CHINA - New evidence from Bloomberg reveals cracking global supply chains are fast emerging at major Chinese ports with thousands of containers of frozen meat piling up with nowhere to go. The Covid19 outbreak will remain a dominant issue for 1Q as supply chain shocks are being felt by multinationals on either side of the hemisphere. Sources told Bloomberg that containers of frozen pork, chicken, and beef (mostly from South America, Europe, and the US) are piling up at Tianjin, Shanghai, and Ningbo ports because of the lack of truck drivers and many transportation networks remain closed. Seaports in China are quickly running out of room to house the containers and cannot provide enough electricity points to keep existing containers cold.

USA - During President Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial, Democrats repeatedly asserted that he is "not above the law." But since his acquittal two weeks ago, the president has taken a series of steps aimed at showing that, essentially, he is the law. On Tuesday, Trump granted clemency to a clutch of political allies, circumventing the usual Justice Department process. The pardons and commutations followed Trump's moves to punish witnesses in his impeachment trial, publicly intervene in a pending legal case to urge leniency for a friend, criticize a federal judge, accuse a juror of bias and threaten to sue his own government for investigating him. Trump defended his actions, saying he has the right to shape the country's legal systems as he sees fit. "I'm allowed to be totally involved," he told reporters as he left Washington on Tuesday for a trip to California, Nevada and Arizona. "I'm actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country. But I've chosen not to be involved."

UK - Prominent evangelical pastor Franklin Graham said Sunday that LGBTQ activists are trying to ban “the truth of the Gospel” from British society by having him barred from preaching in the UK. In parallel posts on Facebook and Twitter, Rev Graham lamented efforts “by LGBTQ activists” to have his eight-city evangelistic tour across the UK cancelled. “Opposition to the Gospel shouldn’t really surprise us. Jesus warned that it would come,” Graham wrote. “As you may know, my eight-city evangelistic tour across the UK has been met with resistance by LGBTQ activists who inaccurately claim that I am homophobic, Islamophobic, and say that I speak hate.” “Anyone who knows me or has heard me speak knows that this really isn’t true — but, I DO preach the TRUTH of the Gospel. Could it be, rather, that these folks are truthophobic or free-speech-ophobic?” Graham asks.

USA - Lawmakers in California are working on legislation that would exempt some homosexual and transgender child rapists from the state's sex-offender registry, leaving registration up to the discretion of the individual judge. And considering the make-up of California's far-left judiciary and the broader state government, it is virtually a certainty that many child-raping homosexuals and transgenders will be left off the list of sex-offenders. The bill, dubbed “LGBTQ Young People Nondiscrimination in the Sex Offender Registry Act,” is ludicrously being described by proponents as a “civil rights” issue, as if there were a civil right for adult homosexuals to sodomize children. Under the legislation, a 24-year-old grown man would be able to sodomize a 14-year-old boy and claim it was “consensual.” Of course, 14-year-old children cannot consent to sodomy — or vote, smoke, drink, drive, sign contracts, and so on — because they are children.

USA - Prominent academics are pushing for the World Health Organization (WHO) to include old age on its list of diseases. They say it will improve old people’s lives – but in reality, it will give everyone the excuse to write them off. In their wisdom, 30 experts – from prestigious universities like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cambridge Imperial and UCL – have decided that ageing is no longer a normal feature of life. They want the World Health Organization to classify ageing as a disease. This diseasing of old age represents another blow to the moral status of the elderly. Being old is already considered to be an unattractive and undesirable stage of life. The call to diagnose ageing as a form of illness will merely enhance its negative image.

USA - For more than a year, cannabis has been legal in the state of Michigan and businesses across the state are making millions in the legal industry. However, tens of thousands of people are still incarcerated under charges relating to cannabis, despite its recent change in legal status. Michael Thompson is one of those people. The 68-year-old is currently fighting for a shot to be released after spending the past 25 years in jail. Thompson was sentenced to 60 years in prison for cannabis distribution in 1996 — a sentence that would effectively keep him in jail for the rest of his life with no chance for parole until he is in his late 80s. Two years ago, Thompson was denied clemency by former Governor Rick Snyder, but he hopes his chances will be better now that cannabis is legal and now that there is a growing support movement on the outside.

USA - All of a sudden, really crazy things are starting to happen all over the world. Giant swarms of locusts are absolutely devastating entire regions, extremely unusual storms are confounding meteorologists, earthquake and volcanic activity are both on the rise, and five very dangerous diseases are sweeping across the globe. So far in 2020, it has just been one thing after another, and many are speculating about what could be ahead if events continue to escalate.

