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With his once-vanquished partner-turned-rival Matteo Salvini breathing down his neck, Luigi Di Maio, the longtime leader of Italy’s anti-establishment, left-of-center Five Star Movement, has stepped down from his position at the head of the party, though he will continue to serve as Italy’s foreign minister in a coalition government with the centrist Democrats.

Di Maio

News of Di Maio’s departure is a harbinger of more political turbulence in a country where the ruling coalition is held together by an extremely fragile alliance, and as a result Italian assets – including stocks and government bonds – sold off initially but have since managed to recover losses.

An index of Italian banking stocks slumped nearly 2% to its lowest level in six weeks. Italy’s still-struggling financial sector is particularly sensitive to signs of political instability.

Over the past year, Five Star’s popularity has been shrinking as its chief rival, Salvini’s right-wing League, snatched the crown of most popular party in the country away from M5S.

Di Maio finally admits he is responsible for the “sinking” of his party. Known now as Sinco Di Maio. https://t.co/s6dKlKmJdk

— Roman Trader (@patdoddson) January 22, 2020

Di Maio said he will deliver a press conference later this afternoon (at 5 pm in Rome, or 11 am in New York).

Citing reports in Italian newspapers, the FT reports that Di Maio is expected to quit following a wave of defections of MPs who are apparently frustrated with his leadership. Support for the party has declined over the past year, and a resurgent League looks poised to win a critical election this weekend in the region of Emilia-Romagna, the birthplace of Italian socialism.

On Wednesday, health officials in China once again announced a sharp increase in the number of reported cases of the mysterious new coronavirus that is now confirmed to have caused at least nine deaths, as we reported last night.

As hundreds of millions of Chinese leave the country for vacation destinations abroad – all part of what the NYT described as the largest human migration on Earth – the hysteria has reached a fever pitch.

In Japan, one shopkeeper in the mountain town of Hakone (a popular vacation destination) has been heavily criticized for hanging a sign outside his door reading ‘no Chinese allowed’. The full message displayed on the sign (pictured below) reads: “No Chinese are allowed to enter the store…I do not want to spread the virus.”

According to the SCMP, the as-yet-unidentified owner of the confectionery store told the Asahi newspaper that he used a translation application to write the message in Chinese, adding, “I want to protect myself from the virus and I don’t want Chinese people to enter the store.”

Japanese tourism officials apologized for the shopkeepers’ actions after he was roundly criticized on social media.

Shin Hae-bong, a professor of law at Aoyama Gakuen University, said the store owner was not breaking the law, as Japan doesn’t have any laws against discrimination on the books.

And while Chinese tourists could try to take him to court, that would take some time.

“This is obviously wrong, but the only thing that could be done would be for a suit to be filed as many Japanese courts have in recent years ruled against places that bar people based on their nationality,” she said.

“The courts have, in those cases, used the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination for the basis of their rulings.”

Meanwhile, back in Wuhan, Chinese officials are taking drastic measures to try and contain the spread of the virus from the city where it was first discovered. Stocks steadied as China’s National Health Commission detailed its plan of action for stopping the virus’s spread. According to Bloomberg, health officials said China has stepped up monitoring of transportation links and ordered a near-complete shutdown of the central city of Wuhan, where the virus originated. Officials acknowledged, however, that they’re still grappling to understand the pathogen, which has infected multiple medical workers.

“We are still on a learning curve,” said Gao Fu, head of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “The disease will continue to develop,” he said, adding that it has already changed from its early stages of detection.

However, while Beijing continues with its transparency act to try and calm the panic, China’s Weibo users have been expressing their disappointment in their government in unusually blunt terms (considering the amount of censorship that goes on). Users on Weibo and WeChat complained about being left in the dark, and accused the government of endangering lives by waiting to disclose that the virus can travel between humans.

Overnight, the first instances of the virus were reported in Macau, and according to the SCMP, health authorities in Hong Kong are carrying out their third test to confirm that a patient from Wuhan is indeed infected with the virus.

Some 440 cases of the SARS-like virus have been confirmed so far across 13 Chinese provinces. China’s medical authorities have 1,394 patients are under medical observation.

All of the deaths so far have been from Wuhan, a city of 11 million people at the center of the outbreak. They include eight men, aged 61 to 87, and one 48-year-old woman. Almost all of those who have succumbed to the virus had preexisting medical conditions.

The most up-to-date map from the NYT (which still doesn’t reflect all of the known cases) illustrates just how far the virus has spread both within China, and abroad.

Following confirmation from the CDC that the first case of the virus had been diagnosed in the US, President Trump said during an interview from Davos that his administration has everything “totally under control.”

“We have it totally under control,” President Trump says after the CDC confirmed the first U.S. case of the coronavirus that has sickened hundreds of people in China. #Davos2020 https://t.co/QYmMpUcbFP pic.twitter.com/iuaQ1DikPB

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 22, 2020

We’re still waiting to see if the WHO, which is meeting Wednesday, will declare the outbreak a dangerous pandemic. The outbreak began in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China. Nine have died already. But how many more will succumb before this latest viral plague is contained?

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

French intellectual Renaud Camus has been given a 2 month suspended prison sentence for saying that mass immigration into Europe represents an “invasion.”

Camus will only avoid jail by paying 1800 euros to two “anti-racist” organizations, SOS Racisme and the LICRA (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism).

The writer, who is the author of Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement), was charged with “public incitement to hate or violence on the basis of origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion.”

The conviction stems from a November 2017 speech in Colombey-les-deux Eglises to the National Council of European Resistance in which Camus declared, “Immigration has become an invasion.”

