USA - The Pentagon is putting 20,000 National Guard on the streets of DC in the wake of the assault on the US Capitol to support Metropolitan Police Department and the US Capitol Police for the inauguration on January 20 of President-elect Joe Biden. That is in addition to the more than 6,000 officers who are part of the US Capitol Police and who are officers with the DC Metropolitan Police Department. The more than 25,000 members of law enforcement personnel that are being deployed is five times the number of United States military deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Security measures in the capital include dozens of roads and other closures, including the National Mall, until the day after the inauguration.

GERMANY - Germany's Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, on Saturday elected Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany's most populous state) as its new leader. He'll replace former chair Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who had succeeded Merkel in 2018 only to resign following a lack of success in February 2020. Laschet is considered a centrist and a close Merkel ally, though he reportedly angered her last spring by advocating for loosening the country's COVID-19 restrictions. To secure leadership, he defeated one of her intra-party rivals, Friedrich Merz, whom The Guardian describes as a "conservative hardliner," by a count of 521 to 466 votes. Per BBC, Laschet is in good position to emerge as the party's candidate for chancellor when Merkel steps down in September, but there's no guarantee he'll be the choice, as there are a few other popular options within the party.

ISRAEL - The Israeli Defense Force is drawing up plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel Hayom daily reported Thursday in a front-page article. The newspaper said that IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has asked for three alternate proposals to derail Tehran’s program, without elaborating on them. It only indicated one of the proposals is a military strike, noting that such a plan would require a significant budgetary boost for the Israeli military. Iran resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent last week, well in excess of the threshold set out in its landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and a short technical jump from the 90% level of enrichment needed to produce weapons. “If the United States government rejoins the nuclear deal — and that seems to be the stated policy as of now — the practical result will be that Israel will again be alone against Iran, which by the end of the deal will have received a green light from the world, including the United States, to continue with its nuclear weapons program”...

USA - Foreign leaders are now condemning US Regime for brutal censorship of American citizens.

EUROPE - Dutch government resigns over child benefits scandal. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the government would continue to lead the country’s COVID-19 response team until elections already scheduled for March. Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government stepped down on Friday after it emerged that officials had wrongly pursued thousands of people over welfare fraud.

USA - Thousands of migrants from Central America are on their way to the United States, and a migrant activist group representing the caravan is calling for the Biden administration to honor its "commitment." The migrants are fleeing political corruption, violence, and extreme poverty in Honduras, which was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and two devastating Category 4 hurricanes that battered the country within a two-week span in November. "We have nothing to feed to our children, and thousands of us were left sleeping on the streets," mother-of-four Maria Jesus Paz, who lost her home in the hurricanes, said. "This is why we make this decision, even though we know that the journey could cost us our lives." The mass migration by Hondurans is happening a week before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. The migrants are expecting that Biden will have a much more welcoming immigration policy compared to President Donald Trump.

RUSSIA - "The city on the hill has lost its shine," said Konstantin Kosachev at Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia). The political system that is supposedly the envy of the world was stripped of "its sacredness" last week when a mob of Trump supporters assaulted the US Capitol, killing a police officer and endangering lawmakers as they certified Joe Biden's election win. American politicians and pundits decried the violent protest as a horror, even though they routinely praise such displays in other countries as valid outpourings of anger against undemocratic regimes. Now US voters are crying fraud and injustice and besieging government buildings.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel's successor as Chancellor of Germany could be an outsider according to one political expert who has identified a rogue candidate capable of beating the current frontrunners. Political author Matthew Qvortrup believes the internal party elections in Germany to replace Angela Merkel could see an outsider draw ahead in the race to become the next Chancellor. Mr Qvortrup suggested the Chancellor's Health Minister Jens Spahn could emerge as a contender despite being written off as a favourite in the race. There are currently three leading candidates to replace Ms Merkel but political scientist believes Mr Spahn could yet emerge from the pack. He described Mr Spahn as the "most popular politician in Germany." Mr Qvortrup also tipped Markus Söder to do well in the race, describing him as a "hardman" who used to be "completely written off" but is now a "possible contender" for the post.

