As torrential rain is also expected to lash down in the coastal provinces, the report also urged citizens to be careful and cautious against disruptions to transportation due to icing and frost, especially on the Antalya and Konya highway, and against conditions such as floods, strong winds and lightning on the coastline. Meanwhile, heavy rain is expected to batter the inner parts of the Aegean as of today, as sleet and heavy snowfall are expected in places above 1,200 meters altitude.

The metropolitan city of Istanbul, separately, where the risk of water scarcity became one of the most urgent problems, will witness slight rain until January 15, the bureau said, noting that the precipitation could increase further in the next two days. The drought experienced over the autumn period has continued since the beginning of the winter in the megacity.

The second costliest and greatest humanitarian disaster in 2022, with at least 1,700 deaths, was the severe flooding in Pakistan resulting from "record-breaking monsoon rainfall". Rainfall there in August was five to seven times heavier than usual, and accelerated glacier melt due to high temperatures "significantly increased the flooding". the report said.

In many countries in Europe, the summer of 2022 was marked by extreme heat and drought followed by severe thunderstorms. In France as well as in parts of Spain, heavy storms brought "hailstones the size of tennis balls" that caused losses in the billions. The river Rhine, Europe's busiest waterway, saw water levels fall to record lows, forcing ships to carry less cargo. "It is difficult to quantify the indirect economic consequences of climatic events like these," Munich Re said.

The speculation grows as the Pope met with Archbishop Georg Gänswein on Monday, the longtime secretary of Pope Benedict XVI and a key figure in his recent funeral. Gänswein has released an extraordinary memoir in which he casts Francis in a deeply unfavorable light. The Vatican provided no details about the content of the private audience, other than to say that it happened.

Italian newspaper La Stampa reported that a cardinal had told them the conservative faction is ready to move against the 'communist' Pope. The cardinal was quoted as saying: 'The secret plan will be formulated on various axes and phases, but it will have one objective - to place the pontificate under such stress that Francis will have to resign.

The bishops’ conference president claimed that the figures were to be explained by the fact that the changes recommended in the synodal pathway on which the German Church was embarked had not “filtered through”. “This is nothing to gloss over.

Catholics who reside in Germany have to pay a compulsory church tax of 8-9 per cent of their net income tax. If they are not prepared to pay the tax, they have to officially sign out of the Church. This means signing a form at their local registry office which states that they no longer wish to be a member of the Catholic Church. This is then noted on the back of their baptism certificates.

Chernyak estimated 500,000 people would be mobilized, with those living in cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg to be most impacted. Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy military intelligence chief, said the recruits would be used in attacks that will begin in the spring in the east and south of Ukraine, reported the Evening Standard.

“We expect them to conduct offensives in Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, as well as possibly Zaporizhzhia but to defend in Kherson and Crimea, this is the number of men they will need for such a task,” said Skibitsky. “If Russia loses this time around, then Putin will collapse,” said Skibitsky, according to reports.

However, he added: "But you want to know the real reason why there's an egg shortage? It is because the supermarkets won't pay the farmers for the eggs. So the supermarkets have upped their price for you, the consumer. But they haven't filtered that price increase down to us, the farmers. So our cost of producing these eggs has skyrocketed, feed, electric, the price of new birds, they have gone up. But our price of eggs has stayed the same. So we physically can't afford to produce these eggs."

"They're going to blame the farmers. We can't afford to produce it. If the supermarkets paid us a fair price for our eggs, then we would stock our sheds, and there'll be more sheds going up and the UK could be self sufficient in great British eggs. But the supermarkets won't pay us."

Scientists who have spent two decades studying mice and rats have reportedly found the same gene in rodents all over the country, making them harder to kill. Pest expert Dr Alan Buckle said the worrying development could pose a threat to both animal and human health.

Anticoagulant rodenticides work by stopping blood from clotting. But continuing to use them even though rodents are able to tolerate the poisons could have major implications, Dr Buckle said.

This morning Tobias Ellwood, a senior backbencher and chairman of the Commons Defence Committee said the revelation in Harry's memoir was 'ill-advised'. Speaking about the Invictus Games, a sporting event created by the Prince for injured, sick and wounded soldiers, he told Sky News: 'I do worry that this is going to have security implications.'

It comes as Rusty Firmin, a SAS hero from the Iranian Embassy siege, warned that Prince Harry's claim has massively increased the threat for his own family and other key royals. As a terrorist target, Harry is now right up there. It's not only himself at risk, it's his family, his children and, arguably, members of the military family.

"The water is everywhere," Western Australia Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson told reporters in Perth. "People in the Kimberley are experiencing a one-in-100-year flood event, the worst flooding Western Australia has had in its history."

In some parts, he said flood waters stretched for 50 kilometres with inundation "as far as the eye can see". The emergency comes after frequent flooding in Australia's east over the last two years due to a multi-year La Nina weather event.

Following its foundation in 1971 by German engineer and academic Klaus Schwab, the WEF has met annually to tackle what it sees as the issues of the day and deliver guidance to invited members and guests, and through them influence the world at large.

In 1973, the annual meeting endorsed the Davos Manifesto, a “code of ethics for business leaders” which was updated in 2020 to set out the purpose of business in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – itself a concept coined by Schwab in his 2016 book. This year’s meeting will be no different. It is headlined “Cooperation in a Fragmented World” and will follow on from the Great Reset as declared at the Davos summit of 2021.

In the run-up to the 2023 event, Schwab announced last November that Communist China will likely serve as a “role model” for many countries as the global community embarks upon a “systemic transformation of the world,” as Breitbart News reported. In an interview with the Chinese state-run television network CGTN, Schwab heaped praise on the Communist government in Beijing for being a leading figure in his vision of the aforementioned Great Reset of capitalism to usher in the “world of tomorrow.”

“Urgent global and national efforts” are needed to mitigate the risk of such a downturn as well as debt distress in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), where investment growth is expected to remain below the average of the past two decades, the Washington-based lender said.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva started 2023 with a warning that the world faces “a tough year, tougher than the year we leave behind.” One-third of the global economy will be in recession because the US, the EU and China are all slowing down simultaneously, she told CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ in an interview aired January 1.

Now, in spite of tough international sanctions and extreme self-imposed isolation during the coronavirus pandemic, experts warn that North Korea has made such rapid progress with its military goals that existing arrangements for the defence of South Korea, Japan and the US could soon be rendered obsolete.

“North Korea is on its way to perfecting its nuclear programme,” says Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who heads the Asia programme at the Wilson Center think-tank in Washington. “I think there is a serious risk that a North Korean crisis could erupt while we are all focused on China potentially invading Taiwan.”

But the development that most worries policymakers in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington is North Korea’s new generation of lower yield tactical and battlefield nuclear weapons. On New Year’s Day, North Korea test-fired its “super-large multiple launch rocket system”, which Kim has claimed can strike anywhere in South Korea.

“North Korea fired more than twice as many missiles last year as were launched during the entirety of the reigns of former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il put together,” says Jeongmin Kim, an analyst with Seoul-based information service NK Pro. “It is no longer strictly accurate to describe these launches simply as ‘tests’,” she adds. “Rather, North Korea is demonstrating to its adversaries that its nuclear forces are operational and ready to use.”

Life is pretty tough for the generation sinking into their middle years. It is a time when people are supposed to be kicking on with their careers, rearing children and, often, caring for ageing parents. But it is also a time when housing and child-care costs combine with uneven taxes and an unbalanced welfare state to create a miserable period. Call it the Dark Ages.