CHINA - China may gradually cut its holdings of US Treasury bonds and notes, in light of rising tensions between Beijing and Washington, state-backed newspaper Global Times cited experts as saying. With Sino-US relations deteriorating over various issues including coronavirus, trade and technology, global financial markets are increasingly worried if China would sell the US government debt it holds as a weapon to counter rising US pressure.

AUSTRALIA - Following the controversial arrest of a pregnant woman over a Facebook post, police in Australia defended the move and said they had paid over 80 home visits to people warning them they will be arrested if they attend anti-lockdown protests. Authorities claimed they were “satisfied” that police had acted reasonably and Buhler was charged under section 321G of the state’s Crimes Act 1958.

VATICAN - Pope Francis denounced a blind trust in science Friday, insisting the coronavirus pandemic has revealed both the greatness and the limits of science. This time of trial has “shown us the greatness of science, but also its limits,” the pontiff told participants in the Forum of the European House-Ambrosetti meeting Friday and Saturday outside Rome.

USA - The hallmark of a first-world country is not that violence never occurs within its borders, but that once it does, the damage is mitigated immediately and the perpetrators are punished and future criminals deterred. Yet here we are, over 80 days into this national insurrection by terrorist groups like Back Lives Matter and Antifa, and there is no end in sight. Trump is president today, not just after November 4. It's time for him to use his inherent power to put down the insurrection. The fact that crowds can celebrate about shooting a Trump supporter in cold blood, rampage through Oakland and chant "death to America," and burn down Kenosha until it looks like Beirut demonstrates that we are no longer dealing with belligerent protests or even rioting, but with deadly terrorism. Our tactics – both at the state and federal levels – must comport with this reality. Trump has the facts, the law, and the American people on his side. Now is the time to read BLM the Riot Act. Now is the time to defend America, not after he wins a second term. As Reagan said, "If not us, who? And if not now, when?"

GERMANY - More than 500 German doctors and scientists have officially formed an organization to investigate the global response to Covid-19 called the “Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee”, or Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss (ACU) in Germany, and came to the conclusion that the freedom-limiting measures we are seeing taken across the globe are wildly excessive when compared with the infection rate of the pandemic.

USA - It looks like we are headed for the most chaotic presidential election in modern US history. According to some estimates, somewhere around 40 percent of all US voters will vote by mail this year. That means that tens of millions of votes will be going through the postal system, and that has the potential to create all sorts of problems. For one thing, it is going to take a lot of extra time to open those ballots and count them. For states that allow mail-in votes to be counted in advance, that shouldn’t delay final results by too much, but in other states we are facing the possibility of a nightmare scenario. There are certain states that are not allowed to start counting any ballots until the polls close on election day, and that includes key swing states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania… So as we all watch the election results come in on the night of November 3rd, what we will be getting will only be partial results.

EUROPE - With a clearer focus of EU military policy and the expansion of cooperation among European military forces within the NATO framework, the German government seeks to strengthen Europe's military clout. During the German EU Council Presidency, the EU should develop a "Strategic Compass" to bundle the, at times, highly divergent geostrategic interests within the Union, based on a common threat analysis, currently in preparation by intelligence services of EU member countries. At the same time, Berlin is promoting cooperation within NATO's Framework Nations Concept (FNC) aimed at bringing together troops from various countries for joint operations and, in particular, placing units of smaller member nations under the command of larger NATO countries, including under German command. In addition to expanding the continental military cooperation, Berlin is focusing on the "E3" ie an informal alliance with France and Great Britain, intended to maintain the availability of the post-Brexit British military potential for the EU.

USA - The US government's debt will exceed the size of the economy next year for the first time since World War II due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Congressional Budget Office published its latest report on federal deficits and debt on Wednesday. Federal debt held by the public is projected to rise sharply to 98 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year, compared to the 79 percent at the end of 2019, according to the report. Debt is forecast to exceed 100 percent in the 2021 fiscal year and increase to 107 percent in 2023, which is the highest in the nation's history. The previous peak occurred back in 1946 due to the large deficits incurred during WWII. Only a handful of counties have debts that exceed the size of their economies, including Japan, Italy and Greece.

