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ysteria reigns supreme at the dawn of the Trump era, with the President rebranded across the whole ideological spectrum as an American Mao or even an American Hitler. Let’s step away from this “American [media] carnage” to examine a few facts concerning the unofficial G2: US-China relations. A case can be made that Beijing has already landed a 1-2-3 punch, pre-empting the possibility of a US-initiated trade war.

It started with Jack Ma’s by now notorious visit to Trump Tower, when he developed his idea of helping small American businesses sell their products in China and across Asia through Alibaba’s network, thus creating at least “1 million jobs” (Ma’s number) in the US. Then came President Xi Jinping’s masterclass at Davos, where he positioned himself as Ronald Xi Reagan selling “inclusive” globalization to the stalwarts of international turbo-capitalism. Finally Ma again, also at Davos, came up with a crystal clear, cause-and-effect formulation on globalization and US economic distress.

Ma said, “In the past 30 years, companies like IBM, Cisco and Microsoft made tons of money.” The problem was how the US spent the wealth: “In the past 30 years, America has had 13 wars at a cost of US$14.2 trillion.” So what if the US “had spent part of that money on building up their infrastructure, helping white-collar and blue-collar workers? You’re supposed to spend money on your own people. It’s not that other countries steal American jobs. It is your strategy – that you did not distribute the money in a proper way.” In the meantime, something quite extraordinary happened at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, one day before Xi’s Davos speech. China Investment Corporation (CIC) chairman Ding Xuedong, referring to Trump’s much-vaunted US$1 trillion infrastructure building plan, said that created fabulous investment opportunities for China and his US$800 billion sovereign fund. According to Ding, Washington will need at least an astonishing US$8 trillion to fund the infrastructure spectacular. Federal government and US private investors are not enough: “They have to rely on foreign investors.” And CIC is ready for it – focusing already on “alternative investments in the US”.

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reaffirmed what the U.S. intelligence community has been saying for years: Iran has no nuclear weapons program, is not building a nuclear weapon and has not even made a decision to do so. The annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment,” which compiles the collective conclusions of all American intelligence agencies, has long held that Iran maintains defensive capabilities and has a military doctrine of deterrence and retaliation, but is not an aggressive state actor and has no intention of beginning a conflict, let alone triggering a nuclear apocalypse. While the U.S. intelligence community assumes that Iran already has the technical capability to produce nuclear weapons, “should a decision be made to do so,” Clapper’s report states (as it has for years now), “We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.” Were this decision ever to be made, Iran wouldn’t even be able to secretly start building a nuclear bomb. “[W]e assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU [weapons-grade uranium] before this activity is discovered,” Clapper told Congress.

Even Clapper, who is no stranger to alarmism, acknowledges that “Iran prefers to avoid direct confrontation with the United States” and would only act defensively “in response to perceived offenses.”  Iran’s “decision making is guided by a cost-benefit approach” based on considerations of “security, prestige and influence, as well as the international political and security environment,” Clapper said, thereby dismissing allegations that the Islamic Republic is an irrational martyr state. Speaking at a national security conference in Herzliya on Thursday, Israel’s own military intelligence chief concurred with Clapper’s assessment. While sure to continue advancing its nuclear program in the coming year, he said, Iran had not actually decided to build a bomb. Such findings are wholly consistent with past assessments.

     In the last 24 hours the controversy over the planned speech by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to both houses of Congress on March 3 to rebut the president’s policy on Iran has blown up to a new level. Muted outrage over the invitation has turned into open rage. The opposition to the speech by major Israel supporters across the political spectrum, liberal J Street, center-right Jeffrey Goldberg, and hard-right Abraham Foxman, all of whom say the speech-planners have put the US-Israel relationship at risk by making it a political controversy in the U.S., has been conveyed to the Democratic establishment. The New York Times and Chris Matthews both landed on the story last night, a full week after it broke, to let us know what a disaster the speech would be if it’s ever delivered. So these media are acting to protect the special relationship by upping the pressure to cancel the speech. With even AIPAC washing its hands of the speech, it sure looks as if Israel supporters want an exit from this fiasco. Jettisoning Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer or cancelling the speech would seem like a small price to pay in the news cycle next to a spectacle in which leading Democrats are forced to line up against Netanyahu in Washington, even as they file in and out of the AIPAC policy conference and praise Israel to the skies.

