TAIWAN - Dozens of volunteers have been collecting highly toxic cane toads in the town of Chaotun in Taiwan in an attempt to contain their spread, while scientists remain puzzled by how these large amphibians found their way into the area. “We hope to minimize the impact brought by the invasive species by collecting them to protect our own local species,” a volunteer from the Taiwan Amphibian Conservation Society, Guava Tsai, told NBC News. When the volunteers arrived at the vegetable garden, where the first photo was taken, they were shocked to discover 27 amphibians whose toxin, as Australian experience shows, might be especially dangerous to dogs and cats, which can lick them. In the meantime, they are trying to understand the cause of the issue. One theory is that locals started breeding toads, which, despite their toxicity, symbolize wealth and good luck in Chinese culture and can be sold for up to $144, with some amphibians later escaping or being abandoned by their owners.

USA - One of North America's most active fault lines sprung to life on Tuesday after a swarm of more than 40 earthquakes - ranging from a magnitude 3.5 to 5.8 - rattled off the coast of Oregon, catching the attention and concern of millions in the region. The series of quakes, which began early Tuesday morning and continued into Wednesday, were all clustered between 200-250 miles west of the coastal town of Newport, Oregon, far enough to be mostly undetected on land, but given the area's seismic history, it is creating quite a buzz. The fault line responsible for the quakes is the Blanco Fracture Zone. According to an analysis by Oregon State University, it is more active than the infamous San Andreas Fault in California, having produced more than 1,500 quakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater since the 1970s.

GERMANY - Germany has been in crisis management mode at European level for far too long. Germany needs to be a driver of new ideas and provide impetus to challenges such as migration policy, security and defence policy, and on making Europe a pioneer of cutting-edge technologies with a strong SME input. Europe looks to Germany, and it is now time for Germany to look to Europe. European reactions to a German government embracing the Future of Europe Conference in the coalition agreement have been quite positive, and rightly so: a German commitment to EU reform is now clearly on the table. "Germany needs to be a driver of new ideas and provide impetus to challenges such as migration policy, security and defence policy".

GERMANY - Angela Merkel was assured of a place in the history books as soon as she became Germany’s first female chancellor on November 22, 2005. Over the next 16 years, she was credited with raising Germany’s profile and influence, working to hold a fractious European Union together, managing a string of crises and being a role model for women. Now that near-record tenure is ending with her leaving office at age 67 to praise from abroad and enduring popularity at home. Her designated successor, Olaf Scholz, is expected to take office Wednesday. Merkel, a former scientist who grew up in communist East Germany, is bowing out about a week short of the record for longevity held by her one-time mentor, Helmut Kohl, who reunited Germany during his 1982-1998 tenure.

USA - An upcoming banking crisis with record amount of bank loan defaults could be on the horizon. With your money on the line, banks and financial institutions could use it for either: Bail-in - where you pay for it right now as the bank takes some of your deposits. Bail-out - where you have to pay for it through future taxation

USA - Being in debt is an incredibly stressful way to live. We owe a trillion dollars on our credit cards — which often have interest rates as high as 28%! We've borrowed a trillion dollars to buy new cars — which plummet in value the minute you drive off the lot. And we've racked up about $1.5 trillion for college diplomas with dubious worth. It's gotten so bad, 73% of Americans now die with debt... with an average total of more than $60,000.

USA - Elon Musk took aim at the US government’s lavish federal budget, and President Biden's infrastructure bill in particular, arguing that spending has reached an “insane” level far beyond what the country is able to sustain. Speaking at Tesla’s new ‘Gigafactory’ in Austin, Texas for the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit on Monday, Musk criticized a massive infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden last month, namely its trillion dollar price tag, ranking among the most expensive pieces of legislation passed in US history. “You can't just spend $3 trillion more than you earn every year. If you don't cut government spending, something really bad's gonna happen. This is crazy,” he said.

USA - Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has called all those believing our planet is overpopulated to think again. It is depopulation, not overpopulation, that is going to be humanity’s doom, the Tesla CEO believes. The world population is nearing 8 billion, but Musk believes there are still “not enough people” on Earth. “I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birthrate,” the Tesla and SpaceX head, who is also a father of six, told Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council on Tuesday.

