IRAN - "The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again," Trump wrote. He also said another "armada" is floating toward Iran. Iran's mission to the United Nations responded in kind. "Last time the US blundered into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it squandered over $7 trillion and lost more than 7,000 American lives," it said in an X post quoting Trump's statement. "Iran stands ready for dialog based on mutual respect and interests — BUT IF PUSHED, IT WILL DEFEND ITSELF AND RESPOND LIKE NEVER BEFORE!" On Monday, a US source confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group had arrived in CENTCOM waters in the Indian Ocean. According to a Reuters report on Thursday, the USS Abraham Lincoln group included other US warships, destroyers, and fighter aircraft.

UK - The Bank of England has warned of the “urgent need” to make the shadow banking industry safer amid mounting concerns it could be the cause of the next financial crisis. Andrew Bailey, the Bank governor, said regulators should not “rest on our laurels” because they had strengthened the resilience of traditional lenders following the 2008 banking crash. “The challenge now lies in managing risks that sit beyond the banking perimeter as well as identifying and understanding new interconnections between banks and non-banks,” he wrote in an article for The Banker magazine. “There remains a particular and urgent need to increase resilience in market‑based finance globally.” The comments are the latest in a series of warnings sounded by the Bank about the possible threat to financial stability lurking in what is a largely unregulated corner of the system.

UK - Claims that there is a Christian resurgence in Britain have been shot down by global analysts, who have poured cold water on surveys that feed a “misleading” narrative. Church leaders around the UK have hailed the prospect of a “quiet revival” in Christian faith, particularly among young people. They have been buoyed by surveys suggesting that Gen Z are more open to spirituality and more likely to be churchgoers than older generations.There is scepticism around the claims, however, from experts who point to the fact that church attendances across the major denominations have failed to recover fully from their pandemic slump. The Pew Research Centre, an American think tank and analyst of global trends in religious faith, has now published an analysis showing there is “no clear evidence” of a revival in Christianity in the UK.

SICILY - Entire neighbourhoods in a hilltop town in Sicily have crumbled in a landslide caused by a freak storm, forcing the evacuation of 1,500 residents. Buildings and streets along a 2.5-mile ridge-top stretch in Niscemi collapsed after Cyclone Harry’s heavy rains saturated the sandy soil, which gave way and slid into the fields below. No casualties were reported but officials warned of further landslides and began evacuating homes within 150m of the collapse.

USA - The Doomsday Clock, which has been ticking down to the end of the world for decades, is now officially closer to annihilation than ever before. On Tuesday, scientists with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the symbolic clock four seconds forward to 85 seconds to midnight. It's also the closest the clock has ever been to midnight in its 79-year history, meaning experts believe humanity has never faced a more dire threat of a world-ending catastrophe than it does in 2026. The group, which decides where the hands are set annually, cited multiple threats to global stability, including nuclear weapons, climate change, disruptive technologies like AI, and the creation of synthetic biological substances called 'mirror life.' Alexandra Bell, president and CEO of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, said: 'Every second counts and we are running out of time. It is a hard truth that this is our reality. This is the closest our world has ever been to midnight.'

MOZAMBIQUE - Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes in Mozambique’s worst floods in a generation, sparking fears that cholera will now strike. Torrential rains across parts of southern Africa since late last year have killed more than 100 people in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Thousands of homes have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of livestock and poultry have been killed. Officials believe the flooding is the worst seen in the southern African country since 2000, when heavy rains and then a cyclone killed as many as 700 people. Waterlogged streets in many towns have led to crocodile warnings.

USA - The weather front has left 700,000 people without power and cancelled thousands of flights. Cold temperatures are expected to last into the week. At least 22 people are believed to have died, 700,000 are without power and public schools have closed after Winter Storm Fern swept across much of the United States over the weekend. Temperatures plummeted below minus 22F (minus 30C) in some areas, while many parts of the country were blanketed under several inches of snow. An estimated 200 million people, more than half of the US population, spanning from the Rockies to New England, were in the path of Storm Fern and have seen dangerously cold conditions, heavy snow and freezing rain forecast until Monday, AccuWeather’s senior meteorologist said.

UK - Britain’s energy industry faces collapse thanks to Labour’s “chaotic and needless” rundown of the oil and gas sector, one of its biggest union backers has warned. Louise Gilmour, Scotland secretary of the GMB union, says “delusional” net zero policies championed by Ed Miliband are causing “arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation’s history”. Ms Gilmour directly attacks Mr Miliband over the “dismal” effects of his policies, which are killing British jobs and creating jobs in China for the ever growing number of wind farms the Government insists on building. She has backed a new report that says Britain will permanently lose its energy independence unless there is a major shift in Government policy.

IRAN - As the days progress, the US continues to deploy significant forces to the Middle East. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, along with its strike group, has arrived in the area of responsibility of US Central Command, to provide President Trump with all the capabilities and options ahead of a decision on how to act against Iran. One of the challenges facing President Trump in deciding how to strike is the fact that protests have significantly diminished after weeks of murders by the regime inside Iran. According to reports, President Trump has requested a focused and meaningful operation, an indication that he has no desire to become embroiled in prolonged warfare. And of course: no boots on the ground.

UK - It’s the first and most fundamental piece of information to be recorded about us the moment we’re born. Alongside our parentage, our weight, our length and our head circumference – it’s crucial to our identity. So it’s hard to imagine the bafflement of staff at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust when they discovered – during a recent training session for the trust’s new software system – that there was no option of recording a newborn’s biological sex on the registration forms.