n the last 24 hours the controversy over the planned speech by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to both houses of Congress on March 3 to rebut the president’s policy on Iran has blown up to a new level. Muted outrage over the invitation has turned into open rage. The opposition to the speech by major Israel supporters across the political spectrum, liberal J Street, center-right Jeffrey Goldberg, and hard-right Abraham Foxman, all of whom say the speech-planners have put the US-Israel relationship at risk by making it a political controversy in the U.S., has been conveyed to the Democratic establishment. The New York Times and Chris Matthews both landed on the story last night, a full week after it broke, to let us know what a disaster the speech would be if it’s ever delivered. So these media are acting to protect the special relationship by upping the pressure to cancel the speech. With even AIPAC washing its hands of the speech, it sure looks as if Israel supporters want an exit from this fiasco. Jettisoning Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer or cancelling the speech would seem like a small price to pay in the news cycle next to a spectacle in which leading Democrats are forced to line up against Netanyahu in Washington, even as they file in and out of the AIPAC policy conference and praise Israel to the skies. Here are the developments

The Iraqi army has been paying salaries to at least 50,000 soldiers who don’t exist, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Sunday, an indication of the level of corruption that permeates an institution that the United States has spent billions equipping and arming. A preliminary investigation into “ghost soldiers” — whose salaries are being drawn but who are not in military service — revealed the tens of thousands of false names on Defense Ministry rolls, Abadi told parliament Sunday. Follow-up investigations are expected to uncover “more and more,” he added.

Abadi, who took power in September, is under pressure to stamp out the graft that flourished in the armed forces under his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. Widespread corruption has been blamed for contributing to the collapse of four of the army’s 14 divisions in June in the face of an offensive by Islamic State extremists.

The United States is encouraging Abadi to create a leaner, more efficient military as the Pentagon requests $1.2 billion to train and equip the Iraqi army next year. The United States spent more than $20 billion on the force from the 2003 invasion until U.S. troops withdrew at the end of 2011. With entry-level soldiers in Iraq drawing salaries of about $600 a month, the practice of “ghost soldiers” is likely to be costing Iraq at least $380 million a year — though officials say that’s probably only a fraction of the true expense.

This August recess has not produced the kind of fiery town hall-style meetings that greeted lawmakers in 2009 before their vote on the Affordable Care Act, but in one small but influential segment of the electorate, Jewish voters, it has been brutal. Differences of opinion among Jewish Americans may be nothing new, but the vitriol surrounding the accord between Iran and six world powers has become so intense that leaders now speak openly of long-term damage to Jewish organizations, and possibly to American-Israeli relations.

On your second day in office, you led the country forward by issuing executive orders banning torture and other forms of abusive interrogation. Many of us were in the Oval Office that day, proud to stand behind you as you signaled an end to the misguided policies of the post-9/11 period. As retired generals and admirals, we have worked since that day to build a stronger, more durable consensus against torture in our country so that, at a future moment when our nation is tested, the American people will reject calls to resort to such abuses. We welcomed your public support for declassification of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s study on the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program. We believe that the American people must understand fully what the program entailed, how it came to be, and what was gained—and lost— because of it. We write to you today because we believe your strong record against torture is being undermined by members of your own administration. In part because there has been so little transparency about the torture program, some former government officials continue to claim that so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques were necessary to disrupt terrorist plots and save lives. Now one of the key proponents of this false narrative that “torture works,” the former CIA director George Tenet, is reportedly coordinating with the current leadership of the CIA to discredit the Senate intelligence committee’s report. CIA Director John Brennan recently told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to "take issue” with parts of the report that he “believe[s] are inaccurate or misleading."

