IRAN - Iranians have been angrily protesting since last month over fuel price hikes. In a statement, the United Nations human rights office claimed to have “verified video footage” showing security forces firing on protesters with seeming intent to kill. The US envoy to Tehran, Brian Hook, claimed the brutal police crackdown has resulted in up 1,000 deaths. He told reporters the anti-government demonstrations were "the worst political crisis the regime has faced in its 40 years". Mr Hook added: “These protests have made clear what Secretary Mike Pompeo and I have been saying for quite some time. The Iranian people want the regime to focus on investing in people, not proxies. They are sick of the regime squandering its wealth on proxy warfare, which leads only to economic pressure and diplomatic isolation. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the Iranian regime continues to do."

HONG KONG - Hundreds of thousands of protesters have filled the streets of Hong Kong in a mass show of support for an anti-government movement that shows no signs of flagging as it enters a seventh month. The march on Sunday was mostly peaceful, in a rare break from the escalating violent scenes of recent weeks. Buoyed by the landslide victory of pro-democracy politicians in the district elections two weeks ago, protesters were in high spirits, and there was a relaxed, carnival-like atmosphere. Some chanted “Five demands, not one less!”, referring to a set of as-yet-unfulfilled political demands, including democratic reforms and an independent investigation into police brutality.

AUSTRALIA - Australia’s biggest city has been shrouded in hazardous smoke for the past week, as wildfires burning across the country’s drought-stricken east coast are — in some cases — becoming too big to put out. The fires are turning the daytime sky in Sydney orange and causing air quality to dip to levels more often seen in cities like Delhi and Beijing. Schools are keeping students inside during recess and cancelling sports and other outdoor activities. Satellite images show plumes of smoke stretching more than 1,200 miles away to New Zealand. “The massive [New South Wales state] fires are in some cases just too big to put out at the moment,” the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said. Officials are particularly concerned about a number of fires around Sydney, the state capital where about five million people live.

ZIMBABWE - One of southern Africa’s biggest tourist attractions has seen an unprecedented decline this dry season. For decades Victoria Falls, where southern Africa’s Zambezi river cascades down 100 metres into a gash in the earth, have drawn millions of holidaymakers to Zimbabwe and Zambia for their stunning views. But the worst drought in a century has slowed the waterfalls to a trickle. Zimbabwe and Zambia have suffered power cuts as they are heavily reliant on hydropower from plants at the Kariba dam, which is on the Zambezi river upstream of the waterfalls. Scientists are cautious about categorically blaming climate change. There is always seasonal variation in levels.

NEW ZEALAND - New Zealand has been hit by a weekend of severe storms, with landslides and flooding in the South Island cutting off towns and trapping an estimated 1,000 foreign tourists. Most are stuck on the west coast in the towns of Fox Glacier and Franz Josef, according to the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, and some have been forced to sleep in their cars, and are said to be scared and tired. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had established contact with the tourists, who have been stranded by flooding and landslides that some fear may take months to clear. More than 300,000 lightning strikes hit the country and its surrounding waters on Sunday alone, reported research organisation NIWA.

GERMANY - Not just Deutsche Bank! Germany heading to economic collapse & stock market crash. Germany’s economic indicators across the board are shrinking. And with Merkel masking a massive tax raise as a political cave to the rising Greens party, the future for Germany’s economic growth looks terrible. Germany is a Dead Economy Walking. The implosion of Deutschebank, then the deluge. Wiping out the EU. Trump will not let the FED bail them out this time. Germany is doing to Europe what China is doing to the world. Germany is the core element of the EU economy. This is not news. What is news is that Germany’s economy is going down the toilet.

GERMANY - - As Cornelius Riese, co-CEO of Frankfurt-based DZ Bank AG (Germany’s second-largest by assets), observed, negative rates indeed “have a huge impact on banks.” Riese ventured to offer some gentle criticism of Draghi & Co’s grand policy experiment: “Maybe at the end of the story, in three to five years, we will notice it was a historical mistake.” The ECB's imposition of negative interest rates have created an "absurd situation" in which banks don't want to hold deposits, rages UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, arguing that this policy is hurting social systems and savings rates.

