on Thursday, according to the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC).

The epicentre of the earthquake was located near the region of Methoni in Greece, some 439 kilometres from Athens. EMSC also cites reports of the earthquake felt in the regions of Albania. Greece is located at a complex tectonic boundary zone in the eastern Mediterranean region, between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The latest earthquake in the country took place in early May 2020, with a magnitude of 6.0.

USA - The ground has come alive in a pocket of western Nevada. A magnitude-6.5 earthquake rocked a remote region 35 miles west of Tonopah on May 15 and hundreds of aftershocks have followed — an event this corner of the county hasn't seen in over half a century.

“Wikipedia’s neutral point of view policy is dead.” Larry Sanger, the founder of Wikipedia says that the project has abandoned neutrality and is now “badly biased.” Sanger is no longer involved with Wikipedia, and his co-founder, Jimmy Wales, is a far-left activist. In a blog post on Thursday, Sanger wrote a scathing critique of the bias at his former website.

“Wikipedia’s ‘NPOV’ is dead,” Sanger began, referring to the site’s neutral point of view policy. Sanger explains that articles on religious topics show a similar pattern of bias and used the entry on Jesus as a particularly egregious example. “It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (ie, neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one,” Sanger stated.

AFRICA - Swarms of locusts have devoured fields of crops in Africa, Asia and the Arabian Peninsula in a single day, eating stock that would have fed more than 35,000 people. According to a report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), droves of insects have been sweeping across the regions since October. The deadly coronavirus outbreak threatens to make the situation worse.

As the world continues to battle the unseen threat, the deadly virus is disrupting supply chains, making it harder for nations to fight off the locusts. The virus has hindered the distribution of equipment, pesticides, protective gear, as well as movement of personnel to fight the pests, WRI researcher Tina Huang said. According to Cyril Ferrand, a team leader for the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the supply of pesticides is the “biggest challenge we are facing at the moment”.

GERMANY - In a striking reversal, Merkel joins with France in recommending a euro fund that could be a timid first step toward greater integration.

• What exactly are the French and the Germans proposing?
• Why is this such a big deal?
• Why is Germany doing this, if it just shot down the idea of eurobonds?
• So what are the real prospects for this big proposal?

Figuring out just what strings to attach to the next big recovery fund will be a big part of the upcoming tussle between member states.

EUROPE - France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday that EU states which are skeptical about a Franco-German proposal for a €500 billion (US$546 billion) coronavirus recovery fund should back it or risk making it even harder to get out of the crisis. “It’s in the interest of all European countries to sign up for this initiative… if there isn’t this momentum, nobody will be able to get out of it,” Le Drian told television channel LCI.

The plan proposed by Berlin and Paris on Monday would offer non-repayable grants to EU regions and sectors hit hardest by the pandemic, with the cash borrowed by the bloc as a whole rather than by individual member states, Reuters reported. The government in Vienna insists that the EU’s emergency aid for coronavirus-hit member states should be based on repayable loans not grants, Austrian daily Die Presse said on Tuesday, citing the Chancellery.