It is understandable that current and former employees of the CIA feel protective of the agency’s reputation and embarrassed by what the Senate study contains. The U.S. military’s examination of torture in its ranks after the Abu Ghraib scandal was painful; it was also necessary to the health of the institution. The stakes are too high to allow the intelligence community to circle the wagons and launch a concerted campaign to undermine the report’s credibility. Ultimately, an American public that understands the high costs of torture is the best guarantee against a future president rescinding your executive order and treating torture as a viable policy option. There is no substitute for leadership from the top on an issue like this. You have set the direction for your administration that torture is unacceptable. But for that leadership to have a lasting impact on the direction of our country, beyond your administration, you must act to ensure that Americans learn the right lessons from our past. We urge you to make clear in no uncertain terms that you expect CIA Director John Brennan to support an expansive declassification of the report and an honest reckoning with its findings.

Despite a mounting civilian death toll and increased opposition from civil liberties activists, the US Air Force has announced that it plans to double its number of drone squadrons.In October, the Intercept released a report outlining the more secretive aspects of the US drone program. Compiled by a source within the intelligence community, the report offers an in-depth look at who, precisely, the US is targeting – and how accurate those missions really are.

"During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets," the report reads. This, of course, wasn’t the first indication of the drone program’s death toll. Analysis conducted by human rights group Reprieve in 2014 found that in targeting only 41 men, 1,147 people were killed by US airstrikes. But not only is the American drone war not winding down, it’s actually about to double in scope. According to Gen. Herbert Carlisle, head of US Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, the US Air Force is about to double its number of drone squadrons, adding roughly 3,000 personnel to pilot and maintain new UAVs which would be stationed across the globe. The plan calls for an expansion over the next five years, and while it still has to be approved by Congressional lawmakers, the proposal would cost taxpayers $3 billion.

Carlisle says the plan is necessary because the Air Force is currently too busy running attack missions and is unable to meet the rising demand for surveillance missions. "Right now, 100% of the time, when a MQ-1 or MQ-9 crew goes in, all they do is combat," he said, according to the LA Times. "So we really have to build the capacity." The proposal includes adding 75 Reapers to the Air Force’s fleet of 175 Reapers and 150 Predators, and could even entail the construction of a new drone operations center in Suffolk, England, pending approval from the British government.

U.S. senators openly castigated the Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday for delaying the release of a long-awaited report on torture and secret prisons during the Bush era. Despite earlier comments that the committee, which commissioned the report, and the CIA were reaching an agreement on portions the controversial 6,000-page study, progress on its declassification is once again stymied. Meanwhile, long-simmering disagreements about the accuracy of the interrogation report have exploded into public view.  "I'm convinced more than ever that we need to declassify the report so that those with a political agenda can no longer manipulate public opinion," said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), referring to the CIA. "He's mad. I'm mad. We're all mad," added Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-WV).

The interrogation report is the product of three year's work and $40 million in preparation costs. Ever since its completion one year ago last week, there's been strong disagreement among intelligence officials and lawmakers over how much information the public should be allowed to read,

Last week, the CIA insisted it was "prepared to work with the Committee." It highlighted the written response it gave to the committee in late June. "Our response agreed with a number of the study's findings, but also detailed significant errors in the study," said CIA spokesman Dean Boyd. That public remark concerning factual errors infuriated Senate Democrats despite the fact that it's been the CIA's position for months. "I am outraged that the CIA continues to make misleading statements about the committee's study of the CIA's interrogation program," said Heinrich. "There is only one instance in which the CIA pointed out a factual error in the study -- a minor error that has been corrected. For the rest, where the committee and the CIA differ, we differ on interpretation and conclusions from an agreed upon factual record."

