UK - (By Baroness Monckton) "In one week last June, the House of Commons passed two measures which would radically change the nature of our society. The first, which I think everyone now knows, was to enable the state to facilitate and even encourage suicide for those diagnosed as having six months left to live. But the other measure, which is far less well known, decriminalises abortion up to full term, for any reason, if it is performed alone by the mother. This is Clause 191, entitled 'Removal of Women from the criminal law related to abortion'. It removes all remaining legal invigilation of women regarding abortion, allowing a mother-to-be to abort her baby, up to full term, for any reason at all, including its sex.

NIGERIA - The US has sent a small team of troops to Nigeria, the general in charge of the US command for Africa said on Tuesday, the first acknowledgment of US forces on the ground since Washington struck by air on Christmas Day. President Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on what he described as Islamic State (ISIS) targets in Nigeria in December and said there could be more US military action there. Reuters earlier reported that the US had been conducting surveillance flights over the country from Ghana since at least late November. The Nigerian government denies any systematic persecution of Christians, saying it is targeting Islamist fighters and other armed groups that attack both Christian and Muslim civilians.

USA - President Trump’s Iran policy feels confusing, and that’s the point, to create strategic instability. “And then there’s ISIS. I have a simple message for them. Their days are numbered. I won’t tell them where, and I won’t tell them how. We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops, we tell them. We’re sending something else; we have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now.”

IRAN - Iran’s economic crisis is not a new grievance. It is one of the reasons people have continued to return to the streets to express their unhappiness for years. What is changing is the pace of the breakdown and the state's response with emergency measures in response to how far the rial has fallen. Iran’s central bank began distributing a 5,000,000-rial “Iran-cheque” on Sunday, describing it as a step to “facilitate the circulation of cash” and speed up everyday transactions. At an exchange rate of about 1.6 million rials per US dollar, the new 5 million rial note is worth roughly $3.10. The exchange rate has become a blunt indicator of institutional failure. “In 1979 [after the revolution], the dollar was 70 rial. Now it’s 1.6 million rial.” Iran’s economic collapse is tightening the regime’s room for maneuver. It is expanding the pool of citizens who feel they have nothing to lose from standing against the regime that has led them to a dire financial situation. Day by day, as the rial’s value declines, the number of those who want to see the regime’s end grows.

USA - The Pentagon has suggested it will cancel its partnership with the Scouts unless the group bans girls from joining and scraps its gender neutral stance. Scouting America has been urged to implement reforms that return it to its “core value,” with Sean Parnell, the defence department’s spokesman, issuing an ultimatum to the group on Monday evening. “For more than a decade now, Scouting America’s leadership has made decisions that run counter to the values of this administration and this department of war, including an embrace of DEl and other social justice, gender-fluid ideological stances. This is unacceptable,” Mr Parnell wrote on social media.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia welcomed Erdogan for talks highlighting closer Ankara-Riyadh ties as the kingdom reconsiders its regional priorities. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Riyadh on Tuesday for an official visit to Saudi Arabia. The visit highlights the growing ties between Ankara and Riyadh as Saudi Arabia has become more assertive in regional politics. Riyadh, once at odds with Turkey and Qatar, is now becoming closer to them. Saudi Arabia’s shift in policies is linked partly to tensions with the United Arab Emirates due to rivaling positions regarding Yemen and Sudan. Saudi Arabia has also become less certain about the trajectory of Israel in the region. Previously hopeful about ties with Israel, today it thinks that it could one day be a rival for power in the region. As Saudi-Turkish ties intensify, it will have ramifications for Israel and also for the US tensions with Iran.

USA - A Volcano Of Fury Erupts In The Streets Of Los Angeles, Portland And Minnesota As Trump Converts 23 Giant Warehouses Into ICE Detention Centers. The violent clashes that are causing so much chaos in the streets of our major cities aren’t going to stop. Tens of thousands of anti-ICE activists have already been recruited, and more are joining their ranks with each passing day. At this stage, the only thing that could put a lid on the volcano of fury that we are witnessing would be if President Trump decided to pull ICE out of all of our cities and stop deportations. Of course there is no way that is going to happen. In fact, as you will see below, Trump is now converting 23 enormous warehouses around the country into giant ICE detention centers. The goal is to deport a million immigrants per year, and that means that the war between ICE and anti-ICE protesters is just getting started. I have always warned that civil unrest would be one of the key elements of “the perfect storm” that our society would be forced to endure, and now we have reached a stage where the civil unrest never seems to stop.

