We don’t need the crystal ball to bet on the next crisis in North Africa. The growing tension between Morocco and Algeria will add to the Libyan chaos and the institutional collapse of Tunisia. With a third wheel: Israel. Tel Aviv has become a strategic partner of Rabat and for Algeria this situation is becoming a factor of national security.

Since the summer of 2021, Algeria has unilaterally severed diplomatic relations with Morocco, accusing the Moroccan kingdom of “hostile acts”. Rabat contests this decision which it deems completely unjustified. The main dispute between the two Maghreb countries concerns the territory of Western Sahara. The status of this former Spanish colony, considered a “non-autonomous territory” by the United Nations, has pitted Morocco against the Saharawi separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers, since the 1970s. Rabat, which controls almost 80 percent of this territory, supports an autonomy plan under its sovereignty. Instead, Polisario is calling for a self-determination referendum under the aegis of the UN. In the background is also the Palestine dossier: Algeria supports the Palestinian cause and judges Morocco’s growing cooperation, especially in the military sphere, with the “Zionist entity”, i.e. Israel, as extremely negative.

At the end of 2022, the King of Morocco Mohammed VI attempted to defuse tensions, inviting the President of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to Rabat for a “dialogue session”. But that meeting never took place.

Has the Marvel Cinematic Universe already seen its best days?

According to a recent poll on Twitter, not only do some fans believe that, a rather sizable chunk of fans believe it.

First, the poll in question, which you can see here:

You need a Twitter account to vote, but should you partake in that poll, you’ll see that (as of this writing) of the 53,000 votes cast, roughly 77 percent voted “Yes” and a mere 23 percent said “No.”

While there is still nearly a full day left on the poll, it’s hard to see that poll creeping back to anything close to 50-50.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev believes that Kiev has rejected ‘the hand of Christian mercy’ by refusing Moscow's proposed Christmas truce. However, according to him, this situation will pose ‘less trouble and slyness’ to the Russian armed forces.

"A hand of Christian mercy was extended to the Ukrainians on the great holiday (Christmas, which is celebrated in Russia on January 7 - TASS). Their (Kiev’s - TASS) leaders rejected it. I think most of our servicemen taking part in the special military operation exhaled when they heard the refusal <...> to cease fire on Christmas Day. Less problems and slyness," the politician wrote on Friday on his Telegram channel.

Medvedev noted that he felt sorry for the people who were deprived of the opportunity to go to church. "But pigs have no faith and no innate sense of gratitude. They understand only brute force," he noted.

Joe Biden spoke Thursday at the White House on new “border security” measures before his trip to El Paso on Sunday. During his remarks, Biden once again called Kamala Harris “President Harris.”

Mask wearing, social distancing and working from home could be introduced by ministers to ease pressures on the NHS, as some experts call for Britons to start adopting Covid-era measures. The Mail has more.

The NHS is facing record winter pressures due to rising rates of Covid and flu, staff shortages and too few beds, while experts fear an Omicron sub-variant will drive a surge in infections, piling even more pressure on the already-crippled health service.

Health chiefs and scientists have already advised adults and pupils to stay at home if they are unwell, don masks if they must go outside when sick and called for the booster rollout to be widened in a bid to ease NHS demand.

Now, ministers are said to be considering issuing fresh guidance to wear masks on public transport, work-from-home and socially distance if the health service “is at risk of collapse”. Hospital bosses have already warned the crisis will continue to Easter but said measures used in the darkest days of the pandemic are not yet needed.

Some experts are advising Britons to already start limiting their contacts, socially distance and not go into the office to limit the spread of winter viruses.

