USA - Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said the incoming Biden administration should move quickly to restore lines of communication with China that frayed during the Trump years or risk a crisis that could escalate into military conflict. “Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I,” Kissinger said during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. He said military technologies available today would make such a crisis “even more difficult to control” than those of earlier eras. “America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they’re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way,” the 97-year-old Kissinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.”

CHINA - Fears of open conflict between the United States and China surged following reports Beijing is preparing for a "final act of madness" from Donald Trump. Speaking to the Global Times, a state controlled Chinese tabloid, an international relations expert warned Mr Trump could try and intensify his conflict with Beijing during his final months in office. The claim was made by Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. Mr Biden won’t be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States until January 20, until which Mr Trump has full presidential powers. Ms Yi claimed: “Trump is actually setting a trap or planting a landmine for the Biden administration.” She suggested Mr Trump could use his presidential executive powers to hit China’s technology industry in the United States or punish Beijing over its treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority. The Global Times argues this would force Mr Biden to continue a hard-line policy towards China unless he wants to be seen as a “panda hugger”.

USA - To understand what's really happening here, it's important to understand that the terms "inoculation," "immunization," "vaccination" and "mRNA vaccination" tend to be used interchangeably by laymen, but they are in fact distinct concepts.

USA - Harry Styles, the former boy band singer, is making national headlines in the fashion world. The first man to grace the cover of Vogue. He was also wearing a dress. Mr Styles says society should dismiss the idea that there are clothes for men and clothes for women. He went on to say that wearing ladies garments is “amazing.” Vogue prides itself in being the industry leader when it comes to fashion and style – and if they have their say – hairy-legged men with burly chests will be painting the town red in Gucci gowns with matching handbags. It’s a direct assault on cultural norms – this idea of gender fluidity.

USA - The Boy Scouts of America will face more than 92,700 claims of sexual abuse in a landmark bankruptcy that could reshape the future of one of the nation’s oldest and largest youth organizations, lawyers in the case said Monday as the filing deadline passed. The number of claims and the total payouts to settle them will easily eclipse those in the sex abuse scandal that engulfed the US Catholic Church more than a decade ago, plaintiffs' lawyers say. "This is a staggering number of cases, even beyond what I thought was out there," said Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who won a $20-million judgment against the Scouts in 2010 and represents several hundred accusers in the bankruptcy. "The scope of this is something I could never have contemplated." The 110-year-old Boy Scouts of America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February as it faced a wave of new sex abuse lawsuits after several states, including California, New York and New Jersey, expanded legal options for childhood victims to sue.

GERMANY - Germany’s ruling class is using the 65th anniversary of the German army (Bundeswehr) to intensify its aggressive push for a return to militarism. In an interview on the public broadcaster ARD’s Morgenmagazin show, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called for a major increase in military spending in spite of the coronavirus pandemic. The media is stepping up its propaganda for militarism and war, and representatives of all parliamentary parties released official statements declaring their full support for the army.

EUROPE - Six hundred pages of the UK's Brexit deal with the EU has been agreed but the sides remain "miles apart" in a row over fishing. Britain is on the brink of unshackling itself from the bloc without a Brexit deal as Brussels chiefs refuse to back down over their red lines. Both sides remain “miles apart” over fishing as the EU fails to budge over the UK’s ultimatum, RTE News has reported. Europe Editor Tony Connelly tweeted: “It’s understood quite a few drafts have changed hands on this area, but no breakthrough yet. On fisheries, I'm told that both sides remain ‘miles apart’.” Britain has repeatedly stated that, following Brexit and as a newly independent coastal state, it wants to be in control of its waters and fish. European fishing vessels fish six times as much in UK waters as British vessels do in EU waters, which means the UK has leverage in the talks.

GERMANY - Prince Charles called Sunday for Britain and Germany to remember their long and close ties, reaffirmed by the nations' reconciliation after two world wars, as the UK tries to find its place outside — but also alongside — the European Union. Charles' appeal during a visit to Berlin to attend Germany’s traditional day of remembrance was part of Britain’s diplomatic outreach to Europe's biggest economy, days before a deadline to strike a post-Brexit deal with the EU. There is growing anxiety in London that Britain may find itself without favorable access to its biggest trading partner when a transition agreement with the EU expires at the end of the year.

