GERMANY - Barely a week after Davos luminaries met with world leaders and Silicon Valley oligarchs to plot their latest phase of the Great Reset, the underlying provenance of their entire ‘climate emergency’ thesis is still struggling to correspond with reality. No one is being hit with this sobering reality more than the Europe’s premier green trailblazer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is currently in the grips of Europe’s record-breaking freeze this winter.

USA - The Catholic Church in the United States has been divided for some time now: a two-party political system has produced a two-party Church, with a solid majority of the bishops in favour of the Republican Party – even Donald Trump’s Republican Party. But now there is a risk of the US Church becoming even more divided – not one community with a variety of different cultures and spiritualities, sometimes in tension with each other, a “big tent”, but two distinct versions of Catholicism, each claiming orthodoxy and existing in a regime of mutual excommunication.

ISRAEL - Three weeks into his term, as Biden has worked deep into his Rolodex of world leaders without dialing Netanyahu’s Balfour Street office, much of Israel’s political class is ready to declare a full-blown diplomatic snub. In the president’s “thundering silence,” some see a long-feared frosty tumble from the warm embrace Netanyahu enjoyed with Trump.

MIDDLE EAST - The Red Sea is governed by an alphabet soup of international agreements and peppered with dozens of strategic ports and military bases. A satellite image of the coast of the Red Sea depicts a desert coastline. But the image is not the entire truth. The long coastline of one of the busiest trade routes in the world is dotted with ports enabling the transportation of everything from oil to goats to consumer goods. These trade hubs are accompanied by military bases that use the strategic geography of the Red Sea to defend and to strike. Who manages the ports and the bases is a reflection of a myriad of power structures, political opportunism, and financial deals – the outcome of the complex regional dynamics of the Red Sea. The strategic artery can be both a beacon of peace or a catalyst for destruction.

PHILIPPINES - Philippines to strengthen its naval presence in another sign of rising tensions in South China Sea. The Philippines’ new military chief says Manila will increase naval forces to protect fishermen after China tells its coast guard to fire on boats in territorial waters it claims. Manila’s announcement comes at a time of rising tensions in the region and with two US carrier strike groups currently in the South China Sea on joint exercises. The Philippines have objected to an “alarming” new Chinese law that came into effect on February 1 that allows its coast guard to open fire during incursions by vessels into waters Beijing claims for itself. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei have competing territorial and overlapping claims to the resource-rich region of the South China Sea. It’s also an important international waterway.

USA - Big Tech is trying to silence women who speak out against radical feminism, author Carrie Gress told RT, after a Catholic store claimed that Facebook had taken down ads for her book on ‘toxic femininity’. A Catholic gift store, Guadalupe Gifts, said it was told by Facebook that it could not sell Gress’s book on its platform because the item did not comply with the social network’s “commerce policies.” “The book’s been out for two years, so to get that kind of response at this point seems a bit ridiculous,” Gress told RT.

ISRAEL - A payslip made from a sheet of papyrus shows a Roman soldier was left penniless 1,900 years ago after the military took out fees for certain items. The document was made out to a Gaius Messius, who participated in the Siege of Masada that was one of the last battles during the First Jewish-Roman War. The receipt shows Messius received 50 denarri as his stipend, but fees for barley money, food and military equipment were taken out that totaled to the amount of his full pay. Because part of the deductions taken were for fodder, food for livestock, experts believe he was a legionary cavalryman and had to feed his horse and mule.

ISRAEL - In the rift between the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office, the US president aims to signal to Netanyahu: ‘You’re nothing special.’ While Israeli intelligence says Iran is two years from a bomb, the outgoing Mossad head hopes to be the point man. Over three months have passed since Joe Biden was elected, and three weeks since he entered the White House, but the US president isn’t phoning. It’s hard to overlook his ignoring of Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel. During this period the prime minister has spoken by phone at least three times with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Israeli and US officials who have been in contact are Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

ISRAEL - Israel will keep the Golan Heights forever, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced remarks that stopped short of recognizing the claim. In 2019, then-US President Donald Trump parted with other world powers by recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli. Israel captured the strategic plateau from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981. Blinken said on Monday he saw control of the Golan, which overlooks northern Israel and also borders Lebanon and Jordan, as being "of real importance to Israel's security" but was circumspect about recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the territory. "Legal questions are something else and over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that's something we look at, but we are nowhere near that," Blinken told CNN. Biden’s advisers had said previously that he would not withdraw US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.

