A US delegation is expected in Moscow on Thursday for negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Ukraine peace talks have been narrowed down to a single unresolved issue, according to US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he would travel to Moscow later on Thursday. The trip was later confirmed by the Kremlin.

Speaking at an impromptu 'Ukraine Breakfast' on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Witkoff said he felt "encouraged" and "optimistic" about the progress so far. He said:

"If both sides want to solve this, we're going to get it solved. I think we've made a lot of progress. I think we've got it down to one issue, and we have discussed iterations of that issue, and that means it's solvable."

Witkoff did not specify the remaining sticking point, but he had previously suggested it relates to territory.

"This is how tyranny looks in the modern world. It arrives dressed as dialogue, consensus, and expertise. It is imposed by people who sincerely believe they are doing nothing at all."
— DataRepublican

Davos — The World Economic Forum (WEF) — is toast. Trump, Bessant, and Luttnick exposed the wretched org of overcompensated squishes to too much light and heat and it flared into such a pathetic little smoldering cinder that its spoxpersons said the meeting might get moved out of Davos altogether next year to Dublin or Detroit. Closer to the people, you understand (except there are hardly any people left in Detroit, thanks to the fifty years of WEF influence on manufacturing policy and the people of Dublin are now Nigerians, Somalis, and Congolese, thanks to the WEF's retarded migration doctrine.)

All of which means that its trademark, WEF Globalism, is dead, too. No more aspirations of One World Government (as if Earth was the Planet Krypton). . . no more You will have nothing, be happy, and eat bugs. . . no more green energy gaslight. . . no more all women are women, including men pretending to be women. . . no more wide-open borders. . . no more of their preposterous elitist armchair totalitarianism. In fact, if anything, the WEF had terminal boundary problems, much like the Cluster-B personalities that infest the upper echelons of the NGO alternative universe that carried out the WEF's dastardly programming for them. They didn't know when to stop.

The U.S. is set to officially exit the World Health Organization on Thursday, one year after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the withdrawal.

Trump announced on the first day of his new presidency that the U.S. would be leaving the United Nations health agency, but under U.S. law, the country must provide one year's notice and pay all outstanding fees before officially departing.

According to Reuters, the WHO said the U.S. has not yet paid the fees it owes for 2024 and 2025, totaling roughly $260 million. Member states are scheduled to discuss the U.S. departure and how it should be handled during the WHO's executive board meeting in February, the outlet reported.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently urged the U.S. to reconsider its withdrawal, calling it a global loss.

Update (1238ET): The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to reject President Trump's request to fire Fed member Lisa Cook as litigation over the issue proceeds in lower courts.

The case, Trump v. Cook, stems from the president's attempt to halt a lower court ruling reinstating Cook after he fired her last year over alleged mortgage fraud.

During oral arguments, multiple justices seemed skeptical of US Solicitor General D. John Sauer's arguments about the limits of judges' abilities to interfere with the president's power to fire Cook - with some raising questions about whether granting Trump's request would impact the public.

Trump appointee Justice Brett Kavanaugh was among the skeptics, saying that Trump's position would "weaken if not shatter the independence of the Federal Reserve," while Amy Coney Barrett asked whether the risk to financial markets warranted "caution on our part," though she also suggested she wasn't ready to fully embrace Cook's position.

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

Antonio Gramsci

Davos 2026 was a demented kaleidoscope. The only possible way to wallow through the mire was to put on the headphones and resort to the Band of Gypsys smashing sonic barriers, and drowning a frankly terrifying series of events, including a Palantir-BlackRock connection, Big Tech meets Big Finance; the "Master Plan" for Gaza; and the acute discombobulation in neo-Caligula's rant, here in the 3-minute version.

Then there was what the fragmented West's mainstream media erected as a visionary speech: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's mini-opus magnum, complete with a - what else - Thucydides quote ("The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must") to illustrate the "rupture" of the "rules-based international order", which was already a Dead Man Not Walking at least for a year now.

And how not to laugh at the extremely rich notion of a letter by 400 "patriotic" millionaires and billionaires directed to heads of state in Davos claiming for more "social justice". Translation: they are terrified - in Paranoia Paradise mode - by the "rupture", actually the advanced collapse of the neoliberalism ethos that enriched them in the first place.

Carney's speech was a wily, headline-grabbing device to - in thesis - bury the "rules-based international order", actually the euphemism du jour, since the end of WWII, for total domination by the Anglo-American financial oligarchy. Carney now only recognizes a mere "rupture" - supposed to be sewn up by "middle powers", mostly Canada and a few Europeans (no Global South).

And there's the dead give away: the presumed antidote to "rupture" has absolutely nothing to do with sovereignty. It's actually a controlled hedging, a sort of managed ersatz multipolarity - nothing to do with the BRICS drive - based on a fuzzy "values-based realism", "coalition building" and "variable geometry" mish mash, destined to keep in place the same old monetarist scam.

