ISRAEL - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, in what could be a possible gaffe, that his meetings with Arab leaders in Poland are "in order to advance the common interest of combating Iran." The comments were made to reporters on the sidelines of the Warsaw Middle East ministerial following Netanyahu's meeting with the Sultanate of Oman's Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs, Yusuf bin Alawi.

USA - Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas. That warhead, the W76-2, is designed to be fitted to a submarine-launched Trident missile, a weapon with a range of more than 7,500 miles. By September, an undisclosed number of warheads will be delivered to the Navy for deployment.

EUROPE - The European Parliament’s Brexit Coordinator Guy Verhofstadt has suggested that Tory Brexiteers who reject a soft Brexit deal will be sent to the guillotine like the leaders of the French revolution. Verhofstadt’s comments come a week after President of the European Council Donald Tusk said he wondered whether there was “a special place in hell” for Brexiteers who promoted leaving the European Union. The threat of damnation for those daring to support leaving the EU was raised again on Tuesday by the staunch Remainer and Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) MP Stewart M McDonald during the prime minister’s Brexit statement, when he asked whether Brexit campaigners would be sent to Dante’s Inferno.

HUNGARY - Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó has said mass immigration is creating “parallel societies” in Europe and undermining security, and that Christianity is more persecuted than any other religion. “We are proud of having a very rich Christian heritage, and we want to preserve that,” the Hungarian politician explained in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News Deputy Political Editor, Amanda House. “That’s why we support Christian communities all over the world, because we take it as a matter of responsibility,” he continued, telling House that “Christianity is the most persecuted religion all over the world… look at [the] figures, it’s a fact.” Szijjártó described how Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has therefore created a state secretariat tasked exclusively with protecting Christian communities in places like Syria and Iraq.

USA - President Trump on Tuesday suggested, again, increasing legal immigration levels beyond an already historically high rate that would pit more foreign competition against American workers and further depress US wages. During a meeting at the White House, Trump said he wanted “more people” coming to the US than the already more than 1.2 million legal immigrants admitted every year to take American jobs that would otherwise go to citizens.

USA - For many Americans, putting one’s health first can mean putting one’s financial status at risk. A study of bankruptcy filings in the United States showed that 66.5% were due, at least in part, to medical expenses. The study, led by Dr David Himmelstein, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Hunter College and Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, indicates that about 530,000 families each year are financially ruined by medical bills and sicknesses. It’s the first research of its kind to link medical expenses and bankruptcy since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. “Unless you’re Bill Gates, you’re just one serious illness away from bankruptcy,” Himmelstein says in a release by the Physicians for a National Health Program. “For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection. Most of us have policies with so many loopholes, copayments and deductibles that illness can put you in the poorhouse.”

USA - What was once a free and open web of information, much of the internet has since been deconstructed into a Leftist “utopia” of rampant censorship and mind control, warns Dennis Prager of PragerU – so much so, in fact, that we’ve now entered a “dark age” of near-total Leftist propaganda online, he says. During a recent interview he gave on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily, Prager told host Alex Marlow that various Leftist narratives are now being catechized as gospel truth across most major platforms, including Big Tech giants like Twitter and Facebook, even as conservative viewpoints are denigrated as “hate speech.” “This is what we are now at in the Orwellian world that the Left has created,” Prager stated during the interview. “Any difference is not debated. It is evil. So if you say America is not racist, you are a racist.”

UK - Vegan activists have struck a deal with an abattoir to allow them to stage 'last rites' ceremonies with incoming cows to tell them, “we love you, we are sorry”. Group founder Dina Aherne said the group has an understanding with the slaughterhouse bosses, who let them stop the trucks and trailers which transport the cows. The 38-year-old former solicitor from Leicester said: “We want to make the cows feel at ease every time because they are living and sacred beings. Cows have a living soul and conscience. We really want to help comfort them. We whisper phrases to them like 'we're sorry', 'we see you' and 'I love you'.”

USA - As Iranians this week mark the 40th anniversary of their country's 1979 revolution, President Donald Trump's national security adviser John Bolton declared in a message to Iranian leaders on Monday that he doesn't think they will "have many more anniversaries to enjoy" — a comment that was immediately perceived as a direct threat of war. "He is laying the groundwork for war and we all must be vigilant." —Senator Chris Murphy. In a video posted to the White House's official Twitter page on Monday, Bolton echoed false assertions and repeatedly debunked claims by the Trump administration that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and described the Iranian government as the "central banker of international terrorism."

UK - Britain could lead the world into a new era of democracy and free trade, using the Brexit revolt against the establishment as a springboard to making the global order more cooperative, accountable and prosperous, according to the Governor of the Bank of England. The current system of global trade has key flaws including wealth and income inequality, a lack of democracy and trust, and serious financial imbalances, Mark Carney warned on Tuesday. However, in a sharp departure from the Governor's "project fear" warnings of the past three years, Mr Carney said Brexit has the potential to address these issues and provide the opportunity to create a new way of running the world.

RUSSIA - Russia is planning to temporarily disconnect from the internet as part of what it says is an experiment to test its cyberdefence capabilities. According to a report on the Russian news site RBC, the planned disconnection is intended to analyse the country’s preparedness for a draft law mandating a “sovereign” internet.

EUROPE - The bloc is “sleepwalking into oblivion” and could soon meet the same end as the Soviet Union, Soros prophesied. In order to avoid catastrophe, he argued, right-minded political parties must resist the lure of EU skepticism sweeping across the continent and “put Europe’s interests ahead of their own.” He chastised Germany’s ruling coalition for not being adequately pro-EU out of fear of losing votes to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), while praising the German Greens for being “the only consistently pro-European party in the country.”

VATICAN - To keep silent about the truths of the Catholic faith or to teach the contrary is a form of religious deception that comes from the anti-Christ, said Cardinal Gerhard Muller. The purpose of the church and its members, he said, is to lead people to Jesus, so all Catholics, but especially priests and bishops, "have a responsibility to recall these fundamental truths" and to strengthen the faith "by confessing the truth which is Jesus Christ himself."

GERMANY - A German Catholic cardinal who was ousted from a high doctrinal position by Pope Francis said in a “manifesto of faith” that the church has become too focused on mercy instead of traditional doctrine. Gerhard Cardinal Mueller didn’t refer to Francis by name, but took jabs at his willingness to allow remarried Catholics to receive Communion, and asserted women cannot be ordained priests. The pope commissioned a study on female deacons. Francis sacked Mueller as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2017. Mueller’s manifesto was released late Friday, but carries the date of February 10 — the eve of the sixth anniversary of Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI’s historic announcement that he would resign. Many conservative Catholics are nostalgic for the doctrinal clarity of Benedict’s reign.

GERMANY - Germany is the birthplace of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, but since the middle of the 20th century, the country has seen a dramatic shift away from Protestantism – one that has greatly outpaced a decline in the share of Germans who are Catholic. Protestants represented a majority (59%) of Germany’s population in 1950, with Catholics as a sizable minority (37%), according to research by Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller, scholars of religion and sociology at the University of Münster in Germany. These shares are largely based on church membership rolls that include both children and adults. Over the next 60 years, the share of Protestants fell 30 percentage points, while the share of Catholics dropped 7 points. Each group now includes roughly three-in-ten Germans, based on 2010 membership data. Among German Christians, however, Catholics are more likely than Protestants to profess nationalistic attitudes and to express anti-immigrant and anti-religious minority attitudes.