UK - She’s done it very quietly. Away from prying eyes, in the parts of parliament which journalists don’t pay much attention to, Priti Patel has effectively criminalised the act of protest. The Government waited until the final stages of a bill’s legislative process and then suddenly proposed a series of amendments, leaving reporters and human rights groups very little time to raise the alarm.

USA - A woman who resides in rural Alaska is lifting the lid on what it's really like to live in a remote part of the state, where moose are her neighbors and a half-gallon of milk costs $18. Emily, who is known as @emilyinalaska_ on TikTok, has been documenting the highs and lows of life in south-central Alaska after joining the social media platform last year during the coronavirus pandemic. She went viral a few weeks ago when she shared a video revealing the astronomical prices tags found on common grocery store items, leaving viewers stunned by the markup. 'Goods are priced higher since they have to travel farther by plane or barge to get to rural areas,' she explained using the app’s text-to-voice feature. 'The cost of living in Alaska is 24 percent higher than the national average.' According to the footage, a 32 oz block of Tillamook cheddar cheese is $24.99, a half a gallon of Darigold milk is $18.29, a 32 oz bottle of flavored Coffeemate creamer is $12.89, and a pack of Land O’Frost honey smoked turkey breast is $10.29.

USA - Cannabis shops across the San Francisco Bay Area have been thrown into dire straits as gangs of thieves broke into more than 15 shops throughout November during the series of ‘smash-and-grab’ robberies that are plaguing California. Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told reporters that ‘hundreds’ of vehicles targeted marijuana stores in Oakland last month, firing 175 shots and stealing about $5 million worth of products. Alphonso ‘Tucky’ Blunt, owner of Blunts and Moore, told MJBizDaily that his store lost about $25,000 during a November 22 raid, where more than a dozen burglars ransacked the store. ‘I know 25 or so businesses that got hit … and out of all those, the percentage I know that told me that they may not be able to reopen is about 50 percent. That’s scary,’ Blunt said. ‘I was safer, and had more money, (selling) on the street, illegally.’

EUROPE - Godless EU Equality Minister Helena Dalli drops plan to erase Christmas after Vatican backlash. EU Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli proposed new rules for the European Union this year changing the name of Christmas to “Holiday period.” Dalli also urged Europeans to drop the use of the names Mary and John. We are witnessing the end of Western society and culture. What a heart-breaking development. Dalli backtracked on her proposals but only after the Vatican denounced the move. ”My initiative to draft guidelines as an internal document for communication by Commission staff in their duties was intended to achieve an important aim: to illustrate the diversity of European culture and showcase the inclusive nature of the European Commission towards all walks of life and beliefs of European citizens,” Dalli said.

USA - A former Planned Parenthood manager who now helps other abortion industry workers leave the business said the “greatest lie women have been told” is that, in order to achieve success, equality, and justice, they need abortion. In an op-ed at Fox News Wednesday, as the Supreme Court heard opening arguments in a case that poses the most significant challenge in decades to the right to abortion created by the Court’s decision in Roe vs Wade, Johnson acknowledged she “told this very lie to countless women in order to convince them to pay us at Planned Parenthood to get rid of that growing life inside of them.”

USA - Former President Donald Trump tore into President Joe Biden in a wide-ranging interview Thursday, suggesting that the administration is "knowingly" destroying the country and is distrusted by the American people. During an appearance on "Fox & Friends," Trump shot back at the president over his 2020 comments, where he suggested that Trump was responsible for American COVID deaths and should not remain in office. Trump largely laid the blame for the continued deaths, which now exceed the lives lost in 2020, on distrust of the current administration and their inability to "sell" the vaccine to the public. "Some people don’t want to take them and that’s their freedom and that’s what we have to do. But, people don’t want to take them because they don’t trust Biden, they don’t trust the administration," said the former president. Trump later slammed Biden for his foreign policy decisions regarding the Afghanistan withdrawal, China, and the rising cost of gasoline. "We have a group of people... that are destroying our country and perhaps knowingly destroying our country," said Trump.

GERMANY - Germany is poised to clamp down on people who aren’t vaccinated against Covid-19 and drastically curtail social contacts to ease pressure on increasingly stretched hospitals. In one of her final acts as chancellor, Angela Merkel will hold talks with Germany’s 16 regional premiers later on Thursday at which they’re expected to agree on new curbs including allowing only people who are vaccinated or recovered into restaurants, theaters and non-essential stores. According to a draft agreement prepared by Merkel’s office, there will also be tighter contact restrictions for non-vaccinated people, nightclubs will be closed in places with high infection rates and there will be strict limits on the number of spectators at large public events. “The important thing is that this is virtually a lockdown for the unvaccinated,” outgoing Health Minister Jens Spahn said Thursday in an interview with ZDF television. “The more than 12 million adults who aren’t inoculated is what is creating a challenge for the health system.”

