USA - ABC News is making the wrong kind of headlines. “BREAKING: Hamas will release the bodies of four deceased hostages on Thursday and six living hostages on Saturday, Hamas and Israel confirmed,” the post said. “Four more dead hostages will be released next week, according to Israel.” In a responding post, Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, slammed the deliberately cloudy language. “Do you mean ‘murdered,’ @ABC?” he wrote. “Civilian hostages, little children, murdered by the evil, brutal scum of Hamas.”

GERMANY - The vice-president’s speech in Munich was a devastating indictment of the Davos-smooching class – and made Keir Starmer look inept. The assembled Eurocrats were braced for a telling off from their American sugar daddy (for spending shamefully little on defence and way too much on welfare), but the vice-president had come to deliver an altogether more painful lecture. A car driven by an asylum seeker had just mown down a crowd of innocent Germans, including a two-year-old child. It was a terrible story, as Vance acknowledged, but one which was all too familiar and, tragically, stupidly, self-inflicted. The greatest threat to Europe’s security, he warned, came “from within” as Western values were abandoned.

SAUDI ARABIA - US secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff left their meeting with the Russian delegation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday mildly pleased with how the discussions went. Witkoff, who has fast become one of president Donald Trump’s most trusted emissaries, called the session “positive, upbeat, constructive”. Washington and Moscow agreed to establish a mechanism through which long-term disputes between the two countries – of which there are many – can be worked on. Ending the war in Ukraine is first and foremost.

RUSSIA - Russia's foreign minister has blasted Keir Starmer's peacekeeping plans and says troops from Nato nations can never patrol in Ukraine 'under some other flag'. Sergey Lavrov said it was 'completely unacceptable' for peacekeepers to patrol the Russia-Ukraine border under any deal. 'Any appearance by armed forces under some other flag does not change anything. It is of course completely unacceptable,' he said. And his deputy Alexander Grushko added: 'Under whatever guise they appear there, this is a step towards escalation.' Moscow issued the chilling warning after the PM said he was prepared to deploy British troops to Ukraine to help police any ceasefire deal.

VATICAN - Pope Francis has been diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia, the Vatican said. The pope, 88, was admitted to Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic hospital on Friday after experiencing symptoms of bronchitis for several days. The Vatican has now said new scans show the pope has ‘the onset of bilateral pneumonia’, but added that he ‘remains in good spirits’. It comes as the pope is reportedly rushing to tie up loose ends and secure his legacy ahead of the race to succeed him. Francis is said to have been experiencing severe pain during his current hospital stay and has confided to those closest to him that he will not make it this time, according to a Politico report.

ISRAEL - Let’s wait one more day before the inevitable headlines blare out with the bad news. We can’t bring ourselves to acknowledge that the unfathomable may have arrived. So we won’t… for as long as we can. Reports from the media were alight with headlines about the details of the planned return of dead hostages on Thursday, as declared by Hamas on Tuesday. Thursday will come soon enough, and we’ll know. But for now, we can still look at those faces, and hold a crumb of hope that the reports prove to be wrong.

MIDDLE EAST - The Kan public broadcaster reports that Hamas has submitted an offer to Israel to release all hostages at once in phase two, rather than spreading out the releases as the sides agreed to do during phase one. The offer is made as Hamas is seeking to prevent an Israeli return to the war and is prioritizing its own survival over the issue of security prisoners who would also be released in phase two, Kan says. Fifty-nine Israelis will remain in captivity after the completion of phase one of the deal, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. The other 35 have been confirmed dead by Israeli authorities.

UK - Millions spent on ‘inclusivity’ projects to save seas — including in landlocked nations. Despite targeting plastic pollution in seas and oceans, some countries that received cash — Zimbabwe and Uganda — are landlocked. Another target country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country of close to a million square miles, has a maritime coastline of about 35 miles. Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will think the scale of pointless projects funded by the government is a complete joke. Waste seems to run through every corner of the public sector, and hard-working Brits are only just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Ministers need to get serious, stop wasting cash on vanity projects and focus spending on fruitful change.”

RUSSIA - Just a week ago Russia was a pariah state, ostracised (by the West at least) and subject to strict sanctions on its economy and the movements of its leaders. Now, courtesy of Donald Trump, it is back at the table of big power politics, just where Vladimir Putin has always wanted to sit as an entitlement, not a favour. The implications of what has happened in the space of a few days can hardly be overstated. It has plunged Europe into a crisis that it should have foreseen and prepared for, but didn’t. Leaders looked at Trump’s first presidency and calculated that all the talk about leaving Nato and letting Europe sort out its own problems was bluster.

GERMANY - Germany’s economy is in the doldrums. Before Sunday’s federal elections, it’s become a truism to note the three underpinnings of the country’s economic might that have eroded in recent years: the end of the era of cheap Russian energy; the decline of Chinese demand for German wares; and the interruption to the low interest rates and undervalued currency that buttressed its export-led dominance.

UK - A yoga studio has opened on a quiet street near my house that used to host both a Post Office and convenience store. The new studio offers classes in all the usual stretching and modish contortion as well as breathwork and “sound healing”. That might seem rarefied, but it is coming to a high street near you too. Where my in-laws live in Essex, a tarot shop that took over one of many empty lots in the city centre appears to be thriving. What used to be called “woo woo” is not only a growth industry, it looks set to become mainstream.

UK - Kemi Badenoch has said the chicken nugget immigration case shows how migrants are weaponising the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to avoid deportation. The Conservative leader told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London that Western civilisation had been “hacked” in recent decades because of “loopholes in liberalism”, including in the ECHR. Her comments came after The Telegraph exposed multiple cases of illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals using human rights laws to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.

UNITED NATIONS - At the UN Climate Action Summit of 2019, a 16-year-old Greta Thunberg gave the most famous speech of her young life. I’m sure we all remember. It was the one in which she indignantly squeaked “How DARE you!” at older generations for ruining their grandchildren’s future. “You are failing us!” she hissed. “But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: we will never forgive you!”

USA - Senator Rand Paul (Republican for Kentucky) has called for a long-overdue audit of the US gold reserves at Fort Knox — something that hasn’t happened in nearly 50 years. The demand comes as concerns grow over whether the 4,580 tons of US gold supposedly stored in Fort Knox still exist or if bureaucrats and the Federal Reserve have been engaging in financial sleight-of-hand behind closed doors. The call for transparency gained momentum when conservative news outlet Zero Hedge sparked debate on X, posting: “It would be great if @elonmusk could take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there. Last time anyone looked was 50 years ago in 1974.”

INDIA - The world’s largest human gathering, the 2025 Prayag Maha Kumbh Lela, is currently taking place in India. Over 400 million to 450 million people are expected to attend the pilgrimage this year. The Uttar Pradesh government claims that the “Festival of the Sacred Pitcher” has already surpassed 500 million visitors as of 14 February 2025. This is the largest global pilgrimage ever. The gathering takes place on the Ganges River. There are reportedly 1.42 billion people living in India today. That means at least one-third of the population has already attended the sacred Hindu pilgrimage. The scale of it is stunning - they set up a 15 square mile tent city to accommodate pilgrims and built 30 temporary pontoon bridges to carry millions of folks across the river...