The United States’ Department of Justice, on Thursday, announced that it will cut back and ultimately terminate contracts with private prison companies. The announcement caused stock prices  of corporations involved in America’s prison-industrial complex to slump.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates noted that private prisons don’t provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources and don’t save substantially on costs. Yates posted a blog, citing that the dwindling federal prison population as one of the drivers of the shift in policy. She added that the population in bureau or private facilities had gone down from about 220,000 in 2013 to 195,000 inmates. The DoD’s announcement about the beginning of the end of the U.S. prison-industrial complex had an immediate impact on the industry leaders’ stocks. At 2:05 p.m. in New York City, Corrections Corporation slumped 37 percent to $17.06 after it earlier plummeted 52 percent. The real estate investment trust’s biggest intraday loss in nearly 16 years. The GEO Group slumped 38 percent to $20.14, after earlier falling 50 percent, its largest drop since the stock began trading in 1994. Corrections Corp.’s report noted 24 government contracts were set to expire in December of this year, as were 10 more that were not eligible for renewal. The contracts were worth $594 million in revenue for the single corporation — 33% of the company’s total revenue. GEO Group currently receives 45% of its total revenue from government agencies.

A substantial rise in incarceration rates, and a boom for the prison-industrial complex came as a result of the failed war on drugs. The prison population grew with a whopping 800 percent between 1980 and 2003. It is noteworthy that privately run prisons have not only shown to be substandard, they have also gained notoriety for abuse of prisoners and rights violations. However, Yates noted that prison populations often grew at a far faster rate than the Bureau of Prisons could accommodate in their own facilities. She claimed that the bureau began contracting with privately operated correctional institutions to confine some federal inmates.  By 2013, as both the federal prison population and the proportion of federal prisoners in private facilities reached their peak, the bureau was housing approximately 15 percent of its population, or nearly 30,000 inmates, in privately operated prisons.

Secretary of state will use Nato summit to seek ‘world coalition’Saudi king: terror ‘in Europe in a month and US a month after’US operations in Iraq costing $7.5m a dayUK PM will seek new powers to tackle Isis

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon have ordered the army to continue preparing for a possible military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities at a cost of at least 10 billion shekels ($2.89 billion) this year, despite the talks between Iran and the West, according to recent statements by senior military officers. Three Knesset members who were present at Knesset joint committee hearings on Israel Defense Forces plans that were held in January and February say they learned during the hearings that 10 billion shekels to 12 billion shekels of the defense budget would be allocated this year for preparations for a strike on Iran, approximately the same amount that was allocated in 2013.

Some MKs asked the army’s deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, and planning directorate official Brig. Gen. Agai Yehezkel whether they felt there was justification for investing so much money in those preparations, said the MKs present at the meetings, who asked that their names be withheld because of the sensitivity of the issue. They said some lawmakers also asked whether the interim agreement reached between Iran and the six powers in November 2013, and the ongoing negotiations for a full nuclear accord, had caused any change in the IDF’s preparations. The IDF representatives said the army had received a clear directive from government officials from the political echelon – meaning Netanyahu and Ya’alon – to continue readying for a possible independent strike by Israel on the Iranian nuclear sites, regardless of the talks now happening between Iran and the West, the three MKs said.

Ya’alon recently indicated during a speech at Tel Aviv University that his view has shifed and he is now likely to support a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran, in light of his assessment that the Obama administration will not do so. “We think that the United States should be the one leading the campaign against Iran,” Ya’alon said this week. “But the U.S. has entered talks with them and unfortunately, in the haggling in the Persian bazaar, the Iranians were better. ... Therefore, on this matter, we have to behave as though we have nobody to look out for us but ourselves.” The second round of nuclear talks opened in Vienna on Tuesday, with the participation of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Zarif and senior diplomats from the six powers.

