Europe

While shortages of basic foods, medicines, and toilet paper may be a major societal problem, the people of Venezuela face an even more existential problem: the nation now lacks the materials to meet the soaring demand for new passports – making it almost impossible to leave the socialist utopia.

"People used to move to Venezuela from all over the Americas, Europe and Asia and now they are all trying to leave," Sonia Schott, the former Washington, D.C., correspondent for Venezuelan news network Globovisión, told Fox News.

Authored by Judith Bergmann via The Gatestone Institute,

• The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Rising production in the Permian, coupled with cheap pipeline and railway transport fees to the Gulf of Mexico, will enable the U.S. to significantly raise its already record-high crude oil exports, Mike Loya, head of the Americas business at oil trading giant Vitol Group, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Friday.

Update 2: Dutch authorities have arrested Turkey's family minister and are deporting her to#Germany according to RTL. The escalation may lead to a spike by Turks in the Netherlands, with some speculating that a curfew is imminent:

BREAKING | #Dutch authorities decided to arrest #Turkey's family minister and deport her to #Germany; operation to arrest her underway: RTL pic.twitter.com/11gsaONQ69

— Vocal Europe (@thevocaleurope) March 11, 2017

There appeared to be a glimmer of hope for the restaurant industry last month, when BlackBox Intelligence's TDn2K titled its most recent Restaurant Industry Snapshot: “Flat Sales, Welcome Change for Restaurant Industry in January.” In the report, it said that "while same-store sales growth was flat (zero percent) in January, it represented a welcome break from the ten consecutive months of negative sales growth experienced by the industry through the end of last year." That finding, however, was refuted by a recent Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll which found that one-third of the 4,200