UNITED NATIONS - As the “science” behind man-made global warming has been increasingly discredited, the story has changed. Now it’s not about saving the environment but about redistributing wealth, says a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the IPCC’s Working Group III and a lead author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, 2007 (its latest), recently said, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.” Edenhofer told a German news outlet (NZZ AM Sonntag): “Basically, it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.”

ITALY - Italian police said on Thursday they uncovered a plot to form a new Nazi party and seized a cache of weapons during searches across the country. Police in 16 towns and cities from the Mediterranean island of Sicily to the Alps in northern Italy took part in the investigation, which was launched two years ago. The probe revealed a “huge and varied array of subjects, residents in different places, united by the same ideological fanaticism and willing to create an openly pro-Nazi, xenophobic and anti-Semitic movement”, a police statement said. Police did not say how many people joined the group or how many arrests were made. In Italy “defense of fascism” and efforts to revive fascist parties are crimes.

ASIA - Food prices are climbing fast in the world's biggest emerging markets, posing a possible inflation threat after months of dormant pressures. Asia's two largest developing economies face a price surge for staple products - pork in China and onions in India - that are central to consumers' diets. In Turkey and Nigeria, supply problems are driving up costs, while United Nations data show global food prices rose at the fastest pace in October in more than two years. Pork prices doubled in October following massive livestock culls to protect against swine fever… In India a 26% year-on-year rise in vegetable prices... In Turkey food inflation hovered near 30% in the first quarter and has remained above 15% for much of the year… In Africa, monthly food inflation in Zimbabwe has reached almost 50% as supplies dwindle. In Nigeria, the price of imported rice has surged 7.3% since August...

PHILIPPINES - Typhoon Kammuri has hit central Philippines making landfall in the southern region of Luzon Island. The country has been preparing for the storm’s arrival with over 200,000 residents having been evacuated from coastal and mountainous areas due to fears of flooding, landslides and storm surges. Operations at Manila airport were suspended for 12 hours from 11:00 on Tuesday (03:00 GMT). The storm, is boasting winds of up to 155km/h (96mph), with gusts of up to 235km/h (146mph). Huge storm surges are also expected of up to three metres (nearly 10ft), the weather service said.

GERMANY - Hers is a government for undemanding times, with none of the ambition needed to face the giant challenges of today. If Germany is the heart of Europe, then it is currently the slow-beating heart of a well-fed businessman resting on his office couch after an ample lunch. For Europe’s sake, and for Germany’s own, that heart needs to beat a little faster.

GERMANY - The future of Germany's government has been thrown into question after the centre-left Social Democrats elected a relatively unknown left-wing duo who campaigned on a threat to pull out of Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition. Relative unknowns just days ago, Nobert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken were comfortably elected Saturday by the SPD, beating Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and his running mate Klara Geywitz. It's a clear indication of the party's dissatisfaction with its role in the ruling coalition. The "anti-Merkel coalition" pair, as dubbed by German media, have vowed to lead the SPD “out of the neoliberal wilderness” and said they would consider quitting the chancellor's government.

GERMANY - The future of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition has been thrown into doubt after her deputy chancellor lost the leadership race of his party. Olaf Scholz, who is also finance minister, lost his bid to become leader of the centre-left SPD. The party is now expected to vote on whether to stay in the coalition with Ms Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU. Mr Scholz's joint challengers, Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, have been highly critical of the coalition... they want to renegotiate the coalition deal with Ms Merkel's conservatives to focus more on social justice and investment. Poor election results and mixed views of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who replaced Ms Merkel as CDU leader in 2018, have led to discontent within the party.

GERMANY - Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, the new leaders of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), may be about to do Germany and Europe a favor. That’s not thanks to any inherent qualities they possess; both are colorless and unimaginative left-wingers vaguely resembling Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, though not quite as reckless. Rather it’s because they may want to take their party out of its coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc, a possibility that has sparked a full-blown government crisis. Anything that shakes the country out of its torpor offers a ray of hope.