Roger Stern, a professor at the University of Tulsa National Energy Policy Institute, wrote a study in 2010 in which he estimated that the US had spent $8 trillion on protecting oil cargoes in the Persian Gulf since 1976, when its military presence in the region was boosted following the first Arab oil embargo. This is all despite the fact that only 10% of the oil passing through the straits is actually destined for the US.Stern explained the true meaning behind the US’s reasons for heading to the Gulf en masse in an interview: “The fear grew out of a belief not just in a global peak oil, but a strong CIA conviction, that was shared by the National Security Council, that the Soviets were running out of oil, that their production was going to tank in just a few years and the Soviets had no choice but to march to the Persian gulf to get oil, so that was the rationale for the idea that a force was needed.”

Gazprom would lose nearly $3 billion in 2016 if the EU accepts a Ukrainian proposal to begin large-scale reverse gas flows through Slovakia to Ukraine, a UralSib report said Thursday. In late April, Ukraine and Slovakia signed a reverse flow agreement that would make use of an old, unused pipeline to begin exporting 2 billion cubic meters, or bcm, to Kiev in October. Exports to Ukraine along this pipeline would rise to 8 bcm by early 2015. According to a Kommersant report, Ukrainian energy officials recently forwarded a plan before the EU Commission that would allow Ukraine to increase reverse flows via Slovakia to 30 bcm. Uralsib estimates that Gazprom's 2016 EBITDA — or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — would fall by $3 billion, or 6 percent, in 2016 if Ukraine and the EU agreed to the tactic. Gazprom would end up selling higher volumes of gas to the EU, where prices range from $360 to $380 per thousand cubic meters and gas is subject to a 30 percent export duty, rather than Ukraine's price of $385, where there is no export duty and transportation costs are lower. Ukraine would be able to take advantage of low EU gas demand during the summer to fill its 30 bcm underground storage facilities, thereby replacing the 28 bcm it imports from Gazprom each year, the report found.

EU Energy Commission GЯnther Oettinger has said that such a large-scale reversal would be in direct violation of an agreement between Slovakia's Eustream and Gazprom Export. Ukraine, however, insists that the reverse flow is ensured by the EU's Third Energy Package — which, among other things, stipulates equal access to pipelines for gas suppliers. On Tuesday, Gazprom finalized a deal to build the Austrian branch of the massive South Stream gas pipeline, which, if completed, will allow Russian gas deliveries to Europe to bypass Ukraine altogether.

It’s time to ponder a troubling possibility: What should we do if the Islamic State wins? By “wins,” I don’t mean it spreads like wildfire throughout the Muslim world, eventually establishing a caliphate from Baghdad to Rabat and beyond. That’s what its leaders say they are going to do, but revolutionary ambitions are not reality and that possibility is particularly far-fetched. Rather, an Islamic State victory would mean that the group retained power in the areas it now controls and successfully defied outside efforts to “degrade and destroy” it. So the question is: What do we do if the Islamic State becomes a real state and demonstrates real staying power? That possibility is looking more likely these days, given Baghdad’s inability to mount a successful counteroffensive. If MIT’s Barry Posen is correct (and he usually is), the Iraqi Army no longer exists as a meaningful fighting force. Not only does this reveal the bankruptcy of the U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces (and the collective failure of all the commanders who led this effort and kept offering upbeat assessments of progress), but it also means that only a large-scale foreign intervention is likely to roll back and ultimately eliminate the Islamic State. This will not happen unless a coalition of Arab states agrees to commit thousands of their own troops to the battle, because the United States will not and should not do the fighting for states whose stake in the outcome exceeds its own.

Don’t get me wrong — I’d be as pleased as anyone if the Islamic State were decisively defeated and its violent message utterly discredited. But one needs to plan not just for what one would like to see happen, but also for the very real possibility that we can’t actually achieve what we want — or at least not at a cost that we consider acceptable. So what do we do if the Islamic State succeeds in holding on to its territory and becoming a real state? Posen says that the United States (as well as others) should deal with the Islamic State the same way it has dealt with other revolutionary state-building movements: with a policy of containment. I agree.

