GERMANY - German politics is heading for a shake up. Genuine conservatives have had enough of leftist policies. As Alternative für Deutschland approach 40% support in East Germany, a right-leaning CDU faction announce plans to break away from the Union and found a new party that will cooperate with AfD. In September, three East German states – Saxony, Thüringen and Brandenburg – will hold elections for state parliament. Alternative für Deutschland are now by far the strongest-polling party in each of these states. In Saxony, for example, they are polling at an all-time high of 37%: The SPD – the party of federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz – has fallen to just 3% support here, well below the threshold for entering parliament, and support for the liberal FDP has all but evaporated.

USA - In his 1902 book, Proverb Lore, Edward Hulme said people used the phrase “rare as a black swan,” to express “the greatest impossibility the speaker could imagine.” Then, in 1697, Europeans finally saw actual black swans on the continent of Australia. And the meaning of “black swan” changed. It came to mean something difficult or impossible to have foreseen. According to dictionary.com, it means, “an occurrence or phenomenon that comes as a surprise because it was not predicted or was hard to predict.”

UK - Barclays bank is in the process of axing 5,000 jobs worldwide in a cost-cutting drive. As part of a push to improve Barclays' profits and cut costs, the jobs were axed from the bank's 84,000-strong workforce in 2023 - and a quarter of these are thought to be in the UK. The jobs were lost through a mix of redundancies and vacancies which will not be filled following a hiring freeze, according to Sky News. This represents one of the most notable cost-cutting measures implemented at Barclays since the financial crisis of 2008.

USA - On Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Morning in America,” Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Patrick Ryder stated that the US has started Operation Prosperity Guardian to try to stop Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea, but “We have no indications right now that the Houthis are going to cease these attacks.” Co-host Adrienne Bankert asked, “We have seen now deadly force being used against some of these rebel militant groups, these terror organizations because of their brazen attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Are we expecting to see more of that, especially in light of this recent explosion?” Ryder answered, “This has become a real threat in this incredibly vital waterway, this international waterway, through which 10-15% of global commerce and trade transit on any given day. And so, it’s very important that the international community come together and address this international problem.

USA - If new discoveries completely disprove old theories, shouldn’t those old theories be discarded? For decades, scientists have been assuring us that many of the fossils that they have been digging up are extremely old. In some cases those fossils are supposed to be tens of millions of years old, and in other cases they are supposed to be hundreds of millions of years old. But in recent years new discoveries have thrown that entire paradigm into question.

ITALY - Without a shared military, EU countries are “defenseless sparrows in a world of eagles,” Antonio Tajani has said. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has called on EU leaders to establish a common European army. Without a joint military, Tajani argues, the bloc cannot have a credible foreign policy. “If we want to be bearers of peace in the world, we need a European army,” Tajani told Italy’s La Stampa newspaper on Sunday.

GERMANY - Green politician Joschka Fischer cited the need to deter Russia and added that the bloc should also invest in air defenses. The European Union needs to get its own nuclear arsenal to better deter Russia, a former Foreign Minister of Germany, Joschka Fischer, has argued. The now-retired official has also warned that the bloc should be able to stick up for itself should its relations with the US cool.

UK - The UK Royal Navy has been forced to post job ads on LinkedIn as it struggles to recruit a new rear admiral to preside over the country’s submarine fleet, a move dubbed “unprecedented” and “shameful” by British military sources. The advertisement was spotted by UK media outlets on Friday, after first appearing on the professional networking site late last month. While senior officers typically rise through the ranks, the Times reported that “there is currently no one serving who is suitable” to replace outgoing submarine director Rear Admiral Simon Asquith, or who is willing to do so.

USA - Abortion has topped several infectious diseases as the world's leading cause of death for at least the fifth year in a row, even though multiple abortion restrictions have gone into place at the state level following the US Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v Wade. Statistics compiled by Worldometer, a database that tracks quantitative data on health, the global population and other metrics in real-time, show that more than 44.6 million abortions were performed worldwide in 2023.

VATICAN - The head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office has dug in his heels in the face of growing opposition to his controversial decision to allow the blessing of gay couples. Argentinian Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández, a personal friend of Pope Francis and the new chief of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), said Thursday the new document does not change traditional Church teaching on homosexuality, but only on the nature of blessings. The Vatican declaration titled Fiducia Supplicans was welcomed with joy by the LGBT lobby, which embraced the new teaching as a “huge step forward” and “an early Christmas gift” for LGBT Catholics.

VATICAN - At the last major celebration of the Christmas season, Epiphany, Globalist Pope Francis once again tried to reframe the latest, deep self-inflicted crisis of his papacy. While Francis is the most political Pope of our times, he is always calling out conservative prelates, urging them NOT to take on political stances – which is quite hypocritical of him. All the time, we see him bashing the people who are protecting the millenary Catholic dogma and doctrine that he is hell-bent on destroying. So on Epiphany, on Saint Pete’s Basilica in the Vatican, he cautioned the faithful against fracturing into groups ‘based on our own ideas’ – even though his fierce critics are defending two-thousand year old ideas from the Church fathers, not their own.

GERMANY - Pedophile activists in Germany are calling for lesbians to be removed from the LGBTQ movement due to their opposition of Minor Attracted People (MAPs). The group is demanding lesbians be banned from an exhibit at Berlin’s Gay Museum due to their opposition to pederasty. Krumme-13 is protesting the Museum, claiming that lesbians “submitted in every way to the anti-pedophile zeitgeist of the heterosexual mainstream.” "The Gay Museum is now dominated by lesbians who have submitted in every way to the anti-pedophile zeitgeist of the heterosexual mainstream. The lesbian activists in the Gay Museum are completely and uncritically committed to protecting children and victims. We strongly condemn the ideology associated with this,” the post continues.

MIDDLE EAST - There is no way to avoid an apocalyptic war in the Middle East now. Too much has been said and done, and both sides have pushed things past the point of no return. This war is going to look far different from anything we have ever seen in the Middle East before, and the level of death and destruction that we will witness will shock the entire globe. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel against waging war on Lebanon in a televised address Wednesday, a day after a strike blamed on Israel killed Hamas’s political number two, terror chief Salah al-Arouri, in a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern Beirut suburbs. “If the enemy thinks of waging a war on Lebanon, we will fight without restraint, without rules, without limits and without restrictions,” Nasrallah said in his address.

MIDDLE EAST - Hezbollah on Saturday initiated what it announced as "an initial response" to Israel's assassination by drone of Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri, which happened in a south Beirut neighborhood last week. The Lebanese paramilitary group backed by Iran unleashed large salvos of missiles that bombarded military bases as well as communities in northern Israel (many of which have long been evacuated), triggering alert sirens among some 90 towns and settlements. The Hezbollah statement declared that the assault was "part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri."

SOUTH KOREA - South Korea has ordered civilians on an island near the border with North Korea to evacuate to shelters, after accusing Pyongyang of firing off hundreds of artillery shells as part of a military “provocation.” The evacuation order was issued twice on Friday afternoon by local authorities, Yonhap News reported, noting that it came amid “apparent signs of a military provocation by North Korea.” “We announced the evacuation after receiving a call from a military unit saying it was carrying out a maritime strike on Yeongpyeong Island as it has a situation with a North Korean provocation,” an unnamed official was quoted as saying by Yonhap. Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said later that North Korea launched around 200 artillery shells off its west coast on Friday morning. The projectiles landed in a maritime buffer zone established under a 2018 deal between the countries, though Pyongyang has since withdrawn from the agreement.