When it comes to nightmare scenarios for the United States, a nuclear attack from a foreign power has to rank among the worst possible choices. While the likelihood of such a strike is low, that does not stop experts from trying to prepare for any possibility. A new story by Business Insider lists the following six cities as the most likely to be at risk in the vent of a future nuclear attack on the United States: 1) Chicago, Illinois 2) Houston, Texas 3) Los Angeles, California 4) New York, New York 5) San Francisco, CA 6) Washington, DC

After more than $20 trillion in stimulus plans since 2020, the economy is going into stagnation with elevated inflation. Global governments announced more than $12 trillion in stimulus measures in 2020 alone, and central banks bloated their balance sheet by $8 trillion.

The result was disappointing and with long-lasting negative effects. Weak recovery, record debt, and elevated inflation. Of course, governments all over the world blamed the Ukraine invasion on the nonexistent multiplier effect of the stimulus plans, but the excuse made no sense.

Commodity prices rose from February to June 2022 and have corrected since. Even considering the negative effect of rising commodity prices in developed economies, we must acknowledge that those are positives for emerging economies and, even with that boost, the disappointing recovery led to constant downgrades of estimates.

If Keynesian multipliers existed, most developed economies would be growing strongly even discounting the Ukraine invasion impact, considering the unprecedented amount of stimulus plans approved.

Now we face a 2023 with even more disappointing estimates. According to Bloomberg economics, global growth will decline from a poor 3.2 percent in 2022 to a worrying 2.4 percent in 2023, significantly below the pre-covid-19 trend but with higher global debt. Total global debt rose by $3.3 trillion in Q1 2022 to a new record of over $305 trillion—mostly due to China and the US, according to the Institute of International Finance.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was frank about her feelings after she and her fellow justices ended their last term, expressing dismay Wednesday following rulings that included the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Sotomayor is one of three liberal justices on the Supreme Court, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The other six were all appointed by Republican presidents, including three in the span of four years by former President Donald Trump.

"I did have a sense of despair about the direction my court was going," Sotomayor said in an hour-long conversation that was part of The Association of American Law Schools' annual meeting, according to Reuters.

Two hundred seventy-nine athletes and former athletes in the United States have died from cardiac arrests after taking COVID-19 vaccines, according to data from a recent peer-reviewed study.

Authored by structural biologist Panagis Polykretis, and board-certified internist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, the study’s cited data found that from 2021 to 2022, at least 1,616 cardiac arrests have been globally documented in vaccinated athletes, with 1,114 of those being fatal.

The global data also showed that between 2021 to 2022, former and current American athletes made up 279 of the mortalities.

Athletes have a lower chance of cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death as compared to nonathletes. A 2016 U.S. study calculated that nonathletes, compared to athletes, have a 29 times higher chance of sudden cardiac death.

For some reason, climate change is only affecting black individuals to collectively commit gun violence across America.

That’s at the macro level. At the micro level, climate change is now the primary link to almost exclusive black gun violence in Kansas City, Missouri.

Structural racism, redlining and disinvestment… now joined by climate change as a reason for black violence. [Is climate change linked to gun violence? A new study shows how KC area is impacted, Kansas City Star, January 2, 2023]:

On the hottest day of 2022 in Kansas City, three people were shot and killed. Three more were shot and survived, the Kansas City Police Department said. The temperature clocked in at 101 degrees on July 23, according to Jared Leighton, a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Kansas City. With 171 homicides, this year became the second deadliest on record in Kansas City — and some of those fatal shootings may be linked to an unexpected cause: climate change.

Researchers analyzed more than 116,000 shootings in 100 cities and found that nearly 7% could be attributed to days with above-average temperatures, not only in the summer, but also at other times of the year when it was unseasonably warm. In Kansas City, Missouri, the percentage of shootings tied to days with above-average temperatures was 6.13%, while in Kansas City, Kansas, it was 7.86%, according to the study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“An increase in warmer temperatures and more frequent extreme heat events due to climate change may create environments with higher risk of firearm violence in the future,” the study said. Researchers concluded that the findings “underscore the importance of exploring heat mitigation strategies as tools to reduce shootings.” Experts have theorized that warmer temperatures increase stress hormones and lead to more interactions between people.