USA - No matter how divided Congress pretends to be they always agree to spend more money… The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a $1.4 trillion spending package that includes a provision prohibiting the sale of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products to people under the age of 21. US lawmakers on Monday negotiated a deal to add the provision, as well as other changes to health-care law, to the spending bill that funds the federal government through the fiscal year ending September 30. The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it’s expected to pass later this week. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said President Donald Trump intends to sign it into law.

RUSSIA - NATO’s ramping up of large-scale war games in the Baltics, Poland and the Black Sea region show that it is gearing up for a major confrontation, Gerasimov said on Thursday, briefing foreign military attaches in Moscow. Gerasimov pointed out that in addition to flexing its military muscles around Russian borders, the US continues to deploy its anti-ballistic missile systems to Europe, which Moscow considers to be an acute threat to its national security. Furthermore, there is an ongoing smear campaign about a “Russian military threat” aimed at vilifying Moscow, the general said. Any military build-up attempted by Russia, transparent and defensive in nature, is being spun by Western media outlets and governments as a “threat to peace,” he added… it’s essential to calm tensions building up between the West and Russia so the animosity does not lead to dangerous military incidents, Gerasimov said, describing it as “the most important area in the dialogue between Russia and the US and NATO.”

UK - MPs have backed Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan for the UK to leave the EU on 31 January. They voted 358 to 234 - a majority of 124 - in favour of the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, which now goes on to further scrutiny in Parliament. The bill would also ban an extension of the transition period - during which the UK is out of the EU but follows many of its rules - past 2020. The PM said the country was now "one step closer to getting Brexit done". Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told his MPs to vote against the bill, saying there was "a better and fairer way" to leave the EU - but six of them backed the government. Mr Johnson insists a trade deal with the EU can be in place by the end of the transition period, but critics say this timescale is unrealistic. The government says it will get the bill into law in time for the 31 January Brexit deadline.

UK - Boris Johnson’s plan to enshrine a 2020 Brexit into law to demonstrate that he has no plans to extend the transition period has been met with a certain amount of eye-rolling in Brussels. “At this stage we take everything with a pinch of salt,” says one EU diplomat, noting that with his majority Mr Johnson is free to make laws - and remake them - as the circumstances require. Mr Johnson’s law does however provide one piece of clarity for the EU, which had harboured hopes in some quarters that a sizeable majority would open the door to extending transition for up to two years - at a cost of 10 billion euros or more a year. It seems clear now that there is no chance of this happening, which sets up an “October crunch” in which Mr Johnson will have to make a series of difficult choices, with a range of four possible outcomes, from a hard ‘WTO-rules’ exit to a fudged ‘transition’ that goes by another name.

USA - I was really hoping that this wouldn’t happen. Within hours of President Trump being impeached by the House, the mainstream media was reporting that Adam Schiff “has declared war” on Mike Pence. At this time of the year, most Americans are celebrating holidays and spending time with their families, but Adam Schiff continues to be deeply focused on his twisted obsession to take down the Trump administration.

GERMANY - Berlin has rejected a package of sweeping US sanctions meant to halt the construction of the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, denouncing it as interference in its domestic affairs. Germany “has noticed with regret that the sanctions initiated by the US Congress against Nord Stream2 and Turkstream [pipelines] came into force after being signed by the US president,” deputy government spokesperson Ulrike Demmer tweeted on Saturday. The sanctions are part of a 2020 defense spending bill President Donald Trump signed on Friday. They flag companies contributing to halt the construction of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline which spans between Russia and Germany. Under the legislation, US visas and American properties owned by those countries will be revoked and frozen. Berlin has been consistently opposed to the sanctions, with some politicians even calling for an in-kind response and a ban on imports of American liquefied natural gas to Germany.

USA - The document has predicted the likelihood and severity of conflicts in 2020 to take place in a number of hotspots expected to trigger a military response from the US. The report was conducted by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations’ Centre for Preventive Action, and released on Wednesday after basing its findings on conclusions from 500 foreign policy experts who reviewed “ongoing and potential conflicts based on their likelihood of occurring in the coming year and their impact on US interests. The result was a historic high in global unrest prediction for the next year. Director Paul B Stares and senior fellow John W Vessey Jr told Newsweek: “Perhaps as an indication of rising concern about the state of the world, respondents rated more threats as likely to require a US military response for 2020 than in any other Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) from the last eleven years.” The warning comes as tensions between the US and Iran tip boiling point.