Welcome to Lampedusa's The Leopard, remixed: "Everything must change for everything to remain the same."

And all that coming from a playbook liberal, a former Governor of the Bank of England. Such tigers never change their spots. The true levers of power - exercized by the City of London and Wall Street - are totally imune to the "rupture" antidote.

The evolving, multi-layered Russia-China strategic partnership already invalidates Carney's very sophisticated fraud, which fooled a lot of informed people. Same as BRICS - as it advances in the long and winding road of real multi-nodality.

Which brings us to the real message generated by Carney's trademark limited hangout:

Canada and the European "middle powers" now find themselves not on the table, but on the menu, as neo-Caligula, the ruler of the world, can do to them what NATO has de facto been doing to the Global South over the past 30 years.

The group needs new leadership, not cosmetic changes, Slovakia's Robert Fico has said

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has compared the EU to a massage parlor, saying its problems can only be fixed by changing the staff. He specifically called for the bloc's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, to be removed.

In a video posted on Facebook on Thursday, Fico described the EU as being in a systemic crisis. He reiterated his opposition to former Estonian Prime Minister Kallas as the bloc's foreign policy chief, and praised his Smer-SD party lawmakers for again backing a no-confidence vote in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

According to the Slovak prime minister, the EU can emerge from its "deep crisis" only with "new leadership and new ideas." "This is not an angry or personal remark, it is political reality," he added, saying the EU is subject to "exactly the same rule as a massage parlor: if it is not doing well, it is not enough to change the beds, you have to change the staff."

Anthony Fauci privately acknowledged "impressive data" showed stronger immunity from a COVID-19 infection than vaccination while publicly pushing mandated shots, newly released documents show.

Former President Joe Biden's top pandemic response officials discussed a thorough study from Israel showing the superiority of natural infection in August 2021, simultaneous with the initiation of federal vaccine mandates via an Aug. 24 Pentagon memo, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Protect the Public's Trust, indicating officials who helped compel COVID shots had contemporaneous scientific evidence they were unjustifiable for millions of Americans. The officials distorted the evidence in public statements, repeatedly saying vaccination is necessary for immunity.

The incident in the Murcia region marks Spain's fourth train crash since Sunday, with that day's high-speed collision in Adamuz killing at least 43 people.

A commuter train has crashed into a construction crane in southeastern Spain, the fourth rail incident in the space of a week.

Emergency services in the Murcia region said four people suffered minor injuries as a result of the incident near the port city of Cartagena.

A spokesperson added the train "hasn't been overturned nor derailed". The incident happened at around midday.

Meanwhile, Spanish rail operator Adif said on X that traffic on ‍that line was interrupted due to "the intrusion into the infrastructure gauge by a crane not belonging to the railway operation".

It added at around 1.30pm that service had resumed on the line, but it marks Spain's fourth such incident since Sunday, with that day's high-speed collision in the southern Andalusia region killing at least 43 people.

What appears as a series of disconnected crises in the Middle East is, in fact, one unfolding story. The region's instability is no longer driven primarily by old rivalries or proxy wars but by something more dangerous: the normalization of force as a routine tool of politics.

From the Saudi-UAE rupture in Yemen to rising unrest in Iran and the threat of US intervention, the Middle East is absorbing the shockwaves of a global order in which coercion has replaced restraint and alliances are cracking.

The Implosion of "Stable" Alliances: Saudi, UAE and Yemen

The Middle East's fracturing is no longer just about ancient rivalries and sectarian divides. What's striking today is how allies are turning on each other, exposing fissures beneath the veneer of long-heralded regional stability. Nowhere is this clearer than in Yemen, where a battle once framed as a united front against Iran-aligned Houthi rebels has given way to an open rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two of Washington's closest partners.

The contribution would come from the Russian assets frozen in the US

Moscow is ready to contribute to US President Donald Trump's 'Board of Peace' initiative, President Vladimir Putin told the Russian Security Council on Wednesday. He suggested donating $1 billion to the body out of the Russian assets frozen in the US to support the recovery of the Palestinian enclave.

The initiative envisages an international council to manage funding, security, and political coordination in Gaza during a transitional period following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The body will work alongside a Palestinian technocratic administration. Trump came up with the idea after the US brokered the truce last year.

Russia could provide $1 billion for the organization "right now, even before we decide whether we'll take part... in the work of the Board of Peace," the Russian president said, citing Moscow's "special relations with the people of Palestine."

The sum could be taken "from the Russian assets frozen by the previous [US] administration," he added. Moscow "has always supported and continues to support any efforts aimed at strengthening international stability," Putin stated.

Putin thanked Trump for the invitation but said that Moscow would need more time to study the offer and consult its strategic partners.