ISRAEL - Archaeological discoveries made in the Holy Land have been linked to the famous Battle of Jericho and can prove the Bible's historical veracity, a scripture expert has claimed. According to Tom Meyer, a professor in Bible and theology at Shasta Bible College and Graduate School in California, US, archaeology can verify the account of Jericho's Rahab. Professor Meyer said: "A once-in-a-lifetime archaeological discovery has come to light that demonstrates the historical reliability of the amazing account of Rahab the prostitute, whose family were the lone Canaanite survivors of the famous battle of Jericho." German excavations at Jericho carried out at the start of the 20th century have found a section of Jericho's walls that have not collapsed. This section could be the evidence needed to corroborate the Bible's description of the battle.

UK - We cannot be certain about the precise size of the large anti-lockdown crowds that massed in London and Berlin this weekend, but at least two things can be safely said. First, the numbers will likely be deliberately under-reported by the mainstream media. Second, as the weeks go by, these protests are going to get bigger and bigger. The hysterics — which includes almost all our politicians, vast chunks of the medical establishment, all the mainstream media and, perhaps most despicable of all, the ineffable Piers Morgan — have had their time in the sun. Now, increasingly, reality is making fools of them all. More and more ordinary people are coming to see the truth of the coronavirus pandemic: that it has been massively oversold by our frightened, mendacious, control freak political class; that our governments’ overreaction to the problem has caused and will cause far more damage — both to our economies and to our lives — than the problem itself. Ordinary people have had enough.

CYPRUS - The US has decided to remove restrictions on non-lethal arms sales to Cyprus following a decades-long ban, sparking an angry reaction from Ankara at a time when Turkey is engaged in a territorial dispute with Greece. The US State Secretary Mike Pompeo announced the decision in a phone call with the Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades. Washington is about to waive restrictions on “export, re-export, retransfer, and temporary import of non-lethal defense articles and defense services” imposed against Cyprus, albeit only for one fiscal year starting October, the State Department said in a statement. Pompeo himself turned to Twitter to praise Cyprus as America’s “key partner in the Eastern Mediterranean” and hail deepening "security cooperation" between the two nations.

USA - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (Republican) promised Floridians during Monday’s press briefing “we will never do any of these lockdowns again.” “We will never do any of these lockdowns again, and I hear people say they’ll shut down the country, and honestly I cringe,” DeSantis said during the briefing in Central Florida. The peak of the pandemic is now behind the Sunshine State, the governor said, explaining the number of positive coronavirus patients hospitalized is “down nearly 60 percent statewide from our July peak.”

USA - The Trump administration has rejected concerns coming from the World Health Organization that a US coronavirus vaccine may be approved without meeting WHO standards, calling the organization corrupt and beholden to China. “The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement on Tuesday. “This president will spare no expense to ensure that any new vaccine maintains our own FDA's gold standard for safety and efficacy, is thoroughly tested, and saves lives,” Deere added. As of Tuesday, the US has registered over six million cases of Covid-19, and 184,270 deaths.

AUSTRALIA - Former Australian PM has condemned the demise of personal freedom embraced amid the Covid-19 pandemic: a world of lockdowns, unsustainable government benefits, and “health dictatorships” trying to conquer death. The ex-leader urged politicians to stop thinking like “trauma doctors” willing to pour unlimited resources into preserving every life and start thinking like “health economists” in a speech to the UK think tank Policy Exchange on Tuesday. The levels of spending required to sustain a country’s economy during a prolonged shutdown aren’t sustainable, he argued, pointing out that the devastating financial consequences mean even decisions made in good faith to protect society’s most vulnerable will ultimately backfire. “From a health perspective, this pandemic has been serious. From an economic perspective, it’s been disastrous,” he said. “But I suspect that it’s from an overall wellbeing perspective that it will turn out worst of all.”

USA - A California church challenged local coronavirus restrictions on worship services, and county authorities responded by canceling the church's five-decade-old lease. County officials informed Grace Community Church that it will terminate its decades-old lease on a parking lot after the church filed a lawsuit over local restrictions against in-person worship. The county told the church in a letter it intends to terminate the lease of a large section of the parking lot that the church leases, threatening to forcibly remove any of the church's property that remained in the lot.