RUSSIA - The Russian Investigative Committee on Tuesday organized large scale raids against Jehovah’s Witnesses nationwide, resulting in many arrests. The raids took place across 20 regions of the country and targeted both leaders and adherents of the sect. The committee further noted the arrests were part of a mounting legal case against the group. In 2017, the Russian Supreme Court branded the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist organization,” ordering them to disband and surrender their property to the Russian state. At the time, the group claimed 175,000 members within the Russian Federation. The Investigative Committee identified several clandestine meeting locations including an apartment in Moscow from which the group worked to convert other residents.

USA - A gigantic victory for religious liberty late Wednesday night at the US Supreme Court. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices told New York Governor Andrew Cuomo he can’t discriminate against religious groups when it comes to Covid-19 restrictions. Newest justice Amy Coney Barrett gave the majority in this ruling its fifth vote. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent. The ruling said, “Members of this Court are not public health experts, and we should respect the judgment of those with special expertise and responsibility in this area. But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”

USA - The CDC must be transparent about the side effects people may experience after getting their first shot of a coronavirus vaccine, doctors urged during a meeting Monday with CDC advisors. Dr Sandra Fryhofer said that both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines require two doses and she worries whether her patients will come back for a second dose because of potentially unpleasant side effects after the first shot. Both companies acknowledged that their vaccines could induce side effects that are similar to symptoms associated with mild Covid-19, such as muscle pain, chills and headache.“We really need to make patients aware that this is not going to be a walk in the park,” Fryhofer said during a virtual meeting with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, an outside group of medical experts that advise the CDC. She is also a liaison to the committee. “They are going to know they had a vaccine. They are probably not going to feel wonderful. But they’ve got to come back for that second dose.”

UK - By Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. The type of vaccine being developed against the virus has never – outside of Ebola – been used before. The trials have been extremely rushed & involved testing only small numbers. What could possibly go wrong? Since the first positive results on vaccines have come out, a lot of people have asked me if I think everyone should take them? For some reason, a number of people out there trust my judgement on such things.

UK - The UK’s top counter-terrorism cop has suggested society stop allowing people to question the wisdom of a rapid Covid-19 vaccine rollout, regarding such skepticism to be life-threatening “misinformation.” Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu has pointedly questioned whether it is “the correct thing for society to allow” the sharing of “misinformation that could cost people’s lives” — demonizing all doubts about quickly developed Covid-19 vaccines whose potential long-term effects are not yet known and tying them to extremist radicalization efforts.

ISRAEL - The Israel Defense Forces have in recent weeks been instructed to prepare for the possibility that the US will conduct a military strike against Iran before President Trump leaves office, senior Israeli officials tell me. The Israeli government instructed the IDF to undertake the preparations not because of any intelligence or assessment that Trump will order such a strike, but because senior Israeli officials anticipate “a very sensitive period” ahead of Biden's inauguration on January 20.

USA - Production disruptions caused by the Covid-19 outbreak could cost the global economy twice as much as a hypothetical global military conflict, according to figures cited in a recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute. In a report headlined ‘Risk, resilience, and rebalancing in global value chains’, the analysts of US-based consulting firm McKinsey evaluated various risks of a manufacturing shutdown lasting 100 days. The economic shocks considered in the report stem from a wide range of possible events – from a cyberattack and trade rows to military conflicts and a pandemic – and vary in frequency, lead time, and nature of impact. It turns out that damages from a hypothetical world war scenario could amount to around $15 trillion, while the coronavirus pandemic would cost as much as two such conflicts and leave a hole of around $30 trillion in the global economy. This is three times more than the cost of the Great Recession, which is estimated at $10 trillion, and 30 times as much as the fallout from a large-scale cyberattack.

EUROPE - The Western powers, including Germany and the EU, are in danger of losing their pre-eminence in the Mediterranean, Admiral Luigi Binelli Mantelli, former Chief of the Defense Staff of Italy declared. According to Binelli Mantelii, Russia has become "the pre-eminent naval power in the Mediterranean," and Turkey, in particular, is rapidly gaining influence. Together, Moscow and Ankara are in the process of superseding the "traditional" Western peacekeeping powers. The statement is being published at a time when Turkey has snubbed the navy of a leading EU power, for the second time. During the night from Sunday to Monday, a German boarding team seeking to inspect a Turkish cargo vessel en route to Libya, suspecting a possible breach of the UN arms embargo, had to abandon its inspection due to Ankara's intervention. Already in June, Turkey had averted a similar French naval operation. Unaccustomed to defiance, the EU finds itself powerless to halt the rise of its Turkish rival.

