EUROPE - Michel Barnier has warned Theresa May that leaving the Customs Union will result in “unavoidable barriers to trade” as he said: “the time has come to make a choice”. Mr Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, is in London for talks with David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, and the Prime Minister ahead of the next round of negotiations. The Prime Minister this weekend ruled out staying in any form of Customs Union with the EU after Brexit following a revolt by senior Eurosceptics. Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Barnier said: "There is so much work so we have decided for this reason to accelerate all the contacts." He added that "without a customs union and outside the single market", barriers to trade in goods and services "are unavoidable".

KENYA - Kenya’s government ignored Western pressure and flouted its own judges Friday after it refused to suspend an unprecedented shutdown of independent television stations. Escalating a broader clampdown, police also arrested a second prominent opposition figure, prompting a renewal of the political violence that has claimed scores of lives since Kenyans voted in a disputed election last August.

MIDDLE EAST - Armed by Iran, Yemen's Houthi rebels now threaten one of world's busiest shipping routes, a top Israeli naval official said. “The entrenchment of Iran in Yemen and the transfer of advance weaponry to the Houthi forces in the region constitutes a threat to merchant ships making their way to the Mediterranean Sea" via the Bab al-Mandab crossing, a senior Israel Navy official said Monday, as he described the threats to the State of Israel’s economic waters. "We are dealing today with the most advanced systems being transferred to Houthis [in Yemen] and Hezbollah [in Lebanon], and this definitely constitutes a threat to Israel’s merchant ships and gas rigs."

USA - One Whole Foods employee says, “The ‘nano’ management is downright insane”. Welcome to Technocrat madness and a future vision of dystopian Technocracy for the rest of society if Big Tech isn’t stopped. ⁃ TN Editor - Whole Foods has a new inventory-management system aimed at making stores more efficient and cutting down on food waste. And employees say the retailer’s method of ensuring compliance is crushing morale.

USA - Amazon Go stores will spread throughout the continent, but shoppers had better beware that every conceivable move they make will be recorded and analyzed. This includes your mood, how long you look at an item, if you pick it up and put it back, and all other metrics of your shopping trip. Of course, they know exactly who you are because it is tied to your smart phone, and they can apply any other public data about you to your profile. TN Editor

USA - Amazon already treats low-paid employees like human robots, but this potential invention will control hand and body movements using AI. To Amazon, humans will have to do until robots reach peak intelligence and mobility and replace human workers altogether. TN Editor

MIDDLE EAST - Tensions between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran have risen sharply this week, following the discovery of an Iranian program to set up weapons factories on Lebanese soil — for the manufacture of missile guidance systems. Such guidance systems can be placed on Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets and missiles, and turn inaccurate projectiles into precision-strike weapons, capabilities that were once reserved for the great powers.

MIDDLE EAST - Hamas officials believe there is a 95% probability that a war will break out between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip in the coming days according to a report published Sunday in the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel's last-chance coalition talks with Martin Schulz's SPD group are set to drag on after the agreed deadline after members reached a stalemate over healthcare issues. The two camps aim to seal a deal by the end of Sunday to renew the "grand coalition" as the German chancellor attempts to claw back power after failing to form a government in Germany’s general election. Angela Merkel's conservatives and the SPD reached agreement on energy and agriculture on Saturday, but are now in an ongoing dispute over healthcare, more than four months after the election. The EU is watching on nervously as their de facto leader struggles to regain control within her own country, long considered the economic powerhouse of Brussels.

USA - On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 666 points (665.75 points to be precise), and many are pointing out that this was the 6th largest single day crash that we have ever seen.  This decline happened on the 33rd day of the year, and it was the worst day for the stock market by far since President Trump entered the White House. 

SOUTH AFRICA - Gauteng residents were urged on Thursday not to jeopardise their own water supply by sending truck-loads of donated water to the drought-stricken Western Cape. The department of water and sanitation cautioned that as much as the situation was dire‚ it had not reached a crisis. “The situation in Cape Town‚ although dire‚ is not in a place really where we need to be cutting water from all over the country towards it‚” said department spokesman Sputnik Ratau. Donated water is being sent to Cape Town as the city prepares for a possible Day Zero – when residents will have to queue to collect water. “We must remember‚ the drought is not Western Cape specific. Even as a country we are not out of the drought yet. So we really want to start looking at whether we should be impacting on other water systems. We need to be cautious‚” he said.

SOUTH AFRICA - Agriculture is big business here in the Western Cape. Industry economists estimate that apples and pears are worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year. South Africa is one of the world's largest pear producers. The Theewaterskloof Dam is the biggest in the network. Located about 85 miles north of Cape Town and about 70 miles east of said port city, it supplies both city and local farmers. It's sitting at just 13 percent capacity.

UK - While the global stockpile of nuclear weapons has shrunk significantly since the Cold War, there are hundreds of warheads that could be launched at short notice, and experts say every nuclear-armed nation is modernising its arsenal or has plans to do so. Countries keep most details of their nuclear weapons secret, but it is known that nine countries own the estimated more than 9,000 nuclear weapons that are in military service. These are either deployed - mounted on land or sea missiles and kept at air bases - or in storage. About 1800 are on high alert and could be fired with little warning. Including retired warheads waiting to be dismantled, the total is said to be almost 15,000, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). This is a marked decline since the 1980s when the figure peaked at around 70,000.

USA - Only 12 percent of Americans believe abortion should be available at any point in pregnancy — the official position of the Democratic party — while 76 percent support limiting abortion to the first three months of pregnancy, or to cases involving rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. That includes 70 percent of Millennials, who largely favor individual rights but tend to favor placing limitations on abortion rights. Even more interesting, 60 percent of self-identified pro-choice Americans and 60 percent of Democrats support these abortion restrictions; only one in five Democrats said they favor abortion during any stage of pregnancy. In short, this poll illustrates an abundance of bipartisan support for limiting abortion and finding a middle ground on this issue, and across political lines Americans reject unlimited, government-funded abortion on demand.

USA - One day last year, a citizen on a prairie path in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst came upon a teen boy chopping wood. Not a body. Just some already-fallen branches. Nonetheless, the onlooker called the cops. Officers interrogated the boy, who said he was trying to build a fort for himself and his friends. A local news site reports the police then “took the tools for safekeeping to be returned to the boy’s parents.”