One big issue is absorbing G7 these days. Possible war on Taiwan.

Chief among the points of tension is how far to go in trying to stop a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which could trigger world war and wreck the global economy. The self-governing island, which Beijing claims as its own, provides most of the world’s advanced computer chips that are vital to the tech and defense industries.

Not all European governments are convinced it’s something they need to prioritize. See this.

From the reporting above, I deduce several things:

1. The possibility of a Taiwan war has become very real – and it plagues all of the G7. 
2. The US is obviously ready to go far in case of a Taiwan war – it seems even to the point of US entering war with China. 
3. The US is pushing the EU to support a war against China, first of all with sanctions and trade embargo, but even to the point of the EU participating with the US in war with China. 
4. Berlin and Paris don’t see a Taiwan war as their prime business. 
5. The prospect of a Taiwan war scares the sh*t out of the EU, and especially Berlin doesn’t want to take part in hostilities – they perhaps don’t even want to break trade ties with China if a Taiwan war breaks out.

The Defense Department is now aiming to complete defueling of the the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii by January 2024 — months earlier than the Pentagon originally forecast.

A fuel leak at the facility in November 2021 affected approximately 9,000 Army, Navy and Air Force families at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and the Army’s Aliamanu Military Reservation and Red Hill Housing. About 6,000 people were sickened after drinking or using the contaminated water and sought treatment for nausea, headaches, rashes and other conditions. The military subsequently paid for many families to temporarily relocated to area hotels.

Police surrounded the home of former Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday, claiming he was sheltering dozens of people allegedly involved in violent protests over his recent detention.

The police deployment was likely to anger Khan’s many followers and raised concerns about more clashes between them and the security forces. Last week, Khan supporters had attacked public property and military installations after he was dragged out of a courtroom and detained.

The popular opposition leader was released over the weekend and returned to his home in an upscale district of Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city and the capital of the Punjab region.

Turkey criticised the US for dispatching a warship to the divided island of Cyprus on Wednesday, accusing Washington of disrupting the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The USS Arleigh Burke, a guided-missile destroyer, arrived in Limassol, Cyprus, for a scheduled visit on Tuesday.

The Turkish foreign ministry issued a statement critiquing the move: “The steps taken in the region by the US which disrupt the balance at the expense of the Turkish Cypriot side damage [United State's] long-standing neutral position.”

Israeli forces have used live fire and tear gas against Palestinians who joined a demonstration on the besieged Gaza Strip’s eastern border with Israel, injuring several Palestinians, as far-right Israelis held a so-called ‘flag march’ in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City.

Hundreds of Palestinians joined the protest on Thursday, which was called for by Palestinian factions in response to the Israeli march. The Gaza demonstration condemned the ‘flag march’ in Jerusalem, and called for an end to Israeli attacks in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Turkey's main opposition presidential candidate has promised to expel all refugees from the country in a bid to attract nationalist voters ahead of the second round of elections on 28 May.

In his first public address since the elections last Sunday, in which he came in almost five points behind President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kemal Kilicdaroglu criticised the longterm ruler's immigration policies.

"Erdogan, you did not protect the borders and honour of the country," he said.

"You have deliberately brought more than 10 million refugees to this country... as soon as I come to power, I will send all the refugees home."

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said that the current Afghan government should ensure Iran's water rights of the Helmand River based on international treaties, Iranian media reported.

Addressing reporters during a visit to Sistan and Balouchestan province on Thursday, Raisi said the current Afghan authorities should "immediately" provide Iran with its share of water.

“I will remind the rulers of Afghanistan that they should not regard our demand as being ordinary and must take it very seriously,” Raisi said.

Rights to water from the Helmand River has recently become a contentious issue between Iran and Afghanistan.

Leaders of the world’s most powerful democracies vowed Friday to tighten punishments on Russia for its 15-month invasion of Ukraine, days before President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joins the Group of Seven summit in person on Sunday.

“Our support for Ukraine will not waver,” the G7 leaders said in a statement released after closed-door meetings, vowing “to stand together against Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.”

“Russia started this war and can end this war,” they said.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, confirmed on national television that Zelenskyy would attend the summit.

“We were sure that our president would be where Ukraine needed him, in any part of the world, to solve the issue of stability of our country,” Danilov said Friday. “There will be very important matters decided there, so physical presence is a crucial thing to defend our interests.”

The U.S. military has walked back claims that it killed a top al-Qaeda boss in a drone strike in Syria, according to reports.

Officials changed their tune after the family of the man killed by a Hellfire missile said he had no links to terrorists, and was tending to his sheep when he died.

