ZIMBABWE - In a country grappling not just with coronavirus but with a string of deepening economic and political crises - including rumours and denials of a coup plot - the extraordinary and deeply controversial case of opposition activists Cecilia Chimbiri, Netsai Marova and Joana Mamombe seems to point to something grim and fundamental about Zimbabwe's current struggles: an overwhelming loss of public trust in its key institutions. "We see a very jittery state that is at war with its citizens," said Fadzayi Mahere, a spokeswoman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Zimbabwe: Key facts: 15.6 million size of population; 63% live below poverty line; 23% of children have stunted growth; 785.5% official annual inflation rate in May...

UK - Scientists using highly sensitive vibration detectors have decoded honeybee queens' "tooting and quacking" duets in the hive. Worker bees make new queens by sealing eggs inside special cells with wax and feeding them royal jelly. The queens quack when ready to emerge - but if two are free at the same time, they will fight to the death. So when one hatches, its quacks turn to toots, telling the workers to keep the others - still quacking - captive. Dr Martin Bencsik, from Nottingham Trent University, who led this study, described the tooting and quacking of these "wonderful animals" as "extraordinary".

USA - President Donald Trump said Monday he is planning to withdraw a little more than half of the US troops now stationed in Germany, despite concerns that such a move would reduce American influence throughout Europe. Claiming Germany is not paying enough toward the NATO military alliance, Trump said the total deployment of American troops in Germany would drop to 25,000. The president estimated around 52,000 military personnel are stationed in Germany, but that number may include Defense Department civilian employees.

"Germany's delinquent, they've been delinquent for years," Trump told reporters at the White House. “They owe NATO billions of dollars and they have to pay it.” Under NATO rules, countries have committed to spend at least 2 percent of their annual defense budgets on the alliance. Germany has not yet reached that goal. The country did spend 1.36 percent of its gross domestic product on the NATO alliance in 2019, though, because of its size, the country spends more on its military than its European neighbors.

USA - As if we didn’t have enough already going on in 2020, now we are facing the possibility that several regional wars may erupt. China and India had both been pouring troops into a disputed border region, and now there has been an incident where they were actually killing each other. On the Korean peninsula, North Korea just blew up “a joint liaison office” that it had used for talks with the South Korean government. And in the Middle East, Turkey is warning of grave consequences if Israel goes ahead with a plan to annex portions of Judea and Samaria. If a major regional war erupts at even one of these flashpoints, it will be another devastating blow for a global economy that is already imploding, and there is a very strong probability that the US and other major western powers could be drawn into the conflict.

INDIA - At least 20 Indian Army soldiers have died in clashes with the Chinese forces over Galwan Valley, a disputed region north of Kashmir claimed by both Beijing and New Delhi. Beijing has not confirmed any reports of its casualties. The Indian Army initially confirmed the death of one officer and two soldiers, but issued an official statement on Tuesday evening adding that the seventeen soldiers who had been critically injured were “exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain” and succumbed to their wounds. Indian media have reported claims that as many as 43 members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been killed or injured in the clashes, which took place on Monday and Tuesday. The region contains several strategic mountain passes, and a highway connecting Xinjiang and Tibet runs through one of them. India attempted to challenge China’s de-facto control of the area in 1962, but the month-long war ended in a decisive Chinese victory.

USA - The stronger dollar era may be on borrowed time. Stephen Roach, one of the world’s leading authorities on Asia, is worried a changing global landscape paired with a massive US budget deficit will spark a dollar crash. “The US economy has been afflicted with some significant macro imbalances for a long time, namely a very low domestic savings rate and a chronic current account deficit,” the former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Monday. “The dollar is going to fall very, very sharply.” His forecast calls for a 35% drop against other major currencies.

SYRIA - It has become commonplace to declare Assad the victor of the civil war in Syria. He has managed to survive nearly a decade of rebellion by brutally suppressing dissent and exploiting the support of Russia and Iran to keep his grip on a burning country. Assad may have crushed the opposition to his rule in 60% of the country, but in 2020, every single root cause of the 2011 uprising has worsened. In recent months, Syria's economy has collapsed, resulting in hyperinflation, mass business closures, widespread food shortages and increasing unemployment. An average monthly salary in Syria now buys roughly one watermelon. Beyond the economic sphere, the Assad regime's failure to stabilize former opposition areas and its continued brutal and corrupt practices are driving intensifying instability.