GERMANY - The Nazi regime murdered an estimated 1.1 million people, the vast majority of them Jewish, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. What did the chancellor say? Mrs Merkel was accompanied on her visit by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and a death camp survivor. She walked through the notorious "Arbeit macht frei" (work sets you free) gates at Auschwitz and then held a minute's silence at the so-called Black Wall, where thousands of prisoners were executed. She then moved to the Birkenau site where she gave her speech. "Remembering the crimes… is a responsibility which never ends. It belongs inseparably to our country," Mrs Merkel said. "To be aware of this responsibility is part of our national identity, our self-understanding as an enlightened and free society… a democracy." Germany continued to have "deep shame" for what happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau. "There are no words to express our sorrow," Mrs Merkel said. Major events are planned for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on 27 January.

UK - You might think that come December 12, if it’s a bit cold and wet, there’s not much harm staying home. Or you might assume because you’re in a “safe” seat, there’s no point in voting. This is despite the reality that just one vote can swing an election under the First Past the Post voting system. But now, there’s another incentive: your absence will be recorded. The Electoral Commission compiles a list of voters called the marked register, which indicates which voters cast their vote and which didn’t.

USA - The federal government Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) under the US Department of Health and Human Services just concluded their fourth and last meeting of 2019 on December 5th. At this meeting the Division of Injury Compensation Programs (DICP) reported that through December 1, 2019, the federal government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program had paid out $‭225,457,658‬.00 for vaccine injuries and deaths for the fiscal year 2019. The fiscal year 2020 started October 1, 2019, and since that date ‭$31,710,574‬.00 has already been awarded as settlements in cases related to vaccine injuries and deaths.

USA - The average person will watch over 78,000 hours of television “programming” over the course of a lifetime. If you want to waste your life, a great way to do that is to spend tens of thousands of hours watching television. Today, it is so difficult to get people to leave their homes and get active in their communities, because most of us are absolutely glued to one screen or another. After a long day at school or a hard day at work, most of us understandably want to relax, and from a very early age most of us have been trained to turn to the television as our main source of relaxation. But of course there is great danger in allowing anyone to pump thousands upon thousands of hours of “programming” into our minds.

UK - British voters keep being called to the polls — and each time the options before them are worse. Labour and the Conservatives, once parties of the centre-left and -right, have steadily grown further apart in the three elections of the past four years. Next week voters face their starkest choice yet, between Boris Johnson, whose Tories promise a hard Brexit, and Jeremy Corbyn, whose Labour Party plans to “rewrite the rules of the economy” along radical socialist lines. Mr Johnson runs the most unpopular new government on record; Mr Corbyn is the most unpopular leader of the opposition. On Friday the 13th, unlucky Britons will wake to find one of these horrors in charge.

UK - The most left-wing government in British history is now a real possibility. Perhaps the most extraordinary part of the Labour Party agenda is the plan to seize 10 per cent of the shares in every big UK company. This is straightforward expropriation — the stuff of tinpot dictatorships. If any British government did this, our status as a place for world-class investment (and all the related jobs) would vanish. That’s the real significance of Corbyn’s programme, beyond the gargantuan, pie-in-the-sky spending numbers. It is openly anti-capitalist, confiscating property in a way that will harm those it seeks to help. So don’t think Nightmare on Downing Street couldn’t happen, because it could.

USA - Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House of Representatives will file impeachment charges against US President Donald Trump for alleged abuse of power. "Our democracy is what is at stake, the president leaves us no choice but to act," the top elected Democrat said. Mr Trump said Democrats have "gone crazy" and urged them to move quickly if they were going to impeach him. Democrats say Mr Trump corruptly made military aid to Ukraine conditional on it investigating his rival, Joe Biden.

USA - Could it be possible that Nancy Pelosi and her minions in the House of Representatives had a completely different goal than we thought this entire time? The Democrats in the House plan to impeach President Trump, and it could potentially happen by the end of this month. But there appears to be zero chance that Trump will be removed from office by the Senate, and many will consider that to be a major victory for the Republicans. So why is Nancy Pelosi pushing ahead when she knows that this impeachment effort is going to fail? Could it be possible that this entire drama has simply been a political ploy to win votes in November 2020? “Civilization as we know it today is at stake in the next election, and certainly our planet,” Pelosi said. Nancy Pelosi knows that the Senate will not vote to convict Trump, but that is not what she is after. Her grand plan has always been to damage Trump for the 2020 election, and only time will tell if her gamble was successful.