TAIWAN - In 2023, the volume of trade between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait was $268 billion. This means Taipei traded more with its main adversary, Beijing, than with its foremost ally, Washington. And for Chinese business, Taiwan was a more important counterparty than the state’s key strategic partner, Russia.

RUSSIA - The Russians have warned us over and over again that they will use nuclear weapons if they are forced into a direct war with western powers. So why are most western leaders not taking those threats seriously? Ukraine is not worth fighting a nuclear war over. Both sides would be wise to try to find a peaceful resolution while it is still possible to do so. But instead, we continue to see escalation after escalation. In particular, the Biden administration seems determined to see how close it can go without pushing things completely over the edge. This is very foolish, because the Russians are very serious about fighting a nuclear war if they are pushed too far.

GERMANY - In the run-up to NATO’s large-scale manoeuvre “Steadfast GERMANY - Defender” media coverage has been increasingly warning the Western public of a Russian attack within the next twenty or even five years. Germany’s Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, has declared that he envisages a widening of the war in Ukraine, even if he does not expect an attack by Russia at present. A leading NATO admiral does not rule out an uncontrolled escalation. 90,000 soldiers are currently deployed for Steadfast Defender exercises as close as possible to Russia’s western border.

VATICAN - Pope Francis said he sees "hypocrisy" in criticism of his decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples, possibly his most strongly worded defence of the move. LGBT blessings were authorised last month by a Vatican document called Fiducia Supplicans (Supplicating Trust), but that has met with significant resistance in the Catholic Church, particularly from African bishops. "Nobody gets scandalised if I give my blessings to a businessman who perhaps exploits people, and this is a very grave sin. But they get scandalised if I give them to a homosexual," Francis told Italian Catholic magazine Credere. "This is hypocrisy," he said.

WALES - Farmers in Wales are warning that protests are "inevitable" over planned Welsh government reforms. Former rugby referee-turned-farmer Nigel Owens is set to be one of hundreds of people attending a meeting in Carmarthenshire on Thursday (February 8). It follows a meeting in Welshpool last week that was attended by more than 1,000. Unions are warning that a new subsidy scheme for farms, set to come in from 2025, is "unworkable".

USA - After five straight days, it stopped raining in California on Thursday. The statewide death toll from the mega atmospheric river storm climbed to nine on Tuesday, and it included the first storm-related deaths in Southern California. Four were killed by fallen trees in Northern California and two died in car wrecks in the Southland, officials said. Five US Marines aboard a military helicopter that went down during stormy weather in the mountains outside San Diego are confirmed dead, a Marine commander said. It is not known whether the treacherous conditions played a role.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia has told the US its position stands that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem, and Israeli "aggression" on the Gaza Strip stops, the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. On Tuesday, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said that the Biden administration has received positive feedback that Saudi Arabia and Israel are willing to continue to have normalization discussions. The kingdom issued the statement to affirm its steadfast position to Washington on the Palestinian issue in the light of the comments attributed to Kirby, the ministry said. Saudi Arabia put US-backed plans to normalise ties with Israel on ice, sources familiar with Riyadh's thinking told Reuters in October, 2023, as the war between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israeli forces escalated.

ISRAEL - Itamar Ben-Gvir has accused US President Biden of not giving Israel enough freedom to fight Hamas. Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has criticized US President Biden’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza, arguing that the situation would be “completely different” if former President Donald Trump were in power. “Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel (to Gaza), which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “If Trump was in power, the US conduct would be completely different.” Since the beginning of the military conflict, following Hamas’s incursion on October 7, which left around 1,200 Israelis dead and over 200 taken hostage, the United States pledged to give Israel “whatever it needs” to achieve its military goals – but repeatedly urged the IDF to avoid harming Palestinian civilians.

USA - Forty years past the time that George Orwell envisioned the stomping boot of Big Brother, the police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state. Fueled by a melding of government and corporate power — the rise of the security industrial complex — this watershed moment sounds a death knell for our privacy rights. An unofficial fourth branch of government, the Surveillance State came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC. This is the new face of tyranny in America: all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. Tread cautiously.

USA - Illegal immigration is a hot-button topic that's on everyone's lips in the US, even catching the attention of billionaires like Elon Musk. Amidst the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis, Elon questions the motivation behind pursuing US citizenship when those entering illegally appear to reap even more benefits. Musk highlighted the paradox where those who enter the country illegally still manage to secure mortgages, bank loans, healthcare, driver's licenses, and insurance. It's a valid point that Elon raises, echoing the sentiments of many Americans.

USA - Tucker Carlson sparked outrage from the left Tuesday by announcing an upcoming interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The announcement led to accusations that he’s essentially working as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propagandist and that his interview will spark a “civil war” in the United States. He issued the announcement through a video post published to the social media platform X. In the video, he explained why he’s chosen to interview Putin despite the “risks to conducting an interview like this.”

USA - Trillions of gallons of rain have already fallen on the state of California, and more rain continues to fall as I write this article. Billions of dollars in damage has already been done, but of even greater concern is what all of this water could mean for southern California’s fault lines. Geophysicists have discovered that the additional weight that flooding puts on fault lines can help trigger earthquakes. Of course we have been warned for many years that “the Big One” is way overdue in southern California, and when it finally happens it will be a disaster unlike anything we have ever seen before.

UK - David Cameron’s call for the UK and UN to consider recognizing a Palestinian state is both short-sighted and fundamentally dangerous. Israel’s very survival is now at stake, with the Israeli people menaced by an array of Islamist terrorist groups and an Iranian regime. Lord Cameron’s poorly-timed remarks at a reception in Westminster earlier this week are among the most reckless comments made by a British Foreign Secretary in the modern era. The Foreign Secretary’s extraordinary intervention comes across as an insidious attempt to undermine the legitimacy of Israel at a critical moment, just months after the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

USA - It has long been on the minds of doomsday preppers and fiction media creators alike – but how likely is it, really? Let’s sketch a big country in three broad strokes: First, its population is over 333 million. These citizens privately own about (or at least) 339 million guns. They are unique in that no other state in the world has more private guns than people. They easily outdistance, for instance, Yemen, a country with a martial culture that has gone through years of civil war and yet there are only about 53 firearms per 100 inhabitants.

VATICAN - On the one hand, Globalist Pope Francis appears before the world as an ailing elder who is already planning his own funeral. On the other hand, the Argentine pontiff is energetically going about reforming (some will say destroying) Catholic dogma and doctrine. Lately, Francis has had to deal with a completely self-inflicted malady, resulting from the publication of Fiducia Supplicans, a document that has generated a historical, unprecedented rejection from prelates and lay people alike. Francis will never admit that ‘Fiducia…’ is a failure of Biblical proportions, but his papacy appears to forever be tainted by this attempt at normalizing behavior that has been anathema for millenia.