Food additives are so ubiquitous in the first place thanks to their ability to extend various foods’ shelf lives and improve palatability. Despite this, the health consequences of consuming these substances are still woefully understudied and not clear. So, analyzing and better grasping the impact of food-additive exposure over time is a vital step in understanding its role in numerous negative health developments linked to their consumption, including increased bodyweight and negative changes to the gut microbiome.

American consumers buy over 400,000 different packaged food and beverage products annually at grocery stores. New food goods and products are constantly landing on store shelves. More ultra-processed foods means that Americans are eating more sodium, sugar, and saturated fats.

Hogl warned that the German military “lacks everything,” from helmets and vests to modern digital radios, and remained burdened by red tape when replenishing stockpiles. This problem also arises in replacing weapons and ammunition that Berlin sent to Ukraine for use in its conflict against Russia.

The slow procurement process means that the planned modernization of the Bundeswehr would take a long time. For example, decades would be required to upgrade barracks, some of which are in a “wretched condition,” Hogl warned.

“If we stayed at the current pace… it would take about half a century before just the current infrastructure of the Bundeswehr would be completely renovated,” the commissioner wrote. Hogl welcomed the decision by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to create a special €100 billion ($107 billion) fund to refurbish the military, but estimated that a sum three times larger would be required to make the Bundeswehr fully operational.

To put it mildly, it is bad news for the United States and deals a massive blow to the near-unlimited geopolitical sway Washington has long held over the region via its strategic relationships with countries such as Saudi Arabia. Additionally, it effectively ruins a US led campaign to pressurize and isolate Iran and hinders American efforts to shape regional politics in Israel’s favor via the Abraham Accords.

It is no surprise that the Western media is calling the Chinese-brokered deal a “challenge” to the international order, but what order is that? The ability of the US to dominate the Middle East? Perhaps brokering peace is a good thing. Since the decline of European colonial empires, the United States has been the sole military hegemon in the Middle East, using a network of partnerships from Israel to the Gulf States to sustain domination over the region and allowing the US to exploit its energy resources.

In order to maintain this position, the US has long needed adversaries in order to perpetuate an ongoing security dilemma and force reliance on it as a security guarantor, which is also beneficial to the US military industrial complex. These policies have accumulated decades worth of wars, insurgencies and attempts at regime change.

It should be understood that the world has changed in ways which now lead these states to perceive that unparalleled US dominance, which is its unequivocal foreign policy goal, is no longer in their best interests. They have found a new, bigger partner in Beijing who not only can buy more of their oil, but also doesn’t have a foreign policy doctrine premised on evangelizing its ideology or creating war throughout the region. As such, when the US delivered an ultimatum to the United Arab Emirates that they will block the export of F-35s if they don’t drop Huawei from their 5G networks, Abu Dhabi told Washington where to go.

“The problem is the bond market, and my prediction, I called Lehman Brothers years ago, and I think the next bank to go is Credit Suisse ,” said the co-author of the best-selling book ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’, “because the bond market is crashing.”

Kiyosaki explained on Monday that the bond market, which is bigger than the stock market, is the economy’s “biggest problem” and will put the US in “serious trouble.” “The US dollar is losing its hegemony in the world right now. So, they’re going to print more and more and more of this… trying to keep this thing from sinking,” he explained.

According to Credit Suisse, which has been hit by a series of scandals lately, its customer outflows in the fourth quarter jumped to over 110 billion Swiss francs ($120 billion), putting it in breach of some liquidity buffers. On Monday, the bank’s share price nosedived more than 14% to a record low amid market turmoil triggered by the collapse of US tech lenders.

A shake-up in the military: Zorn was criticized after giving an interview in September in which he suggested that Ukraine would not be able to counter attacks by Russian forces. He told Focus magazine that Ukraine was mounting "counter-attacks, with which one can win back places or individual areas of the frontlines, but not push Russia back over a broad front."

Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the US Army Europe, in particular, slammed Zorn's "stunningly poor analysis of Russian capabilities" after the latter expressed fears that Russia could open further fronts, possibly targeting " Kaliningrad, the Baltic Sea, the Finnish border, Georgia, Moldova." German media reported that Zorn will be sent into early retirement on Thursday. The replacement of Germany's top military official comes just months after former Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht was forced to resign and was replaced by Pistorius in January.

Breuer is set to also function as a decision-maker in the defense ministry as well as serving as a military advisor to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He will take over the top position in the Bundeswehr as Germany seeks to boost its military capabilities following an announcement last year by Scholz that it would invest €100 billion ($107.5 billion) in the military after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Brazil continues to promote peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Following his visits to Kiev and Moscow, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud confirmed that Riyadh is also pursuing such activities.

According to reports, China’s President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive soon for talks in Russia and to subsequently hold talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Unlike the West, Zelensky already welcomes the negotiation initiatives.

