Call it the Return of Fauci.

It's not that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, America's top infectious disease expert, ever actually went anywhere. It just often seemed that way as he fell out of favor with his boss, President Trump, and was sidelined even as the country grappled with a pandemic.

Now it is Mr. Trump who is leaving, and on Thursday, his successor had a message for Americans: Dr. Fauci will soon be back in the mix.

"I asked him to stay on in the exact same role he's had for the past several presidents," President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said, "and I asked him to be a chief medical adviser for me as well, and be part of the Covid team."

On Friday morning, Dr. Fauci told NBC's "Today" show he had accepted the offer "right on the spot."

Mr. Trump had at times been openly scornful of Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and appeared put off by his popularity. The president, who often dismissed the threat of the coronavirus, was also frustrated by Dr. Fauci's endorsements of masks and restrictions on movement, preferring the counsel of advisers who backed his call to reopen the economy as soon as possible.

"There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic... You do not vaccinate people who aren't at risk from a disease. You also don't set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn't been extensively tested on human subjects." Dr. Mike Yeadon PhD, Pfizer's former Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory Disease

"What we know about coronavirus from 30 years of experience is that a coronavirus vaccine has a unique peculiarity, which is any attempt at making the vaccine has resulted in the creation of a class of antibodies that actually make vaccinated people sicker when they ultimately suffer exposure to the wild virus." Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Here's what I think is currently going on in our country and across much of the western world. A public health crisis - that was manufactured and gamed - out before the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China - has been used to short-circuit long-held civil liberties, strengthen the authority of political leaders, collapse the economy, dramatically remake basic social relations, and impose absolute control over work, school, gatherings and recreational activities. Public policy is now set by unelected technocrats who operate behind the cover of lofty-sounding organizations that are entirely controlled by the world's biggest corporations and richest oligarchs. President Dwight Eisenhower anticipated this troubling scenario 70 years ago when he said:

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

Veteran US diplomat James Jeffrey has served at the pleasure of both Republican and Democratic presidents.

He was envoy to Albania and Turkey under George W. Bush and the top diplomat in Iraq under Barack Obama. The two presidents had radically different foreign policy agendas, particularly on the Middle East, with Obama ending the Iraq war that Bush had launched. But Jeffrey, a foreign service officer with over three decades of experience, was trusted by both and made the postings work.

Donald Trump, though, was initially a step too far.

This belief was what led Jeffrey to sign a letter prior to the 2016 election, along with dozens of other national security officials who served under Republican administrations, which declared that Trump was "not qualified to be president and commander-in-chief."

But in August 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reached out to Jeffrey, asking him to serve as Special Representative for Syria Engagement. The journeyman diplomat answered the call, coming out of retirement to fill the role and later also taking on the title of Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS.

The United States is actively trying to prevent Iran's efforts to buy a COVID-19 vaccine through COVAX, a global initiative undertaken by the World Health Organization, according to the chief of Iran's central bank.

Abdolnasser Hemmati on Monday said it must be "recorded in historical memory" that Iranian efforts to buy a vaccine through COVAX have been hampered due to money transfer issues arising due to the sanctions imposed by the US against Iran. "So far, any methods to make payment and transfer the required currency have faced obstacles due to the inhumane sanctions of the US government and the need to obtain permits from OFAC," Hemmati wrote in an Instagram post, referring to the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury.

Iran, which is dealing with the largest and deadliest COVID-19 pandemic in the Middle East, announced months ago that it had become a member of COVAX in order to secure vaccines. The WHO touts COVAX as "the world's best hope" for tackling the pandemic in a coordinated and timely manner, and says the international initiative's aim is to "guarantee rapid, fair and equitable access to vaccines for people in all countries".

Iran's official COVID-19 death toll surpassed 50,000 on Saturday as the country battles the third wave of the virus with more than a million reported cases. Iranian health authorities say the real numbers are likely to be more than twice the official figures.

Nicolás Maduro tightened his grip over Venezuela on Sunday in legislative elections that some believe effectively marked the end of Juan Guaidó's US-backed campaign to topple the South American strongman.

The bulk of Venezuela's beleaguered opposition boycotted the contest for the 277-seat national assembly, calling it a sham designed to lend Maduro's authoritarian regime an air of democratic legitimacy.

