GERMANY - Upcoming talks in Berlin are an “important step” towards finally facilitating a long-lasting ceasefire in civil-war-torn Libya, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said ahead of negotiations on Sunday. “We see the ceasefire as a particularly important step toward reconciliation and political settlement” in Libya, Erdogan said, reiterating that peace can be achieved only through dialogue. The Turkish leader stated that a call to end hostilities, which was jointly made by him and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, has created the groundwork for further negotiations.

UK - Last week, millions of pounds in “constraint payments” were paid to wind energy farms to not run their turbines. Over £12 million was handed out to wind farms in the United Kingdom last week, following a major outage in a powerline that transported energy from Scottish wind farms to England. The handouts will be tacked onto consumers’ energy bills throughout the country. The firms were paid between 25 and 80 per cent more than they would have earned were the turbines actually running, reports The Telegraph. A study conducted in December by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) found that the UK handed out a record high £136 million to 86 wind farm owners last year in “constraint payments” when the grid was incapable of handling the energy flow.

CANADA - In Canada, the intense storm hit the Newfoundland province Friday with a blizzard that prompted St John’s authorities to declare a state of emergency. “This storm was a bomb cyclone, which intensified rapidly once it moved off the coast of New England,” according to the Weather Channel. The storm brought wind gusts that reached up to 97 miles per hour and caused huge snowdrifts that blocked roads, buried vehicles, and filled resident’s yards. I’ve never seen the combination of the amount of snow, the rate of snowfall and the wind speed that we’ve had here over the past couple of days,” said St John’s Mayor Danny Breen.

INDIA/AFRICA - It is almost as if someone flipped some sort of a switch as 2020 began, because we have been seeing really weird things happen all over the globe so far this year. First I want to discuss the massive armies of locusts that are voraciously eating crops in Asia and in Africa. Right now, a “deadly invasion by millions and millions of locusts” in India is absolutely devastating farm after farm, and the media in India is calling this locust invasion “the worst in over six decades”…

USA - The United States and Turkey are on a collision course. Although the two countries have been NATO allies for nearly 70 years, that partnership has gradually deteriorated over the past few years, as Washington wondered if it could rely on Turkey and Ankara feared that the United States didn't take its security concerns seriously. In the last six months, however, relations have taken a real nose-dive. In July, Turkey acquired advanced Russian air defense systems over US objections, and in October, it targeted Syrian Kurdish militias allied with the United States as part of an incursion into northern Syria.

POLAND - Polish MEPs spark Brussels panic after standing ovation for 'POLEXIT' demands. There is increasing fear in Brussels that another country is about follow Britain in leaving the EU, as the leader of the governing Law and Justice Party in Poland said this morning that "Poles deserve to live in a sovereign state". Polexit was trending on Twitter this morning, after several leading Polish politicians hit back at the EU for interfering in its domestic reforms. A British Brexiteer MEP received a standing ovation from his Polish counterparts after he urged the Polish Government to follow the UK and quit the European Union. Even Jarosław Kaczyński, the former Prime Minister and current Polish MEP, threatened to quit the EU, saying today that "Poles deserve to live in a sovereign state". The row between the EU and Poland escalated on Wednesday when the European Parliament debated the Article 7 probes underway against Poland and Hungary.

USA - In Manhattan, the homeless shelters are full, and the luxury skyscrapers are vacant. Such is the tale of two cities within America’s largest metro. Even as 80,000 people sleep in New York City’s shelters or on its streets, Manhattan residents have watched skinny condominium skyscrapers rise across the island. These colossal stalagmites initially transformed not only the city’s skyline but also the real-estate market for new homes. From 2011 to 2019, the average price of a newly listed condo in New York soared from $1.15 million to $3.77 million. But the bust is upon us. Today, nearly half of the Manhattan luxury-condo units that have come onto the market in the past five years are still unsold, according to The New York Times.

