USA - American farmers are struggling to find storage for crops that would usually be sold overseas, with some being forced to leave produce rotting in fields as a last resort, as the trade conflict between the US and China continues. Farmers in some US states are being forced into plowing their crops under — effectively burying them under soil in fields — as there is not enough room to store them in storage facilities, and they are unable to sell their products thanks to Chinese tariffs, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

UK - MPs believe that Europe will renegotiate Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal if they inflict a heavy parliamentary defeat, risking a serious political backlash when the EU refuses to compromise, senior Whitehall officials have warned. After an intense week briefing MPs of all parties on the details of Mrs May’s agreement, officials have been left dismayed that so many MPs still believe that a vote against the deal on December 11 will be a vote for a ‘better’ deal. “The most common response from MPs is that they think they can vote down the deal ‘so we can go back into bat’ against the EU and win fresh concessions whichever alternative option they happen to favour,” said a source involved in the negotiations.

UK - We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. The European issue has always been about sovereignty. It is ultimately about who governs us and how. The historic referendum vote in June 2016 delivered the democratic answer of the British people, which Parliament deliberately entrusted to them by a vote of 6-1, that they wished to govern themselves, through the members of their own elected Parliament. This is not an ideological abstraction as some like to claim. It is about our democratic self-government. No-one doubts, from whichever side of the debate they come from, that leaving the European Union after 46 years is a fundamental change in our constitutional arrangements.

GERMANY - The Frankfurt headquarters of Deutsche Bank have been raided by prosecutors in a money laundering investigation. Germany's public prosecutor alleged that two staff members have helped clients launder money from criminal activities. Police cars were seen outside the tower blocks that house the headquarters of Germany's biggest bank. Five other Deutsche offices in the city were searched in an operation involving about 170 police and officials. Prosecutors are looking into whether Deutsche Bank staff helped clients set up offshore accounts to "transfer money from criminal activities". In 2017, Deutsche Bank was fined $630 million (£504 million) by US and UK regulators in connection with a Russian money laundering plan.

FRANCE - Rioters ran amok across central Paris on Saturday, torching cars and buildings, looting shops, smashing windows and clashing with police in the worst unrest in more than a decade, posing a dire challenge to Emmanuel Macron's presidency. The authorities were caught off guard by the escalation in violence after two weeks of nationwide protests against fuel taxes and living costs, known as the "yellow vest" movement after fluorescent jackets kept in all vehicles in France. In Paris, police said they had arrested almost 300 people while 110 were injured, including 20 members of the security forces. Police fired stun grenades, tear gas and water cannon at protesters at the top of the Champs-Elysees boulevard, at the Tuilleries Garden near the Louvre museum and other sites. "We are in a state of insurrection, I've never seen anything like it," said Jeanne d'Hauteserre, the mayor of Paris' 8th district, near the Arc de Triomphe.

USA - In an extraordinary and sobering report meant to wake the nation up to a growing threat, a new military white paper warns that an electromagnetic pulse weapon attack such as those developed by North Korea, Russia, and Iran could essentially wipe out the United States… While it is focused on the devastating impact an EMP hit would have on the military, it backs up a congressional warning that up to 90 percent of the population on the East Coast would die in a year of an attack that would dismantle or interfere with electricity, transportation, food processing, and healthcare.

EUROPE - Weapons from the European Union are fuelling one of the world’s most deadly civil wars, an investigation has found. A four-year forensic study into arms supplies to South Sudan concludes that despite an embargo, weapons from Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia have been channelled into the five-year conflict which has killed around 400,000 people. The war has created Africa’s worst migration crisis, with an estimated 2.5 million people fleeing South Sudan and two million displaced inside. Thousands of assault rifles and millions of ammunition rounds from EU states have reached the war. The EU backs a peace process and is one of the biggest aid donors to South Sudan.

