“The real reason the germs spread in winter”, “Iraq is flooding America with lots of oil”, “Russia set to miss World Indoor Athletics Championships”, “Kazakhstan's 75-year-old president tells civil servants to retire at 63”, “Donald Trump's Hatemongering.

bbc.com. “The real reason the germs spread in winter" - Flu season is a fact of life – but until recently, no one knew why. The answer hinges on the disgusting ways that germs pass between people. It begins as surely as the leaves dropping off the trees. As the mercury drops and the sunlight fades, the sniffles set in. At best, it's just a cold that leaves us with the strange feeling that we've swallowed a cheese grater; if we're unlucky, our body is wracked with a high fever and aching limbs for up a week or longer. We have flu.

money.cnn.com. “Iraq is flooding America with lots of oil"- The U.S. more than doubled its imports of oil from Iraq between August and September, according to a Platts analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration statistics. The dramatic increase in Iraqi oil imports is only adding to the already-massive supply glut that has pushed down oil prices. Crude oil prices sank to a four-month low of $40.06 a barrel this week and they're down 12% in November alone.

theguardian.com. “Kazakhstan's 75-year-old president tells civil servants to retire at 63" - Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is exempted from laws limiting presidential terms, criticises those 'holding on' to posts, reports Eurasianet.org

“Russia set to miss World Indoor Athletics Championships" - Russian athletes face missing the 2016 World Indoor Championships because a review of its anti-doping programme will not be finished by March. Russia was provisionally suspended from world athletics after an independent World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report alleged "state-sponsored doping". IAAF inspectors will start work next year to decide whether Russia can be re-admitted to competition. But the World Indoors start on 17 March in Portland, Oregon.

motherjones.com. “Donald Trump's Hatemongering Moves on to African-Americans" - Having already played the hate card against Mexicans and Muslims—and getting crackerjack results—Donald Trump has apparently decided to move on to African-Americans. I don't know what the "Crime Statistics Bureau" in San Francisco is, and I don't think I want to know, but one of the most well-established facts about murder in the United States is that it's pretty racially segregated. Whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks, etc. But today Trump decided to tweet the CSB graphic on the right, for no readily apparent reason. And wouldn't you know it: it contains a wee racial error. In 2014, which is the latest full-year homicide data available from the FBI, 82 percent of whites were killed by other whites and 15 percent were killed by blacks.

bloomberg.com. “Dubai Banks Brace for Bad Debt as Borrowers Flee the Country" - Rising number of small business owners are abandoning debts. Slowing economy and lack of bankruptcy law prompting 'skips'. Dubai's slowing economy, the rout in commodities and strict debt repayment laws are reviving a phenomenon that symbolized the emirate's crash in 2009: “skips," or business owners who quietly leave the country to avoid punishment for defaulting on loans. A rising number of smaller and medium-sized company owners are abandoning the United Arab Emirates without repaying debt, according to Emirates NBD PJSC, the country's second-largest bank. People in the SME sector may have left behind 5 billion dirhams ($1.36 billion) of loans this year, Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, Chief Executive Officer of Mashreqbank PSC and chairman of the U.A.E. Banks Federation, said in Dubai on Monday.