Calling the status quo “unsustainable for both parties and for the region,” Secretary of State John Kerry said here on Tuesday that the United States was working “to lower the temperature” between Israelis and Palestinians, amid Palestinian and European efforts for United Nations Security Council resolutions that would pressure Israel on the timing and shape of peace talks.Mr. Kerry said Washington was keeping its options open and had made “no determinations” about any resolutions on the Middle East. He spoke in a brief news conference after three days of talks with European foreign ministers and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the midst of an election campaign until mid-March.With the Palestinians pushing a draft resolution through the Jordanians, and the Europeans, led by the French, drafting another, softer resolution, Mr. Kerry said the United States was exploring where there might be common ground.

The Palestinians said Sunday that they would press for a Security Council vote on Wednesday on a resolution, proposed through Jordan, that calls for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied land within two years. But since then, the Palestinians have been vague about timing and may simply be pushing for a European resolution closer to the Palestinian position.Earlier Tuesday, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, met in Paris with the Arab League delegation and the former Israeli president Shimon Peres to discuss a European draft resolution, which is still being negotiated but calls for a rapid resumption of peace talks, with a two-year deadline for a settlement and “parameters for negotiations.” Mr. Fabius said that “it’s high time” for peace talks to resume and that France was seeking “a resolution that everyone can get behind.”The world should wait for the Israeli elections, Mr. Peres said. “There is a need and time for a Palestinian state,” he said. “I think it would be better to reach it through an agreement rather than through an imposition.”Washington prefers to wait until the elections are over and rejects any deadlines; Israel is pressing the United States to veto any Security Council action that limits negotiations.

But speaking to reporters on Tuesday night at a Palestine Liberation Organization dinner in Beit Jala, in the West Bank, Mohammed Shtayyeh, a senior Palestinian leader and former negotiator, dismissed the notion of waiting until after the elections. “We are a bit concerned that certain parties are really intending to try to waste time,” he said.Mr. Shtayyeh added that the Palestinians and Jordanians were also working with the French to try to come up with a common resolution, though significant differences remain.

2015 has not been good to Russia; the spread between Brent and WTI is gone in anticipation of US exports and both benchmarks have flirted with sub $45 prices. A hostage to such prices, the ruble has yet to begin its turnaround and the state’s finances are in extreme disarray. President Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings remain sky-high, but his country has not faced such difficult times since he took office more than 15 years ago. Since the turn of the new year the ruble has fallen over 13 percent and Russia’s central bank and finance department are running out of options – to date, policy makers have hiked interest rates to their highest level since the 1998 Russian financial crisis and embarked on a 1 trillion-ruble ($15 billion) bank recapitalization plan to little effect. Their latest, and most dramatic, plan is to abandon the dollar – at least somewhat.

In late December, the Kremlin ordered five large state-owned exporters – including oil and gas giants Rosneft and Gazprom – to sell their foreign currency reserves. Specifically, the companies must bring their foreign reserves to October levels by the beginning of March. To comply, the exporters may have to sell a combined $1 billion per day until March. Private companies have not yet been hit by these soft capital controls, but have instead been advised to manage their foreign exchange maneuvers responsibly. More recently, the Kremlin announced it will open its $88 billion sovereign wealth fund and flip it for rubles. The plan will see Russia convert as much as $8 billion to rubles (~500 billion) over a two-month span and place them in deposits for banks. Overall, the move will provide the Russian economy with some much needed liquidity and could speed up the healing if oil were to rebound, but it sends the wrong signals to investors and Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukaev believes the country’s credit rating will soon be marked below investment grade.

In any case, the move does little for the country’s ailing oil industry. The domestic market is projected to shrink amid the economic slowdown, and competition for market share abroad is increasingly competitive. Production forecasts are no rosier and the EIA predicts Russian crude production growth will be among the worst performers in both 2015 and 2016 – contrasted by continued growth in North America. Russia’s gas industry has fared no better. Gazprom’s 2014 output was historically awful and LNG is ever more a counter to the country’s pipeline politics.