USA - For students at Yale, abortion drugs are now no harder to come by than a Diet Coke or a bag of Doritos. As reported yesterday in the Yale Daily News, the university’s student government has voted to install a vending machine in a centrally located residential college for “Plan B,” a contraceptive that may also function in certain cases as an abortifacient. The so-called “wellness to-go” vending machine will be installed at Silliman’s “Good Life Center,” signaling the death not only of incipient human life but also irony.

UK - Children who believe they are transgender are secretly beginning the process of changing sex behind their parents’ backs by buying drugs on the internet, the Mail can reveal today. As part of our investigation, we were offered a range of transgender medications online, with no questions asked, for as little as £25. One mother, whose identity is known by the Mail but who wishes to remain anonymous, told yesterday how she discovered her teenage son was developing breasts after ordering pills containing the female hormone oestrogen from an online pharmacy based in the US. The drugs, which she found in the schoolboy’s bedroom, were sent in a plain wrapper to his local Post Office in London where he collected them using his ID card. ‘I have been on these pro-transgender sites myself. I believe my son has been brainwashed by them. They have made him believe he is in the wrong body and then told him how to go about doing something about it without any checks at all.’

AUSTRALIA - The bushfire emergency in central Queensland flared up on Sunday evening with residents in the path of the massive Deepwater blaze told to leave immediately. Strong winds and high temperatures tested exhausted firefighters battling more than 110 blazes across the state throughout Sunday. Authorities issued the warning for people in the Winfield area, south of Baffle Creek, where embers were expected to have an impact from the Deepwater fire burning to the north. Further west, residents in Lowmead were told to leave now with the same blaze expected to hit the rural community of 225 people. Regional incident controller Mark Stuart said conditions in central Queensland had deteriorated, with crews battling 52 wildfires amid wind gusts of up to 50km/h.

UK - World War Three is among the biggest geopolitical concerns for the general public, with international relations between several countries approaching breaking point. Which countries could go to war in the next five years? Cold War tensions in certain parts of the World are resurfacing, as Russia and the US once again clash - this time over Ukraine. As a result, the public have been fretting about the possibility of another World War breaking out. Most of the countries seeing pronounced problems border one another, but certain international communities are now also at odds.

USA - We just got more evidence that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  On Friday a magnitude 7.0 earthquake destroyed homes, ripped apart roads and destroyed infrastructure all throughout Anchorage, Alaska.  According to the USGS, the earthquake hit at 8:29 AM and the epicenter was approximately 7 miles north of Anchorage.  That quake was followed by a highly destructive magnitude 5.7 aftershock just a little while later. 

USA - Several weeks ago, when looking at the US budget data for the recently concluded (September 30) Fiscal 2018, we noted that the most troubling observation in the latest data (besides the growing deficit, rising spending and shrinking tax revenues) was that the government paid $523 billion in total interest in fiscal 2018, the highest on record. Alas, this is just the start, because to fund the fiscal stimulus that has already been enacted, US deficit spending is only set to soar higher, with the resulting interest expense rising above $600 billion in 2019. But the truly scary nature of this number is in the context of all other G-7 nations: ...spending on interest expense in the US is now just about $1.5 billion per day, which at current interest rates is orders of magnitude higher than what all other G-7 developed nations spend on interest.

GERMANY - The program of the Berlin Security Conference, which ended yesterday, included discussions on new steps toward creating an "army of the Europeans," concerns over the possible erosion of the West’s "margin in defense capabilities" vis à vis Russia and China, as well as the role of artificial intelligence in future wars.

JAPAN - Beijing has issued a stark warning to Tokyo to not go ahead with plans to put F-35 Stealth jets aboard aircraft carriers, claiming the move would “drive the country to repeat its militaristic history”. Since the end of World War II, Japan’s military has functioned as a self defence unit, with the US keeping an eye on the once militarised nation following its surrender at the end of conflict on September 2, 1945. But now a Chinese news agency has reportedly responded to Tokyo’s decision to modify an aircraft carrier – the JS Izumo helicopter carrier – to carry F-35B fighter jets. Sources familiar with the process claim the addition of the fighter jets – which can take off and land vertically – would upend the balance of power in Asia.