GERMANY - The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party wants to attract "middle-class" voters by pursuing a more moderate path. The idea is likely to be met with opposition from the party's far-right wing. The new co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has called on party members to take a more moderate path as part of efforts to gain more mainstream voters. "We can only reach the middle-class in a reasonable manner," Tino Chrupalla said in a speech at the party's two-day national conference on Sunday. Chrupalla was elected as the AfD's co-leader on Saturday. He replaced Alexander Gauland, a founding member of the party in 2013, who became the party's first honorary member on Sunday. Chrupalla will lead the party alongside Jörg Meuthen, who has also kept his distance from the radical right. "It's all going our way," Meuthen said on Sunday. "That's why we need to be ready, we have to be good."

GERMANY - Germany’s UN ambassador [Christoph Heusgen] has voted again for an anti-Israel resolution, ignoring pleas from the nearly 100,000-member Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Jewish state to change its voting pattern. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean for the human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post: “Having Germany again vote for a UN Resolution labeling the Jewish people’s holiest site – the Western Wall in Jerusalem along with Solomon’s Temple Mount and the historic Jewish Quarter of the Old City as ‘occupied Palestinian territory’ – is an outrage and intolerable.”

GERMANY - A new neo-Nazi scandal has erupted in the German military, this time in its Special Forces Command (KSK), according to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. An officer in the elite military unit is strongly suspected of involvement in the right-wing extremist scene, the paper reported on Sunday. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the military is taking the cases "very, very seriously" and vowed tough action against extremists found in its ranks. "Anyone in the Bundeswehr who appears to be a radical has no place in the Bundeswehr," Kramp-Karrenbauer said Sunday during a visit to Kosovo. She added that the Special Forces Command in particular has a "special responsibility to counter any tendency toward radicalism." KSK is particularly responsible for rescuing people who have been kidnapped, taken hostage or are facing terrorist threats abroad. Pressure is mounting on the German military, with numerous soldiers in its ranks accused of right-wing extremism in recent months.

GERMANY - The election of Tino Chrupalla, a lawmaker from Saxony, is a tribute to former Communist eastern states where the AfD has made big gains in three elections this year. He will lead Germany’s largest opposition party with Joerg Meuthen, an economics professor from the industrial southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg who serves as a European Parliament lawmaker. “It is time to send a clear signal with a double leadership made up of representatives from both the east and west,” Chrupalla told delegates, who elected him in a run-off with over 54% of the vote.

GERMANY - German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ‘Grand Coalition’ is under threat from within, as the Social Democrats (SDP) elect new, leftist leaders. Their focus on social justice puts the SDP at odds with Merkel’s center-right CDU. The SDP announced its new leaders on Saturday, following a vote by party members. While Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and Klara Geywitz – allies of Merkel – were tipped to win, the leadership went to leftists Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken. Both politicians have called for higher taxes on the wealthy, more government investment in infrastructure and climate change measures, and increased welfare spending, regardless of whether the country’s budget slips into deficit or not. The pair represent a bloc of SPD voters unhappy with the party’s role in Merkel’s centrist coalition.

GERMANY - Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered an emotional speech to the German Budestag this week on the need for limiting freedom of speech. Merkel is the current globalist leader on the international stage. Merkel argued that the government must take away freedom of speech to save freedom of speech... Angela Merkel: "For those who claim they can no longer express their opinion, I say this to them: If you express and pronounce opinion, you must live with the fact that you will be contradicted. Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost. But freedom of expression has its limits. Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise our society will no longer be the free society that it was."

It doesn’t work that way, Angela.

GERMANY - The German army (Bundeswehr) is preparing for new military interventions. The plans were announced by the German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), on Monday at a Bundeswehr base in Saarland. “We would be able to undertake additional missions today,” she boasted. Five years after the German government announced the end of military restraint at the Munich Security Conference in 2014, the ruling class can no longer hide the fact that it is basing its foreign and great power politics on the militaristic traditions of the German Empire and the Nazis. In his major lecture on foreign policy at the end of October, the president of the German parliament, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), described 1945, ie, the date of the downfall of the Third Reich and the defeat of Germany in World War II — as a “catastrophe.”