GERMANY - Germany owes Britain a great debt and must allow a Brexit with the concessions it needs, according to a German commentator. But Mr Schoenberg said these issues have been “unshakeable” stipulations for Britain since the beginning of Brexit talks. Writing for the Daily Mail, he said: “To casually propose dumping them in this way was insulting to your country.”

RUSSIA - Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a summit Tuesday where they both affirmed their commitment to signing a peace treaty over their decades-long territorial dispute over the Russian-controlled Kuril Islands. Russia and Japan have not been able to sign a peace treaty since Russia seized the islands at the end of World War II, so the countries remain technically at war. Speaking at a joint news conference, Abe said that the Japanese and Russian foreign ministers would meet in February to continue negotiations over the dispute. Both sides are aiming to reach a deal by the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in June.

INDIA - India is beefing up its defences against Chinese aggression with a third airbase in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Military officials said the extra base would improve surveillance of Chinese ships and submarines entering the Indian Ocean through the nearby Malacca Straits. India has grown increasingly uneasy about the looming presence of China's more powerful navy and fears the network of commercial ports it is building from Sri Lanka to Pakistan could become naval outposts. The Indian military has seized upon the Andamans that lie near the entrance to the Malacca Straits to counter the Chinese challenge, deploying ships and aircraft since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014 promising a more muscular policy. About 120,000 ships pass through the Indian Ocean each year and nearly 70,000 of them pass through the Malacca Strait. Former navy commodore Anil Jai Singh said: "The underlying thing is the expanding Chinese presence.

USA - Just as community organizer Saul Alinsky, in his textbook for Marxist street thugs, Rules for Radicals, advised his minions, constant drumbeats have the potential to wear down resolve and win social and cultural wars. For years now, the object of left-wing pressure has been to undermine the status and reputation of straight white conservative males.

AUSTRALIA - More than 20 wild horses have been found decomposing in a dried-up gully in central Australia and one-third of the nation’s flying fox bats have allegedly died in just two days. The cataclysmic scale of dying wildlife is due to Australia’s hottest January on record as pulverising 40C temperatures scorch the country. The horses were found at a pool known as “Deep Hole”, 56 miles east of Alice Springs, Australia’s most central city. In a Facebook post, Alice Springs residents said that the horses “are likely to have perished from dehydration accompanied by the overwhelming heat”. Five of the ten hottest days in Australia’s recorded history have occurred in the last fortnight.

USA - A friend of mine, who runs a large television production company in the car-mad city of Los Angeles, recently noticed that his intern, an aspiring filmmaker from the People’s Republic of China, was walking to work. When he offered to arrange a swifter mode of transportation, she declined. When he asked why, she explained that she “needed the steps” on her Fitbit to sign in to her social media accounts. If she fell below the right number of steps, it would lower her health and fitness rating, which is part of her social rating, which is monitored by the government. A low social rating could prevent her from working or traveling abroad.

USA - The Doomsday Clock has remained at two minutes to midnight with the scientists behind the announcement claiming that “we have entered the new abnormal”. Members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which organises the Doomsday Clock, announced their findings in Washington stating that “the dangers of the world are being normalised, including climate change and nuclear war”.

USA - The law removes all legal protections for the unborn child and allows non-doctors to perform abortions. New York City’s One World Trade Center’s spire was lit pink to celebrate the passing of a law that legalises abortion for any reason up to birth. The law also allows non-doctors to perform abortions and repeals a legislation recognising unborn babies over 24 weeks as potential homicide victims. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Catholic, signed the bill on Tuesday before ordering that the spire of One World Trade Center, as well as bridges and buildings in the sate capital of Albany be lit pink in celebration.

USA - NewsGuard is yet another Rorschach test that says everything about the provincial, close-minded, and deceptive blacklisters who created it and nothing about its intended targets. Let’s start with NewsGuard’s decision to place the Drudge Report on its blacklist. How is it possible to blacklist Drudge as unreliable when Drudge mostly aggregates news from other sites, and when Drudge does break news, it is never fake? Blacklisting an aggregation site is not only ludicrous; it is revealing about NewsGuard’s own lack of credibility, transparency, and biases. Moreover, what does it say when NewsGuard gives every single establishment media site (every single one!) a passing grade when those are the sites Drudge links most often? What this tells us is that NewsGuard is not interested in accuracy, but rather how terrified this latest establishment media weed is of a popular site that operates outside the establishment media’s filter.

MIDDLE EAST - World War 3 fears were sparked this week after Israel hit the Syrian capital of Damascus early on Monday as part of its increasingly open assault on Iran's presence there. In response, Iran issued a chilling message to arch-enemy Israel – warning it is “impatient” and ready to confront and destroy the nation in a statement issued just hours after Israel launched the air raids in Syria.

EUROPE - France and Germany have renewed their vows of postwar friendship, aiming to show that the traditional engine powering the EU project is still strong, but drawing strong criticism from nationalist and populist parties advancing across the continent.

USA - While the dollar haters are constantly calling for its demise, when we look at the stats, we see a very different picture. Since 2005, the euro’s share of bank loans has collapsed from 30% of the world market to just 20%, while the Greenback has soared from 60% to now 70% of world debt transactions. I have warned that the Fed is being lobbied from every angle to stop raising rates because the number of dollar loans outside the USA is staggering. The Greenback remains the number one currency in foreign exchange transactions. The euro has collapsed from 38% of the transactions back in 2001 to about 30%, and is about to break that level in 2019. The British pound is rising in market share, reaching 13%, running fourth behind the Japanese yen with the Swiss franc in 5th place.

GERMANY - German prosecutors Wednesday announced child rape and murder charges against a rejected Iraqi asylum-seeker in a case that fuelled a heated debate about immigrant crime. The accused in the “Susanna case”, 21-year-old Ali Bashar, had fled Germany after the crime for northern Iraq but was extradited in a mission joined personally by federal police chief Dieter Romann.

Bashar is accused of beating, raping and then strangling to death schoolgirl Susanna Maria Feldman, 14, in a wooded area near his refugee shelter in the city of Wiesbaden last May 23. “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!” — Donald J. Trump(@realDonaldTrump)

USA - Mass shooting deaths in 2018 killed 68 Americans and the mass media freaked out; ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS murdered 2,000 people – MSM silent. It’s astonishing how at least 200 million Americans have no clue what’s really going on in this country regarding deaths caused by illegal immigrants, prescription medications, vaccines, hospital superbugs (think MRSA), chemotherapy, and hospital surgery errors. That’s because the mainstream media, aka MSM, purposely fails to report any of it.

USA - Rather than having to download an app as before, Edge users on Android and Apple devices can now just click one button to enable its “green-red rating signal if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.”