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?

USA - Duke University along with 93 other colleges, is demanding the Methodist church stop believing that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching and accept members of the LGBTQ+ community into the church. Duke University, along with 93 other colleges affiliated with the Methodist Church, is calling on the denomination to change its beliefs, by accepting “gender identity/expression” and “sexual orientation” within the church. The Board also stated that it is important for religious leaders to broaden their inclusiveness, in order to maintain their legacy as being “proponents of social justice and broad educational access.” The Methodist Church currently believes that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” and therefore, does not allow for members of the LGBTQ+ community to be ordained as ministers or serve in the church, according to its Book of Discipline.

JAPAN - Japan is fearing a devastating earthquake or tsunami is on the horizon after seven giant deep-sea fish washed up on its coast in what many see as a doomsday warning. A four-metre-long (13.12ft) oarfish was found on Monday tangled in a fishnet off the port of Imizu is the latest in the spate of unexplained deaths. The creatures, which can grow up to as long as 11 metres, are believed to be an indicator of doom in Japanese mythology.

GERMANY - Legend has it that the medieval German king Barbarossa is sleeping in an underground citadel beneath the Kyffhäuser mountain, waiting for the call to rise and take back his vast dominions. At its summit is a giant monument built for Kaiser Wilhelm I, the Prussian king who unified Germany into an empire. In 1939, the Nazis erected a statue there of Paul von Hindenburg, the First World War field marshal who later made Hitler chancellor.

GERMANY - The parliamentary Defence Commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels (Social Democratic Party, SPD), lists his complaints over more than 120 pages. “There is a lack of material in all areas.” There are “barely any operational Leopard 2 [battle tanks],” “no tankers in the Navy” and “a large part of the submarine” fleet was “broken.” In addition, “less than half of the Eurofighters and Tornados are airworthy” and ammunition stocks have been “reduced to a minimum.”

GERMANY - Politicians in Berlin said they needed more time to decide how to replace an ageing fleet that must be nuclear capable. The Bundeswehr faces pressure to purchase European-made planes, though it favors American models. A German military plan to buy new US warplanes to replace the ageing Tornado fighter jet fleet was delayed by Angela Merkel's coalition partners, the center-left SPD, on Thursday.  SPD's Wolfgang Hellmich, head of the parliamentary defense committee, said there was no rush to replace the Tornado fleet, as it is set to continue operating until 2035. "We don't have to make an immediate decision," he said. "This is a complex issue, and we must understand it fully," Hellmich said.

EUROPE - Europe needs Russia's potential and most importantly the country's market and natural resources in order to withstand such superpowers as China and the United States, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told the Spiegel outlet. "If we, as Europeans, want to survive politically and economically between [such] superpowers [as] the United States and China, we cannot do this without Russia's potential. We need the country's market and, first of all, its resources", Schroeder told the outlet in an interview released on Friday. According to the former German chancellor, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to build the kind of relations with Western countries that would be based on equality and respect, but he has been repeatedly rejected when trying to reach out to Europe.