The family identified father-of-ten Lotfi Hassan Misto, 56, as the man killed in the strike on May 3, who they say was a former bricklayer who lived in the quiet northern town of Qorqanya, according to the Washington Post.

President Joe Biden tripped as he walked down the stairs of the Itsukushima Shrine on Friday in his rush to greet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The president was running late - all the other G7 leaders had arrived on Miyajima Island and were waiting on him to begin the tour of the holy site - when he stumbled and caught himself before he fell.

He and Kishida continued on as if the slip didn't happen, joining the rest of the heads of state to see the iconic 'floating' torii gate. The evening on the famous island, known for its wild deer, capped the end of a long first day of the summit.

After the tour, the world leaders - the heads of the United States, Japan, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and European Union - had a private dinner on the island. 

But Biden, 80, left that dinner early. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the 'plan' was for the president to receive an update from his debt ceiling negotiation team back in Washington where it is now morning.

Russian lawmakers are drafting legislation that would punish anti-Russian words and actions deemed as “Russophobia” with up to five years imprisonment, the independent news outlet Vyorstka reported Thursday.

The bill is expected to amend Russia’s Criminal Code by adding clauses on “Russophobia” to articles criminalizing public calls for extremism and violating equal rights.

Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, defines “Russophobia” as actions and statements directed against Russian citizens, Vyorstka cited an unnamed lawmaker as saying.

California lawmakers blocked two big environmental bills Thursday: One that would have ramped up the state's emissions targets, and another that would have made oil companies liable for the health problems of people who live close to oil wells.

They are among the hundreds of bills that did not survive the Legislature’s suspense file, a mysterious process where lawmakers decide — with no explanation — which bills will get a chance to become law later this year and which ones should not move forward.

Japan’s decision to hold this weekend’s Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima is appearing more and more “on the nose” with each passing day.

Worries that Russia might use nuclear weapons on Ukraine were part of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s calculus in choosing the city that was the first military target of such armaments in human history. Since that call, though, two economic nuclear options have emerged to fuel a bull market in Hiroshima symbolism.

One is the default drama that risks restoring the US to developing nation status. Republicans toying with financial Armageddon have US President Joe Biden truncating his Asia trip, scrapping stops in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

The other is how to play the China “decoupling” dynamic threatening to blow up world markets – and the Global South nations that host Kishida is inviting to the G-7. Along with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US, Japan has invited leaders from India, Brazil, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia and African Union and Pacific Islands nations.

Over the past two decades since China was admitted into the WTO, its national industrial base has made unprecedented strides to emerge as the world’s leading economic producer in many major areas. The academic debates over whether China’s GDP is larger than that of the USA are misplaced. GDP is largely worthless as a measure of a real economy. When measured in real physical economic production, China has left the USA and everyone else in the dust. Therefore, the future course of industrial production in China is vital to the future of the world economy. Globalization of the world economy made it so.

Steel production is still the single best indicator of a growing real economy. In 2021, China produced more that twelve times the tonnage steel as the USA, over one billion tons. The USA, once world leader, managed a piddly 86 million tons. In tons of coal, China produces some 50% of world total coal. She controls 70% of world rare earth mining and over 90% of its processing, thanks to bizarre US policy actions going back several decades. China today is far the world’s largest motor vehicle producer, almost three times the size of the US at 27 million units annually, one third of world total in 2022. China is by far the largest producer of the essential cement for construction, and is the world’s leading aluminum  producer.  At 40 million tons in 2022, this compares to not even one million tons in the USA. It is also the world’s largest copper consumer. The list goes on.

This is merely to suggest  how essential the economy of China has been to world economic growth over the past two decades. A mere four decades ago China was insignificant in world real economic terms. So, if China goes into deep economic contraction, the effect this time will be global. And this is just what is now underway. Important to note, the contraction began well before the severe three-years of China’s zero covid lockdown. Simply put, China since the so-called Great Financial Crisis of 2008 managed to create a financial bubble the size of which the world has never before experienced. That bubble began to deflate, beginning in real estate, around 2019. The scale is systemic and is only beginning.

General Motors is recalling hundreds of thousands of SUVs due to concerns they pose lethal dangers to children.

The American carmaker issued a voluntary recall for more than 680,000 2020 to 2023 Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain SUVs.

The issue is a defect with the rear-seat lower anchor bars being excessively coated with powder, preventing a car seat from strapping in properly.

Owners are advised to install child seats using the vehicle's rear seat belts until the remedy is complete. 