But, if Yatsenyuk is either a Russophobic ignoramus or liar who spreads filthy propaganda about Russians and Russian history to people who have no sense of history, what are we to call the editors, columnists and reporters at the New York Times, who do the very same thing? The Times commenced its latest propaganda campaign against Russia on 28 November 2013, when it published an overwrought editorial titled, “Ukraine Backs Down.” Clearly, some Russophobe’s head must have exploded. Who, but an outraged Russophobe would conclude that President Vladimir Putin’s “strong-arm tactics” against Ukraine would cost Russia its chance “to find its place in the democratic and civilized world.”

China and Thailand further strengthened ties with an agreement on the China – Thailand Railway Cooperation. The announcement was made during a visit of Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha to Beijing and talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China and Thailand penned two Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) last Friday, during the visit of Chinese Prime Minister Li Kequiang’s visit to the Thai capital Bangkok. The planned dual railway track will span 734 km and 133 km, connecting northeastern Thailand’s Nong Khai province, Bangkok and the eastern Rayong province.

For China’s part, the railway will facilitate greater access to southern Asian markets, but Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and in part Myanmar are also beneficiaries in terms of increased export possibilities to China, note several analysts. The project is estimated to cost 10.6 billion U.S. dollars, reports Xinhua.

A record $100 billion in withdrawals of Treasury bills is raising speculation that the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs are yanking their money out of the United States to avoid upcoming sanctions over Ukraine. The massive outflow over the past week came as President Obama and other top US officials repeatedly warned Russia would face a “cost” if it didn’t reverse course in Ukraine. The total amount of foreign-held US Treasury securities dropped to $2.86 trillion — lowest in more than a year. Last year, the most moved out in a week was $32 billion.

Analysts said that if the switch was made by Russia, it would represent about 80 percent of that nation’s US Treasury holdings. “This is only speculation on our part, but it seems likely that the Russian authorities had more than $100 billion of Treasury debt in custody at the Fed, and it doesn’t seem implausible that they moved it to a jurisdiction where it would be less vulnerable to a US asset freeze,” Lou Crandall at Wrightson ICAP LLC told The Wall Street Journal.

After six weeks of hype, the morning after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress feels a bit anticlimactic.

Here in Israel —well, how much is left to say? Every aspect of the speech has been discussed for weeks, except for its substance, and it was fairly light on that. With an early election looming on March 17, politicians have already staked out their positions. Hundreds of retired generals and security officials came out this week in sharp opposition to Netanyahu. The key question in Israel now is not what Netanyahu said, but how long everyone keeps talking about it. Despite the controversy, the prime minister wants to keep the story in the headlines. Recent polls have not been encouraging for his Likud party. A Knesset Channel survey released hours before the speech showed him winning just 21 seats; his main center-left competitor, the Zionist Camp, was polling at 24.

Two weeks before the election, voters are defecting for centrist parties focused on the economy, which remains their top priority: 56 percent of Israelis told the Knesset Channel they will vote on socioeconomic issues, compared with 30 percent on Iran’s nuclear program. Likud is keen to avoid these issues; indeed, it hasn’t even bothered to release an economic platform. After six years in office, Netanyahu is widely seen as responsible for the skyrocketing cost of living. The party believes that it can win an extra seat, perhaps two, by keeping the focus on Iran. It sounds trivial—but in a 120-seat legislature divided amongst eleven parties, that small boost could give Netanyahu the margin he needs to form the next government. Isaac Herzog, the main challenger for the premiership, delivered a brief rebuttal last night from a town near the Gaza border. “The painful truth is that, behind the applause, Netanyahu remains alone. And the negotiations with Iran will continue without any Israeli involvement,” he said.