USA - Mayors and county judges in some of Texas’ largest urban areas criticized Governor Greg Abbott over his decision to lift the statewide face mask mandate next week, saying it contradicts health officials’ advice as infections continue to spread throughout the state, which averaged over 200 reported deaths a day over the last week. Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, a fellow Republican, called Abbott’s order “premature” and asked him to allow more people to get the vaccine. “I am calling on Governor Abbott to open up additional vaccine tier categories so that more people are eligible to get a vaccine if they want one,” Price said in a statement. “As the state’s directive has changed, so must our response. Now, more than ever, vaccines and testing must be readily available.” City and county officials urged residents in their areas to still follow recommendations from health experts and officials that call for wearing face masks in public.

USA - “We are health professionals of the international collective: United Health Professionals, composed of more than 1,500 members (including professors of medicine, intensive care physicians and infectious disease specialists) from different countries of Europe, Africa, America, Asia and Oceania and, on August 26, 2020, we addressed to governments and citizens of countries around the world an alert message regarding the COVID outbreak.

USA - In a year filled with civil unrest and the deepest political divisions in recent history, America is coming together on one issue — COVID-19 relief in the form of continued stimulus checks. A new survey finds generous financial recovery plans win bipartisan support from voters across the United States. Unfortunately, Republican and Democrat voters show bitter divides on most other political issues. In fact, three in 10 Americans say their differences are so irreconcilable they support their state seceding from the US. While Americans agree on the need for stimulus checks during the pandemic, the events surrounding the 2020 presidential election and President Trump’s subsequent impeachment continue to divide voters. Researchers find just 22 percent Republican respondents have confidence in the integrity of the 2020 election results. That’s far less than the 42 percent of Republican policy experts polled by the survey. The survey finds the political divide in America has gotten so bad 29 percent of voters would entertain the idea of spitting the country into smaller regions. One in three Republican respondents support their state seceding from the union.

SAUDI ARABIA - A swarm of locusts flies through Saudi Arabia as stunned people stare and watch and record on their phones. The desert locust has been active since 2020 following a period of wet weather. In a nightmarish clip, filmed by someone standing in the street on February 23, the locusts hang overhead like a swirling black cloud as they fly around outside people's homes. As the camera is turned around 360 degrees, it becomes clear nearby buildings are all completely surrounded by the ravenous insects as far as the eye can see. The footage continues for several more minutes, and the locusts just keep on coming as the swarm apparently grows in size.

CHILE - The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago’s airport in late January, and Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera, was beaming. “Today,” he said, “is a day of joy, emotion and hope.” The source of that hope: China – a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccines to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press. With just four of China’s many vaccine makers claiming they are able to produce at least 2.6 billion doses this year, a large part of the world’s population will end up inoculated not with the fancy Western vaccines boasting headline-grabbing efficacy rates, but with China’s humble, traditionally made shots.

USA - US foreign policy has clearly continued in the same direction, without missing a beat. Biden’s first speech regarding foreign policy since taking office, now posted on the White House’s official website and titled, “Remarks by President Biden on America’s Place in the World,” reveals that, if anything, US belligerence on the global stage is set to only expand. Biden’s opening remarks attempt to suggest that America has drifted away under his predecessor US President Donald Trump. But when he says “America is back,” we are left to assume he means “back” to what the US was doing under the administration of US President Barack Obama under which he served as vice president.

GERMANY - Interest rates have been negative in Europe for years. But it took the flood of savings unleashed in the pandemic for banks finally to charge depositors in earnest. Germany’s biggest lenders, Deutsche Bank AG DB 2.93% and Commerzbank AG CRZBY 0.61% , have told new customers since last year to pay a 0.5% annual rate to keep large sums of money with them. The banks say they can no longer absorb the negative interest rates the European Central Bank charges them. The more customer deposits banks have, the more they have to park with the central bank.

USA - Ever since last summer, a federal moratorium on evictions has prevented landlords from evicting millions of tenants that are behind on their rent payments. This moratorium has caused extreme financial distress for many landlords, but it has also kept us from witnessing millions upon millions of Americans being thrown out into the cold streets.

