AFRICA - Last year, an unprecedented plague of locusts devastated crops in eastern Africa, across the Middle East and throughout much of Asia. Many were hoping that it would just be a one year phenomenon, but now the locusts have returned and one British news source is using the world “biblical” to describe this second wave. At this moment, the Horn of Africa is being hit the hardest, and the UN is warning that this new infestation “threatens the livelihoods of more than 39 million people”…

USA - We are getting a very short preview of what will eventually happen to the United States as a whole. America’s infrastructure is aging and crumbling. Our power grids were never intended to support so many people, our water systems are a complete joke, and it has become utterly apparent that we would be completely lost if a major long-term national emergency ever struck. Texas has immense wealth and vast energy resources, but now it is being called a “failed state”. If it can’t even handle a few days of cold weather, what is the rest of America going to look like when things really start to get chaotic in this country?

GERMANY - While the hunt is on for Trump supporters in the US, Europe leads the way as far as political persecution of conservatives and suppression of free speech. A German Member of Parliament was attacked on the street by 20 violent Antifa thugs on Saturday and government truth commissions now want to censor online news content.

AFRICA - A bubonic plague outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has seen several dozen people succumb to the long-feared disease, which caused Europe’s Black Death pandemic in the 14th century. Multiple cases of the plague were identified in the Biringi area of Ituri Province in northeastern DR Congo between November 15 and December 13, Anne Laudisoit of New York-based NGO, Ecohealth Alliance, told AFP. At least 520 people have become ill and “more than 31” of them have died, Ituri Health Minister Patrick Karamura told the outlet. The vast majority of cases involved bubonic plague, with the exception of five instances of pneumonic plague and two instances of septicemic plague, which occur when the disease spreads to the lungs or blood, respectively. Younger people were most affected, with the average age of patients being only 13. Among those infected was a three-month-old baby, according to Laudisoit.

EUROPE - Mount Etna has erupted for the fifth time in a matter of days with dramatic pictures of the erupting Sicilian volcano showing jets of molten rock spewing up to 1km into the sky. As of Tuesday morning, the 3,350m-tall (10,991ft) volcano is still showing worrying signs of activity and the eruption is ongoing. Boris Behncke, a volcanologist with the INGV-Osservatorio Etneo in Catania, Sicily, said last night's blast was much stronger than Etna's last eruption. He tweeted: "Did I call the February 20 to 21 paroxysm of #Etna 'incredibly powerful'? "Well, its successor, in the night of February 22 to 23, was MUCH more powerful. By about 12.30am, the eruptive episode reached its peak phase with lava jets 1km high. A column of ash and steam surpassed the lava, however, reaching up to 10km in height.

USA - President Biden tried to reassure US allies Friday that he is turning the page on his predecessor's "America first" approach, and restoring a foreign policy that values cooperation with the world's major democracies to tackle global challenges. In two virtual appearances before world leaders, his first as president, Biden emphasized that he would be restoring and building upon the Obama administration's diplomatic achievements, including the 2015 multination nuclear deal with Iran and the 2016 Paris climate accord, and would be seeking to work collaboratively to contain threats from Russia and China.

USA - This morning the Supreme Court threw out a series of remaining challenges to election processes and election results in several states left over from the recent presidential election cycle.

USA - Sidney Powell, the attorney who was distanced from the US president’s legal team because she pushed election-related conspiracies, was said to have submitted a lawsuit that “breathed more lies” than most cases seen in court, after she challenged Michigan’s election results. Issuing a response to Ms Powell’s lawsuit on Thursday, lawyers for the City of Detroit said the lawsuit contained “warped logic”, and dismissed claims that vote machines had been tampered with, among other conspiracy theories.

RUSSIA - Gold made up 23% of central bank’s stockpile as of end of June. Putin has made ‘de-dollarization’ a key policy amid sanctions. A multi-year drive to reduce exposure to US assets has pushed the share of gold in Russia’s $583 billion international reserves above dollars for the first time on record. Gold made up 23% of the central bank’s stockpile as of the end of June 2020, the latest date for which data on the breakdown is available, according to a report published late Monday. The share of dollar assets dropped to 22%, down from more than 40% in 2018.

GERMANY - The Eurozone came into existence thanks to former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who, in his own words, "acted like a dictator" and refused to hold a referendum on the adoption of the single currency in his country. As many wonder whether the gloomy outlook could mean the unravelling of the eurozone, an interview with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, which sheds light on the "single currency's undemocratic beginnings", has resurfaced. Germany's longest-serving post-war Chancellor admitted he would never have won a referendum on the adoption of the euro in his country and said he acted "like a dictator" to see it introduced. "We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the euro. That's quite clear. I would have lost and by seven to three." The interview was conducted by Jens Peter Paul, a German journalist in 2002 – the year when the Deutsche Mark was replaced by euro notes and coins – but only published in 2013.

INDIA - China and India were close to a full blown war when the Indian Army occupied the strategic Kailash range heights in late August, a top army commander has said. Lieutenant General Y K Joshi said India’s move to occupy the area was a turning point in the disengagement talks with China. The Indian Army’s top commander explained how the Chinese People’s Liberation Army also moved tanks up the heights as well as Indian soldiers who brought rocket launchers. His comments come as India and China completed the pull-back of troops from the Pangong Tso Lake area on Saturday. Both sides have said they will work to decrease tensions on other parts of the disputed Line of Actual Control. China and India announced their intentions to withdraw troops from the area earlier this month.

EUROPE - For decades, critics of the EU warned that the bloc would one day fall apart under the weight of its own contradictions. For years, British Remainers countered that our stability, like that of every country in Europe, depended on EU membership. Well, now the EU is fracturing at a rate that even the most extreme eurosceptic would hardly have dared to predict.

EUROPE - Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former Finance Minister, said it was only a matter of time before the EU's eurozone bubble "bursts", throwing member states into economic hardship. The coronavirus pandemic has forced countries around the world to take unprecedented economic measures. Perhaps the most significant came last year when the EU agreed to a COVID-19 recovery fund, which was given the green-light to roll out last month. The package means that the 27-member states will now share collective debt. The EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC), was founded on the promise of financial restraint, with shared debt against the rules. A health crisis has been enough to break down that barrier, however, with the package appearing to work in favour of leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron who are keen for further EU integration among member countries.

EUROPE - The EU failure to successfully manage the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine sparked a brutal backlash across member states, with Italy now being advised to follow in Britain's footsteps and reconsider its membership. In an editorial for his Libero newspaper, Mr Feltri said: "Let me point out to Draghi that, if we are up to our necks with Covid, we owe it to the fact that we have entrusted the Union with the task of purchasing and distributing vaccines. Unfortunately, they do not come to us except in bits and pieces, that is, in an irrelevant number or insufficient to cover the needs It is proof that the highly praised EU, in reality, is a bureaucratic wreck not even able to look after the health of peoples." He continued: "England, thanks to Brexit, has arranged for itself to procure the vaunted jabs, and is set to solve the problem of the terrible disease."

NATO - NATO’s willingness to underwrite US military deployment in Europe and expand its reach to include the Pacific demonstrates that its current purpose is more about propping up America than securing peace. The recently concluded virtual meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense ministers has been billed as President Joe Biden’s first opportunity to act on his promise of repairing the damage done to the military alliance by the contentious policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump. While a great deal of attention has been paid to the optics of unifying NATO under new, more inclusive American leadership, the harsh realities of the policy priorities pushed by Lloyd Austin, Biden’s secretary of defense, and their underlying economics, point to a weakened US looking to further exploit a European military alliance for the purposes of propping up an America in decline.