GERMANY - Politicians and the media fear that the ongoing far-right conspiracy ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joseph Biden on 20 January could plunge the country into deeper crisis — with far-reaching domestic and foreign policy consequences for the stability of the capitalist system in the US and internationally. In the process, all the establishment parties are stepping up their offensive for a more independent German-European foreign and great power policy, which will also further strengthen the extreme right-wing elements in the military and state apparatus here. After 1945, the Germans had “instinctively concluded: never again! Never again [conducting] world politics, never again [harbouring] fantasies of world domination, never again [pursuing a] military foreign policy.” ...Trump's... January 6 coup attempt expresses “a comprehensive breakdown of American capitalist society.” ...The “political antidote to fascism is the development of a mass political movement of the working class for socialism.”

USA - Donald Trump's reign over America will soon come to an end - but not before pro-Trump fanatics make bizarre claims the President should further attempt to block the handover of power to the Democrats. There is a matter of days until Donald Trump leaves the White House following a disastrous single term in office. The American President has lost all remaining credibility following the attempted insurrection on the Capitol in Washington DC by his Far Right supporters, which he did little to quell. Now, pro-Trump lawyers are calling for the President to make a last-minute attempt to overthrow the handover of power to President-Elect Joe Biden. Some of the President’s more deranged supporters have been calling for the President to invoke the Insurrection Act. Pro-Trump fanatics like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, two prominent pro-Trump attorneys leading efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and even one North Carolina state lawmaker have come forward to say the President should invoke the Insurrection Act so he can stay in office.

USA - The Insurrection Act allows the President to deploy military and National Guard troops to tackle rebellions. Historically, the act has only been used in moments of extreme national discord; rioting following the death of Martin Luther King Jr, the Civil War, violence surrounding desegregation and the Klu Klux Klan. It has only been used once in the wake of an election when a literal militia attempted to seize the Louisiana government on behalf of John McEnery, a former Confederate officer who had lost the 1872 governor’s race. The Insurrection Act has also been used dozens of other times across the country, and the last time it was used was in 1992 after Los Angeles police officers beat a black man, Rodney King, which resulted in rioting. Other notable examples of the act being used include President Dwight D Eisenhower invoking the Insurrection Act to protect the Little Rock Nine in 1957, and President Lyndon B Johnson using the law during the 1968 Civil Rights riots. It has never been imposed in the USA on a nationwide basis since it was originally passed in 1807.

USA - Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO: “We are focused on one account [@realDonaldTrump] right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration. So, the focus is certainly on this account [@realDonaldTrump] and how it ties to real world violence. But also, we need to think much longer term around how these dynamics play out over time. I don't believe this is going away anytime soon. You know, the US is extremely divided. Our platform is showing that every single day.” Dorsey said that censoring Trump was just the beginning.

USA - Many Christians absolutely refuse to believe that these are the end times. Instead, they are absolutely convinced that we are headed directly into times that will be more glorious than ever before. So why do so many believe this? Well, it is because of a relatively new theology that has been spreading like wildfire in recent years. It is called “Kingdom Now theology”, and this is how it is described on a Christian apologetics website called “Got Questions”…

USA - As lawmakers prepared to impeach Donald Trump for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol and DC readied for Joe Biden's inauguration, Cliff Dyrud wasn't focused on man-made actions. He was listening for the words of prophets.

EUROPE - Europeans are a step closer to finding all sorts of creepy crawlies on the menu as the EU Food Safety Agency (EFSA) has officially deemed the first such species – a yellow mealworm, to be specific – safe to eat. The development means that people buying pasta, burgers and even biscuits in a store somewhere in Europe might soon find out that their food is made of mealworms, thoroughly dried and ground into powder, while those of a more adventurous nature may be able to buy a baggie of whole dried insects as a snack. Such possibilities are about to open up following the decision by the European food safety watchdog. The EFSA panel has concluded that dried yellow mealworms are “safe under proposed uses” and their consumption is “not nutritiously disadvantageous,” the agency said in what it called “the first completed assessment of a proposed insect-derived food product.”