United States

The escalating, so far mostly verbal conflict with China may have just heated up following a Reuters reports that China has seized an unmanned, underwater US navy vehicle inside off international waters in the South China Sea, and that the US has issued a formal statement demanding the return of the vehicle.

According to CNN, which has a slightly different take on events, a US oceanographic vessel Thursday had its underwater drone stolen by a Chinese warship literally right in front of the eyes of the American crew.

The Great Rotation continued for one more week today with global equity funds receiving $21 billion in inflows in the past week according to Bank of America, the ninth-biggest inflow ever, as investors rushed into 'Trump trade', while money flowed out of bonds for seventh week in a row. The EPFR-based report showed overall equity inflows of $63 billion since Donald Trump's U.S. presidential election win on Nov. 8, offsetting somewhat the $151 billion in outflows observed from January to October.

Quad-witching Friday has arrived, which means that alongside thin, pre-holiday liquidity and a jumpy market, we expect to see sharp, volatile moves for the rest of the day, the first of which was just noted in Europe, where stocks moved from session lows to highs in the span of minutes, in the process sending the Euro Stoxx 50 index 0.8% higher and turning it positive on the year as it reached its highest level since December 2015. The broader Stoxx 600 remains still down 1.8% on the year.

Submitted by Finian Cunningham via Strategic-Culture.org,

The US and its terrorist-sponsoring partners are seeing their criminal regime-change project in ruins, as the Syrian army and its allies win a spectacular victory to retake the strategically important city of Aleppo.

Western governments and their flunkies at the UN are cynically, perversely decrying a «meltdown of humanity».

John Kerry has refused to confirm anonymous intelligence reports alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in hacking the U.S. election. On Wednesday evening, NBC News reported that “senior intelligence officials” had provided them with evidence that proved Putin authorised hackers to influence the U.S. election in order to help Donald Trump win. “I am not going to comment on anonymous reports from intelligence officials that are not identified that have quotes around the concept of intelligence officials,” Kerry said at the press briefing.