GERMANY - The Prince of Wales is visiting Berlin on Sunday to participate in Germany's National Day of Mourning. The wreath-laying ceremony - in the year marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two - takes place in a building that symbolises the country's fraught relationship with the memory of war, writes Chris Bowlby. Whereas Remembrance Day in Britain prompts a united sense of national pride in military service, and respect for the sacrifices of those who fought in both world wars, Germany's commemoration of the war dead is much more cautious and complex. Military service in 20th Century Germany is associated with profound shame - focused above all on the victims of Nazi military aggression and the Holocaust. Reinforcing that is a belief that the ground for Germany's Nazi catastrophe was laid by the militarism of the Prussian state that unified the country in the 19th Century and led it into World War One. It was this militaristic state that built the Neue Wache or "new guardhouse", a classical building on the famous central Berlin street of Unter den Linden, which is now at the heart of the annual day of mourning.

USA - Former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, a Trump campaign lawyer, suggested in a Sunday interview that there is still more evidence coming out in President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud and irregularities. “We’re getting ready to overturn election results in multiple states,” Powell said, saying that she has enough evidence of election fraud to launch a widespread criminal investigation. “I don’t make comments without having the evidence to back it up,” she added, saying that elections software switched “millions of votes” from Trump to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Powell notably provided legal counsel to General Michael Flynn in 2019. She was named to Trump’s legal team in the past several days.

INDIA - Governments around the world are looking to the Indian state of Sikkim to see if going organic is viable. So far all signs are pointing to yes. The state banned the import of all pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers and GMOs in 2003, becoming the world’s first fully certified organic state in 2016. At first farmers struggled with the transition, with steep declines in crop yields, but the government promised things would get better in the long run and to compensate for their losses in the short-term.

USA - The head of the World Food Program says the Nobel Peace Prize has given the UN agency a spotlight and megaphone to warn world leaders that next year is going to be worse than this year, and without billions of dollars "we are going to have famines of biblical proportions in 2021." David Beasley said in an interview with The Associated Press that the Norwegian Nobel Committee was looking at the work the agency does every day in conflicts, disasters and refugee camps, often putting staffers' lives at risk to feed millions of hungry people -- but also to send "a message to the world that it's getting worse out there... (and) that our hardest work is yet to come." "It was so timely because we've been fighting to get above the choir," Beasley said of last month's award, pointing to the news being dominated by the US elections and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the difficulty of getting global attention focused on "the travesty that we're facing around the world."

CHINA - China has quietly taken over a staggering 115 British firms in the past ten years, a bombshell new study has revealed. More than a third of the companies involved in a new scheme by Xi Jinping were identified as British companies in key industries. British companies in aviation, energy, defence and data, have all been acquired under Xi’s ‘Made in China 2025’ goal. In their report, the Henry Jackson Society said: “The Government must make sure that it urgently reviews all of these prior acquisitions to ascertain the full extent of how compromised the UK might be by foreign corporate ownership.” The UK Government has put forward the National Security and Investment Bill in the Commons this week. Under this, the Government has the power to scrutinise and intervene in business transactions. Once passed, the legislation will create an added protection for British companies within 17 sectors, including defence and energy.

USA - Even Jerome Powell is admitting that the boom years are over. For months, I have been trying to explain to my readers that the debt-fueled “prosperity” that we were enjoying prior to the COVID pandemic won’t be coming back, and initially I received quite a bit of criticism for saying that. But that criticism has subsided, because at this point pretty much everyone can see the truth. Despite stimulus package after stimulus package, and despite unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve, we continue to be mired in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

SOUTH AMERICA - The world watched as California and the Amazon went up in flames this year, but the largest tropical wetland on earth has been ablaze for months, largely unnoticed by the outside world. South America's Pantanal region has been hit by the worst wildfires in decades. The blazes have already consumed about 28% of the vast floodplain that stretches across parts of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. They are still not completely under control. The fires have destroyed unique habitats and wrecked the livelihoods of many of the Pantanal's diverse indigenous communities. But their damaging impact reaches far beyond the region.