ITALY - Conservative Catholics from America headed to the Vatican to possibly donate big bucks to the church if cardinals choose 'the right pope' to succeed Pope Francis. As 133 cardinals who are eligible to vote prepare to take part in the conclave on Wednesday, wealthy MAGA Catholics have descended on Rome to have their say. These conservatives, some of whom are linked to the controversial Project 2025, were making a pilgrimage to Rome to take part in the annual America Week fundraising efforts. But the timing of the Pope's death meant they were in Rome for the intense pre-conclave period in which electors are intensely lobbied before they head into the Sistine Chapel to make their decision. During an event held by the foundation, some of the group's wealthy members - who must donate at least $1million in order to gain membership - spoke openly about their preferences for the next pope. According to the Daily Beast, one guest said: 'This room could raise a billion to help the church, so long as we have the right pope.'

INDIA - 'The world should be worried': How tit-for-tat strikes between hated rivals India and Pakistan could quickly spiral into nuclear Armageddon - as countries trade attacks and teeter on the brink of all-out war. Both possess roughly comparable nuclear stockpiles of around 170 warheads but while India maintains a 'no first use' doctrine, Pakistan harbours no such restraint - raising global alarm over where this latest exchange could lead. Explosions lit the night sky over Pakistan shortly after midnight as India launched strikes on nine sites in response to last month's Islamist terror attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, which killed 26 civilians. More than two dozen civilians in Pakistan and at least ten in India have already been reported dead, with observers fearing the conflict could tip into a full-scale war that 'the world cannot afford', according to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres. Researchers warned in 2019 that a nuclear exchange in such a densely populated region could leave 125 million people dead within days.

AFGHANISTAN - The Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over the last year, boosting its cash supply by 14 percent amid the return of Afghanistan as a central safe haven for terrorist organizations across the Middle East, according to a US government watchdog group. The repercussions of the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to reverberate across the war-torn country, with multiple al Qaeda affiliates accessing American-supplied "weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army," according to a new oversight report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The United States left 78 aircraft, 40,000 military vehicles, and over 300,000 weapons in Afghanistan in a withdrawal that saw 13 American service members lose their lives. According to the SIGAR report the Taliban transferred many of these arms directly to terrorist affiliates, while others made their way to the black market.

UK - Asylum accommodation - including hotels - will cost the taxpayer £15 billion over 10 years, spending watchdogs have revealed. The overall bill is more than triple the Home Office's original estimate, data from the National Audit Office (NAO) showed. Contracts were originally forecast to cost £4.5 billion over a decade from 2019 but are now expected to run to £15.3 billion over same period, after the Channel crisis exploded. It means that on average the taxpayer will spend £4,191,780 a day on housing asylum seekers over the life of the contracts. 'The number of people seeking asylum who are accommodated by the Home Office increased from around 47,000 in December 2019 to around 110,000 in December 2024,' it added.

GERMANY - Newly elected German chancellor Friedrich Merz has scrapped Angela Merkel's open border policy, and has issued orders to turn undocumented migrants away from the nation. Alexander Dobrindt, the new interior minister, rescinded Merkel's 2015 order, which had previously allowed hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to enter Germany, many of whom were fleeing civil war in Syria. The new rules would now see everyone without proper documentation, apart from children and pregnant women, turned away if they try to get into Germany from a neighbouring country. Merz agreed to also allow Syrians to be deported back to their home country, and has suspended family reunions.

USA - Elon Musk, President Donald Trump's leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, has made a startling discovery, saying there are more than 100,000 active federal employees illegally receiving unemployment benefits. Online journalist Nick Sortor reacted with outrage: "That's called FRAUD. WE NEED ARRESTS! This is INSANELY easy to prove. DOJ just needs to make a move," he added. "These arrests are layups. I'm really, really hoping I'm proven wrong but I'm starting to lose hope that this DOJ is ever going to make any significant arrests for corruption, voter fraud, etc." Last month, as WorldNetDaily reported, Musk revealed more unemployment fraud discovered by DOGE, including thousands of recipients over 115 years old, between one and five years old, and with birth dates more than 15 years in the future. DOGE uncovers people who HAVEN’T BEEN BORN demanding unemployment. ‘In one case, someone with a birthday in 2154 claimed $41k’

GERMANY - Friedrich Merz, the leader of the German conservatives, has been elected as chancellor after winning the second of two votes in parliament on Tuesday, in a faltering start to his tenure. In a day of unprecedented high drama for German politics, Mr Merz lost the initial vote on his appointment to the role after 18 unnamed MPs rebelled against him. Mr Merz’s defeat in the first ballot, in which he fell six votes short of an absolute majority, is unprecedented in Germany’s political system, marking an embarrassing start to his tenure as chancellor. Speaking after Mr Merz was confirmed as chancellor, Bernd Baumann, an AfD MP, said the CDU chief’s defeat in the first round of voting showed that Germany’s new government was “starting out in extreme instability”. “It will remain unstable. That is the opposite of what Germany needs,” Mr Baumann added.

GERMANY - Friedrich Merz was meant to be riding to Europe’s rescue. Instead, he has fallen flat on his face. The chancellor-in-waiting was forced to stay in waiting, after a humiliating defeat on Tuesday in a vote to elect him that should have been a formality. It is the first time in modern German history that such an election has been lost after a coalition agreement has been struck. The conservative CDU (Christian Democratic Union) leader was stabbed in the back by six MPs – either from his party, their SPD coalition allies, or a mixture of both. Victory in an unprecedented second vote after [who] knows what arm-twisting and recriminations cannot erase the damage of a defeat that exposed the unstable foundations on which Mr Merz’s leadership was built.

EUROPE - The European Union, that grand and failing dream of technocrats, is dying. Its decline is not sudden or dramatic but a slow unraveling, a bureaucratic collapse in which every policy designed to sustain it only hastens its demise. It starves itself on the thin gruel of ideology – open borders dissolving nations into contested spaces, green mandates suffocating industry under the weight of unattainable standards, and a moralizing anti-Russian fervor that has left it isolated and energy-dependent. Once, Europe was the center of empires, the birthplace of civilizations that shaped the world. Now, it is a patient refusing medicine, convinced that its sickness is a form of enlightenment, that its weakness is a new kind of strength. The architects of this experiment still speak in the language of unity, but the cracks in the foundation are too deep to ignore.

USA - Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is back with an avalanche of problems coming to the world starting in 2025. Depressions, defaults, debt crises and wars are going to sweep the globe, according to Armstrong and his “Socrates” predictive computer program. Armstrong has called every big economic turn in the past three decades. He predicted Trump would win the 2024 Presidential Election in a landslide many months ahead of November. Armstrong called the huge stock crash of 1987 to the day. He predicted the dot com boom and bust in 2000. He was spot on calling for the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, and now, we are headed for more big turns.