The Economist rates Trump presidency among its top 10 global risks( Source politico.eu) A Donald Trump presidency poses a top-10 risk event that could disrupt the world economy, lead to political chaos in the U.S. and heighten security risks for the United States, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Electing Trump could also start a trade war, hurt trade with Mexico and be a godsend to terrorist recruiters in the Middle East, according to the latest EIU forecasts. The well-respected global economic and geopolitical analysis firm   put a possible Trump presidency in its  top 10 global risks this month, released Wednesday. Other risks include a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, a fracture of the Eurozone, and Britain’s possible departure from the European Union. Trump’s controversial remarks on Muslims would be a gift to “potential recruiters who have long been trying to paint the U.S. as an anti-Muslim country. His rhetoric will certainly help that recruiting effort,” said Robert Powell, global risk briefing manager at EIU. Until Trump, the firm had never rated a pending election of a candidate to be a geopolitical risk to the U.S. and the world. The firm has no plans to include Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz or John Kasich on future risk lists. “It’s highly unusual, and I don’t think we ever have done it where we’ve had a single politician be the center of our risk items,” Powell said in an interview, but noted that the firm has once included the transition at the top of the Chinese Communist Party as a top-ten risk as well.

The U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Triad. Can the U.S. Afford to Modernize it? (Source southfront.org) The defense budget of the United States stands at roughly ten times the amount of its closest rival in real terms. With more than seven hundred military facilities around the globe, and direct and indirect armed interventions in a number of countries in the Middle East and Africa the armed forces of the United States are consuming vast amounts of money. When one adds in the significant amounts of waste inherent in the military industrial complex, the grand scale of the Department of Defense budget for 2016 in the amount of $521.7 billion has still left military planners and defense industry lobbyists bemoaning it as insufficient. It has recently been argued that the advancements and achievements by both Russia and China in modernizing their military capabilities over the past decade have caught the U.S. military establishment off guard. This is up to debate; however, the fact remains that the only real potential adversaries of the U.S. have exponentially improved their military forces, mainly in the area of missile and aircraft capabilities, but also in the area of naval power projection and nuclear submarine deterrence over the past decade. The conventional military forces of both nations have been greatly improved in all respects. In light of the United States losing its edge conventionally, many would assume that the U.S. could always fall back on its nuclear deterrence capability. This is also proving; however, not to be a suitable strategy as the U.S. has invested very little in this area of defense over the past half century. China has fielded indigenously designed and manufactured SSBNs to add a viable third leg to its nuclear triad in only the past five years, while Russia has greatly modernized its silo and mobile ICBMs, as well as fielding advanced electronic warfare systems over the past decade. The United States has apparently decided to utterly neglect its own nuclear capabilities since the dissolving of the Soviet Union. The U.S. defense establishment is now faced with not only the  major challenge of modernizing its nuclear deterrence capabilities, but also where to find the vast sums of money required to accomplish this feat.

FDA Says Test of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Is Safe (Source nbcnews.com) It’s probably safe to test genetically modified mosquitoes in Key West, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday, but it’s asking for public opinion before formally approving such an experiment. It’s likely to get an earful. The American public has strong opinions about genetically modified anything, and a quarter of those asked in a recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center said they thought genetically engineered mosquitoes had actually spread Zika virus in Brazil. The World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other experts say that’s impossible, and say it’s the natural Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that are spreading it by biting people. “By allowing the trial, the FDA will be signaling that science and evidence-based practices should prevail over the hysteria and irrationality long associated with genetically modified organisms,” said Dr. Zachary Adelman, Associate Professor, Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech University. A British-based company called Oxitec is developing the mosquitoes to fight dengue, a painful and potentially deadly virus that circulates in many countries around the world and which is especially bad in Brazil. The same Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that spread dengue also carry the chikungunya virus, the yellow fever virus and Zika.

Anonymous declares ‘total war’ on Trump, plans April attack (Source RT) Hacking collective Anonymous has vowed “total war” against Donald Trump, making a “call to arms” by summoning fellow hacktivists to unite with them in an attack against all of his websites on April 1st. In a resurgence of its #OpTrump campaign, the group released a new video addressing the controversial Republican candidate directly. “Dear Donald Trump, we have been watching you for a long time and what we see is deeply disturbing,” a masked figure declares in customary Anonymous fashion. “You have shocked the entire planet with your appalling actions and ideals,” he continues. The focus is then turned to hacktivists and citizens: “This is a call to arms…we need you to shut down his websites, research and expose what he doesn’t want the public to know. We need you to dismantle his campaign and sabotage his brand.” The clip ends with a message for Trump “This is not a warning, this is a declaration of total war. Donald Trump – it is too late to expect us.”

