USA - The latest in a series of winter storms hit the United States on Wednesday, dropping wet, heavy snow in the Northeast states that disrupted travel and threatened supplies of salt needed to keep roads clear. Over a million homes and businesses were without power in the Northeast on Wednesday following severe snow and ice storms overnight, according to local power companies. The hardest-hit state was Pennsylvania with 849,000 customers without electricity at one point, according to the governor.

UK - Credit card borrowing has grown at its fastest rate for almost five years, according to the British Bankers’ Association. More than £57 billion was owed on credit cards in December, up 4.7 per cent on a year earlier. The BBA said this was ‘further evidence of the economic recovery’. But the figures will cause concern for consumer campaigners who fear a repeat of the borrowing binge that preceded the financial crisis. More than four in ten are relying on credit cards and loans to pay bills, with personal debt standing at £139 billion, according to research from price comparison website Moneysupermarket. Those aged 18 to 24, who are unlikely to have a mortgage, owe an average of £5,446 not including student loans.

ISRAEL - US Secretary of State John Kerry revealed new details about the secretive Israeli-Palestinian Authority (PA) peace talks he is pushing through. According to Kerry, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opposes the idea that NATO forces will secure Israel's borders in the event of a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. That idea was raised by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas last week, who said he would agree to the IDF leaving the region after 5 years, to be replaced by NATO forces "for a long time."

EUROPE - Germany is casting doubt on the European Central Bank’s strategy to end Europe’s ‘sterilized’ intervention. Instead of acting unilaterally, it will for the first time pass the decision to the European Court of Justice. Germany’s constitutional court said the European Central Bank’s bond-buying program - Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) - “infringes” on the powers of individual nations, a claim the ECB has flatly denied. The European Court of Justice will settle the tiff, with many analysts of the opinion the court will side with the ECB and not Germany.

USA/JAPAN - The United States’ top diplomat said this week that the US will not walk away from Japan as tensions worsen in the Far East between America’s Asian ally and China regarding a heated territory dispute in the Pacific. US Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday when he reiterated previous remarks from the White House about the Obama administration’s willingness to come to Japan’s aid if events escalate in the East China Sea. Kerry is expected to make his way to China next week. If history is any indication, however, he’s likely to be met with strong opposition from opponents who want the US out of the dispute.

IRAN - The speaker of Iran’s parliament criticized Israel and the United States during a ceremony in honor of Tunisia’s new constitution on Friday, causing the American delegation to walk out of the celebrations, Reuters reports. Addressing the ceremony at the National Assembly in Tunis, Ali Larijani referred to Israel as a "cancer" in the region. He accused the Jewish state and the United States of trying to "sterilize" the Arab Spring revolutions. Another Iranian official, Hossein Salami of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, said last week that "if the Islamic nations would unite, it could minimize the breathing room of the US and the West until the Zionist regime would no longer have room to breathe."

USA - Shooters armed with assault rifles and some knowledge of electrical utilities have prompted new worries on the vulnerability of California's vast power grid. A 2013 attack on an electric substation near San Jose that nearly knocked out Silicon Valley's power supply was initially downplayed as vandalism by Pacific Gas & Electric Co, the facility's owner. Gunfire from semiautomatic weapons did extensive damage to 17 transformers that sent grid operators scrambling to avoid a blackout. But this week, a former top power regulator offered a far more ominous interpretation: The attack was terrorism, he said, and if circumstances had been just a little different, it could have been disastrous. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fears it was a test run for an even larger assault.

EUROPE - The Fragile Five, BRICS and MINT are acronyms for countries like Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, and China that are at the focus of the emerging crisis. But Europe may be the most vulnerable, as banks have more than $3.4 trillion in loans in shaky markets.

ISRAEL - According to IsraelNationalNews.com (INN), a group called rabbis from the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel penned an open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry calling for an end to his "antagonism" against Israel.

USA - Some of the most drought-ravaged areas of the US are also heavily targeted for oil and gas development using hydraulic fracturing - a practice that exacerbates water shortages - according to a new report.

IRAN - Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdullah Shalah is currently in Iran to meet senior officials of the Islamic regime. On Wednesday, the terror group leader met Ali Larijiani, chairman of the Iranian parliament.

ISRAEL/VATICAN - Pope Francis apparently plans to heed Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's calls, and use his upcoming visit to Israel in May as a propaganda move for the Palestine Authority (PA) against Israel, according to reports in Makor Rishon.

SOCHI, RUSSIA - Olympic fans of the world, where are you? Sochi is (more or less) ready for you to come to its Winter Games. Thousands of athletes, soldiers, journalists and herds of smiley volunteers are in place, eager to help. So far, though, it seems like the only spectators milling about are Russian. Fears about terrorism and the hassle of reaching Sochi from points abroad may be keeping some foreigners away - and undermining Vladimir Putin's plans to transform Sochi into a magnet for international tourism. A train travelling between Olympic sites and downtown Sochi cheerily announces to visitors in English: "We wish you a pleasant journey!" But on a recent ride, its seats were half empty. And a sweep through four train cars found ... not a single foreign fan.

RUSSIA - Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests. Hotels are still under construction. Water, if it’s running, isn’t drinkable. One German photographer told the AP over the weekend that his hotel still had stray dogs and construction workers wandering in and out of rooms.

IRAQ - Just two years after US troops pulled out of Iraq, the US ambassador there says the country may be one suicide attack away from a full-on civil war. “We’re in a very precarious situation where a misstep anywhere could set off larger conflicts within the country, and that's what we need to stay away from,” Ambassador Robert Stephen Beecroft told “On the Radar” during an interview at the US embassy in Baghdad. “The wrong person gets killed, the wrong mosque gets attacked and exploded and you run the risk of sectarian conflict.”