EUROPE - The euro area is on a path for another economic contraction, as key indicators for the eurozone economy plunged to a six-month low in November, amid renewed government efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19. According to the latest survey by the research firm IHS Markit, both the flash eurozone composite output and services activity purchasing managers’ indices (PMIs) hit their lowest levels since May. The former sank to 45.1 in November from 50.0 seen in October, while the latter plunged to 41.3 from 46.9. Any reading on the index below 50 signals a contraction, while a reading above this level marks growth. Europe’s largest economy, Germany, has helped the region avoid an even bigger downturn. Unlike many of its peers, its flash composite PMI did not fall into contraction territory, but dropped from 55.0 to 52.0, to register the weakest expansion since the recovery began in July.

GERMANY - The four-decade era of globalization may be coming to an end, and we could be entering “The Age of Disorder,” which will reshape both economies and politics, Deutsche Bank analysts have said in a new research note. One of the key characteristics of the new era will be the reversal of unfettered globalization, a team of analysts led by strategist Jim Reid predicted. While we saw “the best combined asset price growth of any era in history, with equity and bond returns very strong across the board” since 1980, “the Age of Disorder” is likely to break this trend. Deteriorating US-China relations is another theme (out of eight) that will define the next distinct era of modern times, “which is hastened, but not caused by, the pandemic.” The analysts note that the Chinese economy will be closing the gap with the US and could finally outperform it by the end of the decade.

USA - Donald Trump has accepted a formal US transition should begin for President-elect Joe Biden to take office. The president said the federal agency overseeing the handover must "do what needs to be done", even as he vowed to keep contesting his election defeat. The General Services Administration (GSA) said it was acknowledging Mr Biden as the "apparent winner". It came as Mr Biden's victory in the state of Michigan was officially certified, a major blow to Mr Trump. The GSA announcement means the president-elect now has access to top security briefings, office space and government officials as he prepares to take office on 20 January. His transition website has now changed to a US government domain. He will begin announcing the people he wants in the top jobs in his cabinet on Tuesday.

USA - Mr Trump claimed the agreement was not created to protect the environment but to “kill” the American economy. “I refuse to surrender millions of American jobs and send trillions of American dollars to the world's worst polluters and environmental offenders.” According to the Associated Press, the US President said: “To protect American workers, I withdrew the United States from the unfair and one-sided Paris climate Accord, a very unfair act for the United States.” The Paris Agreement, was signed in 2015 by parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It outlines key actions to be taken against climate change and in order to reduce carbon emissions. Mr Trump’s decision to pull out from the accord, which was not fulfilled until this month, has sparked fears of tensions with European and Asian allies.

USA - If a theme runs through the books and articles I’ve written over the past 40 years, it’s a fascination with what scientists have learned about the human body. A long career spent explaining biomedical research has led me to a deep respect for the scientific process. Despite its occasional missteps and self-corrections, I believe it ultimately moves us toward a clearer understanding of the world and how to thrive in it. Scientists were figuring this thing out on the fly. The most earnest pronouncements from the world’s smartest experts suddenly sounded like little more than well-meant educated guesses. As this devastating year draws to its raggedy close, it’s worth taking a moment to wonder what the long-term effect will be of watching scientists bob and weave on their way to a better understanding of the coronavirus and how to thwart the disease it causes, COVID-19 — all out in public and all at breakneck speed. Even for a science geek like me, it has been unsettling to watch them debate, disagree, pivot, and reassess. I’ve been wishing instead that some lab-coated hero would just swoop in and make it go away.

USA - Lockdowns, travel restrictions, and economic turmoil are altering the energy sector - and could be changing the way we think about the future of energy as the climate changes. COVID-19 will likely bring about a record single-year reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Is this the beginning of the end for carbon?

USA - When COVID-19 is reined in and humanity enters the new normal, expect transformations in learning, work, communication, and technology. The future has never been easy to forecast, and the coronavirus makes life even more unpredictable.

USA - COVID-19 and protests for social justice have shined a spotlight on society’s inequities and most vulnerable people. A graveside ceremony was held for Adolphus Moss at Fourth Creek Baptist Church Cemetery in York, Alabama, in April. Without fanfare or a public commemoration of his life, Moss, 67, a deacon in his church and respected civic leader in his rural community, was ushered into the ground. His entire service lasted 10 minutes.