Back to Africa to help blacks leave America if Donald Trump becomes President (Source empireherald.com) South African Billionaire Femi Adenugame has created the “back to Africa” movement urging all Black Americans to leave the United States before Donald Trump becomes president. Concerns about Donald Trump becoming President has prompted a South African billionaire to invest his fortune in helping African Americans leave the United States to avoid further discrimination and inequality. According to reports, Femi Adenugame has invested over 500 million dollars to the project. Adenugame owns commercial 747 jets a fleet of cruise ship which he plans to use to transport those interested in returning to Africa from the United States.

WHY DO AMERICANS CONSUME 80% OF ALL PRESCRIPTION PAINKILLERS? (Source blacklistednews.com) Less than 5% of the world’s population lives in this country, and yet Americans buy four-fifths of these highly addictive drugs.  In the United States today, approximately 4.7 million Americans are addicted to prescription pain relievers, and that represents about a 300% increase since 1999.  Someone that was formally living a very healthy and normal life can be reduced to a total basket case within a matter of weeks. And of course many don’t make it back at all.  According to the CDC,  HYPERLINK “https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/getting-painkillers-seems-easy-getting-help-to-fight-painkiller-addiction-is-hard/2016/03/14/2a85f060-df29-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html” \o “more than 28,000 Americans” \t “_blank” more than 28,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2014.  Incredibly, those deaths  HYPERLINK “http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-califf-abuse-deterrent-drugs-have-a-big-flaw-2016-3” \o “represented 60 percent of all drug overdose deaths in the United States for that year” \t “_blank” represented 60 percent of all drug overdose deaths in the United States for that year. Many Americans that start out on legal opioids quickly find themselves moving over to heroin because it is often cheaper and easier to obtain, and the U.S. is now facing a tremendous epidemic of heroin abuse as well.  In fact, the number of Americans that die of a heroin overdose  HYPERLINK “http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/03/07/senate-poised-pass-bill-combat-heroin-use-and-prescription-drug-abuse/81437324/” \o “nearly quadrupled” \t “_blank” nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2013. As long as doctors are writing thousands upon thousands of new prescriptions for these painkillers each year, this crisis is not going to go away any time soon.

Palestine Becomes A Full Member Of “The Court Of Arbitration” (Source globalresearch.ca)

Palestine was awarded a full membership in the  HYPERLINK “http://www.imemc.org/article/%E2%80%9Dhttps:/pca-cpa.org/en/home/%E2%80%9D” \t “_blank” Permanent Court of Arbitration, after 57 countries votes in favor, 24 abstained and zero voted against. The Palestinian application was filed to Holland on January 29, 2015, officially requesting membership with the International Court of Arbitration, but the United States led a strong opposition, and managed to get the court’s leadership to postpone the vote, until a special committee reviewed the application. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it send a strong letter to its Dutch counterpart, demanding that the government of Holland, which houses the court at The Hague, to revoke his decision to suspend the application, and threatened to take the case to specialized international courts. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki also held a meeting with his Dutch counterpart, on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council sessions, and asked him to find a solution to the issue, and the later promised to help in resolving it.

On its part, the Palestinian Mission in Holland also held talks with various countries, members of the court, and managed to come up with a coordinated position, before asking for a date for discussing Palestine’s full membership. The United States, Canada and Israel strongly opposed the move, and presented a number of proposals that were meant to obstruct the vote under various “justifications,” including the claim that membership with this court requires a full membership with the United Nations. The majority of world countries rejected those claims, and affirmed the Palestinian right to become a member with the court.

Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima (Source thetruthwins.com) Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean.  That means that the total amount of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain. Polar bears, seals and walruses along the Alaska coastline are suffering from  HYPERLINK “http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/08/11083494-fur-loss-open-sores-seen-in-polar-bears” \o “fur loss and open sores” \t “_blank” fur loss and open sores. The bears were among 33 spotted near Barrow, Alaska, during routine survey work along the Arctic coastline. Tests showed they had “alopecia, or loss of fur, and other skin lesions,”  HYPERLINK “http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3162” \o “the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement” \t “_blank” the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement. There is an  HYPERLINK “http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-03-31/fukushima-radiation-causing-epidemic-dead-and-starving-sea-lions-california” \o “epidemic of sea lion deaths” \t “_blank” epidemic of sea lion deaths along the California coastline. At island rookeries off the Southern California coast, 45 % of the pups born in June have died, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service based in Seattle.  Along the Pacific coast of Canada and the Alaska coastline, the population of sockeye salmon is at  HYPERLINK “http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/lake-babine-sockeye-fishery-at-risk-of-unprecedented-closure/article13715638/?service=print” \o “a historic low” \t “_blank” a historic low.  Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada  HYPERLINK “http://www.canada.com/investigating+reports+bleeding+herring/8795535/story.html” \o “to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs” \t “_blank” to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs. A vast field of radioactive debris from Fukushima that is  HYPERLINK “http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/03/radioactive-debris-washing-up-on-pacific-coast.html” \o “approximately the size of California” \t “_blank” approximately the size of California has crossed the Pacific Ocean and is starting to collide with the west coast. It is being projected that the radioactivity of coastal waters off the U.S. west coast  HYPERLINK “http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/50176” \o “could double” \t “_blank” could double over the next five to six years.  Experts have found  HYPERLINK “http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/22/national/researchers-find-high-cesium-in-some-pacific-plankton/” \l “.UZu7-GfYGTc” \o “very high levels of cesium-137” \t “_blank” very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast. One test in California found that  HYPERLINK “http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/absolutely-every-one-of-the-15-bluefin-tuna-tested-in-california-waters-contaminated-with-fukushima-radiation.html” \o “15 out of 15” \t “_blank” 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima. The Vancouver Sun in 2012 reported that cesium-137 was found in  HYPERLINK “http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/343-203/9463-canada-fish-eaters-threatened-by-fukushima-radiation” \o “a very high percentage” \t “_blank” a  high percentage of the fish Japan sold to Canada.73 %t of mackerel tested, 91 % of the halibut, 92% of the sardines, 93 % of the tuna, 94 % of the cod.

IMF Issues New Warning on Global Economy as Chinese Exports Plunge (Source globalresearch.ca)

The International Monetary Fund warned this week of a further weakening of the global economy following the release of figures showing a significant decline in Chinese and global trade. In a major speech to the National Association for Business Economics in Washington on Tuesday, the first deputy managing director of the IMF, David Lipton, said that it was “most disconcerting” that the rise in “risk aversion” was leading to a “sharp retrenchment in global capital and trade flows.” He noted that emerging markets experienced a capital outflow of $200 billion last year compared to a net inflow of $125 billion in 2014. “Trade flows meanwhile are being dragged down by weak export and import growth in large emerging markets such as China, as well as Russia and Brazil, which have been under considerable stress,” he said. Lipton made his remarks following the release of data showing that Chinese exports experienced their biggest contraction since 2009. It was another sign that, far from the world economy being on the road to “recovery,” global demand is continuing to fall.

China won’t budge on South China Sea sovereignty (Source Aljazeera.com) China’s foreign minister took a hard line on the country’s claims to virtually all the South China Sea, saying Beijing will not permit other nations to infringe on what it considers its sovereign rights in the strategically vital area. Wang Yi said another nation’s claim to freedom of navigation in the region didn’t give it the right to do whatever it wants – an apparent reference to the United States, which has sent naval ships past reefs where China has engaged in island-building. “The South China Sea has been subject to colonial invasion and illegal occupation and now some people are trying to stir up waves, while some others are showing off forces,” Wang said. “However, like the tide that comes and goes, none of these attempts will have any impact. History will prove who is merely the guest and who is the real host.” Wang sought to deflect allegations that China is militarising the region by building military facilities on the artificial islands. He said China’s development there was defensive and that other nations were being militaristic – not China. China has conducted a massive program of land reclamation in the South China Sea over the past two years, piling sand on top of reefs then adding airstrips and military facilities. Beijing claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including small islands that are hundreds of kilometres from its southern coast.