GERMANY - "Where is Olaf Scholz?" That's a question that has been circulating on social media in Germany since the beginning of the year. Whether it's about arms deliveries to Ukraine, the diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in China, the debate about introducing a general vaccine mandate to combat the COVID pandemic or measures against galloping inflation figures — the chancellor seems all but invisible, his statements seem vague. This negatively impacted his approval ratings in the latest survey by pollster Infratest Dimap, in which 1,339 individuals across the country were polled by telephone (876) or online (463) between January 31 and February 2. Only 43% of respondents said they were satisfied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. One month ago that figure still stood at 60%. Two months after taking office, Germany's new government is slipping in the polls. Voters are expressing dissatisfaction over the crisis in Ukraine and especially with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

USA - A new generation of fear entrepreneurs in the IT industry are promoting anxieties and fatalism about the threat quantum computing poses to the future of encrypted data, cyber-security and our way of life. You can’t make this stuff up. Just when we can breathe a sigh of relief as we appear to have overcome the Covid pandemic, ‘the quantum apocalypse’ draws us back into new anxiety about life on Earth – just like Al Pacino in ‘The Godfather’ trying to escape his criminal past, but being pulled back in. However, this is not a Hollywood movie. It is a real thing. And just like the doomsday predictions of environmentalists, ‘the quantum apocalypse’ is being presented as a real existential threat to life as we know it. So, what is this ‘quantum apocalypse’? Well, to put it simply, it is the imagined outcome of a world where encrypted, secret files are suddenly cracked open by quantum computers. The “quantum apocalypse” is the latest fear being used to stoke the fatalism that now underpins the public imagination.

USA - DC school makes masked kindergarten students march with BLM Signs while chanting Black Lives Matter. When liberal activists masquerading as teachers claim that they are not teaching Marxist critical race theory, they are lying. Like several other schools around the country, a private school in Washington DC has given up on educating in favor of indoctrinating young children to support the extremist Black Lives Matter movement.

USA - A widespread effort is underway within the Biden administration to create special lists that track federal employees or applicants who seek religious exemptions. Fifty-five departments and agencies within the Biden administration have created 57 rule changes to track federal employees seeking different types of exemptions, according to the Liberty Counsel Action (LCA). The government watchdog revealed Thursday that some of the rules apply to COVID-19 vaccine exemptions. Others track all exemptions, such as an employee or applicant seeking accommodation from working on the Sabbath or Sunday. Some even track visitors to their buildings or events.

UK - Why are we paying billions to import all this energy when we are sitting on our own goldmine? If Ofgem’s decision yesterday to hike domestic energy bills from April by almost £700 confirmed one thing for us, it should be that now, more than ever, we must rapidly work towards energy security. Indeed, it doesn’t have to be this way. As British households worry how they are going to keep warm, Americans remain as happy as Larry. In the US electricity prices currently average $0.15 (11.2p) per kWh (kilowatt-hour) – little more than half the average of $0.28 (20.6p) per kWh in Britain. And that is before you account for Ofgem’s price rise. So why is it so expensive over here?The answer is prices are kept affordable for Americans because of an energy policy which prioritises self-sufficiency. By exploiting vast shale gas reserves, America escapes the whims of international markets. Europe and the UK, on the other hand, now find themselves trapped in a perilous price hike. And yet, this mess makes little sense when Britain is sitting on ample gas, oil and coal reserves.

UK - Britain’s Ministry of Defence has released its space defense strategy, which raises the alarming specter of an “exo-atmospheric nuclear attack.” However, the document offers few concrete proposals to counter such a threat. Released on Tuesday, the UK’s ‘Defence Space Strategy’ document describes space as a potential future battlefield, rife with threats ranging from cyber attacks and anti-satellite dazzling lasers, all the way up to an “Exo-atmospheric Nuclear Attack.” Such an attack, presumably launched from a satellite in orbit, would be a “permanent kill event,” the report states. However, it does not elaborate on the likelihood of this kind of attack, whether Britain’s adversaries are anywhere close to possessing such capabilities, or what the term “permanent kill event” means. The latest report describes Russia and China as “international threats,” citing both nations’ testing of anti-satellite missiles in recent years. In particular, the report called out Russia for leaving a trail of space debris behind after a test last year. However, similar tests have been carried out by the US as far back as the 1980s and by India in 2019, with neither mentioned in the MoD’s report.

USA - The Biden Administration is working to force more insurance companies to cover transgender surgeries. Such genital, breast, and facial surgery, as well as hormone therapy and more, would be considered medically necessary for those wishing to undergo the sex-changing procedure. Discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability is prohibited in federally funded healthcare facilities under the Affordable Care Act, passed during the Obama Administration. A proposed rule, issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services on January 5, would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to this list. The rule “places ideology ahead of sound medicine,” the Ethics and Public Policy Center argued in a comment Thursday opposing the rule. It “is without legal support, contradicts long-standing scientific understandings of the human person, attempts to evade court injunctions, promotes harm to patients (especially minors), tramples religious freedom,” and more, according to the EPPC.