USA - Legitimate views about the effectiveness of lockdown are being silenced with accusations of Covid ‘denial’. The misuse of this powerful and emotive word, often associated with the Holocaust, is morally wrong and needs to stop. These days, if you want to shut down critical or dissident views, all you need to do is shout ‘denier’. This morally charged scare word is often hurled at anyone who questions the efficacy of the current lockdown or any of the policies associated with it.

UK - Amid a global health crisis, muddle-headed morons in Britain’s hallowed NHS have waded into the transgender debate, decimating the medical language of clear common sense for laugh-out-loud ambiguity on the maternity ward. Those who emerged from the womb as biological women have been given another sharp slap in the face, as a lone National Health Service trust in England has decided to ditch gender badges like “mother” and “breastmilk” in case they offend the one per cent of the adult British population that identifies as transgender.

USA - The economic downturn that we are currently experiencing is making the last recession look like a Sunday picnic. Yes, 2008 and 2009 were bad, but they weren’t anything like this. Unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve has allowed the rich to get even richer during this crisis, but meanwhile millions upon millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering. Unfortunately, what we have gone through so far is just the beginning.

USA - Why are volcanoes all along the “ring of fire” suddenly starting to pop off like firecrackers? While most of us are preoccupied with other matters, the “Ring of Fire” is starting to shake quite dramatically. Within the past couple of days, we have seen numerous volcanoes along the “Ring of Fire” shoot hot volcanic ash thousands of feet into the air. That list of volcanoes includes Popocatepetl in Mexico, Sangay in Ecuador, Klyuchevskaya on the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sabancaya in Peru, Raung in Indonesia, Reventador in Ecuador, and Fuego in Guatemala. Overall, 28 volcanoes around the globe are currently erupting right now, and most of those are located somewhere along the “Ring of Fire”. We are starting to see so many of them pop off like firecrackers in the early stages of 2021, and that is definitely not a good sign.

NEW ZEALAND - A Series of powerful earthquakes struck off Indonesia and New Caledonia - sparking tsunami fears. An earthquake of magnitude 7.7 struck southeast of Loyalty Islands on Wednesday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said. The quake's epicentre was 401 km east of Tadine, New Caledonia, and was at a depth of 2 km, EMSC said. Ten earthquakes and aftershocks hit the region in a short space of time - ranging between a magnitude of 5.0-6.2 - with the first quake at 12.24.21 (UTC) and the final at 14.59.37 (UTC). Separately an earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck southwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, on Wednesday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said. Indonesia is on high alert after a mega-earthquake struck its Sulawesi island on January 15. This left 84 people dead and another 932 injured. Some 40,000 locals were affected, many of whom went to evacuation shelters or moved higher into the mountains.

RUSSIA - The Russian government is striking back at the EU's accumulating sanctions and threats of sanctions. In a press conference last Friday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lashed out at EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell. EU diplomats see this incident as a bitter setback for Brussels. In response to EU accusations of unprecedented police violence in Russia, Lavrov's ministry published a collection of video footage showing cases of serious police brutality within the EU and the USA. Borrell officially admitted police abuses exist in the West. Moscow, furthermore, expelled three diplomats from EU countries, accusing them of participating in unauthorized demonstrations. For Berlin this comes at a critical moment: Berlin is seeking to compensate for the dramatic shortage of Covid-19 vaccines by purchasing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, which, until recently, had been denigrated here in Germany. Berlin also needs Moscow for important foreign policy projects.