GERMANY - An entire regional chapter of Germany’s far-right AfD party has been placed under police surveillance because of its extremist tendencies, local authorities said Monday, increasing pressure on the anti-migrant group. The Brandenburg chapter of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is now “a suspicious case and an object of surveillance,” said a spokesman for the region’s interior ministry.

There were “enough important factual indications” to show that the AfD in Brandenburg was “striving against the free democratic order,” said Joerg Mueller, the head of the state’s office for the protection of the constitution. The move comes three months after the party’s most radical fringe, known as the “Wing,” was also placed under police surveillance due to its association with known neo-Nazis. The Wing, which has about 7,000 members nationwide, was co-founded by firebrand AfD lawmaker Bjoern Hoecke, who has sparked outrage with attacks on Germany’s culture of remembrance for Nazi crimes.

UK - Brexit leader Nigel Farage has spoken to Breitbart about the “Marxist, Anarchic” threat to free speech and free thought in the United Kingdom, saying that fear is “dominating absolutely everything”. “It seems that the real threat we face now is a genuine threat to free speech. I have never known a time when, in the United Kingdom — which is famed for its huge breadth of media commentary and views — I have never seen so many people so scared to write and say and speak and broadcast what they think. It really is very disturbing.”

CHINA - The Chinese Army is preparing to deploy small, new, tracked war-robots armed with machine guns, night vision, missile loaders and camera sensors to conduct attacks while leaving manned systems at safer stand-off distances. Citing a China Central Television segment on the robots, People’s Online Daily reports that the “thigh-high robot looks like a small assault vehicle. Target practice results showed the robot has acceptable accuracy.” While the report stresses that the robot will be controlled or operated by human decision-makers, it is not clear if the robot is merely remote-controlled or if it operates with some measure of autonomy.

As a small tracked vehicle, the robot is built to traverse rugged or uneven terrain and operate as a forward-positioned weapons “node” for ground attacks. In short, the arrival of armed Chinese war-robots introduces the potential of some kind of robot-to-robot warfare, a scenario likely to be capturing Pentagon attention at the moment.

USA - Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò warns the president that the current crises over the coronavirus pandemic and the George Floyd riotsare a part of the eternal spiritual struggle between the forces of good and evil. “In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides that I would call Biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light constitute the most conspicuous part of humanity, while the children of darkness represent an absolute minority. And yet the former are the object of a sort of discrimination which places them in a situation of moral inferiority with respect to their adversaries, who often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.”

USA - The Trump administration released its final rule Friday that reversed the Obama administration’s definition of sex discrimination by eliminating both “gender identity” and “termination of pregnancy,” or abortion. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B Anthony List, said in a statement the new rule “clarifies abortion is not a civil right.” “President Trump is the most pro-life president our nation has ever seen, and today he delivered another important victory for conscience in America,” she said. “Abortion is not health care and should never be mandated by the government.”

EUROPE – The European Union has finally accepted the UK will leave the bloc at the end of the transition period on December 31, 2020 following crunch talks with Boris Johnson. The Prime Minister met European Council President Charles Michel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Parliament President David Sassoli by video conference to assess the progress made on a post-Brexit trade agreement." The Parties noted the UK's decision not to request any extension to the transition period. The transition period will therefore end on 31 December 2020, in line with the provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement.

USA - Many of the emergency economic measures that were put into place to support the American people financially throughout this pandemic are about to disappear, and that means that big trouble is on the horizon. Right now, we are in the midst of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Economic activity has fallen dramatically, more than 100,000 businesses have permanently closed, and more than 44 million Americans have lost a job so far in 2020. But up to this point most Americans are not feeling too much economic pain thanks to unprecedented intervention by the federal government. Unfortunately, that short-term boost of artificial relief is about to wear off, and that is going to cause some major problems as we approach the end of this calendar year.

USA - A lifting of the ban on travel to the US from Great Britain could still be months away, and in a worst case may not come until a coronavirus vaccine is available, Dr Anthony Fauci told a UK newspaper. The US infectious diseases specialist made the comment in a wide-ranging interview with The Telegraph on Sunday, in which he also expressed hope that one or more of the vaccines now in development could be ready by the end of 2020 or early 2021. “It’s going to be really wait and see. I don’t think there’s going to be an immediate pullback for those kinds of [travel] restrictions,” Fauci said. “Looking at what’s going on with the infection rate, I think it’s more likely measured in months rather than weeks.”