United States

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote poet Robert Frost in the opening line of “Mending Walls.”

And on the American left there is something like revulsion at the idea of the “beautiful wall” President Trump intends to build along the 1,900-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico.

The opposition’s arguments are usually rooted in economics or practicality. The wall is unnecessary. It will not stop people from coming illegally. It costs too much.

While so far Trump's trade focus was fallen mostly on Nafta countries, and to a lesser extent China, one country that is taking precautionary steps is the one which recently suffered a major loss when Trump signed an executive order to exit the TPP, effectively killing the trade deal: Japan. The TPP, which took years to negotiate among 12 countries, has often been described as being, at its core, a deal between the United States and Japan, the world's largest and third-largest economies respectively.

US equity futures are unchanged, trading near record highs after digesting a spate of earnings results on Thursday. The dollar pared its weekly loss as the yen and pound slid, while gold headed for its longest slump in three months. European equities fell and markets in Asia were mixed, while markets in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam were closed Friday for the start of Lunar New Year. Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore had shortened sessions.

Submitted by Robert Parry via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The world’s first pig human hybrid has been created in a laboratory at the Salk Institute in the United States.  Scientists say that this is the first ever successful human-animal hybrid experiment, proving that human cells can thrive inside of an animal host Nationalgeographic.com reports: This biomedical advance has long been a dream and a quandary for scientists hoping to address a critical shortage of donor organs. Every ten minutes, a person is added to the national waiting list for organ transplants. And every day, 22 people on that list die without the organ they need.