“The irreversible colonization is demographic colonization, by the replacement of the population,” said the author, adding,

“The ethnic substitution, the great replacement, is the most important event in the history of our nation since it has existed; as with other people, if the story continues, it will not be that of France.”

Camus also called for a “national consensus of resistance” to oppose Islamization in “the struggle for the salvation of our common civilization, Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, Greek-Latin, Judeo-Christian.”

The part of Camus’ speech that specifically garnered the attention of judges was when he talked about European people being replaced.

Camus said mass immigration “is the substitution, the tendency to substitute everything with its emulator, normalized, standardized, interchangeable: The original with its copy, the authentic with its imitation, the true with the false, the mothers with surrogate mothers, the culture with free time and entertainment.”

France suffers Islamic terror attacks on such a routine basis that it’s barely even an important news story anymore. Many of those terrorists are radicalized by mosques that escape any police scrutiny, but Camus must be punished for his crime of opinion.

And there you have it. Free speech is now a crime in France.

*  *  *

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PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PWC) Annual Global CEO Survey has revealed that pessimism among more than half of the CEOs surveyed across the world are bearish on the global economy. 

PWC surveyed 1,581 chief executives in 83 territories, found 53% projected a decline in the rate of global economic growth this year. Only 27% of CEOs are “very confident” that 2020 will turn out to be a prosperous year. The number of bearish CEOs is at the highest level since 2009. 

PWC said the findings are “compelling because the change in CEOs’ revenue confidence has proven to be a reliable indicator of both the direction and the level of global GDP growth in the year ahead.” 

The study was conducted from September to October 2019, published Monday as the World Economic Forum begins in Davos, Switzerland, and the IMF released its report slashing global GDP growth for the 6th consecutive time. 

Pessimism was on a global scale, in every region of the world, including Africa, Asia-Pacific, Central, and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North America, and Western Europe. CEOs were the most bearish in North America, with at least 63% indicating global growth would decline over the next 12 months. 

CEO’s confidence in internal revenue growth for the next 12 months and three years, along with global GDP growth, has declined over the last two years to levels not seen since after the financial crisis. The subdued outlook suggests that the global economy is stuck in a low-growth period, where investments by executives are being dialed back as macroeconomic headwinds persist. 

PWC ran a regression analysis on the change in CEO confidence and found that global GDP growth is expected to decline this year. 

In a separate report, WEF President Borge Brende warned the world is “faced with a synchronized slowdown in the global economy. And we’re also faced with a situation where the ammunition that we have to fight a potential global recession is more limited.”

We noted last week that 97% of US CFOs surveyed by Deloitte believe a recession could arrive by the end of the year. 

The melt-up in stocks is happening at a time when executives are selling shares at the highest degree in nearly two decades – comes at a time when the market’s most important pillars of support – buybacks – are declining. 

What could go wrong?

Via AlMasdarNews.com,

Some Syrian fighters that went to fight in Libya have since abandoned the war and fled to Italy, opposition media sites claimed, as cited by Al-Watan.

According to the reports, at least 17 of the Syrian fighters have already arrived in Italy after spending a short period of time inside Libya.

The reports said that the Syrian fighters intentionally accepted the deployment to Libya in order to later escape into Italy.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), some 2,400 Syrian fighters have already traveled to Libya thus far.

Another 1,200 fighters from a number of factions in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are expected to make their way to Libya in the coming weeks. Middle East-based reporter for The Investigative Journal Lindsey Snell was told by a Libyan National Army (LNA) source:

“The mercenaries don’t believe that they will be returning to Turkey or Syria, so trying to get to Europe is the most logical option for them,” the source said.

Our #TIJ Exclusive; 3,000 Syrian mercenaries flew to Libya from Turkey. Cost of the trip from az-Zawiyah, Libya to Italy rose from $700 to $1300 “The mercenaries don’t believe that they will be returning to Turkey or Syria, 147 mercenaries paid down payments go to Europe” https://t.co/YLVoWTjuqT

— Mohamed Fahmy (@MFFahmy11) January 21, 2020

“And now, according to the LNA source, it appears that one escaped ISIS member managed to join a Turkish-backed militant faction bound for Libya and attempt to make his way to Europe,” The Investigative Journal reported further.

Last month, Bloomberg News released a story about Turkey offering contracts to Syrian fighters in order to help the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA).

Since then, several fighters have been seen inside of Libya, most notably near the capital city of Tripoli.

ISNA News reports Tuesday that an Iranian lawmaker offered $3 million for a bounty on President Trump’s head after the assassination earlier this month that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds military force and one of the most influential people in the country.

“On behalf of the people of Kerman province, we will pay a $3 million reward in cash to whoever kills Trump,” lawmaker Ahmad Hamzeh told parliament. 

There was no mention from Hamzeh if the bounty had official backing from Iran’s clerical leaders.

Kerman is the capital of the Kerman Province in Iran – the 10th most populous city. It’s also the region where Soleimani was born. 

“If we had nuclear weapons today, we would be protected from threats … We should put the production of long-range missiles capable of carrying unconventional warheads on our agenda. This is our natural right,” the lawmaker added. 

During Solemani’s funeral — NBC News’ Tehran Bureau Chief Ali Arouzi tweeted that one of the funeral organizers said if all Iranians donate $1 each, they could raise an $80 million bounty for President Trump’s head. 

At Solemani’s funeral procession in Mashad one of the organisers called on all Iranian to donate $1 each in order to gather an $80million bounty on President Trumps head. pic.twitter.com/Qb7AAfAiww

— Ali Arouzi (@aliarouzi) January 5, 2020

It seems Kathy Griffin was only three years too early…