GERMANY - All eyes will be on the 92 lawmakers representing Alternative for Germany (AfD), the first far-right party to enter the country's parliament in almost 60 years. The anti-immigration, anti-Islam AfD became the third largest party in the Bundestag after winning 12.6% of the vote, a result described by leading party figures as a "political earthquake." The party's leaders put immigration front and center in their election campaign, naming it as one of the AfD's top priorities in parliament. "First and foremost we must end the migration chaos," says Karsten Hilse, 53, one of the AfD's three directly-elected members of parliament. The former police officer won 33% of the votes in his constituency near Dresden in eastern Germany, pushing Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU into second place.

USA - The public university’s Center for Student Involvement created and circulated the poster on Twitter last week. It was designed to promote an event on free speech issues as part of Kent State’s KENTTalks, which are intended to “provide a safe place for discussions and transformational experiences for our student body” and promote “civil discourse.” Silhouetted activists on the posters hold a range of placards with messages, overlaid with the rhetorical question “free speech or hate speech?” Alongside provocative expressions including “No More Gays,” “Women Need To Serve Their Man” and “Build a Wall,” the fourth placard bears a nonviolent, basic expression of the Christian faith: “You need Jesus.”

CANADA - For starters, how come birds don’t land, nor perch, on tops of microwave, cell, mast and GWEN towers? Microwaves, if you don’t know, are NOT Nature-produced frequencies; they are man-made. The human body is an electromagnetic being, which functions on what is known as the Schumann resonance or approximately 7.83 Hertz (Hz). Microwaves operate between 300 Megahertz (MHz) and 300 Gigahertz (GHz), which are between 300,000,000 Hertz (Hz) and 300,000,000,000 Hertz (Hz) per second! Some researchers think the Schumann frequency is now around 15 to 25 Hz with even higher spikes. If that truly is the case, can it be that man-made electromagnetics are now impacting Nature? 

GERMANY - When the German parliament meets for the first time on Tuesday after last month’s general election, it will be bigger than ever. It is likely to be more bad-tempered and dysfunctional too. A failure to reform Germany’s electoral system, which adds extra seats so the final total reflects parties’ overall share of the vote, means the assembly has a record 709 members. That makes it the biggest elected national parliament in the Western world.

GERMANY - A member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own party said their conservative CDU needs “new party leadership,” accusing Merkel of shifting the party further to the left. Alexander Mitsch, who leads a right-leaning group within the CDU, in an interview on Monday criticized the party’s immigration policies in recent years as well as the loss of voters’ support in September’s national election. “Now after this election debacle, in which the CDU had the worst result since 1949 … the party leadership is obviously not ready to correct anything,” he told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, referencing the CDU’s drop to 26.8 percent in the election, compared to 34.1 percent in the prior 2013 election. “That brings us then to the realization that we need new party leadership.”

QATAR - Qatar is just as dangerous to world stability as North Korea, the US President’s former strategist has said. Steve Bannon claimed Qatar is the single most important thing happening in the world and people should be paying a great deal of attention to it. The Saudi-Arabia led isolation of Qatar is the most worrying confrontation in the world at the moment, the former strategist for Donald Trump added.

USA - Don’t look now, but it’s becoming a real possibility that the government will shut down in December. Congress has until midnight on December 15 to pass a spending bill or the federal government will run out of money. The tricky thing is that Republicans need at least eight Democrats in the Senate to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to pass a bill, which means they will need to make some serious compromises to get a spending bill through.

CHINA - For the last weeks the world’s geopolitical situation has been deteriorating because of the tensions around North Korea and renewed talks about re-imposing sanctions against Iran. The sanctions imposed against Kim Jong Un’s regime do not affect Europe or the United States, but are unacceptable for China, which is North Korea’s almost exclusive supplier of goods. We did not need to wait long for the response: China introduced oil futures contracts, payable in the yuan, which could be exchanged for gold on stock exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong. By using these contracts the United States dollar as well as the economic sanctions against Russia and Iran can be bypassed.

USA - Outbreaks of life-threatening infectious diseases are spreading faster and with more unpredictability than ever. Although there is more awareness about the issue, experts agree that the world is not prepared for the next pandemic. “We still are not ready for the big one,” Ron Klain, who was the United States’ Ebola czar during the epidemic said, noting that next year is the centennial of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 -1919 that killed at least 50 million people worldwide. “We’re frankly not ready for a medium-sized one. The threat is still out there.”

CHINA - For people who love bacon but hate everything it does to their diet, scientists in China may have created a way to have your pig and eat it too. A team of researchers have genetically altered pigs to carry nearly 24 percent less body fat. Using the CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing technique, the team reportedly modified a group of pigs which gave birth to much leaner piglets. The experiment, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is looking to make pigs less susceptible to the cold. Scientists noted that modern pigs, especially younger ones, lack the ability to deal with colder temperatures and build up unhealthy levels of fat. The researchers added that the change could create huge savings for the pig farming industry.

USA - Last year, farmers around the world planted genetically modified crops like soybeans, corn and cotton across 240 million acres of land that create proteins from the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacterium. Capable of killing pests like beetles and caterpillars, their effects on the environment and human health have long been the subject of much debate.

RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin warns of future sci-fi super-human soldiers more ‘destructive than nuclear bombs’ who feel no fear or pain. The Russian President spoke to youngsters at a festival in Sochi about the prospect of mass-killing supermen who are incapable of feeling pain or compassion.

USA - An extensive survey of hundreds of adults across the United States has just revealed that the thing most Americans fear — more than anything else — is their own government. In fact, according to the survey, no other fear even comes close to the percentage of Americans who worry about their corrupt government officials. The survey was conducted by Chapman University and it serves to back up the point that while Americans claim to live in the Land of the Free, deep down, they realize they are living in a corrupt oligarchy.

MADAGASCAR - Travelers are being warned to keep their distance from areas of Madagascar affected by the bubonic plague. As the outbreak worsens, some doctors are even warning that “no one is safe” from the disease.

SWITZERLAND - The most elite scientists in the world are still struggling to find why exactly our universe didn't destroy itself as soon as it came into existence. That's what science says should have happened – but it clearly hasn't, since you're here reading this, as far as we know.