The FBI had at least four criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton that were ultimately shut down months before the presidential election in 2016, a new Justice Department report reveals – and Republicans want to reopen those probes.

A long-awaited report by Special Counsel John Durham released on Monday shows the FBI began investigating claims in late 2014 from a 'well-placed' confidential source that two foreign governments were trying to make illegal donations to buy influence with Hillary during her presidential campaign. 

Investigators were even offered documents of one alleged $2,700 illegal contribution that led to a 'substantial' further donation.

The bombshell report also reveals three different FBI field offices, in Washington, D.C., Little Rock, Arkansas, and New York, launched investigations into the Clinton Foundation in early 2016 for 'possible criminal activity.'

It may be just weeks until summer stars - put parts of New Hampshire are still seeing midwinter weather, with a thick blanket of snow covering areas of the Granite State.

The Mount Washington Observatory noted the absurdity of seeing the white stuff this time of year in a Facebook post after the beauty spot was given a thick coating. 

'The calendar might read mid-May but the White Mountains will feel more like late March Weds into Thurs morning,' the observatory said. 

Webmaster addition:

After being ordered by the Arizona Supreme Court to reconsider the issue of signature verification in Kari Lake’s election contest, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson decided after a hearing that he would allow a full trial. He declined to allow reconsideration of the faulty ballot-on-demand printer configurations, however, which resulted in mostly Republicans having problems casting ballots on Election Day. The trial began on Wednesday, with Lake’s attorneys emphasizing how the signature verification of voters’ signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes was conducted so quickly it was impossible to adequately verify them.

Lake’s attorney Kurt Olsen accused the county of falsely verifying signatures. “Maricopa’s log file data shows that 11 of these signature verification workers approved 170,000 signatures at a rate of between 0 and 2.99 seconds with a 99.97 percent approval rating,” he said. “That’s not signature review, your Honor.” Olsen said due to this, at least 334,000 mail-in ballots were not verified.

Lake’s attorneys displayed a video showing two Level 1 signature verification employees going through signatures on computer screens. While one takes his time, another one spends less than a second on each, clicking through the screens quickly.

 German gun manufacturer Heckler & Koch addressed a controversy on social media after the person running their Twitter account defended a pro-feminism Miller Lite ad.

 Biden administration officials are reportedly walking back claims that they made earlier this month when they claimed that they had killed a major figure in the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda.

 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ office slammed Disney on Thursday after the company announced that it was not going to build a billion dollar office complex because of “changing business conditions,” releasing a statement that Disney had announced the project a long time ago and “nothing ever came of it.”

 A former FBI official claimed the bureau denied Boston Field Office agents access to 11,000 hours of U.S. Capitol video footage on January 6 out of fear it would reveal the identities of possible undercover officers and confidential informants present at the riot.

 The country’s largest children’s hospital performs sex change procedures on children as young as 11, according to a new report.

 Paradromics, a company seeking to build direct data interfaces with the human brain, earned a breakthrough device designation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which will grant the firm an expedited review process to incorporate the technology into medical applications.

 Twitter blew up on Wednesday after images surfaced online of Adidas using a male model to promote a new women’s swimsuit, with many blasting the move as “gross” and  “disgusting.”

Proving the case that “Government”, of every flavor, has been a scam of inter-generational organized crime since the beginning… and they have been getting away with it… until now… because they have been controlling the media and academia.

Webmaster addition: Website of today's radio guest!

THE IRS has reportedly pulled the entire investigate team in the Hunter Biden probe off the case in suspected retaliation for a whistleblower’s claims. One America’s Stella Escobedo spoke with journalist, Troy Smith, about the allegations.

House Republicans on Wednesday passed two new bills in observance of National Police Week, including one aimed at illegal immigrants.

According to The Epoch Times, HR 2494 requires that illegal immigrants who assault police officers are automatically deportable, while HR 3091 authorizes retired federal law enforcement officials to buy surplus weapons being sold by the federal government.

Not surprisingly, Democrats opposed both measures, the outlet noted.

Walt Disney is scrapping plans to relocate 2,000 jobs to Florida in part because of “changing business conditions” in the state, according to an e-mail to employees seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The announcement came amid a widening legal battle between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the entertainment giant.

Disney parks chief Josh D’Amaro said “leadership changes” and “changing business conditions” prompted Disney to reconsider its 2021 plan to relocate employees, including its Imagineers who design theme park rides, to a new campus in Lake Nona. Disney was expected to spend as much as $864 million on the project, according to the Orlando Sentinel.