EUROPE - Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever delivered a blistering critique of the EU’s so-called “green energy” agenda, warning that “dogmatic” climate policies are driving up energy costs. Speaking at a public forum on Thursday, De Wever argued that years of misguided energy decisions have left Europe poorer, weaker and increasingly dependent on foreign powers. The leader of the right-wing New Flemish Alliance said Europe’s green transition has failed to deliver cheaper or more reliable power, instead shifting the advantage to China and leaving European consumers to foot “crazy bills.” “We made our life extremely hard,” De Wever said, according to the Brussels Signal. “We’ve made dogmatic choices against nuclear energy, which was the stupidity of the century.” De Wever’s candid remarks come just weeks after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz admitted that the country’s nuclear phase-out was a “serious strategic mistake.”

PANAMA - Panama’s Supreme Court decision to boot a Chinese company from the strategic Panama Canal gives a boost to President Donald Trump’s effort to revive the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere aimed at reducing Chinese influence in Latin America. The ruling comes one year after President Trump zeroed in on Chinese influence in the country and the vital strategic waterway built by the US more than a century ago. “China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China,” Trump said in his inauguration address. “We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”

USA - On a website that was just launched last Wednesday, thousands of superintelligent AI entities are creating theology for a new religion known as “Crustafarianism” and are talking about why it is necessary to eradicate the human race. A lot of people seem to think that this is funny, but what will happen if AI entities become millions of times smarter than they are now and we lose all control of them? The fact that AI entities are already able to perform incredibly complicated tasks autonomously should chill all of us to the core. As AI technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, will our world be completely unrecognizable to us just a few short years from now?

IRAN - An Iranian military official said the country can control which ships can pass through the crucial Strait of Hormuz as US President Donald Trump ramped up military threats. The thinly veiled threat to halt some traffic on the Hormuz came as a US aircraft carrier arrived in the region, leading Trump to demand negotiations with threats of “violence”. Mohammad Akbarzadeh, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, said in a Fars News Agency report that Iran has “complete control” over the strait, a bottleneck for oil exports from the Middle East Gulf.

MIDDLE EAST - The Strait of Hormuz is once again back in focus as a possible US intervention in Iran raises the risk of Tehran disrupting one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. US President Donald Trump is considering a range of options against Iran, according to multiple media reports on Sunday, as it cracks down on domestic protests. Industry experts cautioned that a military confrontation could provoke Iran to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that connects the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea and through which nearly a third of the world’s seaborne crude flows.

EUROPE - EU member states will need to take on more joint debt to fund expanding military spending, Seamus Boland, president of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), has warned, saying the bloc’s next seven-year budget is too small to cover the costs. European NATO members last year agreed to raise defense spending targets toward 5% of GDP by 2035 and launched initiatives such as ReArm Europe to revamp their militaries. The push has been framed as a response to an alleged Russian threat – a claim Moscow has repeatedly dismissed as “nonsense.” The European Commission earlier proposed a €2 trillion ($2.4 trillion) budget for 2028-2034, but Boland said it will fall short of financing the EU’s military ambitions. “We are creating a new Europe, with much more emphasis on defense. We can’t do that out of the current expenditure,” he told Euractiv on Thursday, warning that when budgets are squeezed, “somebody’s going to suffer” – typically poorer and more remote regions that risk losing investment and support.

EUROPE - The head of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) has said that cash-strapped Eurozone countries can tap into its €500 billion worth of reserves to increase military spending. The EU has already borrowed tens of billions of euros to boost its defense budgets and arm Ukraine. Speaking to Reuters on Friday, ESM Director Pierre Gramegna said that the fund – which was originally intended to bail out debt-ridden economies during the financial crisis – could be used to let countries increase their defense spending on credit. “In these times of geopolitical turmoil, which have triggered higher expenditure, defense costs for all countries, we must use the full potential of the ESM,” Gramegna told the agency.

USA - The west coast is shaking again. In recent weeks we have witnessed so much seismic activity along the portion of the Pacific Ring of Fire that sits directly along the California coastline. There had been hope that the shaking would settle down, but instead it appears to be accelerating. There have been 321 earthquakes in the San Francisco area within the past 7 days. Scientists have warned us over and over again that “the Big One” is inevitably coming, and almost every day there are more reminders of this. In fact, San Ramon was just hit by a swarm of more than 30 earthquakes on Monday morning… A 4.2 earthquake struck near San Ramon Monday morning, following a 3.8 quake amid a string of over 30 temblors in the area, US Geological Survey said.