The statement was in response to Habeck’s latest great reset plan which will see oil and gas heating completely banned in the country from 2045, with the minister also planning to implement restrictions on heating systems allowed in the German market much earlier.

With Habeck having also implemented numerous other controversial energy policies already, this was seemingly the last straw for Professor Frondel, who expressed outrage regarding the proposed plan. “Germany is on the way to eco-dictatorship,” the think-tank tsar told Bild. “I am appalled by Robert Habeck’s plans to ban [gas and oil] heating.”

The primary reason the areas were declared no-go zones was that they had seen some of the worst fighting during the war, particularly during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. The areas were environmentally devastated and contained large numbers of unexploded ordnance along with human and animal remains that further contaminated the environment.

The Battle of Verdun lasted 303 days and was one of the longest and bloodiest in human history with somewhere between 700,000 and 1,250,000 casualties in total. It also resulted in the destruction of villages, 6 of which have never been rebuilt. Over the last century work has been done to clean up Zone Rouge and today the no-go areas have shrunk to 168 sq KM (65 sq mi) (about twice the size of Manhattan).

However, cleaning up the areas doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re safe. Nor that areas that were not included in the original Zone Rouge are without danger. The Iron harvest, which uncovers unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnel, bullets and congruent trench supports, still occurs every year across North France and Belgium.

Since the end of the war, at least 900 people have been killed by unexploded WW1 ordnance across France and Belgium, with most recent deaths as late as 1998. Meaning that the war was still claiming victims 80 years after the cease-fire went into effect.

As the government scrambles to prevent contagion, the Federal Reserve announced on Sunday night that all depositors would get their money back. Yet the revelation about the 'unrealized losses' will only serve to raise concerns about the US banking industry.

The ticking time bomb is due to US banks buying Treasuries and bonds while interest rates were low, but, with interest rates now rising, finding these bonds have declined in value. When interest rates rise, newly issued bonds start paying higher rates to investors, which makes the older bonds with lower rates less attractive and less valuable. Most banks and pension funds are affected.

Jens Hagendorff, a finance professor at King's College London, told CNN that the problem was widespread. 'Many institutions — from central banks, commercial banks and pension funds — sit on assets that are worth significantly less than reported in their financial statements,' he said. 'The resulting losses will be large and need to be financed somehow. The scale of the problem is starting to cause concern.'

They have tightened so hard and so fast over the last year they have raised rates and tightened faster than anytime before. This is in the face of the biggest over-levered situation in history no matter how you look at it… They can only do one or the other, and they already look like fools.

The world is already laughing at the United States. Think of what Russia and China think when we are walking out some army general wearing a skirt. We are getting to the end game.”

The whole system is rotten to the core. The whole system is over-levered. The whole system is fraudulent. The entire system is a Ponzi scheme. The government of the reserve currency of the world has to borrow a trillion dollars a year to stay solvent. That’s ridiculous.”

And as we process the shock of yet another small bank failure (which makes JPMorgan even bigger), the Fed just issued a statement saying that "to support American businesses and households, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors. This action will bolster the capacity of the banking system to safeguard deposits and ensure the ongoing provision of money and credit to the economy."

But wait, there's more: concurrently with the Fed's statement, the Treasury also issued a joint statement with the Fed and FDIC in which Powell, Yellen and Gruenberg all said that they are "taking decisive actions to protect the US economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system. This step will ensure that the US banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth."

Additionally, the trio announced that all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank will be bailed out, as will the depositors of New York's Signature Bank, which has just failed as well, and whose depositors will be made whole after invoking a "systemic risk exception".

Because freedom of the seas, in our lifetime, has seemed like a default condition, it is easy to think of it — if we think of it at all — as akin to Earth’s rotation or the force of gravity: as just the way things are, rather than as a man-made construct that needs to be maintained and enforced. But what if the safe transit of ships could no longer be assumed? What if the oceans were no longer free?

Every now and again, Americans are suddenly reminded of how much they depend on the uninterrupted movement of ships around the world for their lifestyle, their livelihood, even their life. In 2021, the grounding of the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal, forcing vessels shuttling between Asia and Europe to divert around Africa, delaying their passage and driving up costs.

A few months later, largely because of disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, more than 100 container ships were stacked up outside the California Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, snarling supply chains throughout the country.

Explaining the need for the move, Sunak cited the “challenges of an increasingly volatile and complex world.” The priorities for which the money will be used include “replenishing and bolstering vital ammunition stocks,” as well as modernizing the “UK’s nuclear enterprise.”

In such a situation, “it is difficult to convince people with the logic that we should refrain from developing nuclear weapons and stick to the cause of denuclearisation,” he added. The mayor of Seoul, which hosts nearly half the country’s population of 51 million, said the Russia-Ukraine conflict has convinced him that South Korea should seek a nuclear deterrent.

“Russia freely violates Ukraine’s airspace, flying bombers and firing missiles... but Ukraine barely attacks Russian territory because of the psychological inferiority to a nuclear state,” Oh said.