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.

AUSTRALIA - A pregnant woman has been arrested in her own home over a Facebook post allegedly inciting anti-lockdown protest in Victoria. Zoe Lee Buhler, 28, was handcuffed in her lounge room in front of her children and partner on Wednesday afternoon and charged with incitement. Several officers entered the house in Miners Rest, Ballarat, northwest of Melbourne, with a search warrant and began reading the young mother her rights. 'Excuse me, incitement for what, what on Earth? I'm in my pyjamas, my two kids are here,' she said, clearly confused. 'I have an ultrasound in an hour because I'm pregnant.'

USA - A district attorney in California reportedly told members of law enforcement that they should consider the needs of looters before deciding to charge them with looting. Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton expressed her view that officers should consider whether "the target business" was "open or closed" at the time the looting took place, and "what was the manner and means" by which the looters had managed to get inside the business, the Daily Wire reported. The Daily Wire reported that Becton is the same district attorney who charged a couple with a "hate crime" for painting over a Black Lives Matter mural in front of the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse.

“Our criminal legal system was constructed to control Black people and people of color. Its injustices are not new but are deeply rooted in our country’s shameful history of slavery and legacy of racial violence. The system is acting exactly as it was intended to, and that is the problem. We should know: We’re Black, we’re female, and we’re prosecutors. We work as the gatekeepers in this flawed system. And we have some ideas for how to fix it.”

USA - Once in a while, someone says something that perfectly captures the moment that we are currently facing. Earlier today, I believe that I stumbled upon an example of this, and I will be sharing what I found in this article. So far this year, our nation has faced one crisis after another, but even after what we have already been though a lot of people out there are absolutely convinced that much worse is coming. In fact, in all of my years of writing I have never had as many people reach out to me personally with their concerns about our immediate future as I have here in 2020. There seems to be an overwhelming consensus that great trouble is rapidly approaching, and there are so many people that are making major life changes based on what they believe is coming.

USA - The Fed has finally made up its mind… it wants inflation. Ever since the great financial crisis of 2008, the big question has been: What will be the ultimate outcome from all this money printing/ Fed intervention… another deflationary collapse or an inflationary storm? Some 12 years later… we finally have our answer… it will be an inflationary storm.

CHINA - China is on track to double the size of its nuclear warhead stockpile while expanding foreign military bases capable of attacking the United States — worrying signs that Beijing is seeking global superpower status, the Pentagon warned in its annual survey of the Chinese military released Tuesday. The People’s Liberation Army currently has a warhead stockpile in the “low 200s” but will expand it over the coming years for a nuclear triad of land-based missiles, missiles fired from submarines and bombers, according to the report to Congress. “Over the next decade, China will expand and diversify its nuclear forces, likely at least doubling its nuclear warhead stockpile,” the report states. “For decades, China analysts in Washington have been downplaying or denying the possibility that China could become a global challenge to the United States, which this year’s China Military Report now acknowledges is building in plain sight,” he said.

USA - People who eat a lot of industrially processed junk food are more likely to exhibit a change in their chromosomes linked to ageing, according to research presented Tuesday at an online medical conference. Three or more servings of so-called "ultra-processed food" per day doubled the odds that strands of DNA and proteins called telomeres, found on the end of chromosomes, would be shorter compared to people who rarely consumed such foods, scientists reported at the European and International Conference on Obesity. Short telomeres are a marker of biological ageing at the cellular level, and the study suggests that diet is a factor in driving the cells to age faster.

USA - Giving money or resources to your children or aging parents is likely to increase their life span, according to a new paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.