In the past, whenever I went to (or more precisely, 'through') Israel, it was for some antagonistic purpose: to write about the brutal suppression of the intifada in Gaza or Hebron, to comment on the insanity of the land grab around Bethlehem, or to report from the eerie and de-populated Golan Heights, which Israel occupies against all international rules and the UN resolutions. You name it and I worked there: Shifa Hospital or Rafah Camp in Gaza, 'Golans', border with Jordan, Bethlehem.

I used to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, sleep one night in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa, meet my contacts (my left-wing friends), hastily, and in the morning, dash towards the 'front', or towards one of the 'fronts' that the so-called 'Jewish State' sustains for decades at its 'peripheries'.

But this time I decided to do exactly the opposite.

As it became evident that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost all his restraint and shame, as it has got clear that the United States will take full advantage of his madness, and as I was convinced that Europe as well as most of the Arab countries will do absolutely nothing to defend Palestine, Syria or Iran, being 'in the neighborhood' (Egypt), I bought my tickets to Tel Aviv, for just a 48 hour 'visit' and for one simple purpose: to observe Israeli citizens, talk to them, and to try to figure out how and what they think and want; how they see the world, and particularly how they perceive the region where they live, fight and kill.

And so, I flew to Israel, from Cairo and via Amman. Once there, for two days I commuted between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in a brand new, fast and elegant double-decker train. I talked to many people, provoking them to describe the conditions in which they have been existing; to describe their political system, and the apartheid which most of them keep upholding through (as they constantly point out - 'democratic') elections.

Western Europe is home to a cluster of developed economies that boost some of the highest standards of living in the world. But that could soon change. Because as Evan Horowitz writes on NBC News's new "Think" vertical, IQ scores in France, Scandinavia, Britain, Germany and even Australia are beginning to decline.

The trend has been well-documented across Western Europe, and could soon carry over to the US as well. Which means the data have confirmed what millions of Americans who have watched cable news or logged on to twitter over the past three years probably already suspected: The world is getting dumber.


And just like that, another sign of the 'Idiocracy' apocalypse has emerged. Though, unlike the movie, which posits that the population of Earth will become steadily dumber as stupid people outbreed their more intelligent compatriots, the cause of the trend in Europe has yet to be determined, because even the children of relatively intelligent Europeans are getting dumber.

The United States is no longer supplying its enemies only with conventional weapons - that list now also includes cyberweapons. While Baltimore has been struggling with an aggressive cyber-attack over the last three weeks, previously profiled here , it has now been revealed that a key component of the malware used by cyber-criminals was actually developed just a short drive from Baltimore - at the NSA, according to the New York Times.

The tool used - called EternalBlue - has been used by hackers in North Korea, Russia and China to "cut a path of destruction around the world", and resulted in billions of dollars in damages.

Now, it has come full circle and is back in the US, wreaking havoc just miles from Washington. In fact, security experts say that attacks using EternalBlue have soared and cyber-criminals are honing in on vulnerable towns and cities, using it to paralyze governments. The NSA's connection to the attacks had previously not been reported and the NSA hasn't commented about it since an unidentified group leaked the weapon online in April 2017.

The NSA and the FBI still don't know whether or not it was leaked by foreign spies or US insiders.

Criticism of identity politics as merely "divisive" misses the point of what is actually a coherent political movement with a radical agenda to destroy Western society as it exists.

A cookie-cutter version of this complaint - which is often heard from "sensible" centrists and "old-fashioned" left-wingers - came at the weekend from David Isaac, chair of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission.

"We are living in a world that is more divided, there's more individualist thinking in relation to what is happening and less empathy, less hope," Isaac told the Guardian, urging Britons to look beyond "what works for me and my narrow group."

In controversial "implicit bias" training, New York City's public-school educators have been told to focus on black children over white ones - and one Jewish superintendent who described her family's Holocaust tragedies was scolded and humiliated, according to firsthand accounts.

A consultant hired by the city Department of Education told administrators at a workshop that "racial equity" means favoring black children regardless of their socio-economic status, sources said.

"If I had a poor white male student and I had a middle-class black boy, I would actually put my equitable strategies and interventions into that middle class black boy because over the course of his lifetime he will have less access and less opportunities than that poor white boy," the consultant, Darnisa Amante, is quoted as saying by those in the room.

Two people including a schoolgirl were stabbed to death and more than a dozen injured in Japan on Tuesday in a rampage that targeted children as they waited for a bus.

The attacker, a man in his 50s who has not yet been identified, crept silently up behind a group of children at the bus stop and slashed randomly at them before fatally stabbing himself in the neck.

Police said an 11-year-old schoolgirl named Hanako Kuribayashi and a 39-year-old parent, identified as government official Satoshi Oyama, died in the attack, which shocked a country where violent crime is rare.

Seventeen more people, mainly young children, were injured, according to authorities who had previously given the schoolgirl's age as 12.

Koji Shimazu of the St. Marianna University School of Medicine, told AFP that one woman in her 40s and three schoolgirls had to undergo surgery for knife wounds to the head and neck.

"It is a very harrowing case. I feel strong anger," Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in televised remarks.

An enormous fire has engulfed the historic Ambassador Hotel near downtown Dallas with more than 100 firefighters drafted in to battle the blaze.

Dallas Fire-Rescue were called to the raging inferno at approximately 1:30am local time after the five-storey building was engulfed in flames on Monday night.

A huge column of smoke was seen billowing off the building and firefighters reported that several of the floors collapsed.

Dr. Loubani, a Canadian physician, was in Gaza to treat the wounded in the Great March of Return - and to test a new 3-D printed tourniquet - when he was apparently targeted and shot in both legs. He is among at least 17 paramedics injured; one was killed.

On Monday May 14, while treating patients with gunshot wounds in Gaza during the Great March of Return, Canadian physician Tarek Loubani was shot in both legs by Israeli forces. One medic on his team, Musa Abuhassanin, was killed while attempting to providing care Palestinian protesters. Loubani published an account that noted he and the medical staff were wearing "high visibility clothing" and when they approached injured Palestinians, they did so with their hands raised as to show soldiers they were unarmed medical professionals.

After Loubani was wounded, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for an investigation and issued a statement, "We are appalled that Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian citizen, is among the wounded - along with so many unarmed people, including civilians, members of the media, first responders, and children."

Twitter went into overdrive over a fabricated quote of US President Donald Trump praising North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The fake quote drew real outrage from Rep. Ted Lieu and other members of the anti-Trump resistance.

The 'quote' was posted by foreign policy expert and TIME magazine contributor Ian Bremmer on Sunday and was quickly picked up by media people and politicians, including Democratic US representative and fervent Trump critic Ted Lieu.

The since-deleted tweet by Bremmer read: "President Donald Trump in Tokyo: 'Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better president than Sleepy Joe Biden.'" It was retweeted almost a thousand times before being taken down.

The tragedy comes after South African police arrested a man on suspicion of brutally murdering a female white farmer 250 kilometres from the country's capital. Just days before her tragic death, Annette Kennealy shared an article about skyrocketing attacks on white farmers in South Africa.

A young white couple have been shot and killed in broad daylight by unknown assailants in South Africa after their car ran out of diesel, in what police suspect was a racist attack.

The double murder of 19-year-old Johanco Fleischman and his girlfriend Jessica Kuhn, 23, took place on Sunday near the town of Benoni in Gauteng Province, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) east of the capital Johannesburg.