Politics

Back In December, Spain held what turned out to be inconclusive elections as voters clearly rejected the status quo with the country's lowest turnout in three decades. While incumbent Rajoy gained themost seats he was unable to get a majority and now four months later, King Felipe appears to have thrown in the towel on trying to bring the sides together in a working coalition. A new election for Spain is now inevitable in the summer after the king said no candidate counts with enough support to form a government - after a third round of talks between party leaders,

Today we see five states hold the presidential primaries, the so-called "Acela Primary" as most of the states up for grabs fall along Amtrak’s Acela train line between Washington, D.C., and Connecticut, and with Hillary comfortable, and Trump looking for a sweep as he surges on the back of yet another failed "stop-trump" attempt, there should be no real surprises when polls close this evening.

Iran has summoned the Swiss Ambassador to Tehran to protest the controversial supreme court ruling that $2 billion of frozen Iranian assets be used to compensate American victims of “terror”. Last week the supreme Court ruled that Iran must pay the sum to survivors and relatives of those killed in attacks blamed on the Islamic republic. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif threatened to take legal action in the International Court of Justice against the United States if the amount in frozen funds is “diverted”.

Submitted by Ian Armstrong via GlobalRiskInsights.com,

The recent failure of North Korea’s missile tests reaffirms the deficiencies of its ballistic and nuclear programs. Perversely, it also increases the risk of an imminent greater destabilizing behavior.

On April 15th, Pyongyang attempted and failed a test launch of a land-based ballistic missile that, if properly deployed, is capable of hitting a target 2,400 to 3,200 miles away.