USA - A Los Angeles police detective is warning tourists to stay clear of the city, saying that they will be unsafe, and comparing conditions to the horror movie ‘The Purge.’ “We’re telling people don’t visit because we don’t think we can keep you safe right now,” Los Angeles Police Department detective Jamie McBride told Fox News on Monday. The city, he added, is like the movie ‘The Purge,’ a popular horror film set in a US where crime is legal for a set period of time every calendar year. The difference between the movie and the city, however, is that in Los Angeles, criminals have 365 days to run riot, McBride said. Like numerous other critics, McBride, also director for the LA Police Protective League, points to Proposition 47 as key to California’s laid-back attitude towards crime. The 2014 measure made theft below $950 a misdemeanor. The attempt at criminal justice reform, critics have said, has only fueled home invasions and smash-and-grab robberies as most criminals know they will be released not long after being caught and usually with little to no bail set.

UK - The journalist was researching his new book, Trust No One, which explores the cunning and terrifying tricks that could see an innocent person appear in porn or commit a crime. Deepfakes have spiralled out of control after first emerging in 2017 and as technology continues to advance, things will likely only get worse. Last week, a video supposedly showing actress Addison Rae having sex resurfaced online - despite being debunked as the work of high-grade editing tools last year. And she’s not alone. Across the internet, there are fake videos ‘showing’ Hollywood stars in an orgy, Chinese President Xi Jinping declaring nuclear war... and Tom Cruise playing golf.

VATICAN - Pope Francis said Monday there are plans for a possible second meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, after their historic 2016 encounter in Cuba became a landmark in mending relations severed by the 1,000-year-old schism that divided Christianity. Speaking to reporters as he traveled home from Greece, Francis said he planned to meet next week with the Russian church’s foreign envoy “to agree on a possible meeting” with Patriarch Kirill. He noted that Kirill is due to travel in the coming weeks but also said he was “ready to go to Moscow” even if diplomatic protocols weren’t yet in place. “Because talking with a brother, there are no protocols,” Francis said. “We are brothers. We say things to each other’s face like brothers.” The two churches split during the Great Schism of 1054 and have remained estranged over a host of issues, including the primacy of the pope and Russian Orthodox accusations that the Catholic Church is poaching converts in former Soviet lands.

JAPAN - Tokyo is looking for ways to boost its defense posture, including getting the ability to strike “enemy bases,” the country’s PM has said, signaling a potential formal shift from the nation’s post-WWII pacifist stance. The hawkish remarks were delivered by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday, as he addressed parliament during the opening of an extraordinary session, convened to debate additional spending to tackle the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. “In order to safeguard the people's lives and livelihood, we'll examine all the options including capability to attack enemy bases ... and strengthen our defense posture fundamentally with a sense of speed,” Kishida said.

USA - The Biden administration quietly waived sanctions on Iran to allow the hardline regime to sell electricity to Iraq, according to a non-public notification obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that was provided to Congress just as nuclear talks between the United States and Tehran resumed this week. The more concessions you make to terrorists, the harder they push. That’s been the defining dynamic of the Iran negotiations, the PLO negotiations, and all the negotiations with Islamic terrorists. The Biden administration is living up to that dynamic… Iran is repaying the concessions in exactly the way you would expect a terror regime to do. The warning came a day after Washington hit out at Iran, saying talks with world powers on a return to the 2015 nuclear accord had stalled because Tehran “does not seem to be serious.”

GERMANY - AP Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s largest shipping company, announced Wednesday it would pay $1,000 bonuses to each of its 80,000 employees after projecting a record $17 billion in profits for 2021. Those soaring profits were due, in no small part, to the skyrocketing costs of shipping from this year’s massive supply disruptions. “In a massive team effort our colleagues across the globe have risen beyond the call of duty to respond to our customers’ needs. And this has not been easy given the unknowns and disruptions that we had to deal with, the impacted supply chains, congestions, and capacity shortages,” CEO Soren Skou said in the memo. Bloomberg recalled Maersk paying a similar bonus to most of its staff in 2020, when the company emerged from several years of losses to post a $2.9 billion profit. The company just posted the best third quarter in its 117-year history.

USA - General David Thompson, vice chief of space operations for the US Space Force, said Saturday China is developing its space capabilities at "twice the rate" of the US. On a panel of US space experts and leaders speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in a panel moderated by CNN's Kristin Fisher, General Thompson warned China could overtake the US in space capabilities by the end of the decade. "The fact, that in essence, on average, they are building and fielding and updating their space capabilities at twice the rate we are means that very soon, if we don't start accelerating our development and delivery capabilities, they will exceed us," General Thompson said, adding, "2030 is not an unreasonable estimate."