VATICAN - Pope Francis is seeking to turn a page in Christian-Muslim relations while also ministering to a unique, thriving island of Catholicism as he embarks on the first-ever papal trip to the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam.  While Francis is building on two of his priorities with his Sunday-Tuesday visit to the United Arab Emirates — promoting interfaith dialogue and visiting the Catholic peripheries — diplomatic protocol will likely dictate that he leaves other concerns behind.  The Emirates’ support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, which has caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and the UAE’s problematic record on human rights and labor violations at home will likely get a pass — at least in public.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Pope Francis offered the 'blessings of peace' but was greeted by an extravagant military ceremony as he began his historic visit to the United Arab Emirates today. The 82-year-old pontiff was greeted by horse-mounted guards, an artillery salute and a military flyover trailing the yellow and white smoke of the Vatican flag as he arrived at the presidential palace in Abu Dhabi. His 40-hour visit to the Emirates is the first papal trip to the Arabian peninsula, with 135,000 followers set to celebrate a papal Mass on Tuesday in a rare display of Christian worship in the Muslim-majority region.  In a message to the prince, written in the palace book of honour, Francis offered the people of the UAE his prayers and 'the divine blessings of peace and fraternal solidarity.'  

USA - Now that she controls the House Financial Services Committee, Congresswoman Maxine Waters is preparing to finally make good on her threats to subpoena Deutsche Bank to get the "full story" on President Trump's financial relationship with the only major bank that would lend to him following a series of Trump company bankruptcies during the 1990s. And as Waters prepares to let the subpoeanas fly, what better way to alert the broader financial industry that she is not playing around than to sit for an interview with CNBC's chief political correspondent John Harwood?

ISRAEL - Work begins on a new barrier along the Gaza border - PM Netanyahu says 6-meter-high fence will stop terrorists in Strip ‘from penetrating into our territory on the ground’. The Defense Ministry announces it has begun work on a new barrier along the border with the Gaza Strip. Construction began Thursday on the barrier, which the ministry says is some six meters (19.5 feet) high and will stretch for 65 kilometers (40 miles) along the border from Kerem Shalom in the south to the new sea barrier in the north of the Strip meant to guard against infiltration from the Mediterranean. The new fence will be constructed along the path of an underground barrier being built to block cross-border attack tunnels dug from the Palestinian territory, which emerged as a threat during the 2014 Gaza war. “

CANADA - A principal inventor of AI (artificial intelligence), Bengio says “This is the 1984 Big Brother scenario”. Bengio and his fellow Technocrat scientists should have thought about this way before now, but it reflects their Pollyanna-ish view of humanity. Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian computer scientist who helped pioneer the techniques underpinning much of the current excitement around artificial intelligence, is worried about China’s use of AI for surveillance and political control. Bengio, who is also a co-founder of Montreal-based AI software company Element AI, said he was concerned about the technology he helped create being used for controlling people’s behavior and influencing their minds. “This is the 1984 Big Brother scenario,” he said in an interview. “I think it’s becoming more and more scary.”

USA - I, Garry Leech, declare myself president of the United States of America. There I did it. I am now the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. “By what right?” you ask. By the right of the new democratic political process recently implemented in Venezuela and endorsed by the US government. This is how I am restoring democracy in the United States. In the same manner that the new self-declared president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, with the backing of the US government, is restoring democracy in Venezuela: through the ouster of a democratically elected leader.

VENEZUELA - A Venezuelan air force general became the latest high-ranking military member to renounce his support for socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, declaring in a video this weekend that he recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate president.

USA - Federal workers need to be prepared for more pain. If President Trump and Congress cannot make a deal, there will probably be another very painful government shutdown in just a couple of weeks. Even though he agreed to temporarily reopen the government, President Trump made it abundantly clear that there would be no long-term deal without wall funding, and that wall funding is supposed to be part of the current negotiation process in Congress.

USA - Executives at General Motors (GM) announced Friday that about 4,250 white-collar workers would be laid off, the vast majority of whom are in the United States, as the multinational corporation continues shifting production overseas and to Mexico. The Monday layoffs of thousands of GM’s white-collar American workers in Michigan and Ohio is just the latest component of the corporation’s laying off of 14,700 workers in North America — including at least 3,300 American factory workers

USA - The debt crisis in the United States of America has reached apocalyptic proportions.  A new and horrifying report out details the reason why 63 of America’s largest cities are completely broke: debt and overspending. According to a recent analysis of the 75 most populous cities in the United States, 63 of them can’t pay their bills and the total amount of unfunded debt among them is nearly $330 billion. 

UK - Innocent people are increasingly being denied access to their money without any explanation from their banks. Figures obtained by Telegraph Money show the number of complaints from customers locked out of accounts rose by a fifth in just 12 months. The steep rise comes as banks face intense scrutiny of their ability to combat the rising threat of transfer fraud. Banks are allowed to close down an account without notice or explanation if there are concerns it is being used for fraud or financial crimes, such as money laundering. These systems are designed to protect victims by freezing all payments going in or out of an account. However, banks often refuse to tell customers why their accounts have been closed!

CHINA - China’s state-run Global Times on Friday applauded the launch of a European system to evade US sanctions on Iran, pleased by the damage it could inflict upon US sanctions against China, Venezuela, North Korea, and other countries. The Chinese saluted France, Germany, and Britain for moving toward a day when the US dollar is no longer the world’s dominant currency and perhaps Chinese money will take its place. The Global Times gave the French, Germans, and British a pat on the back for exercising “economic sovereignty” against “Washington’s imposition of its foreign policy on other countries,” noting that Chinese interests have also felt American pressure.

CHINA - The real reason for the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) is China deploying 1,000 medium and short-range missiles preventing a US presence in neighbouring seas, former Russian Security Council Secretary Andrey Kokoshin told Sputnik in an interview Friday. "Evidently, the main target of the United States in connection with their withdrawal from this treaty is China. China, according to US estimates, set up a system of medium and short-range missiles of more than a thousand units aimed at the waters of the South China Sea and the East China Sea. It does not allow the United States to enter these waters with impunity using aircraft-carrier strike groups… Accordingly, the Chinese army set up a significant group of high-precision weapons, primarily ballistic missiles, which are capable of hitting US aircraft carriers and US military bases in the region", Kokoshin said.

RUSSIA - Russia leads countries shifting their reserves away from the US dollar. Central bank buying of gold reached its highest levels for almost half a century last year, as Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan boosted purchases to shift their reserves away from the US dollar. The buying reflects continued efforts by emerging market central banks to diversify their large holdings of dollar reserves in the face of rising global trade tensions. The shift towards a multicurrency reserve system will “be accompanied by a period of heightened financial uncertainty, supporting central bank demand for gold,” according to an upcoming report from the OMFIF.

USA - A University of Tennessee student has argued that two-year-old children have no right to life because they cannot communicate. the male student is asked what he thinks about the argument that children can be “aborted” until the age of two. “I’ll buy that,” says the student although he proceeds to argue for the death of two-year olds, believing them to be incapable of communication. “The fact of the matter is that without communication, we have no way of knowing if you’re sentient or not,” he says. “I mean, it’s no different than this tree. It’s alive, but is it sentient? I don’t know. I can’t communicate with it.” Of course, what is more to the point is that a healthy-looking young man studying at an American university can so coolly argue against the right of children to live, even children who have left their mothers’ wombs and are physically independent of their mother’s bodies, even if their survival still depends on maternal care. Whatever would his mother say?