AUSTRALIA - Australia is now paying the price economically for its hostility to China and slavish loyalty to the US. The consequences of Canberra’s unconditional alignment with Washington in the cold war against Beijing are becoming clear. How long can Australia afford to be overtly hostile towards China, its biggest benefactor? A recent study by the Australian National University found that Chinese investment in the country fell by more than 60 percent in 2020.

USA - We are witnessing a last minute mass exodus before the final collapse of our major cities. Americans fled the big cities “in droves” in 2020, and one recent survey discovered that even more Americans are planning to move in 2021. The corporate media is attempting to frame this mass exodus as a temporary phenomenon, but there is nothing temporary about it. Millions upon millions of people can see that our society is literally melting down all around us, and they want to get somewhere safe while they still can. In recent weeks, I have written articles about the specific problems that we are witnessing in Chicago and San Francisco, but the truth is that virtually all of our major cities are coming apart at the seams, and this is motivating more people than ever to seek greener pastures. With so many Americans looking to move, this has pushed up home prices in desirable suburban and rural areas to insane heights. We have never seen anything like this before in US history. According to the Pew Research Center, about one-fifth of all Americans either moved or know someone who moved in 2020…

GERMANY - Should the technocrats who pushed governments to lockdown their citizens be tried for crimes against humanity? One prominent German lawyer, who is also licensed to practice law in America, thinks they should. And he is organizing a team of thousands of participating lawyers who want to prosecute a “second Nuremberg tribunal” against a cadre of international elites responsible for what he calls the “corona fraud scandal.”

USA - Have you noticed that UFO sightings have been in the news a lot lately? Even in the midst of all the other big events that are happening, evidence of mysterious objects flying through our skies continues to make headlines. In particular, what one American Airlines pilot says that he saw is really shaking a lot of people up. According to a radio transmission that was intercepted from American Airlines Flight 2292, a pilot claims that he witnessed “a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing” fly at very high speed right over the top of his aircraft… And the FBI has also publicly announced that it is “aware of the reported incident”, but the agency has not provided any additional details.

USA - The stimulus bill costs $1.9 trillion as the national debt approaches $28 trillion, according to the latest Treasury Department data. The Democratic-led House of Representatives passed the second-largest stimulus package in US history in the early hours of Saturday that includes a gradual $15 minimum wage hike, despite the Senate parliamentarian's ruling. Two Democrats, Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Kurt Schrader of Oregon, joined Republicans in voting against the bill. The final vote shortly after 2 am was 219 to 212 and the bill now moves to the Democratic-led Senate. Democrats are using budget reconciliation to pass the American Rescue Plan, which the Senate parliamentarian ruled cannot include a minimum wage increase. Reconciliation allows Democrats to pass the bill without relying on any votes from Senate Republicans.

USA - A historic winter storm and cold blast caused chaos in Texas last week. Temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and 20s around Houston. Power outages were initiated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas early on Monday morning and lasted for days. Oil and natural gas producer Texas could not keep up with the power needed last week because their Chinese wind turbines froze up in the cold. So what lesson did the crazy left learn about the record freeze last week? We need more frozen wind turbines! Green Czar Gina McCarthy says we need more green energy. You really can’t make this stuff up!

USA - A tacit admission by the US Air Force that the F-35 has failed its main mission has triggered an outpouring of outrage from Americans who think the stealth fighter’s gargantuan budget could have been better spent on other things. Frustration with Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation stealth jet flooded Twitter on Wednesday, after Forbes magazine published a story about how USAF commissioning a study into a new, cheaper and lighter fighter amounts to “a tacit admission that the F-35 has failed.” “We could have used this cash to cancel student loans for every person in America,” lamented the liberal watchdog Public Citizen, pointing to the F-35 program’s estimated $1.7 trillion lifetime cost. For that kind of money, “we could have completely replaced America's water infrastructure,” said environmentalist advocate Erin Brockovich. “That's enough to house all homeless people in the United States 28 times over,” tweeted Robert Reich, Labor secretary in the Clinton administration.