JAPAN - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday briefed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tokyo’s plan to send naval forces to the Middle East to protect Japanese vessels, a Japanese official said, Reuters reports. Rouhani said in response that he understood Japan’s intention to contribute to navigational safety, the official told a media briefing after the two leaders met in Tokyo. “I’m highly concerned about tensions running high in the Middle East,” Abe told Rouhani at the start of the meeting. Friction between Tehran and Washington has increased since last year when US President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six nations and re-imposed sanctions on the country, crippling its economy.

SPAIN - After all the big claims, a hypocritical COP25 summit runs two days over schedule and decides absolutely nothing, leaving climate change issues up in the air and any plans to ‘save the planet’ on hold until next year in Glasgow. The disgraceful collapse of the COP25 gabfest in Madrid, while it was running two days over schedule, is an indictment of everything that those in attendance purported to stand for.

AUSTRALIA - You cannot make this stuff up. An old record has been ignored by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology because it was recorded on a Sunday, and the record keeper at that time should not have been going in on a Sunday.

ISRAEL - Over the past five years, the Israelis have been fighting a quiet war targeting "game-changing weapons" that Iran was transferring to its proxies. Their recent targets are precision-guided munitions, or PGMs. Iran is working overtime to allow its proxies to convert their dumb rockets into smart ones like the deadly Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) which is capable of striking within 5-10 yards of their intended targets. When enough PGMs reach the hands of Israel's enemies, the effect will indeed be game-changing.

GERMANY - German authorities identified over 32,200 right-wing extremists in 2019, according to a report. Much of the rise has to do with authorities counting groups affiliated with the far-right AfD for the first time. Germany's federal domestic intelligence service (BfV) and the state-level intelligence services identified over 32,200 right-wing extremists this year, the paper reported, citing information gathered from security sources. That figure is a third higher compared to 2018, when authorities counted 24,100 people involved in right-wing extremist networks. In January this year, the BfV took aim at the extreme-right faction of the AfD known as "Der Flügel" (The Wing) as well as the party's youth wing "Junge Alternative" (Young Alternative) over suspected extremism. According to Tagesspiegel, authorities included 7,000 members of the "Der Flügel" in its right-wing extremist count, as well as 1,000 members of the "Junge Alternative."

POLAND - Poland may be forced to part ways with the EU if a controversial judicial reform championed by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) comes to fruition, despite vocal opposition from Brussels, Poland’s Supreme Court warned on Tuesday. “Contradictions between Polish law and EU law... will in all likelihood lead to an intervention by the EU institutions regarding an infringement of the EU treaties, and in the longer perspective [will lead to] the need to leave the European Union,” said the court, which has been at odds with the right-wing government since 2015, when PiS rose to power. EU institutions, namely the European Commission, have been up in arms over the judicial overhaul, which its critics argue would give the PiS sway over the country’s judiciary. The draft law, which is now in parliament, will see judges barred from questioning the independence of their peers who were appointed by the government-controlled panel. Judges could also face repercussions for engaging in 'political activity' under the new law.

USA - A wave of debt in emerging and developing nations has grown faster and larger than in any period of the last five decades and could end with another crisis, the World Bank warned Thursday. And if the wave breaks, it could be more damaging since it would engulf private companies in addition to governments, at a time when economic growth is sluggish, according to a new report that covers four debt surges from 1970-2018. "The size, speed and breadth of the latest debt wave should concern us all," World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement. "Clearly, it's time for course corrections," he added. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have been sounding the warning about growing global debt for years, but the latest report is even more stark and turned up the volume on its calls for governments to take steps to prevent a debt crisis.

INDIA - In January, an estimated 120 million people gathered at the confluence of three holy rivers in India: the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the mythical Sarasvati. The occasion was the Kumbh Mela, a historic Hindu pilgrimage that occurs just once every 12 years. It is widely considered to be the largest gathering of humans on the planet (and can even be seen from space). “The scale is really something that can’t be captured — it has to be experienced,” the filmmaker Jeremy Snell told me. Overall, the festival is a celebration of Hindu community and tradition. At the center of the immense pop-up tent city is a marketplace offering spiritual lectures and blessings from India’s most revered gurus. For this year’s event, more than 200 miles of new roads were built to accommodate pilgrims traveling from all over India, although many also arrive by boat, carrying their belongings balanced on their head.