It was reported late last night that The Prime Minister has met with ministers and aides and will announce a new national lockdown on Monday. The Telegraph has more.

Boris Johnson is expected to announce a new national lockdown next week after scientists warned COVID-19 was spreading faster than their worst predictions.

The Prime Minister spent Friday in crisis meetings with ministers and aides after being told deaths were tracking above the "worst case scenario" that suggested 85,000 in the second wave.

Mr Johnson is understood to have been persuaded that a national lockdown is the only way to save Christmas, and will spend the weekend contemplating exactly how severe it should be.

Senior government sources stressed that no final decision had been made and the measure would need to be put to the Cabinet before any announcement to the nation.

Mr Johnson is likely to summon ministers from his Cabinet coronavirus subcommittee over the next 48 hours and could hold a full meeting on Sunday if he decides he needs to act as soon as Monday. The alternative to a national lockdown would be a fourth tier of restrictions on top of the existing three tier system, but Government scientists now believe even Tier 3 is not enough to stop the spread of infections.

During the parliamentary rebellion last month the Government promised Parliament would vote on any new national lockdown measures "where possible". Will the PM honour that? If he doesn't, his party management problems, already considerable, will only get worse.

A new book tour by H.R. McMaster shows how little the foreign policy professionals have learned from two decades of endless war.

When President Donald Trump took office, his aides promised there would always be adults in the room. Especially when it came to foreign policy, learned, stable professionals would ensure responsible and intelligent actions.

Except the adults turned out to be idiots. They fought the president at every turn when he sought to withdraw from endless wars. They insisted that Washington remain allied to the worst of the worst, supporting the vile Saudi regime in its aggressive and murderous war against Yemen. They urged policies that treated Russia as a permanent enemy. They backed American dominance of every existing alliance and relationship, infantilizing America's friends and maximizing Washington's obligations.

Now former national security adviser H.R. McMaster has reminded Americans that many members of the infamous Blob, the foreign policy elite, are brain dead. Their thinking about the world ended decades ago. They mouth hypocritical platitudes while seeing everything through an antiquated prism.

President Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) has arrested more than 600 MS-13 Gang members since the start of his presidency, the overwhelming majority of whom are illegal aliens.

A comprehensive report by the DOJ reveals the agency's efforts to tackle the El Salvador-based MS-13 Gang — where members often kill for sport — over the last four years. Since 2016, DOJ prosecutors have charged 749 MS-13 Gang members with crimes, resulting in at least more than 500 convictions.

Since Trump took office, about 378 MS-13 Gang members have been convicted — including 37 of which who were delivered life sentences for their involvement with the gang's criminal activity. Another 154 MS-13 Gang members, since 2017, were sentenced to at least 61 months in federal prison.

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), an analogue to the EU in the post-Soviet space, should begin using its own currencies in trade, rather than the Euro and Dollar, which dominate commerce between the member states and China.

That's a consensus agreed upon at a virtual forum on Monday, dedicated to integrating the five EAEU member states with China's flagship foreign policy initiative, 'One Belt, One Road'. Founded in 2010, The EAEU is made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia, and in recent years has actively sought a closer relationship with Asia, especially Beijing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Constitutional Court have clashed over a ruling to abolish some anti-corruption laws, as hundreds of protesters gathered in the streets of Kyiv over the decision.

Zelenskiy asked lawmakers on October 30 to annul a court ruling earlier this week that struck down some anti-corruption legislation and curbed the powers of the National Anti-Corruption Agency (NAZK).

In its ruling, the court said the punishment for false information on an official's asset declaration, as envisioned by the laws, was too harsh.

But Zelenskiy said the move could jeopardize vital international economic aid and called for lawmakers to dissolve the Constitutional Court because its decisions were "worthless."

Less than a week before the game-changing U.S. presidential election, the real heart of the geopolitical and geoeconomic action is virtually invisible to the outside world.

We're talking about the fifth plenum of the 19^th Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Central Committee, which started this past Monday in Beijing.

The plenum congregates the 200 members - and another 100 alternate members - of the civilization-state's top decision-making body: the equivalent, in Western liberal democracy terms, of the Chinese Congress.

The outline of what will be the 14^th Chinese Five-Year-Plan (2021-2025) will be announced with a communiqué at the end of the plenum this Thursday. Policy details will be streaming in the next few weeks. And everything will be formally approved by the National People's Congress (NPC) in March 2021.

For all practical purposes, this should be regarded as what China's leadership is really thinking.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a longtime critic of stay-at-home measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, said on Thursday that it was "crazy" for countries to start locking down again to control second waves of the virus.

Most Western countries and parts of Latin America have reported their highest single-day surges in the past few weeks. Many governments, with the notable exception of the United States, have started taking stronger measures to bring the spread of the virus under control.

A senior German government official said on Friday he was "deeply concerned" about the lack of progress in trade talks between the European Union and Britain, given the heavy reliance of German companies on funding from London's financial hub.

London is Europe's biggest financial centre, but faces being largely cut off from the bloc when Britain's post-Brexit transition arrangements expire on Dec. 31.

Britain and the EU have entered an intensive phase in talks on a free trade deal, though EU access for financial firms in Britain is being dealt with separately by Brussels.

It is all but certain that the next head of the influential World Trade Organization (WTO) will be an African by birth and a woman. But neither is what makes the all-but certain naming of Nigerian-born Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala cause for alarm. Rather it is who she is and who she presently is tied to that insure she will implement the unfolding agenda of the Great Reset transformation of the world economy, using the coronavirus pandemic as a prime lever. She presently heads an organization created by the seeming omnipresent (not omniscient) Bill Gates together with the Davos World Economic Forum — both involved in implementing the Great Reset - and she is deeply tied to the prime institutions of globalization and international finance. Some background we should know about.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has just won the unanimous support of the 55 nations of the African Union, defeating an Egyptian candidate. As of this writing she faces certain approval over her South Korean opponent. On October 17, the 55 member countries of the African Union voted to back Okonjo-Iweala against her only remaining opponent, Yoo Myung-hee of South Korea, their current Minister of Trade. The Nigerian candidate claims also to have the backing of a group of Caribbean and Pacific states, bringing the number of countries officially endorsing her candidacy to 79 out of the 164 states that comprise the WTO. It looks like a done deal.

Suddenly, the anticipated Trump campaign's October surprise: allegations that presidential candidate Joseph Biden has been a beneficiary of an international influence-peddling scheme with his son, Hunter, as the point man. This has dramatically, for the moment, turned the tables of election 2020.

This pre-election day chess move is an obvious, carefully planned Trump campaign hit job, but short-sighted, most pundits predict these allegations come too late to sway the outcome of election day. This view is dubious and misses what could indeed be a three-move check-mate against Joe Biden, but...after the votes are counted.

Come Nov 3, the race for POTUS is far from over. Trump's handlers seem to know this. The follow-up will be an unprecedented public spectacle that will likely very much include the Electoral College. Further, this possible coup will have sixty-four very valuable extra days, a Judiciary Committee, an Attorney General, a Senate and developing media attention, all remaining and at the RNC's disposal.

The Trump campaign knows this and appears to be playing the long game. Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon are not political fools. Thanks to Biden's true personality being exposed, a growing treasure chest of allegations have been handed over to Trump, four different times thus far. If these revelations prove true, should Trump lose, this will also provide his campaign no less than two more chances to bring Biden down.