USA - The United States’ scientific lead is shrinking as China and other nations build up their science resources, says a report prepared by the National Science Board. “Other nations, particularly China, are rapidly developing their science and technology (S&T) capacity,” says the report, titled “The State of US Science and Engineering.” The report continued: ...the United States has seen its relative share of global S&T activity remain unchanged or shrink, even as its absolute activity levels have continued to rise … Increasingly, the United States is seen globally as an important leader rather than the uncontested leader. The report suggests the problem is a lack of federal funding: ...the share of US R&D funded by the federal government has declined. This decline is notable as federally funded R&D is an important source of support, particularly for the higher education sector and for the nation’s basic research enterprise.

USA - Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart News he thinks the rush by the House of Representatives late last year to impeach President Donald Trump, and the upcoming US Senate trial, are backfiring on Democrats politically because of their weak case against the president. Heading into the Senate trial and asked what he and Trump are looking for from it, Pence laid out how he believes the impeachment case is weak against Trump, and the American people see through it.

PHILIPPINES - Terrifying eruption blasts in the Philippines have forced thousands to flee danger zones as fears about a larger more life-threatening lava explosion rise. The Taal volcano eruption is continuing to mount as thousands of epople in the danger zone have fled their homes. Recent footage captured at the scene shows the ash plumes and lava which gushed into the air creating devastating impact. The eruption awoke the volcano after 43 years of quiet and spewed lava and ash, filling streets and skies of the Philippine island of Luzon with fine ash fall and volcanic gases. The volcano’s activity has forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes and forced the closure of several key roads, businesses and an airport.

UK - British police in Manchester failed to stop dozens of girls being sexually abused by a network of Pakistani men despite knowing it was happening due to fears over creating “community tensions.” In yet another grooming scandal involving predominately Pakistani men sexually abusing mainly white girls, a new report reveals that Greater Manchester Police “failed to take appropriate action more than 15 years ago, despite getting details of nearly 100 'persons of interest' who were using takeout restaurants as a base to rape and abuse children in care between the ages of 11 and 17” and despite the fact that the culprits were operating “in plain sight.”

GERMANY - Angela Merkel has warned the UK's decision to leave the European Union must act as a 'wake up call' for the bloc. But the German Chancellor, who is due to step down next year at the end of a fourth and final term in power, insisted countries are better off in the EU than outside it. She said the bloc acted as a 'life insurance' policy for 'small' countries like Germany and ensures they can exert influence on the global stage.

GERMANY - The Democratic candidates for president all call for working more closely with allies on pressuring China to give up its unfair trade practices. That now looks increasingly impractical. German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated this week that her country will not join the US in its efforts to pressure China. In an interview with the Financial Times, Merkel accused the US of criticizing China’s practices as “regarding China as a threat simply because it is economically successful.”

USA - Almost a quarter of the world’s countries witnessed a surge in protest and unrest last year and that figure is set to rise further in 2020, according to a new study. There are 195 countries in the world, if the Vatican and Palestine are included, and a newly released index of civil unrest has claimed that 47 of those states witnessed a rise in civil unrest in 2019. The data model, published Thursday by socio-economic and political analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft, has also predicted that in 2020, the number will balloon to 75 countries. The UK consultancy identified Hong Kong and Chile as the two flashpoints suffering the largest increases in unrest since the beginning of 2019. Neither country is expected to find peace for at least two years, according to the research. Other areas now considered hotbeds of civil protest include Nigeria, Lebanon and Bolivia. Beyond these three, countries dropping into a category labeled “extreme risk” include Ethiopia, India, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

CHINA - On top of everything else that has happened so far in 2020, a very mysterious “SARS-like virus” that doctors have never seen before is causing grave concern among global health officials. It has been identified as “a coronavirus”, but that category covers a very broad range of illnesses. If you have a common cold right now, it was caused by a coronavirus. But SARS and MERS also came from the same virus family, and those two outbreaks made headlines all over the world. In 2002 and 2003, SARS infected more than 8,000 people worldwide, and more than 700 of them ended up dying. Global health officials are hoping that what we are now facing won’t be any worse than that, but at this point they just don’t know enough about this mysterious new virus to make any firm projections… there is no need for people in the US to start freaking out about this virus just yet. Only two people have died, and there have been no reported cases in the US so far.