"The dictatorship doesn't intend to hold an election, it intends to annihilate a nation's hope," Guaidó, the opposition leader, said on the eve of a ballot he denounced as a "fraud".

But for Maduro, the vote was a chance to wrest control of the last state institution not commanded by his ruling Socialist party, by packing it with allies.

Venezuela's electoral authority said early on Monday that 67.6% of 5.2m votes cast were for pro-Maduro candidates. Just 31% of the 20 million registered voters participated in the election, the electoral board's president, Indira Alfonzo, said in comments broadcast on state television.

"We have recovered the national assembly with the majority vote of the Venezuelan people," Maduro said in a televised address. "It's a great victory without a doubt for democracy."

An email previously released by WikiLeaks reveals that a Dominion Voting advisor met with John Podesta during Hillary Clinton's campaign to discuss ways that they could help to defeat Donald Trump.

In 2018, Dominion Voting announced that it had been acquired by its management team and Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, who was being advised by Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

During Clinton's campaign, according to an email chain released by WikiLeaks, Kirkland & Ellis LLP partner Kamran S. Bajwa met with John Podesta while offering "anything" to help defeat Donald Trump. Podesta, at the time, was chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

On Saturday, December 19, 2015, Bajwa wrote to Podesta that

"it was a pleasure to meet this past Th in NY. As discussed, I want to do whatever I can by way of sharing ideas, raising funds, recruiting campaign volunteers, and anything else that can help with your campaign. I hope my small efforts to introduce you to a growing group of professionals like myself will be able to boost your important work for Secretary Clinton's campaign.

"I come to NY frequently and would welcome the opportunity to sit with you and discuss the best way to coordinate our efforts. If you will be in NY Jan 5, I will be free that day to meet you at any time and place convenient for you."

Gabriel Sterling is a very unhinged and corrupt top elections officials in Georgia.

On Thursday when video was produced showing far left criminals dragging out hidden "suitcases" of ballots to count in the State Farm Center after they removed all GOP observers Sterling tried to claim this was standard operating procedure.

Gabriel Sterling earlier last week lashed out at President Trump and his supporters after a Dominion operative was caught on video downloading files from a USB during ballot counting.

Gabriel Sterling is a corrupt operative. What is he hiding? And now there is proof that Sterling had it out for Trump.
We know this because he tweeted about it.

Last month Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) headed by Bruno Kahl (lead image) joined with the Chancellery and other ministries in Berlin to provide the first official catalogue of the German government's allegations in the case of Alexei Navalny.

This was published on November 19. Press reporting in Germany has been scant; in Russian, the texts did not appear in translation until last week. In English, there has been almost no reporting at all.

Required to answer by a formal 76-point questionnaire presented to the German Government in the Bundestag by deputies of the Alternative for Germany party (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), the combination of the questions and the Government's answers reveals a catalogue of lies. By examining the fine print the extent of this lying becomes both obvious and shocking.

The full record of the questions and answers can be read in German here; the verbatim translation into Russian is available here. For excerpts in English and analysis, click to read.

Local officials and experts in Germany are asking to reconsider plans to relax some Covid-19 restrictions during Christmas and New Year's Eve as hotspots continue to appear across the country.

"The current system alone is not enough. The number [of cases] remains stable, there are new infections every day, and the number of deaths is increasing," the head of Bavaria, Markus Soeder, told public broadcaster ARD.

"We have to act - better sooner than later... Every four minutes someone in Germany dies from the coronavirus. We simply cannot accept that."

Also ridiculing "rigged elections" and "fake news" -- two other weapons used on him -- the Vermont Senator's relationship to the Democratic Party descends from loyal support to abject subservience.

At what would be the peak of Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, the U.S. intelligence community, using anonymous leaks to The Washington Post, dropped a devastating bomb on the Vermont Senator. "U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest," the paper announced, citing "people familiar with the matter" whom the paper allowed to speak "on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence."

At the time of this perfectly timed leak, Sanders was on a major roll. He had effectively tied Pete Buttigieg for first place in the scandal-plagued Iowa caucus, in which an app developed and sold by Democratic Party operatives made it impossible to reliably count the votes, and then won the first primary in New Hampshire (Joe Biden finished fourth and fifth, respectively, declared all but dead by the punditocracy and Democratic donors).