RUSSIA - A Russian warship caught the US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS John S McCain operating illegally in Russia's territorial waters in the Sea of Japan, but chased it off, Russia's defence ministry said on Tuesday. Moscow said that the Admiral Vinogradov, a Russian destroyer, had verbally warned the US ship and threatened to ram it in order to force it to leave the area. The US ship had immediately returned to neutral waters after being warned off, the defence ministry said in a statement. Such incidents are rare, but underscore poor diplomatic and military relations between Russia and the United States whose ties are languishing at a post-Cold war low.

TAIWAN - Fears of war explode as Taiwan plans new armed submarines to combat China. Taiwan has launched a new military submarine programme with the assistance of US defence contractors as tensions with China continue to simmer. On Tuesday this week, Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-Wen said she was “proud” to launch its ‘Made in Taiwan’ submarine programme. She added the nation is “more determined than ever to continue developing our self defence industries and safeguard our sovereignty and democracy”. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian warned Beijing would “make legitimate and necessary responses” following Rear Admiral Studeman’s alleged visit. China has repeatedly urged the US to stop engaging in “official exchanges” with Taiwan this year, warning such interactions would damage US-China relations.

USA - Friends and foes alike no longer know where the United States stands. As Washington overpromises and underdelivers, regional powers are seeking solutions on their own – both through violence and diplomacy. Local conflicts serve as mirrors for global trends. The ways they ignite, unfold, persist, and are resolved reflect shifts in great powers’ relations, the intensity of their competition, and the breadth of regional actors’ ambitions. They highlight issues with which the international system is obsessed and those toward which it is indifferent. Today these wars tell the story of a global system caught in the early swell of sweeping change, of regional leaders both emboldened and frightened by the opportunities such a transition presents.

USA - If we keep treating the US dollar like it is toilet paper, it is just a matter of time before our entire financial system goes down the tubes. At this moment, the dollar is still the primary reserve currency of the world, and the fact that we control it is an absolutely massive advantage for us. Because the rest of the globe uses dollars to trade with one another, that creates a tremendous amount of artificial demand for our currency, and it keeps the value of our currency elevated at a level that is much higher than it otherwise would be. But now that we are starting to act like the Weimar Republic in their heyday, it is only going to be a matter of time before everyone else on the planet starts abandoning the US dollar in droves. We are literally killing our “golden goose”, and most Americans do not even understand what is happening.

EUROPE - The euro was the most used currency for global payments last month, the first time it has outpaced the dollar since February 2013. Data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, which handles cross-border payment messages for more than 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries, showed the European Union’s single currency and the greenback were followed by the British pound and the Japanese yen. The Canadian dollar overtook China’s yuan for the fifth spot, Swift said. Trade upheaval, a pandemic-induced recession and political disharmony renewed pressure to reduce the share of international payments in dollars. The US currency has weakened more than 11% from its March peak, based on a Bloomberg index that measures it against a basket of major peers, and many observers are predicting its valuation to drop further.

USA - In another stark warning, senior fellow at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, Stephen Roach, says coronavirus may cause dramatic decline of the US dollar in the near future. “In a Covid era, everything unfolds at warp speed,” Roach said, in an interview with MarketWatch. The prominent economist has, in recent weeks, been warning about the looming fall of the dollar and the end of its hegemony as a global reserve currency. While he previously predicted a 35-percent drop in the greenback against its major rivals, he now stresses that his forecast may happen “sooner rather than later.”

RUSSIA - Moscow has continued to sell off US Treasury securities, cutting its stockpile by US$8.73 billion in March, according to the latest data from the US Department of the Treasury. Russia’s holdings of US state debt amounted to $3.8 billion in March, compared with $12.5 billion a month earlier. Three years ago, the amount stood at $105 billion. Moscow has liquidated over 96 percent of its holdings in that period. The country’s long-term US Treasury securities decreased by $928 million, while short-term securities plunged by $7.8 billion to just $473 million.