GERMANY - Irony has been declared many times in this pandemic but now, from Covid-riddled Germany comes the final proof: you can't kill yourself now unless you've been vaccinated. As European countries battle to limit the spread of the virus, Verein Sterbehilfe – the German Euthanasia Association – has issued a new directive, declaring it will now only help those who have been vaccinated or recovered from the disease. In a statement, the association said: “Euthanasia and the preparatory examination of the voluntary responsibility of our members willing to die require human closeness. Human closeness, however, is a prerequisite and breeding ground for coronavirus transmission. As of today, the 2G rule applies in our association, supplemented by situation-related measures, such as quick tests before encounters in closed rooms. 'Close encounters in closed rooms' – what a fabulous German euphemism for assisted suicide. The term '2G' meanwhile refers to a system which only allows free movement for leisure activities for the geimpft oder genese — 'vaccinated or recovered.' God forbid that a person without the jab should try to end it all – talk about a vaccine passport to the afterlife...

USA - Their legacy? Between 1973 and 2017, according to numbers published this year by the Guttmacher Institute, doctors killed 58,177,540 babies in the United States. The National Right to Life Educational Foundation estimates that from 1973 and 2020, the number is 62,502,904. This year, the killing has continued. But the Supreme Court now has a chance to reverse Roe vs Wade. Will Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett stand with Blackmun — or with the innocent unborn?

USA - The most insidious threat to humankind is something called “extinction debt.” There comes a time in the progress of any species, even ones that seem to be thriving, when extinction will be inevitable, no matter what they might do to avert it. The cause of extinction is usually a delayed reaction to habitat loss. The species most at risk are those that dominate particular habitat patches at the expense of others, who tend to migrate elsewhere, and are therefore spread more thinly. Humans occupy more or less the whole planet, and with our sequestration of a large wedge of the productivity of this planetwide habitat patch, we are dominant within it. H. sapiens might therefore already be a dead species walking. The signs are already there for those willing to see them. When the habitat becomes degraded such that there are fewer resources to go around; when fertility starts to decline; when the birth rate sinks below the death rate; and when genetic resources are limited — the only way is down. The question is “How fast?” I suspect that the human population is set not just for shrinkage but collapse — and soon. To paraphrase Lehrer, if we are going to write about human extinction, we’d better start writing now.

USA - Just minutes from the California border sits a sun-drenched town in Nevada that wants nothing to do with its neighbor to the west. Located about 60 miles from Las Vegas, Pahrump was once home to the Southern Paiute Indians and didn’t install telephone service until the 1960s. Many current residents moved to the unincorporated town to get away from the traffic and pollution that plague much of California. Residents now find themselves at odds with Candela Renewables, a San Francisco-based renewable energy company that hopes to build a large-scale solar field across some 2,300 acres. “It seems illogical to me to destroy the environment to protect the environment,” said Pahrump resident Jeannie Cox-King, who helped organize a protest Saturday against the Rough Hat Nye County solar field. “We should keep our public lands public.”

GERMANY - Incoming German chancellor Olaf Scholz has been clear about his intention to pursue a federal European state. But far from bringing the European Union’s member countries closer together, his plan could rupture it completely. Scholz will become the new chancellor of Germany within the next 10 days, heading a ‘traffic light’ coalition made up of his own party, the SPD, the Greens, and the Free Democrats.

TURKEY - Lines outside bread stores and gas stations; farmers defaulting on loans; impromptu street demonstrations. The signs of economic distress in Turkey are all too clear as the lira continues a dizzying slide. Sporadic protests have broken out around Turkey and the opposition parties have called for a series of rallies to demand a change of government after the lira crashed sharply last week. The latest week of turmoil follows months of worsening economic conditions for Turkish citizens. The currency has lost more than 45 percent of its value this year, and nearly 20 percent in the last week, continuing its downward trend on Tuesday. Economists have tied the currency crisis to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s direct interference in monetary policy and his determination to lower interest rates. Necla Sazak, an 80-year-old retired bank employee heading home with a bag of groceries, said she was surviving on credit cards. “Our purchasing power dropped — our money has no value anymore,” she said.

IRAN - In a dramatic change, senior Iranian officials have admitted that Iran has plans to build offensive atomic weapons. The plans were prepared by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of Iran's nuclear program, who, according to foreign sources, was assassinated by Israel a year ago. A senior Iranian military official said that Iran has the ability to build a military nuclear weapon but supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei must approve it. In addition, former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani said that Fakhrizadeh had prepared plans for an offensive weapon, not just to defend Iran but also to serve other nations threatened by Israel, such as Syria and Iraq. At the nuclear talks in Vienna, the Iranians will announce to the world: "We have the ability and knowledge to make the bomb." In addition, they will say that the factory making advanced centrifuges at Karaj is out of bounds and international inspectors will not be permitted.

IRAN - After two weeks of growing protests over water shortages in the Iranian city of Isfahan, the Iranian government violently cracked down on Friday. Security guards fired bird shot and tear gas at crowds of protesters and beat them with batons, injuring scores of demonstrators. Dozens of people were arrested. Videos showed protesters throwing stones at police and chanting "death to the dictator" and "death to Khamenei." In Isfahan, water has been diverted away from farmlands and toward industrial complexes in the desert province of Yazd and for drinking water to the religious city of Qom. The Iran Meteorological Organization estimates that 97% of the country is dealing with drought.