🇹🇷 Turkish President Erdogan: Israel has kept Al-Aqsa Mosque closed to Muslim worship for 17 days without any authority and for arbitrary reasons.

📝 Note: Christians have been prevented from freely worshipping in Hagia Sophia since 1453, also without authority and for arbitrary reasons.

🇸🇰 Slovakia's social democratic prime-minister Robert Fico promised to work a night shift at a factory ahead of the 1st of May, the International Labour Day.

On the 9th of May, Fico planned a trip to Moscow in order to take part in the Russian Victory Day's celebrations.

🇪🇨🇲🇽 - Leader of the Ecuadoran Los Lobos cartel arrested in Mexico City.

🇯🇵 Japan's gasoline prices hit record high.

Despite the grim news and spike in prices, Japan remains one of the Asian countries most protected from the ongoing oil crisis - its strategic reserve can last for months.

🇺🇦🇪🇺 - EU refused to include experts from Hungary and Slovakia to the delegation that is going to inspect the Russian oil transit pipeline in Ukraine.

Hungary and Slovakia have been accusing Ukraine of keeping the pipeline turned off intentionally.

🇺🇸 The Fed refused to lower the interest rate, it will remain 3.75.

The decision was expected by the market, because of the ongoing Middle East conflict, and the Fed didn't hide the reason either.

However, only few weeks ago in February, it was expected that the Fed would lower the rate in March in order to give the economy another boost. February became a surprisingly bad month for the US economy, when both growth and employment appeared to be way below the initial estimates.

🇺🇸 - Citibank predicts oil at 200 dollars per barrel.

Currently, Russia is having the best period in its life ever since the pandemic started.

In addition to oil prices skyrocketing, there's huge shortage of aluminum in the global market. Aluminum is Russia's another major strategic export.

🇺🇸 VP Vance held emergency meeting with leadership of the major US oil companies.

While fracking companies benefit from high prices and remain largely unaffected by the Middle East situation, since their business is located in the US, major international oil giants such as Exxon operate many oilfields in the Gulf.

Many of them had to cut drilling by 15-20% and suffer massive losses, using media and lobbyists to influence the US administration and demanding efforts to achieve normalisation in the Gulf region.

🇷🇺 - Russia begins to integrate the government-approved national messenger MAX with supermarkets' discount cards, making it mandatory to have MAX in order to use the cards.

🇺🇸🇷🇺 - Tulsi Gabbard claims that Russia has missiles that can balance out US' advantage in other military domains.

🇺🇸 - Meta announces it will be shutting down its Metaverse on June 15.

Nearly 90 billions wasted in development since 2021.

🇦🇪 Emirati economy minister inspected supermarkets and assured resident that the country's stocks of foods and medications are sufficient.

Earlier, Iran-affiliated outlets started to spread disinformation about the UAE running out of food. That and continuous Iranian strikes against targets in the UAE led to minor purchasing panic in Dubai, when residents rushed to buy essentials.

🇺🇲 $820 billion wiped off the US stock market today.

$120 billion wiped off the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies.

🇺🇸 Donald Trump reportedly constantly shows White House guests the exact spot where Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky had their affair.