USA - A “Freedom Pass” is a citizen’s only chance to live a more normal life, but the price of admission is that one must submit to testing and perhaps frequently so. This will immediately result in a caste system of “untouchables” and the “haves” based on invisible particles in your body. ⁃ TN Editor

USA - Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell on November 21 said that the president’s lawyers will file a lawsuit of “biblical” proportions, alleging that some election officials were embroiled in a pay-to-play scheme with a prominent manufacturer of voting software. “We’ve got tons of evidence; it’s so much, it’s hard to pull it all together,” Powell told Newsmax. She didn’t provide or elaborate on the evidence. “Hopefully this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical,” Powell said. “It’s a massive project to pull this fraud claim together with the evidence that I want to put in.”

MIDDLE EAST - American B-52s, the massive strategic bombers, arrived in the Middle East on Saturday. They are part of the Fifth Bomb Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota. These veteran, giant aircraft were last deployed in the region in May 2019 and the US Central Command says they are here to “deter aggression and reassure US partners and allies.” The B-52s flying in, appear largely a symbolic gesture, since the US doesn’t need them for operations at the moment. It has ample warplanes already based in the region, such as at the UAE’s Dhafra air base and an aircraft carrier group in the vicinity and massive resources across its Central Command area. The B-52s are supposed to send a message, the kind of messages that the US likes to send to allies.

USA - As religious leaders and their congregations go green, they've neglected one Judeo-Christian teaching that could cut energy consumption and pollution by 14.2857 percent. That's one-seventh, just as the Sabbath halts work one day out of the weekly seven. The day of rest – long considered a gift from God – is meant to create a joyful, liberating respite from worldly concerns such as work and consumption, activities that both use the earth's resources. So renewed observance of the Sabbath could also be a gift to the air, land, and water that we consume the other six days of the week. "Six days you shall labor and do all your work," Yahweh told the Israelites at Sinai, "but the seventh is a sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work."

GERMANY - In power so long she has been dubbed Germany's "eternal chancellor", Angela Merkel marks 15 years at the helm of Europe's top economic power Sunday with her popularity and public trust scaling new heights as her remaining time in office ticks down. With the coronavirus raging around the world, the pandemic has played to her strengths as a crisis manager with a head for science-based solutions. Merkel, 66, has said she will step down as chancellor when her current mandate runs out in 2021, and leave politics altogether. Assuming she finishes out her fourth term, she will tie Helmut Kohl's longevity record for a post-war leader, with an entire generation of young Germans never knowing another person at the top.

HUNGARY - Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán lambasted billionaire plutocrat George Soros as “one of the most corrupt people in the world” after he called on the European Union to make Hungary and Poland submit to “open society” values. “George Soros is threatening Hungary and Poland,” Prime Minister Orbán told Kossuth Rádió on Friday, referencing the 90-year-old arch-activist’s public lobbying of the EU deprive the conservative-led central European countries of funding. “George Soros is one of the most corrupt people in the world; he has plenty of politicians in his pocket who now want to blackmail Hungary and Poland for access to EU funds,” the Hungarian leader continued, accusing the billionaire of spreading “absurd, beyond-the-red-line statements” about his country.

USA - Pfizer, famous for its Viagra and other drugs, has partnered with a small Mainz, Germany company, BioNTech, which has developed the radical mRNA technique used to produce the new corona vaccine. BioNTech was only founded in 2008. BioNTech signed an agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in September, 2019, just before announcement in Wuhan China of the Novel Coronavirus and just before BioNTech made its stock market debut. The agreement involved cooperation on developing new mRNA techniques to treat cancer and HIV. BioNTech also has an agreement with one of the largest drug producers in China, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Co Ltd (“Fosun Pharma”) to develop a version of its mRNA vaccine for novel coronavirus for the Chinese market. This means that the same German biotech company is behind the covid vaccines being rushed out in China as well as the USA and EU. The vaccine is being rushed through to eventual approval in an alarmingly short time.