USA - The Texas grid may fail again this year, according to a local investigative journalist who this week raised the alarm about the grid's state of preparedness ahead of an Arctic weather front. "This is not a good start. Tried checking @ERCOT_ISO dashboard about grid conditions and it's down. Tried checking hourly resource outage data, that's down too," Jeremy Rogalski from K-HOU TV tweeted on Wednesday. He later added that he had gotten in touch with a spokesperson for the Energy Reliability Council of Texas who'd told him that the grid operator was having issues from an upgrade made back in November. Alarm is the appropriate reaction to such news after last year, the grid failed so spectacularly that it caused massive blackouts, with some people remaining without power for several days. The Texas Freeze of last year, as it came to be known, also knocked out power plants and oil and gas wells, causing the largest-ever oil production decline in US oil history.

USA - BLM ‘Week of Action’ Teaching Students Nationwide to Affirm Transgenderism, Disrupt Nuclear Family. Students across the country as young as kindergarten-age are learning that “everybody gets to choose their own gender” and are receiving kid-friendly lessons on disrupting “Western nuclear family dynamics” as part of this week’s national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. The activist-driven curriculum for the Week of Action, which kicked off Monday, is based off the 13 “Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles.” Those principles include a commitment to restorative justice, being transgender affirming and queer affirming, creating space for black families that is “free from patriarchal practices,” and “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other.” Black Lives Matter at School offers kid-friendly versions of the 13 principles designed for elementary and middle-school students.

USA - Everyday items, from grocery staples to home décor, are being priced more like airline tickets and gasoline, where the sticker prices can move frequently within hours or days. Retailers say the price moves are in response to rising production, labor and shipping costs, and continuing product shortages associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. The price changes are happening online as well as offline, especially among smaller retailers that have been wary of spending on pricey technology or frustrating customers, according to executives and analysts.

USA - A decline in morality has preceded the collapse of almost every great society throughout history. Moral decay is often cited as one of the primary reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the level of wickedness in ancient Greece reached a frightening crescendo before it finally fell, and the depravity of French aristocrats was so nauseating that ordinary citizens took them out into the streets and beheaded them during the French Revolution. Unfortunately, we have not learned from the lessons of the past, and so we appear doomed to repeat them.

EL SALVADOR - El Salvador President Nayib Bukele tweeted out on Monday wondering... “Is there a deliberate plan to destroy the United States from within? Why are the authorities and some of the media not even commenting on this things? Why are they letting their beautiful cities rot?” President Bukele tweeted. His comment was in response to a New York Post report on empty shelves at a Rite Aid store in New York City that will be closing soon due to shoplifters. America was once a great country but the Left’s acceptance of crime, destruction of our cities, and attacks on the police have resulted in the most homicides in several US cities in 2021. Democrat officials continue to allow looters to run wild and crime to skyrocket in New York and elsewhere. After the criminals were caught and arrested, charges were reduced to a misdemeanor, and the thieves were back on the streets in less than 24 hours to steal again! And thanks to Democrats and Joe Biden’s devastating policies, the US inflation measurement has reached its highest level in decades, since the early 1980’s.

USA - To put it mildly, these are scary times in Los Angeles. Since November, there have been dozens of dramatic smash-and-grab heists at Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton, Saks Fifth Avenue, and other high-end stores. The Grove, victim of several such “smash mob” attacks, started installing barbed-wire-like fencing around its property every night to deter invaders, while the Tony boutiques of Rodeo Drive have added dozens of security guards to patrol their floors. From South LA (where a CVS was ransacked by a mob of looters) to Studio City (where a man was attacked while taking out the garbage from his house, then tied up along with his disabled son and forced to watch while his home was plundered) to Hancock Park (where a mother pushing a baby in a stroller was robbed in her driveway and 24-year-old Brianna Kupfer was stabbed to death while working at a furniture store on North La Brea on January 13), you can all but smell the fear on the streets. Even in zip codes where violent crime was once unheard of, residents are starting to sweat.

USA - The gross federal debt of the United States has surpassed $30,000,000,000,000. Although the debt affects each of us, it may be difficult to put such a large number into perspective and fully understand its implications. America’s high and rising debt matters because it threatens our economic future… different ways of looking at the debt and its relationship to the economy, the budget, and American families. $30 Trillion is roughly the value of the economies of China, Japan, Germany and the UK. Within 10 years, the federal government will spend nearly as much on interest payments as it does on research and development, infrastructure and education – combined! At $30 trillion and rising, the #NationalDebt threatens our economic future. The interest that we pay on the #NationalDebt is now the fastest growing part of the budget.

USA - Facebook's owner Meta Platforms saw its stock market value slump by more than $230 billion (£169 billion) on Thursday, in a record daily loss for a US firm. Its shares fell 26.4% after quarterly figures disappointed investors. Meta also said that Facebook's daily active users (DAUs) had dropped for the first time in its 18-year history. The company's share price slide saw chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's net worth fall by $31 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The drop in Mr Zuckerberg's personal fortune was equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of Estonia. Even after that drop, Mr Zuckerberg has an estimated net worth of almost $90 billion, which means he is still one of the richest people in the world. It was the first time ever that this measure of activity on the world's biggest social network had gone into reverse.