CHINA - When was the last time that we witnessed a disaster that severely disrupted the supply chains of over 5 million companies around the globe simultaneously? Looking back over the past couple of decades, I can’t think of one. In recent days I have written a number of articles about the economic impact of this coronavirus outbreak, and what we have seen so far could be just the beginning. With each additional week that much of the Chinese economy remains at a virtual standstill, things are going to get even worse. Today, China accounts for approximately 20 percent of global GDP, but that doesn’t tell the entire story. At this point the rest of the world has become so dependent on Chinese exports that any sort of an extended shutdown for Chinese manufacturing would be a complete and utter nightmare for global supply chains. In fact, a brand new study that was just released by Dun & Bradstreet has concluded that the coronavirus outbreak in China “could impact more than 5 million businesses worldwide”…

USA - American factories in China are warning that they do not have enough staff to get their production lines fully back online as plants re-open after the extended coronavirus shutdown. Nearly 80 percent of US businesses in the Shanghai area say they lack the manpower to run at full speed, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. Forty-one percent said their biggest challenge in the next two to four weeks will be a lack of workers. Thirty percent said logistics issues will be their biggest concern. The lack of staff raising the prospects of disruptions to global supply chains. The economic fallout from the coronavirus could include hits to production in regions, including the US, where the virus itself has been scarce but which are dependent on Chinese inputs for goods.

EUROPE - Brussels must learn to take action, especially since Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policies are at odds with the bloc’s own interests, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said, noting that divisions will harm the union. “Europe has to developed an appetite for power,” Borrell told the Munich Security Conference. “We should be able to act... not everyday making comments, expressing concern,” he told world leaders, lawmakers, and senior officials gathered at the summit. Borrell lamented that Brussels’ “soft power,” obtained largely through the bloc’s economic strength, has withered – partly as a result of US President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policies, which have often been at odds with Europe on trade issues. The bloc has remained indecisive on a number of key foreign policy issues, including Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, as well as Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – positions that Brussels has protested but done little to counter.

CHINA - Here’s what we actually know – NOTHING. We have a lot of speculation, a lot of half-info, a lot of assumptions, and a lot of information that is absolutely unclear. We do know that various, large areas of China are supposedly locked down, which for the most part is confirmed.

USA - For weeks, the mainstream media has insisted that the coronavirus numbers coming out of China are entirely accurate and that anyone that dares to question them is putting out “fake news”.  Even as we have gotten to the point where it has become mind-numbingly obvious that the Chinese are not being straight with us, the mainstream media has not wavered. 

JAPAN - Global economic conditions are really starting to deteriorate quite rapidly. Economists were projecting that Japan’s GDP would shrink by 3.8 percent on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter, but instead it greatly surpassed expectations by plunging 6.3 percent. If Japan’s GDP falls again during the first quarter of 2020, and thanks to the coronavirus outbreak that seems very likely, then the world’s third largest economy will officially be in a recession. But of course the outlook for China is even worse. At this point, economic activity in China has come to a standstill, and this has thrown global supply chains into a state of chaos. It certainly appears that the entire global economy will shrink during the first quarter, and that will be the very first time that has happened in more than a decade. And if this coronavirus outbreak continues to intensify in the months ahead, the economic consequences are going to be absolutely catastrophic.

GERMANY - About a dozen foreign ministers and representatives of international organizations gathered to discuss new steps to end the conflict in Libya, following a ceasefire agreement made at a summit in Berlin last month. "It is now a matter of implementing step by step what was decided in Berlin," Maas said. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council endorsed a 55-point road map for ending the civil war, and condemned the rise in violence in Libya. Following the talks, the UN also released a summary of its 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan in Libya. The plan "projects that an overall number of 900,000 people will require some form of humanitarian assistance in 2020," according to a press release issued by the UN. "The increasing use of explosive weapons has resulted in unnecessary loss of life, displacement, destruction and damage to vital civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools." About 35 heads of state and government and almost 100 foreign and defense ministers are attending the 56th edition of the conference this weekend.

USA - In an interview with Spiked, the man who was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001 and turned the organization into a national power slammed the organization for abandoning its core principles of defending free speech, asserting that the organization is “intellectually dishonest.”

Ira Glasser, who grew up in Brooklyn as a devout Brooklyn Dodgers fan and thus was stirred into fighting for racial justice as he watched the struggle Dodger legend Jackie Robinson faced as he broke the color line, has grown disenchanted as the ACLU, which under his leadership fought for the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, where numerous Holocaust survivors lived, has jettisoned its traditional position of defending free speech as it has become politicized in its fight against President Trump.